If we want to support the crucial role of parents then public policy would do things like provide for time off from work to attend to children’s needs (check France or the Scandinavian countries for models). It might provide parents with a broader range of pre-school/child care options (check almost any other industrialized country for models). It might provide social security credit for stay at home moms. It might support home visiting nurses for first time mothers. It might get real about enforcing the parental involvement requirements of No Child Left Behind (not choice–the ones you don’t hear about that call for parents to be informed of and included in decision-making for school improvement).

This particular tirade against the shortcomings of parents (preventing any good coming from increased spending on schools), on the other hand, is pure scapegoating. I hope the NEA is happy.

There is no contradiction. He isn’t opposed to spending money. He just said that money alone can’t produce results.

By being willing to state these things, he is contributing to a discussion of parental responsibility. That, in itself, is helpful.

Funny, when you check his plan for education on his website, it mostly just mentions billions and billions of dollars of new spending. Not much there about parents or society.

The governing assumptions among many young people are that life is an entirely passive experience. Food, shelter, medical care, education and peace are vouchsafed to us all, so to speak, as birthmarks from our heavenly father, via the Democratic Party. One wonders: How much would it cost for Congress to pass a Bill to Strengthen the Resolve of Parents and Teachers to Bring Order to the Younger Generation? Or did we pass along the disease in the first place, and aren

In addition to teaching biology I’m also teaching a 7th grade class of Home Ec. During a recent lesson on budgeting, a student claimed he needed a budget higher than $150/month for clothes because his sneakers cost more than that. When I suggested getting less expensive sneakers, he scoffed at the idea.
I was looking over his budget sheet later on and noticed that he had only set aside a little money for groceries and asked him about it. He replied that food stamps would take care of it.

The current generation of poor students are growing up expecting entitlements to be a permanent part of their income, and until we pull the safety blanket away, they will never be motivated to work hard to prepare themselves for a good-paying career later on.

Bill C. for Secretary of Education ? There are worse ideas !