1.Initiate a voucher program (Schools need to have some sort of incentive to get better and giving those students that do care a choice seems like a no brainer)
2. Incentivize the establishment of private schools in urban areas (some sort of tax incentives possibly)
3. Get rid of standardized test as a metric (drop the time and focus on memorization actually start learning)
4. Merge school districts into single districts based on county, allow transfers within districts. (Talk about a money saver, do we really need a superintendent and staff of 10 different districts for each county)
Expand classes in required subjects to include courses that get students interested such as sports theory, website development, entrepreneurship, etc. (math, history, science can all be taught in ways outside of old textbooks)
We can try to pour money into the current system but as @TayJ said it’s increasingly clear that is not the problem.
It’s seems to be with a few of you that are on here “brent” that it’s always someone else’s fault and no accountability which is another In problem in society with everybody.
I get that too. I am just trying to say that at some point, the school can’t do it all. Its got to start in the home. I think that’s some of what Jeff is trying to get across. I can’t speak for him but maybe. Yes, education is a huge factor in improving your socioeconomic situation, but the family should be the first focus in my opinion.
Brent is talking about the impact of the war on drugs. I would argue that (I’m about to get political, apologies in advance) left leaning groups have been waging a war on the family and that is the real problem. When the family is fractured and people are forced to rely on government programs, now those people are told to think that only democrat politicians care about you. The more dependent a group is on the government, the more likely they are to vote that way. Its really what you said, slavery. Democrats were/are the party of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, segregation. Now they have convinced people they are not while still enslaving their votes. Again, controversial, my opinion, I know. That is what it looks like to me.
I know it’s controversial but I’ve seen it in my own family, is possible reform of the welfare system. It currently incentivizes being a single parent over the family structure. There should be no reason you don’t get as much money because you are married, if you need help, you need help.
This is definitely something that could help. In general I’m a believer in simplifying a lot of the programs and get it down to just giving people cash rather than all of these various programs with different rules. I think that the various rules could have unintended consequences like you’ve identified that a more simple welfare regime would not.
I don’t have the answers man. I just don’t. And the suggestions that I have would probably have me cancelled in today’s culture, perhaps even on here, for being too intolerant or something. So, I will just quote some really old books.
“There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America,” -Tocqueville, mid 1800s
“there is a widespread and aggressive conspiracy to destroy the institution of marriage” ( Plain Truth , July 1976)
So for starters, I guess I would say policies that encourage marriage vs. policies that incentivize people not to marry. But otherwise, I don’t know how to get the divorce rate down or anything like that. To me that’s all on the decay of morality in society. And as John Adams said:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Looking at the Pew research, in 2015, 65% of college educated adults were married compared to 50% of high school or less.
Likely related 68% of unmarried respondents said that financial instability was a major or minor reason why they weren’t married, this was only slightly behind “have not found the right person.” (I’d really like to hear more from the 13% who said not having found the right person was a minor reason for not getting married.) Obviously the lower on the income ladder you are, the more likely you are to cite financial instability as the reason why.
It may be a morality issue, but it could just be an economic one too. I’m not sure of policies that would fix that either. The ones advocated by Tucker Carlson and the like sound too much like central planning to make me think they wouldn’t end up making everyone worse off.
I don’t know what Tucker presented but you’re probably right. I think of instances where a single mother can receive more government assistance than a married one with the same income situation. I’m all for helping people get on their feet but if they help decreases based on marital status, then people are more inclined to cohabitate rather than marry, so on and so forth. Again, with such high divorce rates, does this matter in terms of keeping families together? I don’t know. Divorce rates are high among all groups, religious or not so I am certainly not saying that there is some moral high ground somewhere, per se.
So what we are getting at is, whether darker skinned or not, restoration of the traditional nuclear family would improve a lot of the issues that we are facing today. I’m just not the guy to solve that equation, unfortunately.