On Thursday, January 29, 2015 at 11:03:28 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On 1/29/2015 8:28 PM, Swingman wrote:
On 1/29/2015 4:21 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 1/29/2015 3:07 PM, Leon wrote:
The life long skills that could be taught in a wood shop would be
thousands of times less expensive than incarcerating those that have no
other skill and peddle crack on the street corner. For some odd reason
our mentality is switching over to the idea of knowing how to do "ONE"
thing that requires no thinking.

You can not suppress an educated independent population

Depends upon who is in charge of the educating and what their agenda is..

This country has had more money thrown at education than ever before in
human history (Detroit school system a case in point), is more
suppressed than ever with rights continually under assault by the
government and militarized police forces, with more folks in jail (many
corporate, for profit systems), more in poverty, and the majority so
poorly educated, to the point of barely being qualified to flip burgers,
that we must rely on visas to fill the spots that require something
other than a basket weaving curriculum.


You forgot to mention the children that wake up in the morning turn on
the tablet, or computer and text all day until the go to bed that night.
Their parents don't notice as they sit around the living room texting
all of the people they are aware, of and ignore the kids.

With this system, we are developing a dysfunctional society with no
skills for physical iterating with the people around them. Kids that
think they are being harassed if you look at them cross eyed, and get
their parent to take person to court for harassing their children.


I don't consider it a "system", I consider it bad personal choices on the part of the parents.

I've got 2 kids in graduate school, another with a BS degree working in his field of study, and a fourth with a pretty good job considering he decided that college was not for him at this time.

I feel that I played a huge part in their success.

For many years my family was deeply involved in Soap Box Derby racing. 3 of the 4 kids qualified for the World Championship Race in Akron, OH multiple times (7 trips in total). One of them won the World Championship in the top division. One rule I had is that they didn't race if they didn't work on their own cars. Did I expect them to put in as many hours as I did? No, they had other commitments, but I made sure that they were involved in every aspect of the builds especially at the beginning of each new process. They were introduced to metal work, bondo, fiberglass, bondo, weight distribution, bondo, etc. Did I mention bondo? It wasn't just about learning hands-on skills, it was more about teaching them that rewards require hard work and while hard work doesn't guarantee rewards, it greatly increases the possibility.

Yes, they text from sun up to sun down (and in between) but many of those texts are to me. They also know when to put down the phone and concentrate on the tasks at hand.

My point is that we can't blame a "system". There is no rule book for parenting, there are only common sense practices that point your kids down the right path. It's up to the parents.

It is a losing proposition

I feel like a winner.