Michael Hohmann wrote:
>"...accessing money
> is often a hassle in life-- whether we are working for it or simply standing
> in the proverbial line for an entitlement handout/subsidy!
> Given all our recent discussion of education-related issues on this >list, I can't
>help but wonder what today's high school drop-outs, those >16, 17 and 18 year olds
>who can't read, write, or do basic math >adequately, expect in their lives?
<<<<<<<<snip>>>>>>>>>>
Kids who can't read and write know their futures: they're
going to wind up in prison because they will work at "jobs"
they need not be literate to do--car theft, prostitution,
drug dealing, burglary, robbery, fencing stolen goods, check
kiting. ("Who cares if straight laces snear at us in the
street? Fine airs and fine graces don't 'ave to steal to
eat." IMHO, Dickens described poverty best --in 19th Century
Englnd,-- but the ties to today in Minneapolis are strong in
describing poverty.)
How much public money and support services will they be
> entitled to over the course of their lives
It costs $35,000/year to support one felon. It costs a whole
bunch in police, parole, court, etc. services to pay out
$30,000/year/prisoner. There are high post-prison costs, not
to mention recidivism costs. There are tons of juvenile
offender costs, costs for children of a felon in social
services, etc.
At this point (since 1933 or so) we are in the third and
fourth generation of people who cannot read. That's long
enough to lose the memory of how important it is to read.
All to insure that, being unable to join the ranks of the
working stiff, each illiterate person understands clearly
his/her appointed lot in life.
Their [illiterates] unwillingness to invest
> the time today (attending school and working to learn) that is needed What of
>their children and their children's children?
With three generations, it is not irresponsibility any more,
it's the only life they know. They have been, through one or
another reason (add a pile of health reasons to the ones
noted} dumbed down.
Where does the irresponsibility end?
It is, at most, 50% the individual's failures. The rest goes
to the system interested in keeping a certain number of
people in poverty, hopefully for misguided reasons born in
human ignorance.
>How much freedom and choice, and
> entitlement-based subsidy is justified as reward for such oft-repeated,
>irresponsible decision making?
I don't know, Michael, how much do you think we should
charge ourselves for forcing people to stay in poverty? It
now amounts to less than 1% of our national wealth. That's
pretty darned cheap. The question is 'how much will it cost
to change our behvior? As wealthy as we are, if we devoted
another 2% or our national wealth to making a serious dent
in poverty and illiteracy, we could do wonders.
>When will that circle be broken?
My general rule of thumb is, three genertions in, three
generations plus-plus back out if there are successful,
sweeping changes which the body politic undertakes to change
our bad habits.
>
> I suggest that public systems don't empower people.
Since this particular problem is older than dirt, but is
changing in some parts of the world, I suggest that you're
mistaken, Michael. Those places where conditions are
improving, at least for some, are those where the body
politic decided to make changes by holding themselves
accountble through laws. Hence, the Emancipation
Proclamation, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights,
amendments to the Constitution, etc. The laws are their to
remind us that we have codified ways to hold ourselves
accountable to ourselves and each other.
People empower themselves by learning to take
responsibility in their own lives; by taking
> responsibility for the consequences of their own decisions and their life
> choices. I believe these concepts are still taught in our schools..."
Yes, they were taught in schools, but since you don't seem
to have learned it, and I'm somewhat shakey on how to change
it (there's an understatement if I ever heard one), and
millions of others are likewise unable to get the point,
then I cannot believe that the illiterate should take all
the blame, or even half the blame One--third of the blame
goes to the individual illiterate, at most. It's a national
blind-side, if you will.
Wizard Marks, Central
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