Thompson Pushes Parental Responsibility to Reform Education
Written by Sam on December 5th, 2007South Carolina, where the high school dropout rate is regularly among the highest in the nation, shouldn’t look to Washington to solve its problem, Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said Tuesday.Rather, people should look in the opposite direction.
“The federal government does not have a solution to children dropping out of school, to local schools choosing not to educate their children,” Thompson said in a crowded gun shop in Greer.
“If that’s the case, parents have got to do it. It’s a hard lesson. I know every political candidate is supposed to come up with a 10-point program to solve all problems, but I’m telling you the truth. Those in this country who need help should get help. We have a social safety net. We have a lot of organizations out there that are not government organizations, that are charitable organizations, that are nonprofit organizations. Americans help each other. But at the end of the day, you cannot get around parental responsibility, you cannot get around the responsibility of the teenager, you cannot get around the responsibility of the local school board.”
I don’t have much to add to this. He is exactly correct and I have said for a long time that the number one problem with education in the U.S. is the lack of parental involvement. It seems so many parents today don’t want to be bothered with their kids’ upbringing. They don’t take the time to go to school board meetings or get involved with their classwork. They don’t bother to find out who their friends are and what influence they have over them. They seem to view the schools as a day care center that they can drop their kids off at when they go to work.
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This is why I like Fred Thompson. Other candidates such as Huckabee would say that more government is the answer. Thompson makes me proud to be a conservative when communicates his message.
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that’s because parents have to work. Poor families tend to have parents that have about 3 jobs between them.
it ain’t the 50’s anymore girlfriend.
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I’d say the number one problem is too much parental involvement. If you come to my office or classroom to whine about how your little idiot should be getting a higher grade or to generally tell me how to do my job, I’ll be on the phone with security.
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Publius - parental involvement is when parents really care about the education of their kids, so it’s not a problem at all. If my kid received a 0 on his essay for mentioning about what Christmas really is “Birth of Christ”, then that would be very valid to complain about and the kid is NOT a spoiled brat.
Roger - even there were poor people back in the ’50s, so your forgetting that conept. What it really boils down to is how parents value their kids over their material possessions. Doesn’t matter whether they are rich or poor (even some rich families get themselves into credit card debt).
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Publius, this post is about secondary education. You have proven once again that you are educated beyond your own comprehension. I suggest some humility would make you a better educator.
As Parental involvement in this country has decreased so has the quality of education.
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jason, who’s talking about credit? When you have to work three jobs to survive, the fact that your kids are getting a warm meal at school is a burden off your back. It’s about survival, that’s what life is day-to-day. Surviving in the inner city is even worse. If I have to go to work to make sure my family eats and has a home or I have to go to a parent-teacher conference, where do I go? Think inner city where there are millions of students, not just your local school disctrict of 4,000.
The reason why government must get involved in such things is because society can’t handle it itself.
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I highly doubt there are many people in the inner city working three jobs. I’ll bet there are a lot more not working three jobs and collecting food stamps instead.
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Sam, thank you for being the stereo typical out of touch, ignorant, and nasty Republican.
Have you met your annual quota of cross burning yet? Better hurry up, it’s December.
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Roger, you are free at any time to provide statistics showing the number of people in the inner cities that are working three jobs.
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However, Roger, if you do find such statistics the geniuses on this site will claim that the source (whatever it is) has a left-wing bias and can’t be trusted because Rush Limbaugh said so.
For example, I linked a video from an ABC show that Sam had flagrantly plagiarized a post from (same examples in the same order as on the show with no citation). The posters claimed that, because the video was archived on a left-wing blog, it couldn’t be trusted. As if this blog deliberately set up a studio and hired an actor who looked like John Stossel to film this video JUST to frame Sam as a plagiarizer.
Sadly, although I had high hopes that this blog would be the rare specimen where posters actually articulated conservative principles in a reasonable way (and sometimes there is the occasional gem), the intellectual level of the content and argument is largely in the toilet, like other right wing blogs
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Publius, Sam just avoids the issue and changes the topic.
People like Sam would have condemed the New Deal.
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What am I avoiding, Roger, and what topic have I changed? You said these parents can’t spend time being involved with their education because they are working three jobs. I asked you to provide some kind of data to back that up and you haven’t done so. You haven’t because you can’t because you know that what I said is correct and you simply don’t want to accept the reality. So you see, it isn’t I who am avoiding the issue.
And yes, the New Deal was a raw deal and it prolonged the Depression several years longer than it would have lasted without it. In fact, the only reason we pulled out of it when we did was because of WWII.
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While it troubles me to agree with any part of Sam’s above statement, which reads very much like a stereotypical racist Republican rant, I feel I must share a brief story.
I was volunteering at a community center near Duke, telling kids about the admittedly-pretty-sweet life I have as a SCUBA diver and marine biologist, and one twelve-year-old told me she wished she could have my job. I told her something along the lines of “if you work hard, you can do whatever you want to do”. She looked at me, stunned. I was surprised to see this reaction, after all, I must have heard this a thousand times before I got to her age. She told me that no one had ever told her that before- not her parents, not her teachers, not her minister, no one. I asked the community center leader about her, and she said that her dad had been in jail for several years and her mom was indeed not working several jobs but living off welfare and was a drug addict. This is sad because of the self-fulfilling prophecy component- since her parents were unable to succeed much in life, they didn’t encourage her, and therefore she likely won’t accomplish much either.
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It may not be the ’50s’ anymore but if you are poor, and working three jobs, and still decide to have kids, your responsibility is the same as a wealthy persons.
If you can’t be bothered to take an active role in educating your own children, maybe you should use contraception.