Young Americans are dumbs

[bedstuy]

We're becoming a more and more a nation of the have and have-nots.  There's no real path for poor people to slowly rise up the economic ladder.  A few elite, smart hard-working people will slip through, but there's no generational upward mobility (IE grandfather was a farm-worker, father worked in a factory and paid for son to get an education).  Poor people in America just live in grinding and punishing poverty with no real chance at a decent life. 

I look at the poor kids in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.  Almost none come from two parent households with cohesion and discipline.  They have parents who are totally unprepared for parenthood and have no resources to get their lives together.  Their parents are often functionally illiterate and forced to work two or three jobs just to live.
 
A third of the local high school students don't show up to school on an average day.  They don't do homework, read for fun or do anything academic.  How is a teacher going to really change that situation?  How can those kids possibly compete with kids who study for several hours a day and have doting parents who constantly work on educating their kids?

It all just goes back to the cycle of poverty.  The more we treat poor people like human trash, the worse this county will become.  A society is built at the base and we're hollowing out the foundation of our society.  That's the problem, not teacher's unions.

[bedstuy]

Yes, blame the parents, blame being poor, blame whatever. However, effective teachers can make a world of difference, and that is what studies show. Nothing else much matters. Being effective means being smart, knowing the material, and being charismatic, and knowing how to keep order and stare down the punks mouthing off and disrupting, while going forward with the lesson plan. You just keep talking about Sudan being until divided the largest country in Africa as you walk up to the disrupter, and get within a few inches of his eyes, and stare bullets at him.

For those wanting to get further depressed, check out a newly published book, The Son Also Rises.  The same families keep appearing at the top of the heap, century after century.  And when I think of my forebears. Putting aside wealth, they all seem to have been middle class since rocks cooled - for 200 years or more, and many highly successful. I won a valuable lottery ticket as it were, given who sired and bore me into this world.  It's sobering - very sobering.

I am beginning to sound a bit like opebo aren't I? Oh dear! 

We need good teachers as well.  You haven't made the argument that teacher's unions caused a decline in teacher quality though. 

[bedstuy]

Yes, blame the parents, blame being poor, blame whatever. However, effective teachers can make a world of difference, and that is what studies show. Nothing else much matters. Being effective means being smart, knowing the material, and being charismatic, and knowing how to keep order and stare down the punks mouthing off and disrupting, while going forward with the lesson plan. You just keep talking about Sudan being until divided the largest country in Africa as you walk up to the disrupter, and get within a few inches of his eyes, and stare bullets at him.

For those wanting to get further depressed, check out a newly published book, The Son Also Rises.  The same families keep appearing at the top of the heap, century after century.  And when I think of my forebears. Putting aside wealth, they all seem to have been middle class since rocks cooled - for 200 years or more, and many highly successful. I won a valuable lottery ticket as it were, given who sired and bore me into this world.  It's sobering - very sobering.

I am beginning to sound a bit like opebo aren't I? Oh dear!  

We need good teachers as well.  You haven't made the argument that teacher's unions caused a decline in teacher quality though.  

Yes, I would need to link the longitudinal studies for that. But the quality of teachers overall is shockingly poor - the C students from third rate schools as it were. When speaking to some of them, and reading their prose, the literary level they have is pathetic - and frightening. That has been my anecdotal experience, and what I have read elsewhere over the years.

I wonder how much of that is just how our society has changed economically.  Back in the day, there was less difference between a doctor salary and teacher salary.  Today, if you're a bright college kid, you might be reducing your lifetime earnings 10 times by choosing that career.  People are motivated by money, after all.  

Also, back in the day, a smart woman was more limited in career trajectory.  I bet a lot of brilliant women in 1960 became math teachers because our society prevented them from becoming Wall Street traders.

[bedstuy]

We're becoming a more and more a nation of the have and have-nots.  There's no real path for poor people to slowly rise up the economic ladder.  A few elite, smart hard-working people will slip through, but there's no generational upward mobility (IE grandfather was a farm-worker, father worked in a factory and paid for son to get an education).  Poor people in America just live in grinding and punishing poverty with no real chance at a decent life. 

I look at the poor kids in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.  Almost none come from two parent households with cohesion and discipline.  They have parents who are totally unprepared for parenthood and have no resources to get their lives together.  Their parents are often functionally illiterate and forced to work two or three jobs just to live.
 
A third of the local high school students don't show up to school on an average day.  They don't do homework, read for fun or do anything academic.  How is a teacher going to really change that situation?  How can those kids possibly compete with kids who study for several hours a day and have doting parents who constantly work on educating their kids?

It all just goes back to the cycle of poverty.  The more we treat poor people like human trash, the worse this county will become.  A society is built at the base and we're hollowing out the foundation of our society.  That's the problem, not teacher's unions.

As someone who's grown up in a single mother home that was reliant on welfare, I feel this statement is quite harsh. Especially when I've been given more than half of my tuition costs covered by need-based, federal and state grants and much of my study abroad trip will be covered by grants and scholarships from the state and my public school.

When we're talking about general trends, it's appropriate to make generalizations.