it goes well beyond gender and expression. violence is rewarded with frightened pacifism, teachers now fear law suits and termination over the safety of them and their other students. and teachers are told not to fail students, increasingly middle school is the first place children can "fail", until then standardized tests are about all we use to gauge "normal students". and for the abnormal we slap then with "iep goals" that aren't legally reinforced let alone reinforced properly in the classroom. paperwork is so cumbersome, yet so unimportant, that it takes up 50% of a teachers time yet isnt even respected or used after it's written. i created a program for my wife to automate the process in a quarter or less of the time and her administrators threw a fit. not because anything was incorrect, but because paperwork needs a "homemade feel" to signal to the parents there's a level of personal care for their child that's all smoke and mirrors. its a fucking mess....

I rate the debate as a non-changer for Bernie. He had a little trouble in the first 30~ minutes but after that it was pretty on par for the course as far as his usual debate performances.

Biden on the other hand had the best debate he's had all primary. Which is great for him, considering his performance will probably make voters who had lost confidence come back to him. Clyburn as alo endorsed Biden as was expected so another great bump for him in the older black voting block.

With this in mind I expect a Biden win, which ultimately, will make the race a bit more interesting.

I mean at it's core this is my problem with the modern left. It looks to shift responsibility from the individual to the public/government/society on pretty much every front. It's not the kids or parents fault that he's getting bad grades and he's disinterested, schools should do more, government should do more, etc. It's not a person fault they make 12 dollars an hour the system is unfair those entities need to do something to bring this person along. You can apply to a wide variety of issues.

Problem is it creates a society dependent on constant handouts and lowering of the bar. In the same way if i do no weight training my muscle mass disappears same thing happens to societies. You have to make failure costly and evident from a societal perspective otherwise you breed weakness and complacency. Decades of wealth and prosperity has made much of the American public complacent not realizing that there's proverbially hungry people from places like India or China that are more than happy to work harder and take your lunch.

I'm in business school right now and i see it everywhere in fields where there's money to be made. Half of the students are Chinese and Indian even though as a % of total population they make up less than 1-2%. Business, engineering, IT, medical you name it. Their parents spend a fuck ton of money to send their kids here to gain the necessary skills for the future and many of them end up staying here. It's a royal fuckup to constantly lower educational standards in middle and hs to string along everyone. It makes us as a country categorically worse of and less competitive.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Feb 26 2020 12:10pm

i agree. and we're seeing a repeated pattern. people repeatedly ask Bernie/Warren questions like "are taxes on the middle class going to go up" or "your bill is 3x the federal budget, how will u pay for this" or "the senate is currently republican, how will u pass your bill". and they dodge, they dont answer directly, they dont want a bad soundbyte. but no one is fooled. everyone left right and center knows the answer, and they know they just are dodging bad PR.

u could grill bernie for 2 straight hours just on paying for his damn bill, he could dodge for 2 hours, and no one's mind is changed. its just fodder for media personalities to act like this matters.

its a typical over correction. we had bully teachers, abusive teachers, and children allowed to fail at too high of a rate. and the fixes were good at first, more special ed programs for learning disabilities, stopped teachers from being abusive verbally and physically, etc. but the pendulum never stops at center, and we've gone too far.

on that same subject parental punishment is now frowned upon, not strictly illegal, but frowned upon. so the lazy parent who could enforce their kid to try hard in school with spanking now doesnt, and the same lack of personal involvement leads to far worse outcomes.

lastly college fucked shit up too. because what was a 13 year education as a standard became 13 years of prep for 4 years of "real education". and the approach they used wasnt teaching people to be critical problem solvers, it was to memorize just enough to get by.

Ok buddy.

It's always the same thing in these debates. The only different one was Nevada because Bloomberg was obviously not coached enough in how to dodge well on bad records.

Imagine Joe Biden gets to be president, how much do you think he'll slide mentally by 2024? I mean, just 2016 ---> 2019/2020 is already painful.

he's clearly in the midst of a mental shift. ive seen old people drop off then hold steady, and ive seen them fall into a pit of despair getting worse by the week. hard to say, but not good as a POTUS in either case.