alt.education

hrubin@ (Herman Rubin) wrote:
>In article ,
>Cary Kittrell wrote:
>>In article <1a1c2cbd-4183-4bd8-a852-2fc56f9a8eb6@> "leonard78sp@" writes:
><> From Elections to Shootings: America Is Broken
><> By Chris Adamo | February 22, 2008
>...
>
>>It gives me great pleasure to nominate this wonderful
>>piece of writing for "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short
>>Story of 2008".
>
>>I hardly see how it can miss.
>
>>-- cary
>
>On the contrary, it is well written and mostly accurate.

Take this one paragraph
<><> In our modern, open-minded era, grade school children are no
<><> longer expected to listen to those in authority, stay in their
<><> seats, or restrain their brutish urges. While an abundance of
<><> rules exists, young people are rarely punished for failing to
<><> submit to them. Instead, they are "diagnosed" as having
<><> physiological problems and subsequently drugged into a
<><> compliant stupor, never learning that wrong actions reap
<><> negative consequences.

From this we conclude that no person who reaches adulthood has learned
that wrong actions reap negative consequences, because they've all
been drugged into a compliant stupor. Therefore there must be 30,000
students outside your office with Uzis and are about to burst in and
make mincemeat of Herman Rubin.

---

In reality, the number of people who think it is OK to shoot people is
fewer than in the antebellum southern and western US when there were
no public schools and no drugs and plenty of Bible thumpers.

/books?id=qvVLh9LCu-8C&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=murder+rate+antebellum&source=web&ots=Iq1JgcGDPu&sig=L1hquim6vw5BOWIljb99sdoU_Ro
The murder rate in the area of rural Edgefield SC from 1844 to 1858,
based on coroner cases was 18 per 100,000, which is higher than any
state today.

In 1880, a reporter was so struck by the number of murders in the
South that, based solely on newspaper reports, he calculated that the
murder rate in South Carolina, Kentucky and Texas was between and
per 100,000. Of course there were some public schools by then in
the South, but few of the adults had attended them.

Needless to say, it was worse in "Bloody Kansas", or it wouldn't have
gotten that name.

lojbab