Obama's new budget plan for 2015:

Obama Budget Plan Reflects Partisan Lines - WSJ.com

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's 2015 budget will abandon overtures to Republicans and call for a large expansion in spending on education and job training, in a push certain to ratchet up tensions in the already-fractured capital ahead of November's elections.

The proposal—which will serve more as a political treatise than a fiscal blueprint—won't include a call to slow the growth of Social Security spending by changing how the program accounts for inflation, White House officials said Thursday. Such a change is favored by the GOP and had been included in Mr. Obama's budget plan last year.

Instead, Mr. Obama's budget, which will be released in full early next month, will propose $56 billion in new government spending on programs such as education, manufacturing and job training, which would be offset by spending cuts and tax increases on high-income earners.

Part of me wants to say "Why do this when there's no chance the other side agrees?"

But considering the other side would actively disagree no matter what (and throwing red meat to their supporters) this isn't so bad.

Dola: Who says government isn't run like a business.

Because we can't get congress to kill boondoggle projects like the F-35 (which costs 8x as much as a F-16, and can't do the F-16's job right), or sell unneeded bases (the estimation is that we have a 20% surplus of bases/airstrips etcetera at our CURRENT levels).. we can only go after soft spending..

like turfing out 100,000 men and women.

Yep. Always the soft targets.

Pentagon To Cut Army to Pre-World War II Levels | TIME.com

On any issue there will be people for or against. That is to be expected. But you'd expect that people in a position to make the decision to have a grasp on what they are debating.

Enter the esteemed state senator from Arizona, regarding Common Core:

Arizona Senate panel votes to dump Common Core


So, um, I guess he's never heard of algebra.

The word algebra is derived from the Arabic word Al-jabr. Common Core's use of Algebra is another front for indoctrinating our children into Sharia Law.

Let me guess. Every single Democrat thinks this is good and every single Republican thinks this is bad. Am I right?

No, I don't like Common Core myself, it encourages too much "teaching to the test" and makes it harder for a well rounded education in an era where there's more students per teacher.

I think that these complaints are ridiculous, but there are problems with Common Core.

:+1:

Chief amongst my problems with Common Core is that apparently of the 100-odd people who put it together, there was not a single person who specializes in early childhood development and, specifically, Kindergarten. I may be biased, given that my oldest is in Kindergarten this year (and doing Common Core), but that seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight to me.

Seems like we should study other countries like Finland-which is very low-tech yet produces-and learn from them first.

I'd only amend this a bit, some of our communities are broken. We do quite well educating middle class and wealthy students.

I'll amend this further: we do quite well educating middle class and wealthy students who are motivated to take advantage of what's on offer for them.

I was looking in the aggregate. We have a massive disparity between poor school districts and more wealthy districts. We don't have an education crisis, we have a poverty crisis.

Yeah, I can absolutely agree with that.

*Yawn*

Color me unsurprised.

One of the things which would help America hugely (at least in my area in Florida - I'm presuming its the same elsewhere?) is opening up the school choices so they're not tied by location - if a school has spaces and someone wants their kid to attend then let them, that doesn't mean they should get their kid transported to school ... they should have to do that themselves, but at least allow them the choice.

I was gobsmacked when I moved to Florida and found my kids 'assigned' to a school by the location of our house - then doubly smacked when a few years later our 'assigned' school changed to a different random one at the whim of a planner somewhere (its for this reason my kids are in private school - having the stability of a constant school and thus peer group around them is important in my opinion).

This didn't ever cross your mind when a 2000 sq foot house in one part of town was twice as much the same one in another? Sounds like your real estate agent didn't do a very good job.

But a lot of the problem isn't really about the school. Poor areas have a greater percentage of single parent homes, a greater percentage of criminal activity, a greater percentage of poorly educated parents, etc. Good schools can help those kids, but without a comprehensive approach to improve the rest of their daily lives, the school isn't anywhere near enough.

LOL :D

Don't get me wrong - my wife is American and we bought in an area with a nice school close by (we were then rezoned to a different (far worse) school 5 miles away, despite being within walking distance of the other school - go figure ;) ).

In England there is similar disparity between house prices, however the school side of things is a lesser factor because you have freedom to put your kids in any school if they have space (if they don't then hard cheddar), there is a semi-intelligent system of ranking for how spaces are allocated which is biased towards siblings being present already, family location (ie. locals first) then anyone else (if its a religious school then they can also factor that into the bias but eventually it still opens to all - in England my kids went to a Catholic school because it was the best in the area, we weren't Catholic however).

Emphasis mine. This is the problem. You're dealing with America here. The lack-of-intelligence of the masses tends to make an elegant solution like this impractical.

I'm surprised it works that way over where you are. Brevard is usually regarded as a better public school system compared to most areas in FL. I'm in Florida as well and while my county/school district maps us to a default school based on geography, it also allows us to choose which school we want our kids to go to so long as school capacity can support it.

They also have a school proximity classification where they will also support busing if your "default" school is considered close enough to your "school choice" school. Its typically like a handful of schools lumped together (at least at the elemtary & middle school levels, less so at high school level). But if you choose something outside that range, you can still supply your own transportation for your kid.

So who ends up at the "worst" schools in England if you can just choose to go to a better one?

In any debate about education I always think one of the forces working against attempts at "equality" is the fact that parents, inconveniently maybe, WANT their kids to have advantages over other kids. When you move to send your kids to a better school, you're hurting the tax revenue of the place you leave. When you put your kid in private school, you're adding to the economic disparity between kids at "good" schools and kids at the "bad" schools. I wonder if that attitude is as prevalent in other countries.

I think (but I've never really studied it so I could be far off) that in some places, school performance and displayed aptitude, rather than income and wealth, is the thing that gets you to the better schools (obviously there's some correlation between school performance and income, but there's at least an opportunity there for the best to rise up and get a better quality education). We have that kind of thing to some extent in the U.S. in terms of getting into college, but I'm not sure we'd tolerate it as a society in terms of school placement before that. It seems more we want everyone to have roughly the same caliber of pre-college education, which is tough when parents (very understandably) work against that idea.

It varies, at least somewhat.

What you're describing there is, in some places, known as "open enrollment". That term typically applies to crossing school system (i.e. city or county) boundaries. It's rather controversial, at least in Georgia, as several of the most prominent/successful HS (such as Buford) operate this way. Basically those zoned to crappy schools hate to see the "better" (for lack of a better word) students leave for greener pastures, they'd rather you stay & suffer with them.

On a somewhat smaller scale there's also school choice -- fairly limited in nearly all cases I'm familiar with -- within the same district. That's usually a situation that (rather bizarrely) allows really bad schools to take in students from better schools, done occasionally as a matter of convenience for the parent. For example, mom or dad works near Crappy School B while So-So School A is on the far end of the zoning for both their home & work.


Stipulating that I don't know the specifics of your personal situation but generally speaking school redistricting is anything but random. It may be done for space/resource allocation reasons, it may be an attempt at social engineering, it may even be simple petty personal/local politics ... but I'd say it's uncommon for it to be done truly randomly. I make this point simply to that the subject is almost always so contentious that it's tough to imagine many situations where it would indeed be "random".

Most kids who go to private schools have parents who fund (what ends up being) a pretty good local public school. I live in the Kyrene school district and the public school near me (Kyrene Sierra) is one of the top 5-10 in the state. Yet, a bunch of people near me send their kids to one of the private schools in the area. Rarely is a kid "from the ghetto" going to have his parents pay to send him to a private school. So, I think your second point is overstated. Most parents with the money to send their kids to a private school live in a wealthy area - which often has one of the better funded public schools.

That's too crazy to figure out - esp for our current education system. This call would have to be made on mostly K/1st graders and it would be very tough to know which kids have the aptitude to be good students, which ones are just a little immature/energetic (don't concentrate well) and which just had a bad day when taking a test at 5 years old. That's why we wait until High School/College for "aptitude" decisions and not middle school.

IMO, this all comes back to the parents/community. If the parents put as much value on an 'A' in a chemistry test as they do a touchdown in football or a goal in Lacrosse, they can help setup a good learning environment. The problem is (for both wealthy and poor), parental involvement can be sketchy or even misguided. There are a ton of very wealthy parents who either both work and take little role in their kids education or choose to not participate because of other priorities. There are also some parents in the poverty level needing to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, thus making parenting for school is difficult. Yet, there are single moms with two jobs who do a great job parenting their kids. Poverty is certainly a challenging factor to overcome, but real change starts with parents putting a value on education in their actions/expectations for their kids - not just words. And, this can be difficult for parents who never went to college or even consider it a viable choice for their kids.

Fretting about education in many communities in the US is like going to Samoa and complaining that very few Samoans end up being gymnasts and ice skaters. When your community/parents don't setup a viable plan for kids to achieve that goal, it's going to be difficult to make it happen regardless of governmental interference.

Parents generally who just put their kids near where they live - but at least people have a choice and aren't bound by their geographical location (i.e. such a solution isn't tied to income level and where you can afford to live).

If a school loses sufficient pupils then its either closed down (if there are already adequate schools in the area to take up the slack) or the government consider it a 'problem school' and one which isn't fulfilling its potential, then they'll generally try and shake up the staff and sometimes (mainly for inner city school) bring in specialist teachers who have excelled in that sort of situation previously to try and turn it around.

PS - I'm not indicating that this is a perfect setup by any means, there are flaws - especially if you're in a rural area where there aren't easy choices available (i.e. there was ONE high school where I grew up unless I commuted for half an hour).
The hardest areas for schools in the UK I've seen are those in the inner city where there are a lot of non-English speaking families which fail to support their kids education, that can lead to a fragmented schooling system where they are both trying to help the native-English speaking kids as well as ensure that the others don't fall through the cracks - not an easy situation and not one which I think is fair to rate teachers on a performance level basis for (which is another topic entirely - ie. how do you decide if a teacher or school is failing or succeeding, its not as simple as it sounds in all cases).

Thanks for the explanation - very interesting.


Sorry that was a very 'flippant' comment by me, it was far from random, I know as they did 'open' a certain amount of it for discussion and I had strong views upon it (as you can probably imagine).

There were various reasons given, however they were all from a pure budgetary perspective (they'd built a new school in an area which didn't truly have enough people to fill it so needed to ensure it was filled) and also (my belief as it was wasn't clearly stated ever - but I definitely got that impression) to try and shuffle more 'successful' kids into unsuccessful schools to try and give a more positive peer group.

Both of which I understand - however they ignore the effect of such changes on the pupils in question who have formed relationships with both tutors and pupils at their present schools, some kids will take that sort of change in their stride - however for others its a huge deal and can adversely affect their development.

Please note - I'll readily admit I'm probably over-sensitive to such things myself as both my boys have speech issues which they're learning to overcome (as did I was when I was younger) ... as such integrating into a social group isn't something which is particularly easy for them at times.

What was the previously used test like?

I know in California the old test was purely a regurgitation of facts in a multiple choice format. Also, using the very specific and simplistic state standards "teaching to the test" became the main way teachers were evaluated.

I agree, somewhat. I think the problem lies with what to do with the bottom 20-30%. I've been in urban education for 18 years and no one is even close to answering the most basic questions: what should non-4 year bound students learn, and how do we know they have learned it?

I think we'd be amazed at what takes place in a tougher school these days. Just getting kids into class, getting them to pay attention, getting them to show a basic respect for teachers, getting them to do any homework... you can spend a million dollars per student and you won't get him or her ready for anything.

I wish I knew the solution, but when you see a student pretty much refusing to take part in school, you can bet the problem lies at home. And telling parents how to parent is completely taboo in our society.

We can lay the blame for this in many places, but money is not the answer. Nor is a common curriculum. And I'm not sure there's much evidence that programs like Head Start are working, even though you'd think it would help.

How much does it really matter? I always thought the goal of education, from the broad perspective of a state or country, should be to find the best and brightest, wherever they are, and make sure they have access to the best education possible. Like anything else, easier said than done, but I'm more concerned about identifying the elite minds in the poorer parts of America and giving them every boost we can, than making sure our unskilled workers had a better classroom education. And sure, at some level, you need a competent school system to identify those elite minds, I just wonder if that's the real end game goal.

Big +1 here, and it should be noted that I don't always (or even often) agree with Arles.

To add on, though, it is for the above reason that I have reservations about nationwide school improvement programs (such as NCLB and now Common Core). Schools are varied and involvement is intensely local. Needs are very different. Applying a one-size-fits-all solution may bring up the worst performers, but it also tends to drag down the top performers, which is something I don't think we want.

In an ideal world I'd like to see a nationwide program for schools (like approach, not a mega-school-district) in the hope that it would "lift all ships" as it were, but I just don't think it's realistic, given all the factors involved. A solution which allows localities to, by and large, chart their own direction while focusing additional support on localities that are obviously failing seems more realistic. But even then you're going to run into challenges as to what "success" and "failure" are. And as we've seen, standardized testing, which is option #1 to determine success and failure, comes with its own challenges.

I don't often agree with you much either, but I agree 100% here as well, especially your second paragraph.


More money, in and of itself, is probably not the answer, but we certainly do have instances where more money, or a change in the way money is spent, would probably help. For instance, I know far too many public school teachers who buy basic school supplies out of their own pocket, because the school doesn't have budget for it. Things like that shouldn't be allowed to happen, and yes, it sometimes happens not because the money isn't available, but because it's mis-spent on other things (by the administration, teachers, the community, etc...). In addition, there is some evidence that Head Start helps: Does Head Start work for kids? The bottom line

But yes, those are symptoms of the problem, they are not the root cause. And I think many posters have identified that the root cause has something to do with society, families, parents, communities, etc... and broaching that subject in a national conversation is just not something we do well as Americans.

A major problem is still kids being hungry and/or cold. They aren't in a great position to learn when their body isn't able to function properly.

Are you saying find the naturally best and brightest and give them a good education?

I think a lot of societies ills are fixed when the vast majority of its people are educated, to some level. However, like I said, I don't think we have any idea what that level should be. But as a citizen, I feel that my community would be cheaper and safer if everyone was well educated.

The elephant in the room is that a successful classroom comes down to how well the students respond to an upper-middle class, mostly white socialization process. Failure to accept and recognize this just means we are going to keep spinning our wheels. However, who wants to go to a parent and say your 0-5 year old needs to be nurtured and brought up in a more white way?

Really FOFC?

Federal Judge Strikes Down Texas Gay Marriage Ban - NBC News

But there is a stay order in there, so it won't take effect until all of the appeals have run their course.

Oh I know, I saw that. But it's just one more to add to the pile.

And it should make for some excellent reactions in the fundy-camp.

Has RedState blown up yet?

Brewer vetoes the religious discrimination bill.

That's the high water mark.

It's frustrating that it's presented or perceived in that manner.

I don't know what "white" means in this context. As a "white" person of a presumed stereotype, I worry that I'm not allowed to be an individual or advocate for any kind of culture. I'm just lumped in with a faceless mass of privilege. This is, obviously, the liberal white guilt many of us experience. Certainly, I have my share of it.

If that's the worst thing that happens to me, yeah, poor baby.

I can't, obviously, speak for black people (or even for white people, I hope), but my immediate reaction to this is that these perceptions do far more harm than good. We're damning black children with lowered expectations by saying it's a "white" school system they're entering.

I like the idea of a vast melting pot that can't help but absorb pieces of every culture it welcomes. We keep our individuality but we reap the rewards of everyone's strengths.

I don't know how you go to parents of black children and tell them that these are things they can do to prepare the kids for the challenges they will face. If you present this as a "white" world they need to enter, of course they will resent it.

Any ideas?

I'd love to hear (ok, read) you expand on this.

Now it's okay for schools to forbid the Stars and Stripes

Court: School Can Ban U.S. Flag Shirts for Safety - NBC News

Nice to see the courts vomit on the 1st amendment and patriotism in general.

I agree with you but it's consistent with every court decision with regards to those types of things. If it is done to create a disruption then the student can be asked to change.

I would like to see uniforms at all schools because of these exact things. Too many judgement calls, too many cliques formed by judging,etc.

Courts have been pretty consistent in saying that students have very limited rights.

So, this is fun: Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ | World news | The Guardian


So it turns out all that paranoia about "hackers" watching you through your webcam were true, except it wasn't "hackers", as we traditionally think of them.


Yeah, I'm guessing 1% human rights legislation and 99% overloading servers. Good thing the NSA is building a new data center!


The "special relationship" between the US & Britain is not dead! :D


So, uh, that's creepy.


There's obviously a lot more in the article, and it is all awesome.

I don't understand how you can read that article and not understand the reasoning behind it. Unless you are sympathizing with racist assholes.

Which is fine, but just come out and say it, let's not pretend there is some selfless act of patriotism being blocked here.

This might be one of the saddest, no, make that pathetic posts in the history of the FOFC.

Truly disgusting.

I disagree Jon, there are a number of yours that qualify.

Same as TCY Junkie in the Chick-Fil-A thread. Either stupidity or blatant bigotry. Take your pick.

Seems to me that the "racist assholes" here are the ones that have a problem with wearing the United States flag IN THE UNITED STATES.

Would your opinion be different if they were banning T-shirts with liberal slogans or pro gay-marriage slogans in the name of "security"? As long as we're "not pretending", let's also not pretend this is some legal analysis. People will pick their desired result based on their politics and then fill in the gaps to backtrack their opinion from there.

I'm fine with schools that block slogan T-shirts, regardless. If the purpose is to be inflammatory, it has no place in school. I don't totally disagree with the person who said that maybe we should have school uniforms in all schools... though from a logistical standpoint that sounds like a nightmare.

So, no... my opinion would not be different.

But what if it was viewpoint-based like this one? Where all slogans aren't banned, only ones that specifically have liberal messages. Or if a school in Alabama bans only t-shirts that have pro-gay tolerance messages. Because of security (so they claim).

Students have very limited to no right to free speech. Individual communities decide what they decide. If they can prove that there is a safety risk being created specifically due to the wearing of the message and being done intentionally to inflame or invoke unrest, then I would be fine with banning any specific "viewpoint" or slogan-based clothing, sure.

methinks you don't understand the definition of the word "racist" mmkay?

In case people aren't familiar with the backstory that led to the lawsuit and the ruling. Emphasis mine.

Yes it would be interesting to hear the board members opinion on a backwoods Missouri school (there are plenty :) ) banning kids wearing Michael Sam jerseys for security reasons. Of course the American flag shirts are being worn in protest of the Cinco de Mayo celebration and I wouldn't mind seeing the punk kids wearing them get their asses kicked but why does every solution always have to involve banning things? And it's always "security" as well.

Yeah, I was using Butter of 69's words but it was a poor fit for my context. I'll stick with just assholes.

In regards to DT's article, I wonder why the Cinco de Mayo celebration wasn't banned as well.

Which brings me to my point on banning everything. You end up having to ban Cinco de Mayo now to be politically correct and to be "consistant" (and then I'm sure something innocent like green on St. Patricks Day or something down the line) Why not just deal with the idiots on both sides? No instead lets ban American flag shirts!

I'd prefer government doesn't get into habit of trying to discern the intent of expression before deciding whether to ban it. I'm not aware of any recognized 1st Amendment distinction between sincere expression and ironic/satirical expression. (Edit: The school aspect of course, is a thing, and a important part of the legal analysis here, I'm just not sure off the top of my head the scope of viewpoint-based banning of expression where there's alternative means to deal with the state's claimed interest of security - I do doubt that the Ninth Circuit would come out the same if it was a different kind of expression that was banned though.)

How do you deal with idiots on both sides though. Clearly these were a group of students looking to incite violence (or at least incite anger) by wearing their t-shirts. This group clearly had a precedence. So what do you do that doesn't get blowhards like the above posting Georgian from saying this is the end of Merica and civilization as we know it!!!

It's just a different twist on what might be the most foundational issue in the concept of government. There's a very real and legitimate security concern, and the government absolutely has the authority to address it, and there's concern that they'll exceed that legitimate authority to pick political sides/be corrupt/scale back rights/whatever. Definitely no easy answers, its just interesting to see the same debate with the sides switched.

Because these days they're as liable to get shot/knifed and seriously injured, or just beat up and then have their parents sue the school district as it is to be "harmless" like it was in the "good old days."

I'd argue that it should be if it caused that flashpoint. And the article doesn't specifically say, it may very well have been banned this year too.

Whatever the intent, if someone considers someone else wearing an American flag to be proper provocation for violence, we've completely lost our perspective of the meaning of expression versus action.

However, the courts have made it clear that expression is not necessarily protected in the schools. The schools have a responsibility to preserve the peace.

Those who consider the flag-wearing students to be nothing but asshole racists should take a hard look at our country's history of protest - even a recent history. I don't know what's in their minds any more than I know what's in the minds of those who protest wealth or minimum wage or any number of other concepts.

I suspect that none of us would hold up to any stringent test of bias, should there be some sort of machine that can open up our brains and extract our thoughts.

Aren't there really two distinct issues here? The court was deciding whether the school had the authority to ban the clothing and the decision is in line with plenty of precedent establishing that students have very limited free speech rights while on school grounds or at school activities. There really shouldn't be any shock or anger that the court did what was expected.

The second issue is whether the school administration should have banned the clothing. That's a lot trickier, IMO, but it's an argument that has nothing to do with the court.

The school is wholly responsible for the safety of the kids and would be held to such in the courts especially if they knew that there was the potential for violence.

It's the same kind of mindset that gets kids to chant "USA! USA!" at foreign players during sporting events. Most are just doing it to be an asshole and it is certainlly racially charged. Plain and simple. There is very little going on from a patriotic standpoint to those sorts of "protests", and those that say otherwise are deluded.

Ban patriotic chants!

I'm not looking for the return to any good old days. I'll gladly take 2014 over then. I work at a school though and think the blanket fear of lawsuit so we will do this is so prevalent nowadays that's it sickening. Let them sue, we have a full time attorney here they can waste their money ours is already paid for.

Definitely. Does the constitution let them, and should they. It's good to separate those things.

And then there's this other angle about how the American flag is really a symbol of racism here. I'm sure it is, for some of them (cue "thug" debate). But there's an important distinction/separation to make there too. We can fairly speculate about people's "true motives" in using certain symbols. I was the biggest "'thug' is a racist symbol" guy in that Richard Sherman thing. But here we're talking about law and banning expression. I wouldn't be excited about any government entity banning the use of the word thug, even if the motives behind the use of word were racist. And the flag, unlike the word "thug", does have legit sincere positive meaning for a lot of people. That takes things into even more dangerous territory, IMO, when it comes to government banning, and punishment for certain kinds of speech, even in the context of a school.

Why don't we just teach the concepts of critical thinking(to include perspective), proper debate, & disagreement-without-violence earlier in education?

And I think the word "racist" or "race" is likely the wrong word choice here...its "xenophobic" if anything. The subject of "race" is constantly thrown into things where the most obvious difference is the visual appearance of 1 group. If people celebrating Cinco de Mayo (or a similar holiday) were ass-white and of Swedish/Russian/German (or whatever) descent, I contend you'd see the exact same backlash (reasonable or not) but we'd get past the outward appearance part pretty quickly to get at the root of the "problem" or dissimilar viewpoint or perspective.

Because gunz n 'merica!

No seriously, we could but there are so many different people that there is no way that you could ever convince everyone to just rationally think/disagree move on without someone somewhere taking offense, or feeling slighted and then that would be that. It's a pipe dream. Like living in a world without structure where you could do what you want in a free market without, you know, a government to help formulate the structure of society or regulate what goods and services and the concept of fairness are worth.

Clearly can't and shouldn't be done, but I appreciate your condescension in EVERY POLITICAL THREAD. It's great.

Point was the sentiment behind it is much the same. Not whether it should be banned or not.

I'm interested in this distinction, please expound.

I thought you were trying to blend the two, and honestly, if I took another second to make that post I would have spelled that out more instead of resorting to a catch phrase-type thing. I didn't think you were literally calling for the banning of patriotic chants, I was trying to make the point that how we feel about the people making the expression shouldn't impact how our we respond to the them in a legal sense.

But your all caps and your belittling of me and my opinions as a whole is kind of ironic. You're not above lecturing people if you think you're in the right.

You're both wrong, and acting like children. I CLAIM THE MORAL HIGH GROUND!!! BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Er, as you were....

Well race is not the same as "foreigner". You can be a light, medium, or dark skinned foreigner and be equally objected to by a local populace. And "foreigner" can be a relative term for that matter...this happens to be a EDIT: Mexican holiday but its a similar (albeit much milder) behavior when you see objections around people moving from one place & still supporting their old sports team. Essentially the "we did things like this where I came from" vs "well, if that place is so great, then go back" argument thats prevalent in many places that people move to (i.e. Sunbelt destination cities have these types of divides in many social circles). I think its just more magnified when its country vs country as opposed to US city vs US city (or at least its got more extreme elements to it).

The real issue with these types of things in my opinion is that "foreigners" are celebrating traditions and affinities that they should not (to those objecting) because the new place (again, relative to the foreign & established people) should be what they aim to assimilate into. If the foreigners were Russian, I suspect you'd hear lots of "Ivan" and "Nikolai", vodka, and communism mockery without anybody attaching race to it. To that end, (sidebar here)...I was a bit surprised (though not shocked) to hear during that kind of stuff on national news during the Sochi Olympics. I guess I chalk that up to "people don't really know what racism is, they just know making fun of dark skinned people might get them labelled as racist so they don't do it".

The namecalling (of foreigners by established people), focus/mocking on skin color differences or other associative traits or behaviors that people do is (again, imho) just post-rationalizing the reasons for objection to the foreigner (in an albeit crude & illogical way).

Thats at least my hypothesis around these types of societal issues.

I agree, you won't get much headway with adults who tend to be set in their ways, but kids are naturally more open minded...its the adults that tend to close it for them.

You'd have to make the subjects of such teaching the most politically correct things for it to work though. You couldn't debate anything that has any wiggle room for outcry but I think those skills would still have more merit at an earlier age even if the debated topics are more centered around "pencils with erasers vs pencils without erasers".

I know right? I can't believe I'll have to see the Irish flying the flag of a foreign nation (only colors that should be flying in this country are the RED WHITE AND BLUE. If they want to drink their green beer they can GO BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM.

If this were 1910, you'd find lots of agreement.

What are you basing this on? Do you think court decisions that have protected the free speech rights of Fred Phelps or the KKK were the "desired result based on their politics"?

The justification for the suppression of speech in this case is security. The government maybe/probably can suppress the speech, because of that legitimate interest, and because there's lesser First Amendment rights in schools. Usually when the government is doing something in the name of security, there's a lot of suspicion of that. But when the "what they're doing" is also something we want them to do, the suspicion seems to vanish. (Edit: Which just makes me suspicious, even when I also like what the government did.)

Fred Phelps and KKK cases are extreme examples. I think it's almost easier to recognize the free speech in the extreme examples. It's messier when there's two sides, and the government picks a side to censor.

But as a matter of law, and separately policy, are you really down with this? If a student's gay rights group in the south was getting harassed and there was the possibility of violence, and the school administration responded by banning the group and any reference to gay rights, would that be ok with you? Would you think that was both illegal and bad policy, or one or the other? I'm pretty sure if a Bush-appointed federal district court judge upheld the ban, we'd have some rhetoric about that, we might suspect the judge of having a policy interest in the case, and maybe it'd be well founded. His ruling wouldn't necessarily mean he's a bigot, maybe schools can selectively censor whatever the hell they want in schools. But I'm sure that would be the response.

Edit: And what's the difference between those people wearing flag shirts and the hypothetical gay rights group? Their motives. So it's not really at all about security anymore (if there's a distinction at all, either in law or policy), because the security concerns are in both examples. And its the security concern which justifies the ban in the first place.

Or, you can take the view that America is a melting pot that embraces the wide variety of cultures that have made it their home, and that the country is only the stronger for it.

:D

I think we are getting to the point where we need a standards group to identify all forms, including context where applicable, of bigoted expression.

But this will likely be very complex as you start to consider the amount of contextual situations. Plus it would need to evolve over time so we may even need to just make it a computer application so it can properly weigh all of the various factors for our little brains because we can't seem to find agreement to say, a 90% level.

I'm certainly not arguing against that view. I'm just pointing out that we apply the wrong form of wrong a lot. :)

Well, there's a significant difference in intent between the two groups. The gay rights group is advocating for a greater extension of rights, ostensibly at the expense of no one. The flag group is deliberately attacking the right of another cultural group to exist in their society.

Diametrically opposed in intent, one could say....

The problem is that while discernment of intent tends to be a common sense thing in the moment, it's easily obfuscated when people get lawyered-up, and that's when everything heads to shit.

Why can't we all get along, indeed.

Do you have examples of this?


This doesn't really make sense. Are you trying to suggest that the court wouldn't have banned "God Hates Fags" under the same exact facts of this case because it's "easier to recognize the free speech"?


Your example is much more extreme than the current case. They haven't banned the flag shirts permanently, but simply ordered the students to turn them inside out during this one celebration. Of course I wouldn't be okay with a complete ban, whether it was a gay rights group in Alabama or a traditional marriage group in San Francisco. And even the limited bans I would only be okay with if there was clear and convincing evidence of security concerns.

The point of my post was that you're claiming this was a policy decision and it would've been different if it was some liberal cause being banned (because I guess liberals don't care about the flag?), but have not offered any evidence of that.

Or, you know, we could all curb our tendencies to be judgmental assholes. :D

I've often said we should apply the right form of wrong more often. When it's right, you just can't get enough of wrongness, I say.

:p

But then we'd have to accept people being different from us, please explain how this will work. :confused:

And I hope that a hundred years from now they'll think people in our time getting upset about others celebrating Cinco de Mayo or Chinese New Year are as crazy as we view people in 1910 who would get outraged at St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

Who will judge whats judgmental though? How would we even know we're judgmental? :D

EDIT: That would mean we'd have to judge ourselves as to whether we are being judgmental. My head could hurt from that.

I've definitely boozed up many times in celebration of many "foreign" traditions. But I kind of do get the source of the tension where we become so protective of the foreign traditions, at the expense of the ones here. In a broad sense, it's silly, because American traditions aren't going away, if anything, they're getting more global. They don't need as much protection. But I get why people get anxious when there's that voice that doesn't mind banning flags or symbols of Christianity, but then is simultaneously ultra-protective about protecting "foreign" patriotic and religious symbols. I'm not saying they're right or that there isn't distinctions, I just think if that anxiousness is understood there maybe wouldn't be as much of that tension. There maybe would be better, practical solutions to situations like what was going on at this school, rather than just banning things that are important to people.

Almost any other time the security/government thing comes up. NSA, gun control, military, police searches and seizures, drug laws, the Patriot Act, etc. Even school security like metal detectors, random locker searches, etc. Don't we tend not to believe the government when it does things for "security", or at the very least, we're concerned about the potential for abuse? Edit: Don't you think the degree of that suspicion depends on how much we like guns, or tanks, or police officers, or racists?

I think when it's something that's SUCH a fringe view, I think it's easier to say, "ya, you're crazy, but you have the right to be crazy." When it's a more contested issue, like gay rights, or border-town rivalries between races, I think it's easier to get caught up into it and take a side. I think courts do that, I think people can do that, and I know I can do that. To me, it's the most interesting thing about being a lawyer and briefing constitutional issues, trying to completely eviscerate any of my own policy opinions of things. Maybe because I've done that so many years, I'm a little over-sensitive in identifying the potential for it everywhere else.

But either way, neither of those (KKK and Phelps) cases came out of the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit has a history of making bewildering decisions that are quickly overruled 9-0. They do make up law to fit their desired policy end. I don't think there's much debate about that, even among moderates (and probably most liberals). That doesn't necessarily mean it was the case here, but I thought some of the rhetoric responding to the decision, that was all focused on how racist these people were, instead of the security issue, was that kind of response. And maybe in retrospect they were entirely talking about what the school SHOULD have done, instead of the constitutional issue.

I do admit that this is where the theory falls down, yes.

Tell you what, even though this is just a huge imposition and challenge, I'll step up and do it. I can judge everyone and that way no one will really have to worry about it too much. Sound reasonable?

So it's easier to pick Fred Phelps over a guy whose son was killed in combat than it is to pick between the flag and a Cinco de Mayo celebration? Yeah, that makes no sense.


See this is where I have a problem. You don't know that they're doing this. It could be just that the 9th circuit has a different judicial philosophy than the Supreme Court and thus gets overturned more often than other circuits. But you're assuming they're making a policy preference.

There's a lot of false equivalence in what you're saying, however.

Unless you want to start giving us actual examples, I'll point out that when we talk about banning symbols of Christianity, it tends to be things like a monument to the 10 Commandments outside of a courthouse, or something like that. Which you're comparing to a school having a one-off Cinco de Mayo celebration (which has already been assimilated by the American beer industry anyway).

I mean, maybe you have examples where false equivalence isn't present, and if so, let's talk about those, than broad generalities where equivalence is simply implied.