I’ll grant that those who are not born into wealth need to work harder to attain the same level of success as those who are born into wealth. However, those who are born into wealth still need to work hard to maintain their wealth, or they’re not going to remain wealthy very long. And the fact remains that somebody had to have originally earned the wealth that was born-into.

I’ll try to ignore the “silver spoon” comment because you do not know who you are talking to.

“Stop people inheriting money.” You’re telling me that parents can’t work hard to provide a better life for their kids than they had and/or that parents can’t choose to hand things down to their children when they die. Please. Did you think that one through? Do you really believe that families can’t do with their property as they please?

And yes, if you haven’t earned your education, if you haven’t earned your health care, then you don’t deserve it, whether you come from wealth or not. The alternative is to say that you’re entitled to these things, and that those who have worked to provide their own should now contribute to yours. That’s about as communist as it gets.

And I agree that a person who is given something without having earned it does not fully appreciate that which he is given. That’s part of the tightrope you walk when you’re a parent– You want your child to succeed, but you don’t want to hand him his success. You want to help your child through failure & disappointment, but you also want him to be able to overcome hardship on his own. Tricky.

Too many Americans have grown up expecting to be babied– Expecting that somebody, somewhere will take care of them whenever they face difficulty in their lives. Hence their predilection for socialism.

I see this kind of thing among many of the sons and daughters of Baby Boomers– They want to be able to enjoy their iPods, plasma screens, xbox 360s, Razr phones, and whatever else has been paid for by mom & dad, but when it comes time for them to move out of the house, pay the bills, and provide for themselves, they flounder around at home for several years, because they haven’t learned to work for the standard of living to which they’re accustomed. That is not the product of our country’s economy or the nature of capitalism; it is a product of (a) poor parenting and (b) ignorance on the part of the child as to how the world actually works.

People need to take a close look at their own behavior before they blame the system.

I do believe fully that the hard working should be rewarded while lazy people reap what they sew…. but that is not always the way it happens and I can’t say that I know it is a far majority of the way it happens… quite often certain people keep getting beat down rather than rise above…. now am I saying they are not accountable for their choices/actions that may have put them in a position to fail… no… I am a full believer that every situation good/bad that you find yourself in is the fault/betterment of that individual… even if someone else is doing something to you… well you put yourself in the situation to have that person do something to you…

other comment… though it was only an example (at the top)… “having enough money to take care of their children and their children’s children”… though I believe the right is fully present, as a personal opinion, those are the generations that are lost but still have the resources not to fail… they don’t have to work for anything nearly as hard and thus do not know the value of choice and punishment…

(2) For those who can’t learn the material– Well, I’m somewhat stuck there, because I can’t account for all the reasons why a student can’t pass. What I can say on principle is this, though– that it is not the responsibility of one taxpayer to make sure that another taxpayer’s kid passes his classes. It’d be righteous for others to come to the aid of a failing student and help him get on his feet. Using state & federal dollars to fund everyone’s education is a way of forcing that to be the case, though, and that’s crooked.

(3) It sounds like you guys are put through a pretty good gauntlet in order to become teachers and stay where you are. I know New York can be pretty stringent in its teaching requirements. Perhaps other states should raise the bar.

The only problem with that is sometimes you can’t blame teachers or administration…

I don’t know how else to explain it but to say this –

I teach in a high end school in Westchester – second highest on the payscale, one of the hardest schools to get a job in, etc…

This past year I co-taught a class called math 2RA for kids who were a little behind and scheduled to take the math A regents in June instead of January.

There were 16 kids and 3 teachers – and while I am new to the school, the two men I taught with are both established and amazing teachers.

These kids had every opportunity – and yet, 7 of them still failed. They only needed 36 out of 84 points to get a 65, but some of them just can’t, or won’t do it.

Now, luckily for my school, these kinds of kids are the minority. But in an already under funded school in a low income area those kids aren’t the minority. What do you do then?

I guess that is the reason why I am so vehemently against the idea of taking funding away from those schools.

Oh – and this is an FYI – every teacher in NYS that got certified after Feb 2004 is required to be a “life long learner”. Certification is only valid for 5 years to renew it you have to prove that you have done 175 hours of professional development and/or graduate level classes. So there is a system – here at least – to make sure teachers are at the top of their profession.

I’m conflicted, though, because once you claim a right to something, you hand over the management of that right to the government, and the general result of doing so is winding up with a watered-down version of what you really want. That’s where the free market should take over, because most of the time it’ll do a better job.

I can see how under-performing schools can get caught in a downward spiral. I don’t have an easy answer to that one. On the one hand, there are schools in bad areas with great teachers who could really just use more money. On the other hand, I’ll bet there are schools who just make poor use of their resources. Maybe the administration should be gutted. Maybe the teachers are just bad. Maybe the whole school should be flattened and the kids sent to school somewhere else.

Even if No Child Left Behind isn’t structured well, there needs to be SOME kind of accountability. (If not standardized tests for the kids, maybe tests for the teachers?) The threat of pulling federal funding for poor performance seems like a pretty good motivator to me, but maybe there’s another way.

Overall, we shouldn’t force parents to pay into a system which will ultimately fail to provide an adequate education for their children.

I work in the public education system, and believe me, vouchers are not the answer. What they will do is take money out of the struggling schools and give it to high performing schools – the ones who need it less. Then the lower performing schools – which are usually in low income areas to begin with – get even less money. It’s a vicous downward cycle. It works in much the same way as NCLB – an act which now forces schools to give standardized tests to students in ELA and math every year and if the students don’t get above a certain average, the federal governement pulls it’s money. Again, what will invariably wind up happening is that the schools that need the funding the most will be the ones who suffer.

I agree with all of your points on capitalism except the right to an education – without that the next generation isn’t even given a chance. Children shouldn’t suffer for the sins of their parents. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to advance – it is what they do with the opportunity that will make the capitalist system work as well as it has in this country.

My understanding of the voucher system is this– Families still spend whatever amount they’ve been spending on their children’s education to the government, but they’re allowed to put their money toward whichever school they choose (meaning they’d be free from districting and other rules).

It’s like, you spend your money on a bunch of tickets at an amusement park and then you can choose which rides you want to go on. You’ve already put your money towards the system, but you still have a degree of choice.