San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Great analogy, luchabee. The bright white light of logic; thank you!

Problem is that it would be a really short movie.

Scene 1: When parents don't get involved in their children's education it results in poor academic performance.

Scene 2: No amount of money can solve this problem (short of hiring professional parents for each student).

Scene 3: The End.

If you're a bad parent it's your fault. Don't have kids if you can't raise them.

I don't know.... If one needs a license to become a hair-dresser, why wouldn't there be pre-requisites to becoming a parent, if that's the most important job?

Good point about the billions upon billions wasted in the failed inner city public schools.

But what about those highly successful public schools in the more affluent areas? You know, those neighborhoods where home prices are at a premium because everyone wants their children to attend a "good" school. Those are public schools too.

How can the same public school system produce such varied schools? Perhaps, and I'm just supposing here, it's not the school system, but the stratification of American society. Perhaps education, and the value thereof, starts in the home. Perhaps America, unlike most Western countries to which it is compared, has the enormous task of educating the children of a huge non-native speaking, non-tax contributing, third world immigrant population.

Perhaps, and again this is just a guess on my part, if one just looked at the public schools in middle and upper class neighborhoods, America's public school system would rival that of any nation. In fact our very public university system is already the best in the world. How can we have the best public university system in the world, but the worst public secondary system in the world?

Maybe there's nothing wrong with public schools. Maybe they just reflect back what is wrong with society.

I would like to see a movie by
Micheal Moore about the housing bubble.

Working Title "House of Cards"

Maybe there's nothing wrong with public schools. Maybe they just reflect back what is wrong with society.

Self-selection plays a big role in the very successful schools. Good teachers self-select to teach there. Good parents self-select to get their kids there.

Failure to remove problem students, mainlining differentially enabled students, IDLPs, massive ESL issues, promotion for social development, there's many issues.

The goals start out lofty, bringing all equally to the high bar set by successful schools, the results have been often abyssmal creating a lowest common denominator for all in the school.

PC (how appropriate your initials are, sir!), parenting is a very important job.

Qualifications on who could have kids? That implies qualifications on who can have sex, as birth control is not foolproof.

Conservatives are all in favor of qualifications on who can have sex: chastity belts for the unmarried and shame and scorn for those who have sex or children out of wedlock.

I second your motion, PC. All those in favor, say 'Aye.'

Yes, sorry, it should be shameful to have a child out of wedlock (but I'm just an old fashioned conservative CA attorney who is also a Christian, so what do I know? I'm also married, in my early 30s, and Caucasion. I know, terrible).

How many of society's ills stem from children or unprepared young people having children themselves?

Let's go through a short list: Kids that are home alone, kids not being educated b/c the parent is working, kids having their parent's lovers come in and out of their lives who are strangers (preying on the children, too) giving them no stability, kids doing drugs or having sex because their parent is working, kids doing drugs or having sex because they need affirmation from someone b/c their father (typically) is gone.

Let's not even talk about crime! In the inner cities, this is one of the greatest reasons why kids are killing each other with drugs and violence. I should know, I lived in Richmond, CA for 3 years--one of the most crime ridden cities in CA. I bet less than 20% of the kids had two-parent families. Probably less than 10%.

This really is the legacy of modern liberalism. No moral judgments and the sexual revolution sounded great, but what were the consequences? So far (and it will likely get worse, spreading to the traditional middle classes), millions of lost children and heartache!

Also, billions spent by the government in social programs to remedy all of these problems (stemming primarily from out-of-wedlock births), thinking that if we have more after-school programs it will get better.

It will not get better until society gets back to basics . . . a belief in traditional values, repentance, and a belief and relationship with God. Yes, that's the secret. Harsh and antiquated, I know. Don't worry, though, our society is too far gone for this type of prescription, I'm afraid.

Sure, I'll pass on the complete disgust if you're an educated, affluent single mother who has a kid, but how often have you seen that happen (unless your a movie star)?

In my experience with my friends, it has been a 16 year-old Latina who's boyfriend sells meth, a girl who was never loved as a child and got pregnant trying to find what she never had, and a girl who got pregnant because kids were cute.

So, scorn, no. A little shame, yes.

Having a kid out of wedlock should be just as shameful at least as dropping out of high school, making a homophobic remark, or not recycling (sarcasm off).

Don't you just love Liberal priorities?

Depends on where you're from.
The majority of young (ie under 40) couples in the UK are unmarried - many of them parents.
Same in many other parts of Northern Europe - Germany, the Netherlands, Scandanavia, even parts of France, Italy and Spain which are traditionally Roman Catholic.

So far, society has not fallen apart....

Having a piece of paper saying you're married isn't going to make you love and care for your children any better than not having the piece of paper. If you're going to be a crap parent, then even being married by the Pope himself is not going to make you better at it.
Conversely, you can be a good parent, whether or not you're married.

I'll take unmarried couples living together over an unmarried, single parent, as better for the kids. No contest here.

What about mothers with serial partners or boyfriends who left? In my experience, "committed cohabitaion" is especially prominent in the educated, upper class, not in the working class or minority populations. My prescription was not a marriage license. The only hope is a spiritual awakening, but, I believe, it is too late for Western culture, absent a miracle by God. We are too weak, too spoiled, too distracted, and too amoral for any transformation.

You are wrong. Society is falling apart in the US, especially in the inner cities because of this.

Don't believe me? Walk through Oakland, CA at night by yourself or take a nice little jog through East LA on a weekend at night. Tell all those kids without fathers (the one's with gang tatoos who got out of prison yesterday) that you're a cool, tolerant, and hip liberal just trying to see if there is a crime problem in LA. Not your scene, try San Bernardino, CA, maybe for a little scenic drive on a Friday?

Also, the middle class is just increasingly accepting out-of-wedlock births (in the last decade or so) believing it's no big deal. Give it time and a few more generations and middle class non-marital births might start competing with the inner cities. Offhand, black non-marital children comprise 70% of all births. For Latinos in the US, it's probably 30-40%. Again, patience. Give it a little time.

If we throw more money at it, though, or get a new fancy government program designed by academics, costing a few billion, maybe it'll change?

sp, those European countries are on a slow, suicidal death spiral. Check up on them in 50 years; non-replacement birth rates, aging populations, and not believing in fighting to protect yourself do not make for vibrant societies, but make for countries prime for the taking by younger, more aggressive peoples.

Such could be North Africans and Turks. We'll see.

Well said, speedingbullet.

The escalating teenage birth rate and growing number of unwanted children are not due to liberalism.

It has to do with the religious conservatives who have their heads buried in the sand and won't fund sex education. Teenagers think that babies come from praying to the Virgin Mary.

Oakland and Washington DC are salient examples, sure. But look at Palatka, Florida or any of the bible belt towns. There are plenty of unwanted births right there.

As much as the priests preach against out of wedlock sex, the flock is still humping like rabbits.

--------

jg, as a fervent Catholic, do you use contraception or abstinence? Just kidding, you don't have to answer unless you want to. As always, you're a good sport. :)

As Catholics, my grandparents did not use contraception. They had 7 kids. Lucky that they plenty to feed the kids. Unfortunately, war, political and economic change didn't leave us grand-kids the luxury to indulge in such lifestyle.

"Well said, speedingbullet"

Pas une balle, mon cher, mais une poulet ;-)

Nice point, though - no amount of ignorance has ever stopped anyone from getting pregnant.

Dude,

The reason public education has some troubles is that parents place their childrens authority above the teachers authority.
If we can all agree that the little angels are NOT "special", and that teacher IS the authority, the problems will go away. It doesn't have anything to to with the schools being public.

Perry,

Your comments about not funding sex education are hilarious. Making an argument from an excpetion to the rule is a waste of time.

I've lived in a lot of crime-ridden urban centers in California, especially in Northern California. All of them were overwhelming bastions of liberal group think, teaching the latest in diversity, "tolerance," and sex education. There was no condemnation for teenagers having sex; it was just accepted or encouraged. No condemnation for girls getting pregnant; it was accepted.

No, instead, they were blaming Bush for this or that . . . Not once was did I witness any conservatives advocating abstinence. There weren't any conservatives there to begin with.

These are the same kids who can't even read out of high school, but they educators thought they would reliably use birth control pills everytime or a condom everytime.

You need to get out more and come visit a big city.

"If we can all agree that the little angels are NOT "special", and that teacher IS the authority, the problems will go away. It doesn't have anything to to with the schools being public."

We had quite the discussion on this in another thread. We are a lazy indulgent and apparently finger pointing do nothing society. I agree with you completely BTW. Education minded kids might have less births that they are not ready for. We don't seem to really care if the kids are education minded or have good schools as long as they are not ours and for that we are part of the problem.

l-, PC is a part-time practitioner of Jack-in-the-Box 'Angus' sex, so this pregnancy stuff is Greek (good double entendre, jg) to him.

Yeah, you're right PC: skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birthrates since the '60s are caused by repressive attitudes.

Try correlating with 'Great Society,' instead: pay for motherhood, but only if the mother is unmarried.

Guess what? When you pay people to have kids out of wedlock, they do.

The reason why Moore won't touch the schools is that he and the rest of the lefties are beholden to the teacher's unions. They have a lock on policy in most states and give generously (with or without the teacher's permission) to the democrats.

Doing a sicko type of piece on public schools is like shooting your own foot for Moore. He is more likely to go after private schools and how they promote religion, patriotism, etc.

On a side note, I grew up going to private through 8th grade then to public. I thought my public school education was ok, but there is no way my kids are going to one. The public schools in San Diego had deteriorated too much.