What's wrong with our society?

[m3racer]

Laws aren't necessarily an offshoot of religion. I'm pretty sure we would have come up with a "don't kill people" law, even if it hadn't been handed down to Moses.

[disneysteve]

all our actions have consequences

I think this really nails it. Years ago, our actions had consequences. More and more today, that isn't true. Just look at the celebrity news. People abusing drugs and alcohol, going in and out of rehab, and still being idolized by the public and making millions with their movies or music.

Same in politics. Years back, Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, DC was caught on video in a cocaine sting. He was clearly buying and using cocaine. Was he disgraced by the episode? Nope. He was convicted and served 6 months in jail but when he got out, he got re-elected as mayor. What the hell were people thinking? If there are no consequences to our actions, people eventually stop caring about their behavior. When criminals are celebrities, the focus on doing right fades.

Of course, it all starts in the home. If parents let their kids run wild and impose no rules or discipline, the kids never learn right from wrong.

[PrincessPerky]

I personally think public school is what is wrong...I am NOT saying having help to educate your child is the wrong, I am saying public free mass education for 12 or 13 years is the problem. (not the only one, just the biggest IMO)

Think about it, we don't call it "home feeding" when you take responsibility for feeding your own kids, we don't call it "home shelter" when you take responsibility for providing a roof and the like for our own kids, the list of what is still in the camp of mom and dad to provide goes on.

But the one HUGE crucial element to our future, education..is the one we try to FORCE out of the home, it is far easier to send your child off to school at the appropriate age for your state than to invest the time to refuse to send them (of course actually teaching them is work as well). So less and less parents find the need to invest time or energy in it. I know of children who have had a wonderful first 5ish years of life in a great learning environment, who certainly have not gleaned all they can from mom or dad or others who nevertheless are sent off to school..some merely because 'thats where you go at 5.

I love to use children as an example, while all children are different in general any average child has the physical capability to say tie a shoe around 5 or 6 not well, but tied...yet many do not have a clue, because parents simply do it for them..not that there is anything wrong with assistance on occasion, but that by not letting the kid try, fail and try again, we deprive them of the chance to learn how properly.

Educating children is the same way. The more we tell parents not to worry about it from math to reading to manners, the more parents will not bother...and education is where we really get the best morals, sure some folk are born with an innate sense of right and wrong..or at least love for fellow man, but others are a bit...less civilized from birth. Sending them all to 'lord of the flies kids rule' territory before instilling in them proper values is bound to result in troubled kids.

Now you might say if we don't offer the free education we wont have any...this is simply not true, before mass education we had education in America, we had some private schools, some tutors and a WHOLE LOT OF PARENTS TEACHING! I like to emphasize that last point, we do not live in a so called '3rd world country' mom and dad generally know how to read and write and perform basic arithmetic..yet we are encouraged NOT to pass that information on to our children (you might teach them wrong and then k-5 teacher has to reteach them how to write) humph...so long as you can read it and you encourage improvement one day it will be right..sometime after the fine motor skills typically show up (like when they can tie shoes). Same argument for reading.

Again I am not saying we should not offer any education, I believe education is third only to the need for food and shelter. Needs should be met, however we don't offer free food to everyone in America, we try to offer assistance as needed with the assumption that one would figure out how to provide it for oneself asap. while I believe the welfare system has many issues, at least they haven't (yet) tried to make it universal.

Nor am I saying all parents must educate by themselves, teach what you can get help when you can't. I believe it was James Madison who was sent to formal schooling a bit earlier than his parents expected...because he read every book in their own library (a rather extensive one including Greek Latin and French titles). Yes parents will need help, children should not be carbon copies of their parents. but help comes in much better packages than from the government.

If we take away the assumption that the govt will take care of education, more parents would step up to the plate.

[m3racer]

I guess this thread got moved. Princess Perky, you make some salient points. However, I'm not sure what role education has on moral values.

[zakity]

Because the parents send the kids off to school and expect the schools to teach them everything. The teachers are only interested in teaching to the test since NCLB. There are also way more kids than teachers. The kids are learning their "morals" from other kids their age. I think that kids aren't really learning respect in school.

We are not religious and we do follow the three-fold law/Karma thing. We homeschool too. My children are learning respect for everyone and everything. I constantly get compliments from people on their behavoir because they are sweet, respectful, and mannerly.

[moneybags]

Laws have to be based on something. Obviously laws have a religious basis.

What would be the religious basis of a speed limit of 30 mph? Some things are based on common sense.

[LuxLiving]

I do believe it is in the scriptures somewhere about not being the companion of fools. No, certainly not your little darling, of course he/she isn't a fool, but get a whole pack of them together w/1 adult to watch 30-35 of them and see if something foolish does not occur!

edited to add: Proverbs 13:20

[disneysteve]

PrincessPerky - I'm not entirely sure where you stand regarding public schools. Certainly, they are not the problem since they've been around for a very long time and the types of problems OP referred to are more recent ones. I'm a public school grad of the late 60s to early 80s and I think I turned out just fine, as did my wife. The fact that my parents sent me to school every day didn't mean they abdicated all responsibility for my education. By the same token, the fact that we now send our daughter to public school doesn't mean we've abdicated that responsibility either. Whether it is through helping her with homework and teaching her ways to solve problems beyond what was covered in class or encouraging her to read books on topics outside of the school curriculum or traveling around the country and world to educate her about history and culture firsthand, we remain actively involved in her education.

I'm a huge supporter of public schools. I think they don't get nearly the support or funding they deserve and desperately need to do the best job possible.

[m3racer]

Not to beat a dead horse but I have to agree with you Steve. I don't think I would have been exposed to other cultures if it weren't for the public schools in NYC.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Me too as well. Unfortunately the way society is moving is not due to lack of religion. There are many cultures with stringent religion and yet they have many problems. And other cultures without much religion and they too have problems.

More likely it's something to do with the lack of personal responsibility either way. Whether you are religious. According to religion only the strong survive, yet we give drugs, life support to our handicapped children. We should be leaving them to die. Or we might want to consider multiple wives like in the bible, but for some reason it just doesn't work. We're not naturally monogamous, but when we try to do polygamy major jealousy arises.

Also PP, you say public schools are the problem, in most other countries public schools are the common form of education as well. And it seems to be working out. It could be due to our acceptance of behavior as a society rather than public school which is cauing a problem. What sort of acceptance? How about justifying all problems as not the child's fault?

[2moretrees]

OK, I'm going to throw this out there, but I don't think that things are nearly as bad as this thread makes them out to be. Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of problems in the US and the world, no doubt about that. But I think a lot of what we see today always existed, you just never knew about it because the information was hidden. No Internet, no instant messages, no 24/7 news.

I was one of those that listened to the "terrible" music with words that made my parents cringe. I've taken drugs before. I've done a lot of things I'm not particularly proud of, but I've also turned out OK. I was not rescued by religion or a help group or anything else. I matured even without the help of a parent guiding me.

This is not to dismiss that we can make things better. I just don't see that things are any worse now than they were 25 years ago. I would argue because more information is available, it's better.

[disneysteve]

I think a lot of what we see today always existed, you just never knew about it because the information was hidden. No Internet, no instant messages, no 24/7 news.

Exactly my point in my earlier post. When you didn't have Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer and Nancy Grace and People magazine and all the other outlets that have to find stories to stay in business, problems that would have quickly faded away become major national stories.

I'm always amazed/disturbed when some nobody commits a crime that isn't particularly important and it becomes a 24/7 story on the news. Scott Petersen comes to mind. He was nobody of importance. He killed his wife who was nobody of importance and it happened 3,000 miles from where I live. Why was it the top story on our local news many, many times throughout the case? Who the heck cares?

[PrincessPerky]

Exactly my point in my earlier post. When you didn't have Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer and Nancy Grace and People magazine and all the other outlets that have to find stories to stay in business, problems that would have quickly faded away become major national stories.

Now you can't have it both ways, either the problem with society is new or it is old but now publicized...

When I speak of public school being the problem I am not referring to Mass schooling as a problem (what you send your daughter off to) free or not you and your family still are a part of her education. The same is NOT true for many Americans.

Public school is relatively new ...history of home schooling

Many regard homeschooling as a new educational phenomenon, but that is simply a reflection of the bias of our times. If somehow we could help our caveman see into the future, he would regard government-sponsored schools as the variant, as would the majority of his descendants at least until the middle of the nineteenth century. Until then, the mostly agrarian American society lived a family-centered lifestyle; education happened at home, if only by default.

compulsory attendance in America

"In colonial times through the early Republic period, when private schools were the rule, a great many people were educated, despite the relatively low living standards of the day. As the historian Robert Seybolt wrote:

In the hands of private schoolmasters the curriculum expanded rapidly. Their schools were commercial ventures, and, consequently, competition was keen.... Popular demands, and the element of competition, forced them not only to add new courses of instruction, but constantly to improve their methods and technique of instruction.

If you really want to get into the politics of public school (again not mass school, while I disagree with mass school, it has its place- I am actually not trying to turn America into a country of home only educators..any more than I am trying to turn the country into a society of home only cooking.) read further down that last link to why we have them..it ain't pretty.

Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it. - Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

Early compulsory schooling began in Prussia ...under no pretense of 'free thinking' it was begun to try and subjugate the masses.

...attempted to instill social obedience in the citizens through indoctrination. Every individual had to become convinced, in the core of his being, that the King was just, his decisions always right, and the need for obedience paramount.

The schools imposed an official language to the prejudice of ethnic groups living in Prussia. The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy. As the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system, said, "The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."

Now I am not a conspiracy theorist in fact "Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this school thing as a conspiracy, even though the project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators. It was and is a fully rational transaction in which all of us play a part.. (Gatto) but it is hard to imagine a system based on Prussian desire to create 'sheep' could really be best for our children.

America from what I understand largely took on compulsory education as an add on with child labor laws...more history
The fact that the Irish were poor and unschooled did not endear them to the proper Bostonians. Charles Fox, master of the Boylston School, said that he was "exceedingly annoyed by a set of miserable, dirty ragged boys, of wretched parents, who generally are about our streets and wharves.The fact is that some parents will not send their children to any school; they want their services to procure chips, to beg, or steal — in fine, to get anything in any way they can.They will not attend school, unless they are deprived of their liberty." (The Culture Factory by Stanley K. Schultz, p. 292)

Actually, the major cause of truancy among the immigrants was the need to work and help their families survive in the new world. Child labor was widespread but not as horrendous as later depicted by liberal historians. In fact, for many children, the factory was a very adequate school. Stanley Schultz writes (p. 295):

I happen to disagree about the factories, in that day and age they were not as safe as they are today, and I still don't want my 10 year old in one (nor for that long) but the point is, schooling for the Irish immigrants was a way to get the poor beggars out from underfoot...they were working for food! Don't you think adequate food for the family would have given them time to pursue other avenues? Like education.

Lest you think those beggars were the majority of children:
In 1848, the city marshall of Boston was ordered to find out how many truants and vagrants there were in Boston. He found 1,066 children between the ages of 6 and 16 who were either vagrant or truant Considering the fact that in 1849 the total enrollment in Boston's public schools was 20,589, the truants amounted to about 5%. In other words, without compulsory attendance laws, 95% of the city's children were attending school.

BTW after passing the law Massachusetts had to force children off to school at gun point...not all the 5% either..many of the formerly attending objected once the compulsion was put in place, we are still Americans 'land of the free', if barely.

free education (not public)

Prior to the government’s takeover of American education and replacement of it with mass compulsory schooling (this distinction is most important), there was no system. There was a mishmash of different educational alternatives.

Unschooled as most people were, they were not uneducated. Between a mix of occasional formal schooling, homeschooling, apprenticeships, and self-motivation, average Americans were more generally educated and industrious than any other people in the world. This was consistently noticed by European travelers in the early 19th century.

Man I would love for that to be true today!!!! Instead we are the ignorant louts, Europeans wonder how on earth we manage to be a super power with so many dolts living here! Truth is we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before...those who had the freedom to learn any old way that worked.

I suppose an older simpler way to point the trouble with society (In my eyes) is "we lock away our young and our old, instead of letting them learn from each other" (sorry don't recall who said it, but I wasn't the first thats for sure.)

[rob62521]

I would like to add that some people don't weigh the consequences of their actions and most do not take responsibility for what they do. I'm also in the inner city schools and I might ask a child to stop doing something (talking, kicking someone, etc.) that I saw them do and they look me right in the eye and say, "I didn't do that." Music, TV, movies, and even their home lives influence the fact if they don't get caught, it's OK to do it. And it's not just the poor...politicians, the weathly...it's whatever one can get away with.

I'm not trying to preach either, but our pastor was talking about how media shows families and he compared and contrasted the older sitcom "Family Ties" to "The King of Queens." He said neither were perfect families, but he recommends families don't watch "The King of Queens" because of the sarcasm and hatefulness things are said. To quote him, "Kids don't need lessons on how to sass." Amen.

[cicy33]

Personally I think a huge problem is when the "law" decided to take away our rights to discipline our children. Now, it is true that there was and is abuse. But when you cannot spank your child to correct them because you will go to jail BUT you WILL be held liable, financially and criminally when they mess up is just a bad situation waiting to grow into a really bad problem. I personally spanked my daughter and she grew into a beautiful, responsible woman who respects me and other people. She was not abused but she was spanked. I see a huge difference in kids today and when I was raising my daughter. (she is 22) The vast majority have no respect for anyone and do what they want. My personal favorite (sarcasm here) is when my friends are visiting and their children are ready to go and TELL their parents they want to leave and it is time to go. What are they thinking! and this has happened a lot! I would have been mortified if my child had done that.