If we have "across the board" failures on parents taking the time and effort to feed their own children breakfast then we have a societal problem that cannot be resolved with breakfast served at schools. It is cruel to the children for society to teach them that when they have their own children that they should expect someone else to feed their children breakfast and lunch. How much longer before the schools feed the children supper too?

If there are parents so disconnected from the lives of their children that they go to school hungry daily then that's a matter for child protective services, not the school. I'd expect CPS to educate the parents on feeding their children, and if there's no improvement then the children are removed from the parents and put in an environment where they can get proper nutrition.

I'm interested in a society where parents are expected, willing, and able, to feed their own children. If there's no expectation on parents feeding their own children then in time is anyone going to care for the children? It's supposed to be some other person's job. Will the government employees even know how to feed children if they grew up in a household where there was always food that appeared from a slot in the wall than seeing their parents prepare and serve food to them? Serving breakfast at schools is setting a dangerous precedent. We should stop it now before it grows.

As beneficial as it may be to learn a second language there needs to be a real perceived value to maintain interest in it. If English is the language spoken at home, and is the lingua franca for much of the world, then is there value in training people to learn any other language later in life?

People were convinced to learn Latin, Greek, French, or whatever in the past because what they were taught was expected to have value in the future so they could read scholarly papers, communicate with educated people, and so on. Telling students it will help them later learn some other language will simply get them asking which language, and why they aren't learning that language to begin with. If there's no obvious language to learn in the future then that can be perceived as a waste of time and resources.

I grew up in a community that for the most part had ancestors in German speaking parts of the world. If the local schools taught German as part of learning family history, local history, getting some connection to culture and history more generally then there may be some greater perceived value and therefore interest. If the justification is only that it's nice to know for something something then expect it to be dropped from the curriculum.

The chances for any English speaking person to meet someone that speak Mandarin is quite small. Even less likely is this Mandarin speaking person to know only Mandarin, they'd likely know some other language also. Of the 990 million people that speak Mandarin only a handful will leave China to interact with Americans. These few Chinese speaking people will almost certainly have learned English.

I'd expect much the same of people speaking Hindi, that if such people leave India to where they'd have a chance to meet an American that they'd learn English before leaving. So, what foreign language should be taught for the best chances at future success? Because there is not likely to be much agreement on that the perceived need to learn any foreign language is gione

The United Nations is broken in that a nation like Tuvalu, with a population of about 10,000, has as much of a vote on resolutions as China, with over a billion people.

How do we make the UN "fair" on setting any kind of international policy? Maybe have some kind of system like the USA where there's a vote based on population, as we have with the House of Representatives, and another vote based on political boundaries, as we have with the Senate.

I'm confused on how it takes only 60 member states to pass any kind of treaty or resolution when there's 190+ members. If that's how things work then it might be possible for one large nation to get 59 small nations under their umbrella economically, politically, and militarily and then be able to kind of rule the world.

There's five nations with special status in the UN, those being China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These five nations aren't easily removed from their spot as having considerable veto power on anything the UN does. Russia is on this list out of momentum, not because they have any outsized authority on the planet in their economic or military power. I have a suspicion that Russia will not remain in this position much longer as the nation could be facing an economic and population collapse. That tends to happen when a large number of young men in a nation are sent to war then end up dead. If China keeps going as they are then they could also face a population collapse, though I expect China to ride that out better as they have a larger population and a democratic government still in exile on the island of Formosa. If, or rather when, communist China falls then we can expect democracy to be restored, and with that a shift of the UN as a defender of peace and democracy restored. If, or rather when, communist Russia falls we could see a democratic nation inherit that spot in the UN, and with the five major powers in the UN being democracies we could see the UN become relevant again. As it is now so much of what they do is held up by a veto by one communist nation or another.

Consider that the UN exists because the USA allows it to exist. Would the UN exist if the member states didn't have a safe place like the USA to meet? Maybe they should move their headquarters elsewhere. I'd suggest Iceland as they have no standing military and so could pose no threat to any other nation. Iceland does have a coast guard, air defense force, and a kind of crisis unit that sounds something like the US National Guard, but no true military force. By being out in the North Atlantic they are naturally insulated from many kinds of invasion or attack. They are also in a good spot to monitor global warming by looking out the window to see how many icebergs float by.

The UN is broken. I'm fairly certain it cannot be fixed. Maybe if we see some restoration of the democracies that won WW2 put in control we can get the UN back to something like it was intended to be. So long as petty little dictators can direct how the UN operates it's value is minimal. I see value in them setting standards on things like shipping, air travel, passports, postal services, and a few other bits, but on any larger matters it's just people yelling at each other and nothing getting done.

Maybe the USA needs to leave the UN, have the UN move their headquarters, then just deal with each other nation individually on anything concerning international trade, international boundaries, and so forth. Things would likely work more smoothly that way, even if there's a dementia patient sitting in the Oval Office.

Don't be an ass, I'm quite certain you knew I was referring to actions in uniform while not in combat.

No analogy is perfect so your nitpick on this is you just being difficult. You know that as a government employee there's no 1st Amendment right to speak as they please while in a time and place that implies they speak for the government. While I was in uniform and my sergeant was in uniform there was an expectation for us both to speak and act like soldier, with him as my superior in the chain of command. As could be expected when out of the sight of others I'd have chats with my sergeants as just a couple dudes, I'd still be respectful but I'd also feel free to drop a lot of the formality. I had that happen with my instructors at university. When taking summer classes the instructor and many students would have to drive from some distance off campus and so on days when traffic was light many would get to the classroom plenty early. In that time we'd chat about current events and exchange opinions. Once the time for the scheduled class started, and the rest of the students were in the room, the bullshit session ended and we put our political commentary or whatever away until the next bullshit session.

When you have schoolteachers and their students that are still minors there's still rules on what the schoolteachers can and cannot say even if outside the confines of a classroom. They can't bullshit like a couple dudes that meet outside of work. An adult mentioning anything about LGBTQIA2BBQWTFBLT+$%& to a minor that is outside the relationship of parent/child or guardian/ward could be considered a crime.

There is no exception here. Teachers are to teach what is in the published curriculum, going outside that should be considered insubordination and grounds for losing their job. If there's something LGBTQIA2BBQWTFBLT+$%& on the published curriculum then it needs to be age appropriate and meet standards of decency. Since this is k-12 we are talking about there is very little that is both LGBTQIA2BBQWTFBLT+$%& and also age appropriate.

I have doubts about that. While I was in high school there was quite a scare over the spread of HIV/AIDS, as such we were taught that putting our "tab A" into another man's "slot B" was dangerous behavior. There doesn't need to be any religious context to that, it's a basic public health reality with all kinds of scientific evidence to back it up. If that's what you mean by LGBTQIA2BBQWTFBLT+$%& education then I have no problem with that. I expect that is not what you are talking about. Parents don't need some "religious offense" to be opposed to the teachers telling their children so many things about LGBTQIA2BBQWTFBLT+$%& concepts. It can be a matter of health, like with HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It can be a lot of things. Objections to LGBTQIA2BBQWTFBLT+$%& aren't confined to religion.

Bullshit. There's no compromising on keeping the boys locker rooms separate from the girls locker room. Failure on that is a recipe for children getting hurt. It's also a recipe for school staff getting hurt as parents will protect their children from this violently.

Maybe, possibly, there's that one in one hundred thousand chance there's an intersex student in the school that needs some kind of accommodation. In that case it could be a simple matter of waiving any requirement for this student to participate in PE, as well as use a separate restroom. It appears a trend for any kind of public building to have a separate restroom for those with some kind of special needs that offers added privacy, the student can be given such an option to avoid embarrassment. Allowing boys and girls to commingle in the restrooms is asking for trouble, and there's already plenty of trouble with just having boys in the boys room and girls in the girls room, we should not add to the issues when we don't have to.

Then why mention the 1st Amendment?

When the children are asking about a sensitive topic like sexual relations the teacher should inform the child to ask their parents. Failure to do otherwise could be considered a crime as we are talking about minors in K-12 education. Again with some exceptions at the very top end in high school where some portion of the students could be considered legally adults, or at least considered old enough to comprehend what it means to have sexual relations.

Great! I love academics who recommend realistic policies that can be quickly and easily implemented.

How will it be enforced?

Who will do the enforcing?

An education system that is seeing students perform badly because they show up to school hungry should be looking to educate the parents on the importance of a proper breakfast than providing breakfast at schools.

Once we get to a point that public schools are proving breakfast then that is not only educating the children that the schools are to provide food it is also educating the parents that while school is in session they don't need to prepare breakfast for their children. Is that the kind of lesson we should teach parents? Maybe we'd see better performing students if the schools made some kind of effort to educate parents on the skills needed to prepare a proper breakfast quickly, easily, and with minimal expense than rely on the schools to provide breakfast.

It might not be the goal of public schools to make a point on the nuclear family but the government that funds the public schools should know that maintaining a nuclear family is good for long term education, employment, and more to where any interaction between the government and family should encourage the nuclear family and parents being a partner in the education of the next generation than merely the means of human reproduction.

Maybe all the schools need to do is send some pamphlets home with the students for a parent to read. I recognize that not every parent will bother reading this stuff but it's better than going down the path of turning the government into the parent.

I can agree that learning any language as a youth prepares the mind for more later. I credit my Spanish classes for scoring so well on the DLAB and setting me up for being a linguist in the US Army. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) I scored well enough on the DLAB that I'd likely be taught one of the more difficult languages like Mandarin or Arabic than something a bit easier like Russian or Ukrainian. Part of that is simply being intelligent, another part is having enough exposure to any foreign language at a young enough age to develop the mental connections to make learning another language later in life easier. Even if not learning anything other than English the background on a foreign language helps in learning new words and understanding how English works if applied in nonstandard ways such as with poetry, non-native speakers, children, or something else that just slipped my mind.

I guess my point is that if we are to get students interested in learning a foreign language then there should be something to show it will have value later in life. With so much of the world speaking English as a first or second language there's going to be difficulty in making that case. If a Filipino vessel is contacting a Chinese vessel in English then how much utility is there is learning Mandarin?

I can recall there being something of a trope in popular media of kids learning to speak French badly in high school. That kind of turned into a trope of speaking Spanish badly with King of the Hill and more recent shows. How would tha helo with interactil That Chrannat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Public school teachers answer to their unions than the schools. We need another Reagan to kill the unions. Reagan was willing to see the air travel industry brought to a stop to see an end to union coercion. We need the teacher unions killed in a similar manner in order to see children educated in facts than the opinions of the unions. If teachers face no punishment for wasting time in the calassroom then we will get wasted time in the classroom.

Private schools might have their corporate masters but they don't have the same kind of government funds that allow them to be assholes like union run public schools do. The public school teachers get paid regardless on if the students so up for class or not. If a private school is full of under performing or preachy teachers then they will fail. Parents paying for a private school don't have to put up with teachers that spread what their unions want them to, they can find a different school to send their children to. These private schools might fill the heads of their students with some religious indoctrination than indoctrination specified by some government agency or teacher union, but this is often seen as a benefit than something to fear and avoid.

If the issue on LGBTQ+ is "bullshit" then why even bother with separate boys and girls locker rooms? Why not have the boys and girls share a shower after PE class or track practice if there's to be no keeping boys that believe they are girls from going to the girls locker room?

It turns out that parents aren't exactly on board with the idea of boys getting naked in the vicinity of their daughters. There's also boys not exactly comfortable with sharing a shower with girls.

How do we resolve this? I have an idea. We put an end to the idea that "gender is a construct" and go back to recognizing that male and female are distinct biological realities. Words like male, female, masculine, feminine, and so on might be constructs but they are descriptors of reality and not some arbitrary distinction we came up with from nothing. Instead of having locker rooms for "boys" and "girls" we can have locker rooms for "male" and female". We then define "male" and "female" in ways that define physical characteristics than how someone felt that morning upon getting out of bed and dressing themselves.

While much of what is taught in schools is local the federal government still maintains considerable control by means of subsidies. Perhaps the primary means to control what a school teaches is with subsidies to school lunches: https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp

The federal government will like to show photos of pleasing school lunch meals but for the most part it can be a few dry chicken nuggets, greasy noodles, and some broccoli cooked to the point it is sad and gray.

School teachers don't have a 1st Amendment right in the classroom, just as I didn't have a 1st Amendment right while in my US Army uniform. Public school teachers are expected to teach the approved curriculum, not use the classroom paid for by taxpayers to spew their beliefs to a captive audience of children expecting to learn lessons useful for living a life of enlightenment and gainful employment.

If the teachers want to express their beliefs then they can do so as private citizens off the school property, and without any indication of their affiliation with the school that hired them. If I were to speak out against the US government, or state government, while wearing my Army uniform then I could expect severe punishment for doing so. We have seen university lecturers and professors punished for attending political rallies while wearing their university ID badges, as they should. If they are displaying the ID issued to them by the university then that implies they speak for the university. If a teacher preaches their personal beliefs while in a classroom during a scheduled class then that implies they speak for the school, state, and possibly federal government that subsidizes their school lunches.

There is no 1st Amendment right while working for the school, state education system, or while subsidized by the US Department of Education. This is no different than me not having a 1st Amendment right while wearing my US Army uniform. I mean I could have called my sergeant an asshole to his face but the 1st Amendment and the E-4 rank on my uniform would not have saved me from punishment for it. While out of uniform I might have got away with it as I was not under the employ of the government at the time. I might have even got my sergeant to smile, laugh, and admit he's been an asshole to me since he believed that as part of his job. I was an E-4 Specialist and I noticed the sergeants around me acted very different once they knew I was waiting for my discharge papers. At that point they knew I was effectively off-limits to them, we talked like people that met on the street than a sergeant to a recruit. You want that relationship of talking like people that met on the street than teacher to student? Fine, do that outside the classroom. While in the classroom the teachers should be expected to follow the state specified curriculum or expect to be fired.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. You haven't heard that before?

Children need to learn that their parents are the providers and educators, not the schools. Parents cooking a breakfast for their children teaches a lot of important lessons to their children. One important lesson in this is that family is where they should turn to for food when hungry, not the government. Then is lessons on self reliance as they get older, as in learning to prepare their own breakfast.

School lunches should not be free. There is a lesson in having the children have to bring a little token or ticket like I had to for my school lunch. This teaches that if you are to eat then you need to bring something in exchange, that lunches aren't free. In grade school this was a little green plastic coin our parents would buy and we'd hand over to get lunch. If I forgot my coin then I'd have my name taken down that I owed them a token and then ordered be told to get in the back of the line, it was embarrassing and also an important lesson. In high school we could pay cash for lunch or buy tickets to show someone paid for the lunch. I learned that some of my classmates got their lunch tickets for "free", which only meant it was paid for by taxes. I learned we likely qualified for the "free" lunch and I asked my dad why he didn't take advantage of this. He said something like he's not going to have someone else feed his children, that there's no free lunches, and I learned another important lesson that day.

I'm a believer in having everyone learn a second language but for Americans what language would that be?

If we look to history the lingua franca would be French, it's kind of where the term lingua franca came from, the language of the Franks was kind of universal for a bit. For a certain period of time it would have been advantageous for Americans to learn German as that was the language of the best scientists and engineers. Today if someone is to be a world traveler then knowing English is often the best bet. What does that mean for Americans?

How many of those reading this have seen the video of two Chinese ships colliding and a Philippine coast guard ship call them on the radio to offer assistance? What language was being spoken? It was English. English is the language of international shipping. It is also the language of international air travel. How many of those reading this have flown to a foreign airport? An airport in a nation where English isn't the predominate language? Did you notice that all the signs in and around the airport had English on them? I did.

In much of the world if children are expected to learn a second language then it is often English. If English is already your first language then what? What is expected of people in other nations that have English as a primary language to learn as a second language? In Canada I'd expect most every English speaker to learn enough French to order a meal, ask where to find the restroom, and otherwise meet basic needs. In the UK? Maybe French? Irish? How about Australia? Indonesian? Mandarin?

I might guess that American children would be encouraged to learn Spanish. I saw this in doing some baby sitting with by nieces and nephews as they liked Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street that worked in Spanish words into the programming. Would that useful in the future though?

When it comes to music lessons though I'm all on board with that. What bothers me is how much is paid in renting the instruments. I discovered that a "student" or "beginner" guitar or violin can be had for like $120. Most any musical instrument can be had for about that price, it might be a plastic trumpet than one made of brass but it's likely cheaper to buy than rent and still sound much the same. Even if never played again after the lessons end it can be a piece of decor in the home, and maybe a visitor will pick it up and provide some entertainment. For some instruments it might be more like $300, still likely cheaper than renting, can provide entertainment for life, or be decor to enjoy. Some instruments will cost far more than $300, and so might make sense to rent. Such instruments are often large, as in an upright bass or tuba, and so not something that might be tolerated as a wall hanging or something once the music lessons end.

Everyone should be expected to learn to play some instrument in American schools, if only so far as to keep a beat on a drum. I need to get back to my learning to play upright bass and/or bass guitar as I believe I'd enjoy that greatly should I get some basic skills in it. I'd like to live in a world where when people first meet instead of asking what kind of work they do people get asked what kind of instrument they play.

And increasingly the youth are looking at the public schools as more of their guardian/provider than their biological parents.

Public schools are apparently offering breakfast in addition to lunch. How many parents are so lacking in time and the care for their children to fix them a breakfast? Maybe they don't get a hot meal but is it so hard to set out some fruit, boiled eggs, maybe a slice of bologna on a slice of bread, and a glass of milk? What I described should be a decent breakfast by most standards, and likely better food than the public schools serve.

It doesn't take much time to warm up a frying pan for some hot pancakes, scrambled eggs, and some bacon or sausage. I often had to prepare breakfast for myself and my younger siblings in the little time we had between morning chores on the farm and when it was time to drive to school. Get the pan hot, toss in some bacon, cook some eggs in the bacon grease, put some bread in the toaster, pour out some glasses of milk, and everyone got a hot meal in a hurry. If I had time then I'd make pancakes from a mix, because I like pancakes. Apparently it's not that difficult to make pancakes from scratch if the pancake mix looks expensive, and not much in morning preparation time if mixed the night before and kept in the refrigerator.

Why the focus on parents cooking breakfast for their children? Because that is teaching the children that the parents are the providers, not the school. Then is seeing the parents cook the meals to show their children that when they are old enough to go out on their own how to prepare their own breakfast than buy it from McDonald's or something. This is also "family time", even if only 30 minutes of rushed time of inhaling breakfast before the school bus arrives, to interact in ways that families should. This simple morning routine is an important part of the child's education, and I'd argue more important than so many things they learn at school.

I could argue that schools should not even provide lunch as that sets a bad example on who is the provider but I can see a matter of health and sanitation from every student bringing food and keeping that safe to eat later in the day. I'd encourage parents to pack a lunch if they could as that's another lesson on what makes a good meal, who is the provider in this relationship with the school, and so on. Too often the schools try to teach that the parents are the "enemy" that fill them with lies. If the parents are involved enough in the lives of their children to provide their meals then they'd likely be involved to where they can pick up on when the schools are teaching things they don't approve of.

I can see the parents seeing the schools as a babysitter. What I can also see is the parents see themselves as the educator. The school is just a safe place for their children to go for a while to interact with others their own age, their education starts when they get home and the parents go over their lessons with them, this allows them to correct what the schools taught that conflict with what the parents know and believe.

I believe so.

Too much of hiring in education is based on having the right papers than their ability and motivations to deal with the children and young adults in the schools. If I were running a school and looking for someone to teach classes like biology, health and nutrition, physical education, or psychology then I'd be temped to go to the local hospitals and look for nurses and other staff for teachers. These are people that have to deal with others daily, have shown they care about others, and shown they know the material they'd be teaching well enough to apply it.

For classes like wood shop, home economics, algebra, any kind of accounting/finance/pre-business class (they teach that in high school still, right?), arts and crafts, and likely more I'm missing, I'd look to local cookie shops, pizzerias, handy-man services, ice cream parlors, and any other business where the people there will need the skills to deal with children as well as skills related to what they are teaching. The guy in town that builds doghouses, assembles swing sets, and mows the Little League field is likely to be a better teacher than a lot that have a bachelor degree in education from some university. These are people that care about kids, know some skills and how to apply them, and so demonstrated they are likely suited to teach.

We rarely have such people as teachers because we put far too much value in teaching certificates. Do people need a 4 year degree to be a teacher? I'd say they'd need some training and testing so as to make sure the guy mowing the Little League field isn't Forest Gump, where once in front of children he'd show the class the scars he got while in combat. You know, the scars on his buttocks? How long should that take? A few weeks at a community college? A 12 week summer session of night classes at the local university? Okay, maybe they need to have a semester of courses as a full-time student. Whatever the training is it should be something that can be managed in fairly minimal time assuming the applicants have a 4 year degree, or something similar, to start with. The schools will be closed for the summer anyway, have the teachers already at the school teach and evaluate the next generation of teachers during the summer. Assuming there's also remedial courses at the school over the summer they can get time observing classes in progress, and time actually teaching, before getting their certification.

Maybe we need more part-time teachers, people that teach a class or two in the morning then in the afternoon go run the local pizzeria or something. The problem I've seen in so many cases of bad teachers is they never had to apply what they teach and so are bad at teaching. They might have all the right certificates but then fail in being able to answer the basic questions children ask because the child might have spent more time in the "real world" than their teacher.

There's a lot of good data out there that shows about 10% of adults are not able to navigate the world without some assistance. I could write plenty on the how and why but that's quite a rabbit hole to go down, and gets into the controversy of IQ scores and their ability to test for future success. Maybe I can summarize by pointing to studies out of the US military. While the testing for military service isn't exactly an IQ test it does correlate very well, both are testing for comprehension of much the same skills and have the scores normalized on a percentile than an absolute score.

The US military determined that those with an IQ lower than somewhere between 80 and 85 would not be able to be put in a position in the military that added value, they'd drag down their battle buddies to a point they could get them killed. This range in IQ is also about where there's a 50/50 chance of graduating high school. This is about 10% of the population. Finding work in the military is different than finding work in the civilian world so if we put this 10% of the young adult population in a different kind of education than the traditional high school then we could likely find a place for them than where they tend to end up now, in prisons.

We used to have institutions for those with learning disabilities but many of them were closed in the 1960s and 1970s for reasons that I have difficulty following. Those with families that had the resources to provide care could keep such individuals out of prisons. Not everyone has a family able to do that.

While graduating high school is often an indicator of future success this is because high school is a kind of IQ test. It is also a test of having a sociable demeanor, those with behavior problems not associated with IQ could still fail high school because they could not complete their work. Those with an IQ well below average could still graduate if they could stay focused on the work put before them.

This gets complicated quickly and, again, there's been plenty of studies on this. If a school is having problems with the quality of education, graduation rates, or whatever, then maybe there needs to be an evaluation on if there's students that need to be put in a different environment than the typical high school because of a behavioral problem or below average IQ. The US military found that such people can weigh down those around them, high school isn't exactly basic military recruit training but there's a lot of similarities including the age of those involved.

It might not be exactly kind to send 10% of the students to a separate school than their peers but then it's a lesser kindness to leave them on a path that is certain to impact the education of the other 90%.

I can tell that you have no idea what you're talking about because the vast majority of public K-12 school funding is through local taxes, not federal funding. The federal government has almost no control over it so they can't cut funding. If you look at the actual spending on a per pupil basis it's gone up significantly in red and blue areas alike.

The percentage of students enrolled in private schools tends to be slightly higher in blue states as well. The biggest private schools tend to be Catholic (or other religious) schools that aren't that expensive. There are also many states that have charter schools that perform better for less money than the public schools, so it's not a money problem.

The U.S. should invest in expanding the number of charter schools. The real problem is that the public school system has very little competition and therefore no reason to improve. When Sweden expanded charter schools they found that the public schools performed better as well because they had to provide better service.

Regulation by whom and over what? Must so many people believe every problem is best solved by more government?

I just finished watching a YouTube video where there are concerns that the FCC forced Jimmy Kimmel off the air. I have doubts on that but there's some suggestions that some veiled threats from people high up in the FCC was the last straw that got his show removed from the air. If there is any truth to that then that's a bad precedent for the federal government dictating what is allowed speech. We can get someone else in the White House then then that could just mean we get another bully instead, and maybe those reading this will agree with how the next POTUS runs the federal government, that doesn't make the the USA a better place but just sets us up for the political pendulum swinging more wildly until someone on the Left or Right grab it so it won't swing any more.

What do we do when the government is the problem? More government still?