You’re right…
The whole thing IS a can of worms!
: )

Heh. Read “A People’s history of the United States” by Howard Zinn, and it becomes evident pretty quickly that at least SOME of the “Founding Fathers” didn’t really mean a word of it.

But I’m not going to reopen that particular can of worms, thank you very much.

(that’s also leaving aside whether “Our Constitution” — as opposed to the principles we THINK it embodies — is worth “defending”.

Is the “copyright” thing in article 1, section 8, not eminently worth “trashing?”

How about the proven curricula used by many homeschoolers?

Here’s a good question for you:

Some of my best friends when I was a teenager were some Mennonite guys around my age who were taking lessons from the same guy I was taking lessons from at the time. (The guy basically taught banjo, mandolin, dobro, bass, guitar, and the “curriculum” was a mix of classic bluegrass stuff, and Gordon Lightfoot — I still have a soft spot for Gordon Lightfoot, even now.)

Anyway, they were homeschooled by their parents — somewhat, for religious reasons, and somewhat just because homeschooling is better. Result: when they took the standardized testing the State requires, they excelled. Now, keep in mind that at the time homeschool curricula were primarily video-tape/lesson-plan based, and tought by parents who had no “formal” training as teachers.

Homeschoolers also routinely kick ass in things like spelling bees and such.

Go back and read what I actually said, and then think about whether the level of regimentation, cliques, “school spirit”, ideological mindfucking, etc. is a “necessary” aspect of “education”.

I submit that it’s not. Read some stuff by John Taylor Gatto, or the “unschooling” movement, and stop trying to defend the status quo on the basis that “solutions” are hard.

The first step is for people to realize that there actaully IS a problem (which many people, thankfully, do.)
The next step is to experiment with alternatives (which is what the homeschooling/unschooling/education reform thing is about.)

But above all else, people need to stop making excuses for the existing (failed) paradigm, because by it’s OWN criteria (standardized testing etc.) it completely fails to even produce the Military-industrial elite’s version of a “competitive” workforce. (The fact that corporations are required to invest so much in “remedial” training indicates that they’re not even capable of churning out the good little worker/consumers in the first place.

So stop apologizing for the existing system when it does shit like this, and at least have the basic moral decency to condemn it.

(As a side note, the growth things like Wikipedia/Wikibooks, “online universities” etc. indicates that there are many other option available than herding children/teens into a cross between a prison and factory, and training them to jump when the bell rings.

And just to get THIS one out of the way, no I don’t have chldren, and I don’t plan on doing so, either. Why am I interested?
Because — like all of us — I’ll have to deal with people who are PRODUCTS of the “educational” establishment, and — judging by phenomena like support for “Dubya” etc., that will probably involve eventually getting my ass nuked or something.

One solution comes to mind for a lot of what ails us…
Shoot, on sight, all those that openly trash our Constitutions!

@Henry

You’re absolutely right about the “herd mentality training”.
Mass “Patriotism” (as we discussed a little while back) is so much easier to achieve when you’ve conditioned the young.

1. Attendance is compulsory, with serious consequences for “truancy”: the essence of imprisonment is legalized compulsion — they “have” to be there whether they WANT to, or not. Whether they happen to disguise the compulsion/justify it because “they’re learning to read” or some such bullshit, the fact remains that students are COMPELLED to be there, and their parents, in many cases, face serious consequences up to and including fines and jail, if they don’t attend.

2. The fact that homeschooling is permitted to exist at all is nothing but a way for the power-structure to make it appear that there’s actually “choice”. (Just like the “first-sale” doctrine makes it appear as though there really is “competition” in terms of prices, in music/books etc.)

3. Strip-searching and other “zero-tolerance” bullshit is just another way for those in power to train the next generation of slaves for dutiful obedience to the human hive known as “society” — everything from “get to class when the bell rings” right on down to “show ’school spirit” by cheering on your school’s teams” is a microcosm of the later sociopolitical structure they’ll face as adults — up to, and including, the subtle brainwashing of “cliques” — “class consciousness”, anyone?)

(And we wonder why teens sometimes go batshit, and start shooting….)

Ah well, most people are stupid sheep, and just want the next generation’s spirits broken, because it makes the wheels run more smoothly.

Yes, I see where you’re going.
Yes, some decisions from the Supreme get passed downstream.
I didn’t say “a lower court went against a Supreme Court ruling”.

I’m saying, SC rulings can still be appealed or challenged at the SC level in separate motions.

Sorry again for the double comment, but I want to clarify something. Lower courts interpret what the Supreme Court said. They will not disagree with the ruling, but they will interpret what the Supreme Court said. For example, in the Brown vs. Board of Ed (1954), the courts stated that schools must be segregated soon. No schools became desegregated for a few years because the lower courts who didn’t want the segregation said that they still had more time (since it had to happen soon, but not now). See what I mean?

Please show me a single United States court case in which a lower court went against a Supreme Court ruling.

I don’t think you’re going to find this to be completely true.
Liability rulings on supposedly exempted individual parties have been challenged in private suits.

I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to do by any means, but some were reversed in the process.
The plaintiffs who succeeded did their homework and generally argued the constitutionality aspect of excluding someone from liability who holds no such privilege under the law. (Educators cannot possibly be exempt, as they haven’t been given the legal immunity.)

There is no court in the entire US that will go against a Supreme Court ruling. If the Supreme Court says that the officials cannot be financially liable, then no US court will ever accept a lawsuit against them. You say that they should be liable because of the unconstitutional search. The Supreme Court’s sole purpose is to decide what is constitutional and what is not. If they said that under the constitution, the officials should not be liable, then that is what the rest of the US courts will believe.

The Supreme Court takes on cases will important future consequences (cases that will affect future court cases) so that the lesser courts will know how to rule on these kinds of issues. Even the President or Congress cannot overrule a decision made by the Supreme Court. Only a future Supreme Court case can change the decision of a previous one.

oops-typo

I love how the linked article has officials saying that people do this to ‘get around’ child porn laws and then goes on to talk about how various states have found ways to ‘get around’ the fact that what he did wasn’t illegal according to the Supreme court.

I also love how it says;

“Since then, “more and more of these guys are using morphed images, image manipulations” in an attempt to circumvent prosecution, Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said Wednesday.”

I love the phrase “circumvent prosecution” and how it implies that there’s no question that he’s guilty and that he’s just using a technicality to get away with it.

I guess the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing goes right out the window as soon as the words “child porn” are mentioned.

I’d also like to know how they “caught” him.

http://news.aol.com/article/virtual-porn/544064
(June 25) — A Tennessee man is facing charges of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor for what authorities say are three pictures — none of them featuring an actual child’s body.

Which is worse? The copy & paste guy or the pedo’s in this educational institution that went fishing in a little girls underwear because of hearsay based on another student?

I hope that school is sued, I hope the school board is sued, and I hope those idiots who did this are held responsible and removed from ever working in an educations institution again.

Have a great day!

Now what these people did to this girl goes way beyond any copy & paste. Yet nothing happens and it took 6 years for the court to even say this was wrong!

Double standard that shouldn’t be tolerated.

I think the people working in that educational institution who did this have a thing for playing in little kids underwear.