When I saw this headline -- 'Chicken' Game Police Blame In Death Common Among Teens -- I thought it referred to the version I remember from my days as a yoot. Two idiotic kid drivers head their speeding cars toward one another to see who swerves away first. But apparently there is a more modern, even scarier version:
There are numerous videos on YouTube of young teens engaged in the game of chicken, daring each other to jump into the street.
Two 13-year-old boys told 6News they have seen people playing chicken in their neighborhoods.
"There are kids that have to cross the street to get to their houses, and sometimes they'll mess around and jump out in front of cars and try to make it back," said Tyler Mitchell. "It's just crazy, because all it takes is one slip or trip, and then he's dead."
The teens said peer pressure is often involved in the dangerous game.
Ah, the always handy peer pressure: "I dare you to prove how crazy you are!" Look, I know kids lack judgment, that each generation tends to top the previous one in risky behavior, and that we forget our own youthful indiscretions when we get to the older and wiser tsk, tsk stage. But, hey, it's my turn. Stoopid kids.
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It's obviously due to the lack money directed at education.
Yeah, because only stoopid people, like, read books and, like, know stuff. I agree, knowledge and intelligence are a waste. Let's spend that money on aircraft carriers.
Tim's point, which you choose to ignore, is that more and more money has been directed at public education despite the evidence that it has not improved public education. At least when they spend money on an aircraft carrier, they tend to insist on getting one that actually works.
I just reread Tim's post and he most certainly did not say that. I ignored nothing.
Further, even if we accept your unfounded assertion that more money hasn't helped schools, it doesn't follow that less money will make them better. If we followed that reasoning, we arrive at the position that schools would be best with no funding, which is absurd.
You're now going to direct me to some right-wing source showing spending on education going up as scores go down. As a pre-emptive strike, I will simply point out that correlation is not causation.
Littlejohn, simmer down, a man your age shouldn't let his blood pressure soar! I am glad my "tongue in cheek" swipe at the current mess of our schools caught your attention though.
I won't cite any right wing sources as it may obviously push you all the way over the edge, but I would ask you to ponder this:
Let's pretend you're a widget manufacturer (everyone loves the widget example) and your team of widget makers has been with you for since oh, like 1980. Now since 1980, the quality of your widgets has been declining. In fact the quality of your widgets has actually gotten markedly worse, all the while every year you have spent loads of money on the building, the machinery, the tools, the break room, you've shortened the hours, you've increased the employees pay every single year, you provided your employees with 1st class zero deductible FREE healthcare and you give them roughly 3 full months time off year around, and you paid for and set up a free pension plan for life too, but still the widgets just keep getting worse.
Obviously, if you were selling those widgets in the public marketplace, and the quality had sucked for over 30 years, you would have been out of business 29 years ago because of the competition making a better widget. But because nobody has to buy those widgets, the quality of the product is immaterial doesn't matter. If quality mattered you would have hired better widget makers.
The good news is you (as the widget maker) have an endless supply of money so the quality of the product obviously doesn't matter, therefore you will continue to produce lousy widgets even though you pay your employees more and more with better and better benefits each year right?
Is there any evidence that a school teacher with a master's degree is more effective than one with a bachelor's degree? Any evidence that one with a doctorate is better yet, and one with a good high school education is poorer?
For that matter, how effective are aircraft carriers? How much did they contribute to the war in Afghanistan, or the war in Iraq, or the war in Kuwait, or the war in Grenada, or the war in Viet Nam?
None of those were wars, of course. The last time we were at war was 1945. How many of today's aircraft carriers were even afloat back then?
The military budget has DOUBLED since 2001. Is there any evidence that we've purchased ANYTHING with that extra money? In 2001, fear of the US military helped keep us safe. These days, the world knows that amateurs, using IEDs cobbled together with materials sold at 7-11s, render us impotent. Nobody's afraid of us anymore.
As the husband of a schoolteacher, I agree that a good teacher is a good teacher. I suspect temperment has more to do with it than advanced education. However, if we follow that too far we again risk implying that less education is better. I'm grateful that my wife makes extra money because of her advanced degrees. For what it's worth, those charts we've all seen consistently show higher salaries correlating with higher income, but of course that doesn't prove it's the best idea.
I also agree that the aircraft carrier (or any other military materiel) example is weak. Look at the F-22 fighter, which would be a great fighter if anyone used fighters anymore. It's overpriced junk that nobody needs, and a massive waste of money that might have been spent on schools.
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Forget those F-22s, because our military imagines a need for an extra engine for the yet-to-fly single-engine F-35. We can also forget about discovering any rationale for paying more for advanced degrees and longevity without requiring better performance. But I like littlejohn's justification:
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