From: johniac@austin.ibm.com (John Iacoletti/100000)
Subject: Re: Football Failures at Bowie Force end of Season
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 00:13:36 GMT
Distribution: tx
Organization: IBM Advanced Workstations and Systems, Austin, TX
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fred j mccall 575-3539 (mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com) wrote:
:                  Or do you think they just said, "Hey, I've got an
: idea.  Let's not let 'em play sports if they're failing.  Well, no, it
: doesn't seem to bear any relationship to anything, but it's fun to
: make up arbitrary rules."?

That's exactly what I think happened.  Do you have evidence to the contrary?

: Worry away.  Don't YOU know the difference between a good citizen and
: a bad one, John?

No I don't, as a matter of fact.  And seeing as how "good citizen" is a value
judgement, I'd like to know how YOU define it.  Are you willing to tell me?

:                                                          Where, for
: example, do you get the idea that I "don't like football", for
: example?  

Sorry.  You don't think football is "productive".  Is that better?

: The difference between our outlooks, John, is that you want to let
: that kid go through school learning nothing,

You're misrepresenting my position.  I'm questioning your assumed link between
extracurricular activities and "learning nothing" as well as your assumed link
between "good grades" and "learning something".  Also in the final analysis,
whether a person learns or not depends upon that person.  You don't "let"
somebody learn nothing, nor can you "make" somebody learn something.  I think
that negative reinforcement is counterproductive.

: and then later say "fuck
: him" when he can't make it because he never learned either any of the
: academic material or any of those principles like having to do 'work'
: before you have 'fun'.

I'm not particularly interested in you foisting your "puritan work ethic" upon
the masses.  Weren't you one of the people opposed to teaching ethics in
public schools?

: He is somehow immaculately going to become
: 'not a problem'.  Under your view, we should simply go back to
: privately funded schools where everybody pays for their own child, and
: screw anyone who can't afford it.  Social Darwinism at its best.

Last time I checked, the U.S. Constitution didn't say anything about education
being a "right".  In fact it doesn't say anything at all about education.  But 
given the fact that socialized education is here, I resent you imposing your 
values upon people who may not agree with them.

: Because, John, if they can't make a living I'm faced with the choice
: of having to either support them, arrest them, or bury them (or
: perhaps some combination of those).

Actually you don't have to do any of these three.

: This isn't true in that little
: libertarian dream world you seem to be coming from,

Please respond to what I actually write and not your preconceptions about
where I seem to be coming from.

: but people who
: didn't learn how to DO anything don't simply go away.  They become
: problems for the rest of us, even under that social Darwinism that you
: favor. 

Only because you choose to assume responsibility for them.  This is great:
You insist that we spend public money to take care of people and then you
complain when you have to take care of people.

: Well, John, it seems that a lot of them DON'T learn those things in
: elementary school.  And I thought you were insisting that education
: isn't a window that slams shut, so why is it too late for them to
: learn it later on?

Fred, they don't teach reading and basic arithmetic in high schools.  Is "no
pass-no play" going to magically cause that knowledge to just float into their
heads?  If you're worried about kids not learning to read or do basic
arithmetic, I suggest you focus on the elementary schools, or get these 
classes introduced into the high schools.

: No, it's easier to NOT think and just let things continue on as they
: were, including letting people who ara failing CURRICULUM to continue
: to participate in EXTRA-CURRICULAR activities.

What's the difference between doing nothing and doing something that doesn't
have the effect that you want?  That's often the problem with activist
governments.  Sometimes "doing something" is the goal rather than "doing
something that works".

: This flies in the face
: of all that 'free market forces' jazz that you espouse, since it tells
: them they can have the 'good' part (the rewards) without doing the
: part that they're supposed to be doing (the curriculum).

That doesn't sound like "free market" to me.  In a educational free market,
the students would decide just what they were supposed to be doing, and what
the "good parts" are, and hopefully they would be the same thing.

--
John Iacoletti       IBM AWS Austin       Internet: johniac@austin.ibm.com
        My opinions do not reflect the views of the IBM Corporation
    "Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age" -- TMBG   "I Palindrome I"