From: joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: mandatory service (was Re: Metzenbaum introduces....)
Date: 14 Aug 92 21:50:11 GMT

ae642@yfn.ysu.edu (Kelley Miller) writes:

>In a previous article, shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) says:

>>In article <1992Aug14.052914.7301@news.ysu.edu>, ae642@yfn.ysu.edu (Kelley Miller) writes:
>>> There is no public university, anywhere in the U. S.,
>>> that can't be attended on govt. grants and loans.
>>
>>You're assuming equal access to public k-12 education,
>>which is a hell of an assumption to make.
>Another irrelevancy, as you must be a high school graduate to enter the
>military.

Hmm, I wasn't sure this was the best argument myself, preferring something
along the lines of different economic and social environments. (Actually, I
thought I remembered high school dropouts who went in the military....)

>That aside, though, are you saying now that school age children have no
>access to a public education?  Unless an individual student has committed
>an act hienious enough to have that option removed from them, education
>through high school graduation is a right, and if a person chooses not to
>take advantage of it, that's their own fault.

I rarely call people clueless, but this seems unbelievably clueless.  From
what I think of as my extremely sheltered experience of public education, it
*still* goes completely against my experience.  As far as I know, you can't
have your ``right'' to an education taken from you regardless of crime
(unless, I guess, you get executed--I remember something back a while about
Vermont allowing minors to be tried as adults in murder cases).  The problem
is what that ``right'' means.

I went to what I guess was a fairly mediocre high school--and felt like I
learned almost nothing; in retrospect I wish I would have gotten out earlier.
Teachers were there to pass the kids.  I remember a senior English class, top
section, where we were being taught *barnyard* sounds for vocabulary.  (Dear
Ms. McGuffee, openly getting off with Mr. Crist, who believed sex education
was a bad idea 'cause it encouraged kids to be immoral, and who threw out a
couple dozen copies of ARMS AND THE MAN 'cause she didn't like it.)  Nearly a
quarter of my class left--probably 'cause they felt like *they* weren't
getting anything.  I lived outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and got the
impression the schools were *much* rougher there.

I was lucky.  I knew I was going to university.  I had a stable if
unsatisfying home situation.  Nobody did anything that fucking nasty to me.

>> I, personally, would like to dump you on 63rd St. in Chicago and watch
>>you tell people there that they're either lazy or loosers [sic].

>Me going and getting my ass kick by a bunch of losers will not change the'
>fasct that they are losers.

What an easy judgment to make:  how neatly like good Victorians we divide
people into the worthy and unworthy.  Maybe nothing pisses me off more about
our economic system than the underlying assumption that some people are more
valuable than others, that the few have somehow earned the *right* to make
their living off the labours of the many *by their own hard work* (gag).

I've had most of my life handed to me on a silver platter (whatever the things
that have hurt me deeply, and they've hurt me *very* deeply sometimes), and
so, I'd gamble, have you.  I've had so many lucky breaks it's ridiculous.
Sure, some of them I've encouraged to happen, but by no means all of them.

....

A friend of mine from high school, seen last weekend for the first time in ten
years, ``straightened his life out'' and got out of cocaine addiction by
joining the military.  To him the military was a godsend--they did, after all,
put structure in his life.  He got married, had a kid, became one of the top
people of some particular description in the navy.

But talking to him, he seemed desperate to believe that some unresolved
problems were resolved.  (He came across pretty strongly as repressed
gayfolk--he repeated an incredibly misogynist statement (``have you noticed
how women are all so unintellectual?'') and said something to the effect that
his closest friends were male, he felt strong physical attractions for them,
but this didn't mean anything, really.  He did briefly mention ``doing some
things'' with his brother and a friend in his early teens--this was by way of
explaining that he understood (!) homosexuality.)

He asked me, ``what would you think of an organization that picked you out of
the gutter, gave you self-respect and discipline, paid for your education?
I've had so many positive things happen since then it's unbelievable.''  I
told him, I'd probably think it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
``Not the best,'' he said, ``but one of the best.''

Kelley, your answers are too simple for me.  None of us is truly ``free''; all
of our decisions are constrained by many, many things.

Joel,
        who occasionally feels a great debt to the gays who paved the way
        before him, who sacrificed that things might be easier for me
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