From: ae642@yfn.ysu.edu (Kelley Miller)
Subject: Re: mandatory service (was Re: Metzenbaum introduces....)
Reply-To: ae642@yfn.ysu.edu (Kelley Miller)
Organization: St. Elizabeth Hospital, Youngstown, OH
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 05:26:02 GMT


In a previous article, joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project) says:

>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....)

Several years ago that was so, but in the past 5 years, it's been H.S. grad
only.  Not even a GED is eligible anymore...

>
>>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.

Again, a few years ago this was true--but with students beating teachers,
uncontrollably disrupting classes, terrorizing fellow students, ect., some
changes have had to be made, and it does happen that some students have been
removed from the public school system in order to preservr the rights of 
others.

>
>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 had teachers like that myself...and from what I understand (several of my
relitives are in the education proffesion--K through Graduate school level),
they still exist today.  Still, I received an excellent education, because
what was not offered to me freely I took.  I determined early, when I was
first exposed to one of these free-wheeling inept teachers, that I was
not going to allow them to deprive me of what I felt I was due.

>
>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 didn't have such assurances.  I wasn't sure I would be going to college
until about a week before the begining of the freshman term.

>>> 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'm not saying that the "Losers" as I refered to them are in any way less 
valuable than myself, or any other person.  All I'm saying is that except
for those of lessened mental capacity, (read:mentally ill) not a single one of
them had less opertunity than I did to get an education or learn a trade.
They were either too lazy, or too indifferent to their own situation, to
do so.

>
>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.
>
I've had to work for everything I have.  Lucky breaks? No, I've made my own 
breaks.  Luck didn't play a part in it.  Hard work, dedication, and an over-
whelming wish not to live the life my parents did (7 children and perhaps an
avarage income of $10,000 over the past 30 years...) is what put me where
I am today.

>....
>
>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.''
>
I'm happy for your friend.  But I have to ask, why was he in the gutter in the
first place?  And even dismissing this, 10 years ago the military would accept
just about anybody...HS dropouts...Drug addicts...persons convicted of minor
felonies...Now, a recruit has to be squeeky clean...they'll even bounce you
having a moving violation on your record, or for having more than a single
"F" on your high school transcript in a single year.

>Kelley, your answers are too simple for me.  None of us is truly ``free''; all
>of our decisions are constrained by many, many things.
>
Given...but with enough determination, one can find their way around these
constraints...Blaming our circumstances on external "constraints" is the
first step toward not making it.

>Joel,

>        who occasionally feels a great debt to the gays who paved the way
	     ^^^^^^^^^^^^
I always do...
				

>        before him, who sacrificed that things might be easier for me
>
-- 
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*      the KelleyMan:Kelley L. Miller // your house from here!"          *    
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