- Andrew Hecht
- Hollywood, FL
- United States
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Should public schools in the United States eliminate the traditional A to F grading scale? And if so, what assessment do we replace it with?
In 5 months, at the age of 21, I will be graduating college from the University of Florida. Yet, it wasn't until recently that I began to realize how distorted my view of education has been for past 15 years of my life. From childhood, we are commonly "taught" (and indoctrinated) that when we receive "good grades", we are "good people" and "good students." Consequently, beginning around kindergarten, a child's self worth is defined on an "A" to "F" scale. From the perspective of a child, an "A" student is "good" and an "F" student is "bad".
This belief entirely distorts the real purpose of education. We are commonly driven to learn not for the sake of learning; but instead, we are motivated by the almighty grade. Growing up, rather than reading books for fun or curiosity, I commonly read only those books that were assigned. Rather than exploring new concepts, I stayed on the designated curriculum and track. And rather than creating new ideas after school, I completed my homework. By high school, my GPA became somewhat of a false deity, a barometer of self worth, and a ticket to future success. Sadly, a large number of my "academically successful" peers had an even more distorted view of education than I. In high school, I often saw students copying each others homework before class as a means to manipulate the system. School was not about learning, it was about recieiving high grades. In college, this same manipulation manifests itself every time I hear a student say "I'm not taking Professor X's class because it's hard and I need an "A" for grad/law/med school."
Moreover, not only does the "A" to "F" scale seem flawed but the standards we measure as well. Commonly, in public schools we measure math, science, and reading but deny the students who excel in dance, singing, painting, building, and poetry the self worth of receiving an "A" in their area of expertise.
Should pub. schools in the US eliminate the traditional A to F grading scale? Is there a better way?
Chris Ricciardi
Russell Richard
Yes, grades are a superbly simple way to show how well you did in school and therefore how you are likely to do in a job. But, I can’t think of a reason why you can’t just come to an employer and tell them the things you know. Can you lie? Can you say “I know calculus well” when you don’t, and be believed? It’s absurd.
We understand that children who want to do something and are excited about that thing are very likely to succeed. Those children will try and try again, on their own, until they get it right. Children who are taught hunger for knowledge get awesome grades at school, so long as the teacher has even half a brain, because they seek the knowledge themselves. It’s almost like cheating. They don’t play within the rules. They don’t begrudgingly regurgitate the lesson to win a letter. Instead, they completely digest the knowledge and let it add to their person and sort of collect this strange alphabet soup as a byproduct.
Grades are only needed to make sure the students aren’t trying to gain knowledge.
Wendy Yothers
I would like education to become a balance between process and product. Technology gives us a great & easy way to store data. Pictures, videos including explanations of student products could be more easily stored than that of student portfolios. I would rather that students have a real product that can be shared with peers, teachers,and the community. If the product works without problems, it is a success (a garden, a meal, a shed, a piece of clothing, etc). If it doesn't work, then fix it, redo it, or come up with a different plan that will work. Students would be motivated to do things and create things likethey do in art, music, and PE.
Many innovators and great thinkers leave schools because they have big ideas that they want to make real! They are doers. These people feel they can't do that in the school setting. They rather change the world from their garage. That says a lot to me.
I feel we need a change in perspective. There are many jobs out there that are necessary to the functioning of our lives. However, we rank those like we do grades and people. If you are content in your job, you are able to support yourself and your family, you are a good citizen, then you are a productive member of society and I thank you.
Thomas Brucia
Thomas Brucia
That said, we live in a world where Bernie Madoff fraudsters are common. I don't see how eliminating measurement of skills makes life better for anyone. It strikes me that giving everyone an 'A' automatically is counterproductive. The fact that lots of people are liars, fraudsters, and so on doesn't prove we should eliminate measurement -- or to demand such things as achievement, effort, and so on.
Would a world in which nothing is measured be a better one? Nope.
Dan F 50+
The objective grading of students for classroom performance is important as a matter of fairness, not just for students, but parents and teachers as well. It enables an official ranking of a student's grasp and application of the subject matter presented. Grades serves the crux of what it means to be a student -- to learn and academically compete with one's peers (other students) in a classroom environment.
The system can and does breakdown. Teachers can be ineffective and/or incompetent, schools can be substandard, or pushing their own agenda, homes can be hellholes, etc. It would be nice if all these problems could be magically eradicated, or fixed, but reality is what it is.
This grading process does not satisfy many parents, teachers and students because it demands accountability and it is not perfect. It would be interesting to know if exceptional students object to the achievement demands placed on them, or if they are more appreciative of the special recognition they receive as a result of excellent marks and the opportunity it may afford them in the future.
Terry Thompson
Louis Lafair 500+
Here's an incredible article I recently read on this topic:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm
(It's by Alfie Kohn and was originally published in "High School Magazine" in March 1999.)
These are the major points from the article that I believe are a great summary of the dilemma with grades:
"1. Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself...
2. Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks...
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking...
4. Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective...
5. Grades distort the curriculum...
6. Grades waste a lot of time that could be spent on learning...
7. Grades encourage cheating...
8. Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with students...
9. Grades spoil students’ relationships with each other."
The article continues by refuting common objections to replacing grades and by discussing routes to reform. I strongly suggest reading it to whoever's at all interested in the education system of today.
I myself, as well as many of my current teachers with whom I've discussed this topic, believe that, although far more time intensive, replacing grades with some form of comment feedback would be significantly more beneficial to students and conducive to learning as a whole.
Christian Lemke
Andrew, good people get bad grades. If you get a bad grade, more often than not, it means that you've either misinterpreted the instructions, didn't understand how the work would be evaluated, weren't given an opportunity to practice and be corrected, or made a choice not to apply yourself. The first three have to do with assessment, and are the responsibility of the teachers to facilitate in the best ways that they are able. To have your work evaluated after good assessment has taken place most certainly is fair.
The bottom line is, A - F evaluating scale is handy, and universally understood. It's only really inaccurate when the assessment sucks. Think of it as being handed a rule book for football, and being trotted onto the field to play a big game, before you've ever been coached. You'll try as hard as you can, and they'll squash you. Coaching and practice time are assessment. Game day is the letter grade.
Think the scores are fair in the NFL? Yes? Good coaching and lots of practice has taken place. Think a C- is fair on the paper that you tried your best on? No? Look to poor coaching, and not enough practices. I hope that in FL, good students with bad grades begin to look at how they are being assessed.
Jon Miner
You state: "peer evaluation might be a good part of the answer as it allows for specific information to be recorded about the students but is done by the collective."
For an examination of grading by the collective, see "The Cultural Revolution"
http://library.thinkquest.org/26469/cultural-revolution/
The 'collective' was in charge of Chinese education for ten years.
From the above article: "The CR started in Oct, 1966 and ended in Oct, 1976. Indeed, The CR was threatening China for ten years. In the beginning, destructive groups such as Red Guards and The CR Authority grasped the power, and China drove into the severe confusion. But passing the time, the people got to doubt the CR. And finally, ten-year tragedy came to an end in 1976."
In summary, the article states:
"In the early of 1980s, the CR was formally considered as wrong and Gang of Four was judged on trial. During the CR, the number of the people who were persecuted to death were uncountable, and the damage on the mind of the Chinese is beyond words. We have to face the past and think of what is needed for future so as not to cause such a tragedy. "
It would indeed be a tragedy to think that students should be the primary controllers of the education process. People in their 20s think they know more than their parents, more than their teachers, and more than 'authorities' in general. It is humorous to see how the students see their parents growing smarter as they grow older.
Ian Barrett
It does not necessarily indicate you have a grasp on the fundamentals of the various topics.
Our education system has the hidden curriculum and message that says if you get good marks you will be a success and get a good job etc.
There are so many aspects of intelligence ... the ability to apply learning, to adapt it, to communicate it and to synergise with other disciplines ....
Our world is too obsessed with how athletic, beautiful, rich, connected we are rather than shifting to a different paradigm where we value each other in the total honesty and effort we put int o living together in harmony ..
That is the real "win win" that educatio has to work on ... not just rote learing but teaching kids how to think and also how to act ethically.
Byron Yang
Steven Rappolee
I would like to investigate the UK open university concept
is this any different from UCSC?
Mariahn Scarborough 20+
Another reason is time, specifically the lack of it. A hundred years ago, a person could learn everything they would need to know in order to earn a good living in about six years of schooling. At that time, school lasted nine months. There was one final at the end of the school year and if you didn't pass you were held back. Today, people have to be at least a hundred times more culturally and technologically literate. Public school teachers have the same 180 days to cover orders of magnitude more material. But if you measure it in hours and you take out all the lunches and pull outs and required testing - that 1080 hours of learning time shrinks substantially. The point is, experimentation takes quality learning time that we simply don't have. So my short answer is money and time. Trust educators to develop and implement modern ways of teaching, and give us the rest of the year to do it, with one week breaks at the quarters and we would graduate a lot more creative life long learners.
Comment deleted
Byron Yang
So in general, the US education system is a piece of shit. It has been modified to meet the needs of the industrial age and has not evolved with time. I suggest you start reading some books and see how our educational system that you're so proud of is failing. Seriously man, stop living in a fairy tale.
Mariahn Scarborough 20+
As a teacher, one of the biggest obstacles I face is the fear of "the wrong answer". Useful learning is not comprised of a set of memorized facts or formulas. Useful learning requires that a student be able to take the facts and actually build formulas through experimentation, analyzation, synthesis and extrapolation. If a student is afraid to take a guess, then he or she will never get to the other steps. In an attempt to begin to free students from the fear of failure I built a sign that is prominently displayed in the classroom. It says" There are no such things as mistakes or failures, only choices and outcomes. If your choice didn't work, make a different choice until you get an outcome that does."
Most of the methods used in education are at least 150 years old. They do not take into account current knowledge about the brain and how humans learn. We are only just now beginning to adjust our classrooms to use the new technology. My colleagues and I are about 20 years behind when it comes to integrating computer tech in school. The whole field needs to be forced into the 21st century, both physically and philosophically. Experimentation needs to be encouraged and failure seen as a way to learn what not to do next time.
It is a shame that the field insists on doing the same things and expecting different results. A new assessment would focus on what the student could do with the information rather than the information itself. This would make the assessment as useful to the student as it is to the teacher.
nik walser
Such a good point about the difference between memorization and applied learning! It makes a lot of sense therefore that the problem is not so much the grading system as the fact that teachers use the wrong metrics on which to judge performance. Why don't more teachers grade on demonstration of competence at a skill or step, as opposed to grading on memorization? Or, what can be done to shift the mindset?
I also agree with you about having a tolerance for experimentation. I think it's important to highlight the iterative nature of this. One experiment which ends in "failure" should not be the end of the lesson. The experimentation should be continued until "success" is achieved (however that is defined).
Ray Givler 20+
There are problems, like comparing across schools, but standardized tests and certifications can do that. Also, employers can judge the relative merits of a 1st rank at MIT vs. Podunk U.
margaret peters
nik walser
We should instill some standards of quality in the culture of our too-often-lackadaisical education system. There should only be one acceptable grade: "A"
If a student does not perform up to an "A" grade, they should have to repeat, repeat, repeat the test/paper/project/class until they can DEMONSTRATE competency.
No more pushing kids along just because the class schedule dictates. One of the most common curriculum structures is to progressively introduce new concepts which are built on previously-introduced concepts. A student who demonstrates an inadequate command of a concept gains little by getting a "D" or "F" and then continuing on with the class to the next concept. This is REALLY how we leave children behind.
Omar Al Mutawa 500+
Only time can tell.
joe henao
I personally believe that the only way that education would work for the best interest of the students is through an upheavel in the whole system of teaching not just the "almighty" grade as you put it but even the way teachers taught their class letting the children choose the classes they wish to attend and the lessons they wish to learn.
The way I see it is that the only way that children can really learn is by being taught how to be critical thinkers at a young age if this sense of questioning everything and holding no assumptions about preconceived ideas then we would not have the problems we do now what with gun and knife crime so (supposdely) prevalent and a population of youths so disenchanted with the current way things are turning out no wonder school is a nasty place to be no wonder they all just wish to escape I know i did.
Instead letting them grow by nourishing their minds, making school a adventure a fun place to be if teachers showed experiments let their imaginations run free then the generations of thinkers that came before could have their dreams accomplished a free land independant of rules , laws and regulations a land where are all equal. =)
paska rinda
Firstly If we talk about university system Lecturer give their students scale A for good students and F for bad students. Even we cant blame students who get scale F as bad students even they may have another skilled not only on one subject which is they get low scale.
Second the education system should change their assesment to students using scale A to F, probably they can make project or competition to explorer student capability, its not about the scale but how can they applied what were they learn on the reality.
Third its about hardskill and softskill how can they make good collaboration about it and make assement to student, i think nowdays we need balance between softskill and hardskill for example a student who has high GPA but they cant socilalizing with the environment its just mean nothing if they cant make cooperation with anothers.
So i make conclusion succesfull students in their life its not about how is high GPA they get on their studies, but how they applied their studies to society.
han jinyu
Debarati Ghosh
However with all of the fuss about equal education i think there are three sides of the story, 1 it is true that those who say live in dangerous neighborhoods with low income have less of an opportunity for education, 2 there are those who don't have the capability(seriously don't) who would be lost in a class with other kids, or if you dumbed down the class would lose a lot of the faster learners (like the standardized testing system) 3, there are the kids who just don't care, and don't want to. I believe the last one can be changed with the way the education system works, if we can make it more about how these topics connect to us, why we should care, and more exciting/fun rather than grades and a bunch of homework then we might be able to get this last group up and running. See there are all different situations.
Andrew Hecht
Ousmane Camara
Some people have been calling for change in the global educational system, especially at the roots. I believe that school should be something serious, but also fun. At young ages, kids should be given certain psychological tests to see their inclinations for science, litterature or arts, and regularly as they go through general instruction, a special attention should be kept to their special abilities. That way, by the time they reach college, they have the confidence required to choose the last line to the accomplishment of the minimum required instruction in order to enter fully Life. The grade matters less... instead of grading, I rather think that regular evaluation of the "how-well" the kids understand should prime.
ingrid bazin
By the time you get to college you better know exactly what you want to be in life and failing is not an option. If you fail a class you take the year over not the class the YEAR. This is why people come up to the US for college.
As for your self worth, parents/society place pressure on children in regard to their grades. every child is not going to be an A student even if they are siblings. every child should have their strengths praised, their weaknesses assisted and their passions nurtured.
But you asked about grades. there has to be a way to measure comprehension. The issue is all teachers are not given the proper tools to teach. Our educational system is separate and definitely not equal
Edward Webber
No child answers "what do you want to be?" with "Homeless and starving" or "Working a dead end job". They have grand plans for themselves and we herd future scientists into cooking classes and language classes, which aren't themselves evil, but to kids with no interest are punishment. Punishment for showing up to learn both discourages their attendance and teaches them what they want is irrelevant, when what they want should be the focus of the school.
There are already schools which have adopted this "cart blanche" method of aiding education as opposed to directing education. The founders of Google attended such schools, and well, they created one of the most successful companies in existence. Imagine if they had been forced to learn sewing or history (neither of which are bad, just irrelevant to their goals) instead of programming, science, electronics and math? Note how most of the required courses today are listed as classes which likely helped them to be successful. Allowing children to choose their own adventure, to use a novel term, lets them decide when they are ready to learn the basics. When anyone is given the choice, they arrive motivated and willing, something severely lacking in the military method of perform or reprimand the school system embodies today.
For those curious, please look up Montessori education on the same Google the education approach itself helped build.
Cheers.
Jon Miner
The Montessori approach is based on the idea of auto-didacticism, or to 'self-teach.' It depends on both the teachers and materials necessary to be in the environment as required by the physical and psychological level of the students who, given motivation by the teachers, and the proper materials to study whatever the student is interested in (prompted by both the teacher and provided materials) the student will naturally learn.
It has of course had great success since the beginning of the last century. The students are in student sized environments surrounded by materials that enable them to reach the goals they are ready to achieve.
Whether or not it is graded at all is not the point. It would be possible to either grade or not depending on the particular school and teachers involved at that point.
That is all great.
At some point either the student has to enter the main stream or make their own stream, such as the Google team did. So for some very bright and motivated students, self teaching will work.
How will society at large benefit from this, and how will the student justify their interests to the system? Will the ed system - which is now facing a storm of critical review - be able to receive the necessary financial support from tax payers who are already revolting against the high cost of education? At least the ed system can - for now - point to the recognized achievements of its graduates. The resumé still carries weight. Harvard rates above Podickly. What will happen if everybody 'does their own thing?' How will students be evaluated upon entering the work force? Will the work place give them a test? Will they grade A-F?
At some point, the other shoe will drop. Avoiding realistic evaluation of student progress is a mistake.
Edward Webber
You bring up some great questions, and I hope I have some good ideas for solving them.
"How will society at large benefit from this, and how will the student justify their interests to the system?"
The system already justifies the specialization approach in careers, certifications, licensing and the workforce in general. In my view, the educational system is the only system left still adhering to an arcane "generalized skills" approach. To move to a self selected specialization approach would both motivate students and lead to much better suited workers once they leave the school system either for further study or directly into the workforce.
"At least the ed system can - for now - point to the recognized achievements of its graduates."
A great number of the recognized achievers are highly specialized in their selective trade, which benefits a specialized school system over the current generalized system.
"The resumé still carries weight. Harvard rates above Podickly. What will happen if everybody 'does their own thing?'"
Harvard is well respected because graduates come out with more knowledge in a certain area than lesser schools. This will not change, though with public schools allowing students to choose their focus, the students will head to colleges with higher levels of knowledge in their focus area, allowing all colleges to teach new students at a higher level immediately, which means the Harvards of the world will still pump out great achievers, but it also means all colleges will improve the usefulness of their graduates to the same ratio as current levels.
"How will students be evaluated upon entering the work force?"
In nearly the same way they are today, by focused trade exams. These exams could be used throughout their education to provide insight as to their current skill level and where focus can be directed. All of this can be done on a standardized, national level. Upon graduating, the final scores will follow them to college/work
Jon Miner
You have great ideas and an approach that is very sensible. I wish I knew how to implement it on a grand scale.
Edward Webber
1) Major employers could specialize exams based on their needs for skilled workers.
2) Students would be nearly guaranteed work coming right out of lower education
3) Even normally low achievers could leave lower education with a specialization guaranteed to be useful to at least one specific employer.
4) Trade exam materials would be provided, at no cost to taxpayers, by those who are best suited to write them, the employers in the respective trades.
To further expound on the benefits, employers could also help students, who choose their selected trade, select the proper literature to learn from. I don't think it would be overly optimistic to expect some larger employers to write and even provide the required materials to students. After all, it would be money well invested, and the students would be catered to like they have never been before.
Employers could stop being the recipients of whatever there was to choose from and begin molding a workforce they dream of. The flip side being students would have a solid chance of getting well paid, solid employment right out of primary school, something almost unheard of today.
All of this guaranteed employment would have other, less direct benefits, including higher wages, lower crime (namely theft) rates, much lower unemployment, lower welfare rates, which would lead to more stable families, .. the list goes on.
David Hamilton 50+
Nothing is stopping everyone from getting an A... If everyone got 90% of the questions right, and did there homework, they'd all have A's... Colleges would fight over the most emotionally developed students, the best dancers, and writers. People are lazy. People give up. People fail. The competition isn't that stiff up here.
Chan Park
I don't think the point is that school's should somehow lower their standards. Rather, I think the point is that schools undermine learning when evaluating students based on a linear, absolute and arbitrary measurement.
I think there's a scale with Actual Learning on one side and Societal Pragmatics (i.e. If we don't grade, we can't pick the best people) on the other. I think an ideal solution should balance both.
What is incorrect, I think, in mainstream thought is that the 'best people' are somehow inherently the Best. Contrarily, I believe that the educational system has a primary influence on this. As I understand it, the poster's opinion is that the grading system is at the root of it. I don't disagree.
Jon Miner
You said: "linear, absolute and arbitrary measurement." Of course you are correct in that belief, but the A-F grading system is not that way. It is flexible and can be modified 'on the fly' as students' capability changes.
The idea of depending on standardized tests is a good idea in theory and absolutely counterproductive in actuality. Teaching to the test is the result, and creativity and focusing on student needs are thrown out the window.
Politically, standardized tests are becoming more favored, which will lead to more criticism of teachers for the simple reason that they will be held accountable for the achievement of the students. The assumption that the standardized tests are an adequate way to evaluate the education process is one of the great mistakes being made in the politics of the institution of education today. Teachers teach, provide an environment suitable for learning, and motivate students to learn. But in the end, students have to do the learning. Politically, this is not a popular idea. Politically, every student should be able to learn everything. Politicians have been promising this kind of idea in many areas of politics. We are experiencing the results. I hope that student centered education will experience a rebirth.
Chan Park
Just to clarify:
When I say linear, I mean that A is always better than B, B is always better than C etc.
When I say absolute, I mean that my C+ is exactly equivalent to my neighbor's C+.
When I say arbitrary, I mean that the actual reality is much more complex and the summary that the grade provides is dangerously misleading.
I am in no way defending standardized testing. I agree with you, I think they are flawed. I just think what is more flawed is to be judged while you learn, for the sake of culling.
David Hamilton 50+
If the tests aren't doing that, we need to fix the tests. To suggest that we give up national standards all together however is literally to say, that an individual teacher, could make a test that tests conceptual learning, but the government, couldn't possibly pay a teacher to do the same thing. You're saying that the people who are good at teaching, are only good at it, in a way that is no way reproducable or demonstrable. Good teaching is something that only exists when you can't see it. That can't be true.
Why on earth would someone possibly believe that it's the good teachers, whose students are failing standardized tests? Is the government so good at intentionally not teaching concepts, that they've made it impossible to teach concepts and have your students pass the test? Improve national testing, spend some money on it, recruit some great teachers to right tests that test "real learning"... Don't give up on objective reality. Don't let bad teachers convince you that standardized tests couldn't be anything but bad... That's nonsense.
As to A to F... An A is always better than a B... An A means you remembered at least 89% of the material, a B means you didn't... I don't care what the excuses are. If you can't do it in a class room, how are you going to do it in a warzone? on an operating table? on the floor of a billion dollar business? Without standardized testing, the south wouldn't teach slavery, as part of history, or the history of the American Civil War, it would all be states rights. No national standards sounds nice, till you look at the counties.
Harro Penk
It's the part where for every winner there's 11 losers. For everyone that becomes a Bill Gates there's 5,000 that fold up their business and cash in their 401k to keep their house. For every real estate agent that retires there's 40 that leave for other jobs. I think you've gotten sucked into the "winner" part a little too much. You forgot about the competition part. The part that makes America "great". That we do produce losers. And that failing businesses ... fail. And that companies that don't have good customer service and suck at selling stuff and can't glue two bricks together get closed. And yeah, a country where kids that suck at math don't get scholarships, or when they suck at football they don't get to play in the superbowl.
And how exactly do we figure out who the deserving ones will be? Do we just dance around in class all day, make clay pots and straw hats, paint with our fingers, and judge our kids by how happy their faces look at the end of the day? I've got news for you. That's what we've been doing all this time. The US lags behind pretty much every other nation except the ones that suck even worse than us.
I say, more grades. More tests. Separate the intelligent kids from the ones that have trouble. Don't punish our kids, the ones that do well, by lumping them with the ones that struggle. Quit basket weaving 101, photography 102, and music appreciation 103.
Math, Science, Language. Let the chips fall where they may, and our country WILL rise, and our kids with it.
Chan Park
What is the end game? Is it to become Bill Gates? Is it to win the Superbowl?
Perhaps we can agree that the ideal is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for all.
Now, if we have an educational system that is unjust, does this not infringe on the ideal?
Your assertion seems to be that the educational system is unjust because we don't sufficiently filter out the "duds". This is a fine assertion, but its predicated on what I believe to be a faulty assumption. Namely, the existence of "duds".
I would contend that if you go back far enough, those "duds" are "duds" for unjust reasons. That is, the non-duds just got "lucky".
So what we have here is a situtation where lucky people are successful, unlucky people are not.
To make it more "just", what is it that we, as a society, should reward with success? Is it intellect? Does the ability to determine why e^(i*pi) equals -1 of merit in our society? Perhaps it is, because then we can compete with the Chinese.
But does this promote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for all men?
Harsh realities suck. But I think to stray from ideals is dangerous.
Harro Penk
Again, I'm from NY. The wonderful state where we spend a huge amount of money on our kids and 80% or so fail High School in NY City, one of the most expensive-to-live cities in the world. I would argue that NOONE, not even the lowest, sickest, smelliest street bum in NYC is in "poverty". There are literally dozens of programs that government and NGO's have to help absolutely anyone and everyone in every situation - if they choose to take it. Contrast that to the billions of other people living in rural areas in China, in Africa, and other parts of the world that TV cameras have long forgotten. There are no spigots with a neverending water supply there. There are no magical lunch trucks that show up every two miles. There is no government sponsored emergency room. There is no bus to take you to school. Now that IS "REAL POVERTY".
You say "unequal chance". Well, hello. Here, it's at equal as it's gonna get. Without a *massive* infusion of money, total redo of our business model and government, it's gonna stay this way. There will be stragglers, .... continued
Harro Penk
I live in an area where honestly noone lives in poverty. I've seen what poverty really is, and I find it disturbing that people that have cars, live in homes with running hot water, have jobs, free education, all kinds of government owned/sponsored ammenities from shopping malls to walk ways, would ever go around and count themselves as living in poverty. I guess it's relative around here. I don't make a six figure salary (far from it), but I live in a nice house and drive a late model Camaro with my wife who also makes a decent, but not six-figure salary.
Again. Let me be more blunt, perhaps, this time. What's the excuse for being dumb? Is it that we don't spend enough money on our kids ($19k/year/kid !!!). ....Continued