Warrior, better pick on someone other than school bus drivers. Guaranteed, with your attitude as demonstrated on here numerous times, you would not last out the first day before throwing up your hands and walking away. Not only is the driver responsible for the safety of all the children on his or her bus, but they have to stop verbal and physical assaults without ever laying a hand on any of the participants, remember who did what so at the end of the day they can write up a report on any illegal or immoral activities that took place on their bus. My experience behind the wheel of one of those rolling classrooms ended long before all the lawsuits had forced drivers to adopt the hands off rules. If you are worried about your reputation, for sure you do not want to drive a bus, as one kid can put you out of work, and quite possibly, behind bars, for something you did NOT do.

Chester, some people CHOOSE to be school bus drivers because they truly love children. They have a knack for understanding children and know how to get the behavior they want. They like the hours, they’re satisfied with the pay and THOSE are the people who SHOULD be school bus drivers! I will NEVER forget my children’s first school bus driver! His name was “Sarge”. He loved my children and my children loved him!!! I also will never forget some of those who carried a grudge and didn’t want to be there! The whole point is about CHOICE! Everyone should have choices and opportunities and not be forced into something they hate simply because they had no education to pursue what they really wanted.

Chester, the chip on your shoulder is not a chip but a tree trunk. Shrug it off already.

Chester, I think you missed my point. When I was a ute, in the city, there were few if any buses picking up kids for school. We walked. Now, I do understand, in the “country” there were buses to chauffer kids to schools. Now, flash forward to the 1970′s and we have this terrible dilema because minority children live too far away from good schools because the schools in their neighborhood are all minority. It is deemed that the only way these kids can get an equal edumacation is if we “bus” them to “white schools” and that will lift all boats. Well today, here in chicago, everyone gets “bussed around” regardless of which scrool they attend. This new way of life has now created 1,000′s of bus driver jobs at a cost of over $100 mil/yr to the city. I’m not denigrating the task, however, the edumacation required to drive a bus is, well, about as stringent as running 100 meters.

Think about the function of tax accountants and tax attorneys. These occupations were “generated” by the gubmint. Both fields have extremely talented people. My opinion is their “talent” is wasted because the tasks they perform produce nothing! They’re just redistributing wealth.

Our gubmint in their infinite wisdom creates these “make work” programs that frankly do not produce any value.

So this kind of racism is ok since it’s coming from the social justice crowd?

Science it is, racism it is not. The authors of The Bell Curve never started out with any preconceptions regarding the racial (not racist) nature of IQ. They were simply trying to determine why America was polarizing along economic lines, and tried to get to the root of the fact that elites of the intelligent were becoming more prevalent, while the size of the “lower” economic class was growing.

They worked the cultural biases out of standard IQ tests, and even compared apples and apples by ensuring that test results were compared for participants of equal socioeconomic status.

Their results were actually surprising to them, as somewhat “conventional” knowledge assumed that environmental factors were the key to describing disparities in test scores.

What is so different, as I said, is that it has apparently been adopted by the “social justice” crowd in contradistinction to what would normally be described by the left as racist politics.

I FIRMLY believe that children will excell UP to or DOWN to one’s expectations!!! I KNOW this to be true!!! I have personal knowledge about this! One of my sons was very shy. His teachers rarely called on him and his work was mediocre. In 1st and 2nd grade his grades were mostly C’s. In second grade his teacher put him in the lowest reading group. I expressed my concerns as he was reading 5th grade level books at home. She was adamant. At mid year they took standardized tests, the results of which were not released until spring. His scores in all subjects were in the 98-99% range. She apologized for misplacing him but his work at school was lackluster. Before 3rd grade started, I spoke with his teacher and asked her to treat him as she would a really smart child and to EXPECT him to excell! It made ALL the difference in the world! From then on, he got straight A’s and excelled! He was placed in advanced classes and always did well. This very shy child was almost lost to the system! I also know this because I volunteered in the schools for over 20 years. Children who were thought to be lost causes excelled when you let them know that they COULD and WOULD do it! Now I will admit that there are some children who just don’t learn no matter what you do, but for the vast majority, they will perform up to or down to your expectations!!!

Nancy in Neb – to bad you were a volunteer. Seems there would be a hell of a lot smarter children in this world if you were the teacher.

Bill, I often “taught” one group of children while the teacher was teaching another group. I was the sole teacher of “keyboarding” for the third grade. I did individual tutoring in the hallways. I made lesson plans, gathered supplies and taught art (with other mothers) to all of the kindergarteners, so the teachers could get a break. I volunteered in the lunchrooms where I reinforced manners and self control. I volunteered on the playground for recess duty. Rather than standing in one place and playing policeman, I made rounds of the playground and “played” with the kids. Often it was as simple as “follow the leader”. I taught them the difference between “telling” (someone or someone’s property was in danger) vs “tattling” (everything else). I rewarding “telling” and punished “tattling”. I had no problems that could not be solved with two minutes of sitting on the curb. I love children!!! I enjoyed working with children! The biggest problem with education today is that too many people go into education because they don’t know what else to do. If we only had teachers who WANTED to be teachers, we wouldn’t have any problems in education!!!

I agree with you but for this one kernel of truth! Homework is meant to be practice for the student to see if they understand the concepts. Many parents give their children the answers and/or DO the homework for them. They are so determined that their children come out on top, that they cheat their children of learning! Those children reflect higher grades but not higher learning. One needs to decide, which is more important, grades or learning?!?

That’s why God made Private schools. He goes along with the concept that anything that is free is usually something that is not worth having.