Our education system is failing for several reasons.

1. Family structures aren't what they used to be. Then again, neither is the country. Respect for symbols, adults, each other, has gone the way of Common Sense. If it isn't on social media readily available on an electronic device, then why bother thinking about it, researching it, questioning it?

2. Apparently there isn't a lot of reading going on in a lot of families. If the parents don't read it is guaranteed the children won't, either. Good luck getting a child to curl up with a good book on a rainy or just-too-hot-day to be outdoors. They will play video games until their eyes dry up. No student should be allowed past 3rd and 8th grades without being able to read for understanding at those levels. This newspaper I believe, is written for an 11th grade level, if I am not mistaken. This means that ninth-graders should be able to handle it. Most adults read at 7th or 8th grade level. Most books are at this level. This literacy fact says a lot about us as a nation.

3. Our educational system structure is partially to blame. K-12 demands regular annual progress regardless of whether any material was learned for understanding and retained. There's another class coming along, and heaven forbid we hold any student back, at any age. Social promotion has been the standing order of the day, for DECADES. Teachers' hold-back recommendations are routinely ignored.

4. An overhaul of our educational structure is long past due. K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-14. Students should start K at age 6, 1st grade at age 7. Middle school should run three years, grades 7-9. High school should be lengthened to 5 or 6 years. I don't make this recommendation lightly. To borrow a phrase, students are getting "a mile-wide education one inch deep." Look up SC (or any state) high school core subject standards. Read line by line what teachers are expected to teach. On too many facets, teachers could spend weeks, months, or an entire year on them, to insure learning for understanding. They don't have the time, so they merely introduce topics, not study them. Imagine sending more mature and actually prepared high school graduates out into the world at jobs, or at college, able to actually function without needing remedial courses. It's a concept. It's supposed to be the whole point of education.

All the disgraceful national stories about college behaviorial problems on campuses, including frats and sororities, would probably be greatly reduced if the environment consisted of older and more mature young citizens, actually interested in learning and questioning. Our brains don't fully develop for about 23 years or so. Until all those neurons are connected, why push students through a system they aren't ready for?

Annually, everywhere, because students mature at different paces, there are 7th graders not ready for 8th, 8th not ready for 9th, 12s not ready for college, etc. This is fact, and this is fixable. Students in each of the numeric categories I listed would be able to proceed at their own pace. Under this overhaul, the best would still graduate in four years, and NOT need remedial college courses, and NOT need help filling out a job app. There would be no social stigma staying an extra half year, year, or up to two years.

The goal of education is to produce qualified, literate citizens ready to take their place in the world. Who cares how long that takes? We are failing at that, annually, in great numbers. That failure is showing up everywhere, in the low quality of elected leaders at every level and job of govt; low levels of journalism; medical mistakes, you name the career field, it has problems it didn't use to have.

Our current crop of citizens can't lift their heads up away from their devices to walk, talk, drive, or be civil. They can't carry on a conversation unless they use their thumbs. Their standard response to social confrontations however minor or major, is to either flash a middle finger, or a gun. The complete visible lack of manners, tolerance, and Common Sense, is atrocious. They don't even like our Flag.

This is nuts. We allowed this to happen. We created this. We can fix this. We will not fix it if we continue to support the current education structure, one in which too many certified teachers become expensive administrators, or simply quit; where we socially promote the un-ready; where we praise the few with particular skills in whatever (sports, mostly) and ignore the majority; where we allow tax dollars to be pulled away from public schools to fund charter schools that, even with selective admittance programs, show barely more progress.

States need to tell the feds to stay out of public education, and learn to go their own way. States know where their problems are. Relying on blanket programs from the feds that don't allow for individual fixes is wrong, and proven wrong.

Our ineffective, broken national public school system doesn't necessarily need a lot of money to be fixed.

Let's first define the problem. Life-risking busses? Low-paid staff? Too may administrators, not enough classroom teachers? Crumbling facilities? Lousy test scores? Low h.s. grad rate, recently manipulated in this state by lowering the scoring system? High drop-out rate? Too many needing remedial classes in the basic skills their first year of college?

SC is slowly, like it does everything, proceeding to acquire a few new busses each year. It's a start. There will be a horrible accident or two before that gets the attention it deserves. New roads have started, as well. So, there's some light in those tunnels.

Staff are low paid, especially classroom teachers. When her district allegedly has a 16-person public affairs staff, it's difficult to listen to her and the school board complain about funds shortages. When local and state govt officials give away the bank to entice new businesses to settle here, there is a not so hidden cost to those offers: someone else is going to get short-changed. So far, that someone else has been SC education.

Low test scores, grad rates, high drop out rates, and a high number of graduated students needing remedial courses, is mostly a function of lousy home lives, and of schools trying to teach too much in four short years, or 175 days times 4 = 700 high school days. That simply is not enough time. It just isn't. Teach less, or add more days. That simple.

Parents and students should not get all glossy-eyed over great GPAs. Almost none are based on detailed knowledge of any subject. Scan through the standards for any required high school course. I defy you to explain to me or anyone else, satisfactorily, how so much can be taught for understanding, in such a short time period. Answer is, that it can not and is not being done. Remedial college freshman courses, drop out rates, and grad rates, are all proof. Students for decades and decades have received a "miles wide, inch-deep" education exposure. Most folks posting here including me are victims of this approach.

Simply by reading the core state standards/requirements, one should quickly grasp that students simply aren't being given enough time to absorb, critically think about, and understand the material, much less the nuances. We annually send off un-prepared, mostly socially promoted students into the world, be it to sell drugs and work retail, attend a career technical school, or attend an actual college, sorely un-prepared to handle the advanced course work or life challenges.

One shouldn't criticize, without having viable alternatives. Here's mine.

We need to re-structure our K-12 system. it currently is based upon age. If you are a certain age you need to be in a certain grade level, and that is all there is to that. The horror of holding a chlld back a year, especially in early years, is too much for those involved. That self-esteem thing weighs more than any other single factor.

Our schools should start first graders at age 7. No one goes to 4th grade without reading at 3rd grade level, period, nor does anyone go past 8th grade without reading at an 8th grade level. Most newspapers are I believe, set for 8th grade reading levels. It's not that tough a standard.

If it takes a student six years to graduate high school, I say why not. Eliminate the four anachronistic levels, and replace with a different, perhaps numeric scale. One being beginning knowledge levels, and 6 being actually ready for college course work without needing remedial classes. Testing at registration would help place students in appropriate starting levels.

Sending 19-20 year olds off to college isn't a bad idea. Their advanced maturity should translate to less college nonsense, especially fraternity and sorority behaviors that have made national headlines over the years, and more students actually staying in college, actually learning, as opposed to one and done, or not even attending at all. This carries forward to graduating 25-26 year olds into the real world, far better prepared to handle job challenges and life itself. Repeated studies have shown human brains take about 23-25 years to fully mature. Why rush students through a system they aren't built for?

Personally, I want my nurse to know what the heck he or she is doing. I want my airplane pilot to be smarter than his or her instruments. I want my train engineer fully alert at all times. I want the truck drivers high-balling me on the highways trained and able to handle their rigs. That list goes on and on.

Shut down charter schools. Stop the drain of public school funding. Change our school funding system. Pay all our teachers a living wage. And let's re-invent the way we teach our young.

CBS News posted on their site a story about 18 deadliest U.S. mass shootings. I looked up some of the details:  example - 0/2 = dead/wounded

Sep 1949: Camden, NJ: WW II vet on rampage, 13/3; Luger pistol.

Aug 1996: Austin TX: former Marine on rampage, 17/31; Rem. 6mm; M-1 carbine; .35 caliber; 12 gaug shotgun; .357 magnum; Luger; knife; .25 ACP.

1982: Wilkes-Barre PA: prison guard on rampage, 13/0; AR-15

1983: Seattle, WA: gang hit, three shooters, 13/0 multiple firearms.

1984: San Ysidro, CA: survivalist/security guard on rampage, 21/19; Uzi; shotgun; pistol.

1986: Edmond, OK: postal worker on rampage, 14/6; two .45 semi-auto pistols, one .22 Ruger semi-auto pistol.

Oct 1991: Killeen, TX: 23/27; unemployed man on rampage; Glock 17; Ruger P89.

Apr 1999: Columbine CO; 13/26; two students, Tec-9 among several weapons and unexploded bombs.

Apr 2007: Virginia Tech, VA; 32/23; student; Glock 19; Walther P22.

Apr 2009: Binghampton, NY; 13/4; unemployed Vietnam native; 9mm Beretta; Beretta .45

Nov 2009: Ft. Hood, TX; 13/32; major; FN5-7 pistol; .357 magnum.

2012: Aurora, CO: 12/62; student; tear gas, M + P 15 Sport Rifle; 870 Remington Shotgun; Glock 22; FN5-7 pistol; .357 magnum.

Dec 2012: Sandy Hook, NY: 27/2; man on rampage; AR-15; Glock 10mm; two semi-auto handguns; hundreds of rounds of ammo; several magazines.

2014: Wash. D. C. Naval Yard: 12/8; civilian contractor; Rem 870 shotgun.

2015: San Bernadino, CA: 14/24; Muslim; two .223 AR-15s; 2 9mm guns; pipe bombs.

Dec 2015: Orlando, FL: 49/53; Muslim; Sig Sauer semi-auto rifle; 9mm Glock 17 semi-auto pistol.

Oct 2017: Las Vegas, NV: 58/546; four DDM rifles; three FN-15 rifles; one AR-15 rifle; one AR-10 rifle; 1 AK-47 rifle; one LMT rifle made to order; one handgun.

Nov 2017: Sutherland, TX: 26/20; all in church; unbalanced shooter; automatic weapon; 30 empty mags found holding 15 rounds each.

Total dead: 338, does not include shooters themselves.

Total injured: 886 (548 in NV alone)

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Number of NRA conventions in victim cities: at least one, Denver, shortly after Columbine.

Congressional response to massacres since 2004:

1. 2004: Effort to renew the assault weapons ban law of 1994 failed in a Republican-controlled Congress.

2. 2008, post-VA. Tech shooting, Bush II signed into law an expansion of FBI background check system; also required agencies to keep up to date records on people with mental health issues and felons.

3. 2011, post-Rep. Gifford shooting (one of their own): a bill closing gun show loopholes and banning high-capacity magazines, failed.

4. 2013, post-Sandy Hook Elem. School massacre: a bill expanding background checks failed, as did proposed amendments to this bill banning high-capacity clips and limiting size of magazines to 10 clips.

5. 2015, post-San Bernadino shooting: Senate rejected a series of gun control bills; failed repealing funding gun ban on gun violence research.

6. 2016: Bi-partisan bill on background checks failed in Senate.

7. 2016: post-Orlando nightclub shooting: a bill proposing a no-fly, no-buy terrorist watchlist ban on purchasing weapons failed in Senate; never came to a vote in the House; Trump on campaign trail was in favor of this bill, as were 86% of polled voters.

  

NRA spending 1998-2016 to politicians, political action committees, campaigns usually without coordination with candidate, for or against: $207m.

Break-out since 1998:

Donations to Congress members: $4.23m (source: Washington Post newspaper).

Contributions to candidate, P.A.C.s, $13m.

Outside spending: "independent expenditures, often ad campaigns for or against a candidate without coordinating with same": $144m.

Federal lobbying: $46m.

After researching this, studying what I have presented here, I have come to these conclusions:

1. Congress does not care and will not act to reduce massacres. Your representatives simply do not care about mass murder.

2. NRA money talks, and bullshit walks.

3. Massacres will continue and so will the hand-wringing and the crying and the spin, but nothing, absolutely nothing, will change in America.

Mind you, this is just a list of the deadliest massacres. Wikipedia and the FBI have far more data on mass killings.

Pretty sick. It's worse than sick, because as a nation, as a society, we have chosen to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change this, to reduce this, to make our communities safer. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Shame on us all.

 A need to own guns falls into three categories: hunt for fun, which controls herds; hunt for food; protection. No one needs high firepower, multi-round, easy re-loadable weaponry to do any of these three activities.

 No one is asking anyone to give up their guns, or their gun rights. I believe in restricting the sale of weaponry designed for armies, to armies. Call me crazy. Swat teams too. That's it. No other category needs them. 

Tanks and LAWs and jet fighters aren't sold to the general public for the same reasons. There is no loss to anyone's precious rights if we finally, at long last, take a stand in trying to reduce the national slaughter rate, by restricting that which seems to do the most damage in the quickest amount of time. Why not do this? What reason would we not ? 

People intent on committing violence can use baseball bats, tire irons, axes, crowbars, you name it, but they cannot commit mass slaughter quickly. These weapons and small guns that hold small numbers of rounds before needing re-loading, would give crowds time to scatter, thus lowering the kill and injured total. Now, who would be against that? 

Respect the Flag

"When you see the Stars and Stripes displayed, son, stand up and take off your hat, somebody may titter. It is in the blood of some to deride all expressions of noble sentiment. You may blaspheme in the street and stagger drunken in public places, and the bystanders will not pay much attention to you; but if you should get down on your knees and pray to Almighty God or if you should stand bareheaded while a company of old soldiers marches by with flags to the breeze, some people will think you are showing off.

But don't you mind: When Old Glory comes along, salute, and let them think what they please! When you hear the band play " The Star Spangled Banner " while you are in a restaurant or hotel dining room, get up even if you rise alone; stand there and don't be ashamed of it, either!

For of all the signs and symbols since the world began there is none other so full of meaning as the flag of this country. That piece of red, white and blue bunting means five thousand years of struggle upward. It is the full-grown flower of ages of fighting for liberty. It is the century plant of human hope in bloom.

Your flag stands for humanity, for an equal opportunity to all the sons of men. Of course we haven't arrived yet at that goal; there are many injustices yet among us, many senseless and cruel customs of the past still clinging to us, but the only hope of righting the wrongs of men lies in the feeling produced in our bosoms by the sight of that flag.

Other flags mean a glorious past, this flag a glorious future. It is not so much the flag of our fathers as it is the flag of our children, and of all children's children yet unborn. It is the flag of tomorrow. It is the signal of the " Good Times Coming. " It is not the flag of your king-it is the flag of yourself and of all your neighbors.

Don't be ashamed when your throat chokes and the tears come, as you see it flying from the masts of our ships on all the seas or floating from every flagstaff of the Republic. You will never have a worthier emotion. Reverence it as you would reverence the signature of the Deity.

Listen, son! The band is playing the national anthem - "The Star Spangled Banner." They have let loose Old Glory yonder. Stand up-and others will stand with you.

This tribute to the flag is offered to the country in appeal to all men and women of all races, colors, and tongues, that they may come to understand that our flag is the symbol of liberty, and learn to love it.
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Author: Alvin M. Owsley. It was on the backside of an American Legion page entitled "The Flag Code." It is a product of the American Legion's National Americanism Commission circa 1923. Seems fairly applicable today.

Divisiveness is bringing down our country. 

There have always been differences of opinion on every topic, and there always will be, hopefully. We seem to have more splinter groups than ever before, all shouting to be heard, or protesting over something or other. Our Congress is Bought and Sold, and has been for years. Once in office, they could care less about us. Their salaries are far outweighed by their benefits legal and not so legal.

I still encourage people to vote. It's our only weapon left. Too many Americans since 1917 have died for our freedoms not to vote. I am sure the dead would love to vote just once. But for crying out loud, be a term-limit person and vote out all incumbents in place for two or more terms. Diane Feinstein from CA is about 87 and deems herself fit to run again. This is nuts. I am so weary of voters not caring and just voting a straight party ticket, or simply recognizing a name and checking that box.

Our spirialing-down education system isn't helping matters. Our young people enter adulthood totally un-equipped to make good conscious choices. We used to have a three-part, Checks and Balances govt where in each branch kept an eye on the other. No longer true, blatantly so.

The Executive Order power presidents have has morphed from sparing the Thanksgiving Day turkey, to making each president one himself. Thoroughly and totally NOT what the FF had in mind when they set up this Checks and Balances thing. Grown adults can't/won't lean across the aisle and talk with, not to, each other. Meanwhile, our enemies are lapping it all up. 

We don't have to worry about invasion. We're doing just fine destroying ourselves from within.

What happens when the next black motorist mis-behaves during a traffic stop and any color officer ends up shooting that person? Is the dis-respectful kneeling going to continue?

What happens when a black couple shops for a housing loan and is rejected time and again, or offered a higher rate than anyone else? Is the dis-respectful kneeling going to continue?

What happens when a black person shoots another black person, yet again? Will there be kneeling? Protests?

What happens when young blacks rage in a mall brawl, or have a punch-out in a park? Will there be kneeling? Riots? Public and private property destroyed?

White folks, and others of all tints, are abhorred whenever people of any tint are mis-treated, whether they take to the streets or not. Please don't mis-interpret our silence as acquiescence and approval. We do not.

We are however, absolutely mystified, when a black motorist doesn't know how to behave/respond during a traffic or street stop, no matter the reason or lack of one. The proper response simply is NOT rocket science. When a police officer contacts you, be polite. Talk politely. Move very slowly if you must. Answer the questions, politely. Accept the ticket. Accept the harassment. Also accept name and badge number, note the time and location, and immediately report the officer's actions to that officer's superior. You can be assured the matter will be investigated.

You can also be assured that if you act the fool during a contact, you are going to create problems for yourself. Not keeping your hands in clear view, sudden movements, running away, driving away, yelling, assaulting, throwing, whatever, will bring a response you are not going to like. How hard is this?

I understand, I get it, that blacks are followed around retail stores as if they were about to steal. I get that they get stopped for driving/walking.sitting while black. But their reaction always determines what happens next. I don't believe kneeling is going to change any of this.

We citizens of all shades, we immigrants/sons and daughters of immigrants all, willing or not, are perfectly aware our melting pot nation is not perfect. We always will have problems and we must always be vigilant in identifying them and coming up with viable solutions. This kneeling, this refusing to stand and appear, will not change anything substantial. Point has been made. It's time to move on.

We have struggled with equality mightily since the end of the Civil War. We have a long ways to go. Blacks do appear to be their own worst enemy, however, merely by the way a tiny minority lead their lives. The rest of the imbalance: in properly funding decent schools with great teachers in poverty zones, with proper pay rates, with sufficient job opportunities, with equal maintenance and repair of neighborhoods and provision of parks and playgrounds, can far more easily be addressed. There simply are too many blacks in prison and across the nation's crime statistics sheet, in proportion to their total percentage of the population. That fix, is not in stadiums, arenas, marches, riots. It's in the mirror.