$447 bil

[pauldun170]

Nice personal story and all but pretty useless in this thread.
Stay on fucking topic.

The point of this thread is to get smittie to admit that he was molested by his 3rd grade teacher hence his disgust for those who teach.

[Smittie61984]

Originally Posted by pauldun170

Nice personal story and all but pretty useless in this thread.
Stay on fucking topic.

The point of this thread is to get smittie to admit that he was molested by his 3rd grade teacher hence his disgust for those who teach.

They were never that nice to me. If they did I would have loved school.

My disgust for teachers is how they like to put themselves on a pedestal as if they have the most horrible job on the planet and they are paid with whips on their backs. They keep saying "more money, more money, and by the way we need more money". We give them more money and they still suck (and if you find a good government school, odds are the numbers are stacked). I'm curious where the magical number is. If we give them 40trillion dollars and then give teachers a starting salary of $500k a year will that do it?

I just feel that on the Federal side of things, if we are going to spend a lot of taxpayer money, then it should be spent on legitimate functions of the Federal government such as the military. Not a state issue where the only reason the federal government cares is because of teacher's unions and scared mommies and daddies who are afraid that they'll have to spend their own money on their own kid's education instead of that new pimpin ride or a new LED TV.

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

scared mommies and daddies who are afraid that they'll have to spend their own money on their own kid's education instead of that new pimpin ride or a new LED TV.

Your education was all private / home schooling, then?

From a quick google search, the Department of Education budget is about $46 billion. Department of Defense, not including the wars, $680 billion. Where is this "more money" that we've been giving teachers? Possibly on a pallet flying to Iraq?

[Captain Morgan]

Originally Posted by the chi

Through all of this discussion I am reminded of this:

Sounds about right. Either that, or they lay off many of the others, dumping their workload onto the watchmen, but keeping his pay the same.

I just spent an entire day in a meeting where we were told at the beginning to voice all of our complaints and that a rep was there to inform us how to resolve issues, etc. We all had our bitch session, along with ideas how to fix things, then at the end we were basically told thanks for your opinion, but nothing is going to get changed anytime soon. If you're lucky, things might get changed in the next 5 years. Thanks for wasting my day, jackasses!! I could have actually been getting shit done since my workload is higher than can get done without working OT (for which I don't get paid). Now I had to waste an entire day and get farther behind on all the paperwork you want me to push while I make sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed, when in reality, it doesn't matter one bit.

[Homeslice]

Originally Posted by fatbuckRTO

From a quick google search, the Department of Education budget is about $46 billion. Department of Defense, not including the wars, $680 billion. Where is this "more money" that we've been giving teachers? Possibly on a pallet flying to Iraq?

[Smittie61984]

Originally Posted by fatbuckRTO

Your education was all private / home schooling, then?

From a quick google search, the Department of Education budget is about $46 billion. Department of Defense, not including the wars, $680 billion. Where is this "more money" that we've been giving teachers? Possibly on a pallet flying to Iraq?

Unfortunately I was government educated. My father was military and stationed in DC. Expensive housing and shit pay never got us much in that part of the country. I also got the added benefit of seeing my father 6months out of the year while he was on TDY, during peace time. I bet teachers get to see their kids all the time.

I on the other hand will never let my children go to a government school. For what many spend on a car payment I can send my kids to the best private schools. Most prefer a new bitchin ride (or motorcycle) and give a big "fuck you" to their kid's futures.

Also for your numbers. I don't doubt them one bit. But you are also forgetting how much the states and local governments spend on education. I doubt the states send much to the DOD.
This is for Georgia
http://app.doe.k12.ga.us/ows-bin/owa...prev_order=asc

The state spent a total of roughly 6.2billion dollars. The local also spent roughly 6.2billion. For the sake of argument let's just say they spent 12billion total per state (some states will be more and others less). Multiply 12billion x 50 and that equals roughly 600billion dollars spent on education just from the states.

So education gets $650billion total with help from local, state, and federal governments. The DOD only gets their money from the federal government.

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

Also for your numbers. I don't doubt them one bit. But you are also forgetting how much the states and local governments spend on education. I doubt the states send much to the DOD.

...

So education gets $650billion total with help from local, state, and federal governments. The DOD only gets their money from the federal government.

You're right, I was only looking at federal funds. But regardless of whether the money comes from the state or the federal government, it ultimately comes from us.

That said, total expenditures on education, including state and local money, work out to about $10,000 per student in this country in 2007.* Accounting for inflation and possible *cough* budget increases, let's call it $15,000 per student. Hell, call it $20,000, per student, per year in 2011.

The current DoD budget is $680 billion, again not including war budgets. There are currently about 2,940,000 servicemembers, including reservists. So even with reservists, who actually get paid a fraction of active duty salaries, the DoD is spending $231,000 per servicemember, per year in 2011.

Doesn't seem to matter how much the states and local governments are contributing, a student costs us 8% of what a servicemember does. Again, not even counting the war budgets, which add (very conservatively) another $100 billion per year.

Obviously, these are simplified estimates. Besides, we can batter numbers around all day, but what's the point? At the end of the day, what good does it do to defend a country that can't offer any legitimate competition in the world market? The fact is that you are correct, and most parents would choose to spend their money on something other than their children's education. That just underscores my point in other threads that the problem with education isn't teachers, it's parents. But as a country, can we afford to stand by and allow the average American to raise a litter of illiterates? I, for one, don't want to be paying a soldier $100K a year or more if he can't even read the goddamn package instructions on an MRE (they are half pictures, by the way).


*http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

[Smittie61984]

Well schools aren't exactly in need of B-2 bombers or high end satellites that can probably read our thoughts 5 minutes before we think them. It is hard to compare school's needs and the military needs.

I feel in reality, we could teach children everything they need to know to get to a point they are ready for college with a white board and a sharpy. L'hopital wrote the 1st calculus book and he did that in the late 1600s. He didn't have fancy power points, Macbooks, touch screen projectors, graphing calculators (which I never used once), or even a basic calculator. English shouldn't require more than a pen and paper. Social Studies shouldn't require anything more than a $50 textbook and maybe a globe.

The military on the other hand needs a lot of technology and a lot of money. The Navy SEALS shouldn't roll into Bin Laden's crib with an old Huey and a M1 Garand. They need top secret high dollar helicopters with high dollar satellites and high dollar night vision (and training) to pull it off. I wouldn't want the people who are facing danger to have anything less.

I also want to point out that I don't isolate the teachers as the only problem. No doubt parents have a big role. But I also know that from personal experience how bad teachers can be and it is easier to fix teachers.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this before but a great movie to watch is called Waiting for Superman. It's a documentary about the government school systems. Pretty damn eye opening also for the parents who say "my school district is fine"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTfaro96dg

[Homeslice]

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

I feel in reality, we could teach children everything they need to know to get to a point they are ready for college with a white board and a sharpy. L'hopital wrote the 1st calculus book and he did that in the late 1600s. He didn't have fancy power points, Macbooks, touch screen projectors, graphing calculators (which I never used once), or even a basic calculator. English shouldn't require more than a pen and paper. Social Studies shouldn't require anything more than a $50 textbook and maybe a globe.

What about computers? Chemistry labs? Gymnasiums? Athletic fields?

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

The military on the other hand needs a lot of technology and a lot of money. The Navy SEALS shouldn't roll into Bin Laden's crib with an old Huey and a M1 Garand. They need top secret high dollar helicopters with high dollar satellites and high dollar night vision (and training) to pull it off. I wouldn't want the people who are facing danger to have anything less.

Even though we are 10-20 years ahead of anyone else in military tech, the military industrial complex keeps exaggerating the threat from Russia/China/Iran etc. so they can convince Congress to buy more of their shit. And then there's black budgets we don't even know about.

Stealth helicopters are nice and all, but we wouldn't have needed them if we hadn't basically created Al Qeada in the first place.