It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I guess if one thinks that those people belong in prison, then why not just shorten the path as much as possible
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No - I said it wasn’t a DRAMATIC drop. I never said it was irrelevant. I was even generous and said it was significant, even though it went from very low to even lower. The rate fell by .6 people out of 100,000 per year. If the US had that great of a fall it would be a whole 1.14 people out of 100,000 per year, and the US is much larger so that would be in even more significant number.
Stats are great, but are worthless with out context and analysis. If you weigh say 180lbs and lost 30lbs in a month, that is dramatic and worrisome. If you weigh 300lbs and lost 30lbs in month it would still be fairly dramatic, though much less noticeable and less worrisome. If those two people lost 30lb over a whole year, it wouldn’t be dramatic in either case, but again may be cause for alarm in the 180lb person (depending on body type.)
That person should not be involved in the education system. Period.
ETA - Zero tolerance is the worst policy ever put in schools.
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Not when the mutton is nice and lean.
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Exactly. I know that the last school where I taught did everything to retain students, sometimes much to some teachers’ chagrin. And it was incredibly rare to find a student who really disliked our admin. I think the district hated to fight parents, wanted to avoid any litigation, but I know some of the admin worked hard with social workers and single parents making sure the troubled teens weren’t kicked out.
Perfect example of their patience happened two years ago. A young women got stinking drunk during school, whacked a young man across his face (knocking out his contact lens), and then headbutted a female teacher. The teacher didn’t want to press charges and the cops were upset about it (I actually spoke to one of them). The offender ended up spending a semester at a continuation school and getting help, and then returning. This is what school should do: help teenagers learn from their mistakes. This method is just teaching them to be distrustful.
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The text on top of the Animal Farm picture is not from George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Mr. Orwell might agree with it if he were still alive, but he would not write that way. Mr. Orwell was careful to show us the truth without naming any real names.
Please support my petition to reform the rules for police interrogation in the US. Click here to read the petition.
C’mon folks…
If you’re going to have any serious discussion of eating kids, it has to follow that you at least consider the economics of it from a meat production/animal husbandry point of view. There’s a growth curve to consider, and the economics of time and feed. That itself speaks for eating kids over adults.
If you want to determine when is the best time to harvest children for consumption, well, I’d have to see the feedlot nutrition studies on that one…
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I have too, unfortunately even from foster parents. We looked after one girl for a couple of months while her foster parents were away. When they came back and we said that she had coped well with our family, they asked if we’d like to keep her. They didn’t really believe that you could have a close relationship with a child who wasn’t your birth child, so they were going to try to have their own baby. 
When my wife was pregnant, a number of people assumed that we’d be giving our adopted son back to the orphanage, because obviously we didn’t really need him anymore. This was mixed with ethnic exceptionalism (and more than a little self-hating racism in some cases), as there was the assumption that white people couldn’t raise Chinese children and that our daughter’s pale skin and blue eyes were so much better looking than our son’s brownish skin and dark eyes. They’d say this in front of our son, and the negativity was really starting to get to him.
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Not with that attitude.
Simpletons.
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I just felt sorry for any children they did end up having.
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Seriously, if you can have a close and loving relationship with an entirely different species, for instance a dog or a cat, then it’s trivial to do so with a child who doesn’t happen to share your DNA.
I’m adopted, and I have never tolerated people casting aspersions on my relationship with my parents.
If I’m in an especially generous and forgiving attitude, I’ll explain to them in detail exactly how stupid they’re being and make it clear they should apologize and never make the mistake again.
The fastest way to piss me off and ruin a first impression is to ask “do you know your real parents?” when I mention I’m adopted. It’s a non starter, and I will explain that I have four real parents who have affected my life in different ways. But to even say “real parents” is making the assumption that the people who raised me from a tiny baby, changed my shitty diapers, coped with one suicide attempt, ADHD, Depression, nearly flunking out of high school, and many other hardships are somehow impostors or phonies. They’re just as real as my DNA donors, and in some ways far more real. And to suggest otherwise shows either a profound lack of thought, or some kind of malicious psychology.
For fuck sake, my parents chose me. How many normal, non-adopted kids get to say that? They got to meet me as an infant and say “we love you enough to give you a home and a life.” How cool is that?
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Hoooooooly fuck. 
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One time we were in a supermarket and a random woman took our son and told him that she was going to take him back to her home, because he shouldn’t bother these foreigners anymore. This is a thing that happened, and we had to gently ask her to give him back to us.
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Sorry, I can’t like that. But… … … I don’t know what to say besides that’s probably in my top ten of the most fucked up things I’ve ever heard.
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What’s especially painful for me in reading this is because the bond with my children is probably the closest relationship I’ve ever had with any other human being, of any kind.
Knowing that, and how that parent relationship underpins everything these little people will become, asking someone else if they’d want to turn their foster kids over to strangers on a whim, Jesus Mary & Joseph, man. That’s unconscionable.
Appropriately, happened to be listening to this as I typed:
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Yeah… My shitty little pop contribution
Seriously, where is the love? Because that’s what’s important. Without it, you end up like worms. Blind, insensible, living in shit. Without love, you simply can’t raise kids. And that’s the scariest thing to me, and a big reason why I don’t think I’ll ever have kids of my own. I don’t even love myself. So how could I adequately love a child I have to care for?
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Oh, you are so wrong.
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