I think there’s some degree of selection bias going on there because American Christians who aren’t self righteous pricks aren’t as likely to tell you all about their Christian beliefs in the first place.
Same deal with vegetarians. The only way you’ll know if most people you meet are vegetarians is if they make a point of telling you, so the whole group gets the reputation for constantly talking about their dietary lifestyle.
Oh certainly. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve realized that NotAllChristians are actually frothing-at-the-mouth bigots, mass-murderers, hypocrites, terrorists, and other types of monsters, because that’s been my impression of your faith based on its outspoken representatives. For example, like the ones that broke my bones and threatened to set me on fire for not accepting Jesus. They were very outspoken about their Christian beliefs.
“My” faith? C’mon, just because I think Jimmy Carter is a nice guy doesn’t mean I identify as a member of any organized religion, let alone part of the same group of people who attacked you. I like Malala Yousafzai too but that doesn’t make me a Muslim.
No, but lack of funding is absolutely problem #1. Until there is equal funding between “under performing” schools and “high performing” schools, it remains the most likely, highest-impact thing we can do. Equal funding needs to be holistic, too: not just $/student, but also teacher pay, infrastructure, administration, class size, etc. And it needs to be sustained. You can’t just fund an “under performing” school for a year, then throw your hands up and say “well, that didn’t work!” The funding needs to be ongoing, K-12, for decades before you can say it’s not funding.
Oh, and BTW, when studies have been done comparing private schools to public schools with the same funding across the board, public schools outperform private schools significantly.
I believe the term Jesus specifically used was “hypocrites” (Matthew 6:5-6) for those that loudly and publicly make shows of religious piety, if you’re looking for a good term to use.
Not a Christian, or really anything, myself, but I do agree with ~95% of what Jesus was claimed to have said. As a lot of people have said, “it’s not the band, it’s the fan club I can’t stand”.
Here in Australia, parents who sent their children to private schools complained it was unfair that their tax dollars went to state schools. So the right wing Liberal/National government , hating public institutions, decided to fund private schools as well. When it’s pointed out that a private school may have an enclosed heated pool and a public school down the road may have class rooms without air conditioning, they always assert the government funding is only spent on administration, not amenities . Of course, the word “choice” is used to defend the current system. Any attempt to redress this current system is labelled “class warfare”. The Labor party (our Dems analogue) who supposedly champion public schools , just pledged an extra au$250M to private catholic schools to curry favour with that conservative constituency.