Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[prabe]

Why does every thread you join become an argument about "player agency"?

Probably for the same reason some bands' songs all sound alike ...

 

[Aeson]

This could be a good site for numbers nerds. You can see how much money is spent on education by state and per student.

How are public schools in the US funded? | USAFacts

Primarily from state and local governments. In the 2021–2022 school year, the most recent year of available data, about 44.1% of public school funding came from state sources like income and retail taxes, and another 42.2% came from local sources like property taxes. The federal government...

usafacts.org

 

[Scribe]

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Wait, "online discourse" is not reality?!

 

[prabe]

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Wait, "online discourse" is not reality?!

I KNOW RIGHT?

 

[billd91]

It's always been strange to me that while US public schooling is generally seen as pretty sub-par, US post secondary schools - universities and the like - are the most highly ranked in the world. The majority of the top 100 uni's in the world are all in the States. If US public schooling is so bad, how come their uni's are so good? Something doesn't seem to add up.

US public schooling is constantly caught in a nasty social dilemma because it's publicly funded out of everyone's tax dollars, has a mandate to serve all kids of virtually all abilities, but is also subject to every individual's private agendas and interests - particularly, keeping their own taxes low but also including how much they personally value education and what kind of education that is. This is much less a problem (though not a completely absent one considering the number of publicly-funded university systems around) with colleges and universities - in no small part because attendance is voluntary rather than compulsory.

2) Money, money, money: the universities are in a global competition for it, in all of its forms. Colleges & Universities that get too visibly entangled in American culture wars lose international students, investments from foreign & domestic businesses & governments, and so forth. And the feedback loop between those income streams and the quality of recruits & graduates- and the statewide economies- is very strong.

Money is a BIG factor. Public schools are publicly funded and have a number of mandates they have to meet and have little control over. Universities, even the publicly funded ones like state university systems, have more control over their curriculum and very broad avenues to grubbing up money - particularly if they engage in research that can be monetized. That tends to create divisions between have and have-not departments, but they do help keep the lights on campus-wide.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Well, I'm old now so when I took a fall at Knotts Halloween Haunt a few years back, I braced myself by falling on first my left hand and then forearm. Took a couple weeks to figure it out, but I'd managed to do a hairline crack in the latter. Taught me my balance just isn't what it once was.

One of my feet turns out slightly farther than the other, and it has always given me problems with randomly losing my balance/kicking things/twisting my ankle/etc... I randomly fall on my arse at least three times a year.

I long ago taught myself to instantly react to any chance I may be falling or slipping by dropping straight downward so that, when I do inevitably tip over and land wrong, at least I won't injure myself as severely.

But even then, I really don't bounce nearly as well as I used to... Getting old sucks.

 

[dbolack]

Money is a BIG factor. Public schools are publicly funded and have a number of mandates they have to meet and have little control over. Universities, even the publicly funded ones like state university systems, have more control over their curriculum and very broad avenues to grubbing up money - particularly if they engage in research that can be monetized. That tends to create divisions between have and have-not departments, but they do help keep the lights on campus-wide.

And the Texas factor cannot be overstated.

 

[Mannahnin]

And the Texas factor cannot be understated.

Pretty sure you mean "cannot be overstated", or "should not be understated."

 

[dbolack]

Pretty sure you mean "cannot be overstated", or "should not be understated."

Absolutely correct. Sorry. Oklahoma Public Schools.

 

[overgeeked]

It's always been strange to me that while US public schooling is generally seen as pretty sub-par, US post secondary schools - universities and the like - are the most highly ranked in the world. The majority of the top 100 uni's in the world are all in the States. If US public schooling is so bad, how come their uni's are so good? Something doesn't seem to add up.

Canada's in the same boat really. Canadian public schools are not terribly well regarded, but, everyone and their mother wants to go to uni in the US or Canada.

The rich people pay a lot of money for their kids to have good schools. So private schools and some universities have bags of money. Football is also a money maker. The public schools are funded through local taxes, which people in the US hate more than anything, so almost always vote against. Selfishness and individualism are the twin north stars, so people without kids hate the idea paying taxes for someone else to benefit even more. Which is also one big reason why we don’t have nice things like a social safety net, i.e. universal healthcare etc. Thanks capitalism.

And of course capitalism. Unless you have money, you don’t matter. Everything is designed to make about 1000 billionaires richer. What the rest of us want doesn’t matter. Thanks capitalism.

The Texas thing mentioned above is that school-textbook publishers cater to Texas public schools because they are the largest or some of the largest. They don’t want to publish different books for different states, so the whole country is stuck with whatever anti-science, anti-history nonsense the school boards in Texas will permit. So literally the few dozen people on the school boards in Texas dictate to the entire country what all the kids across the country in public schools learn. Thanks capitalism.