If we have certain shared social values that most people agree on, why don't we teach them as part of public education? We certainly teach enough other crap.
It would seem to me that there would be very little disagreement in the idea that fathers are important to their children's lives and if you help create a child you have a certain responsibility to him/her. But this isn't formally taught anywhere. Why not? It would seem to me, the younger the better.
I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting, or what form it would take. Was this ever formally taught? If it was once and isn't now, I would guess the difference might be that schools are more sensitive about avoiding making kids whose fathers are absent, through no fault of the kids', feel stigmatized.
I do see more kids' reading material in which, for instance, the child protagonist has a single parent or other nontraditional family -- the most famous, of course, being
Heather has Two Mommies. But again, I think this is mainly about making kids comfortable with their own situation -- and, in the case of
Heather, normalizing that situation for their classmates as well.
so now, have we had enough red herrings thrown down to avoid discussing the issues on this thread? should we continue to discuss the state of the underclass?
Personally, I'm done (I hope) fighting a circular battle over this, hurling sarcasm, accusations and veiled insults back and forth that often at least dance near the line of personal attack. And yes, I've been as guilty of it as anyone. Somehow, despite all my concerted attempts at reason and occasionally snarky comments, I have failed to convert broketrash and HerrKaiser to liberalism, so I am going to retire from that kind of debate for now (and just hope that someday they see the light
).
I'm still interested in discussing some of the issues here, especially the implications of class in America. But the posts implying that people on one side or the other are more or less intelligent or compassionate -- they must be, otherwise they'd surely see that they are wrong wrong wrong -- those don't seem to have been very effective. And yes, again, I've been guilty of these, myself.