SCOTUS rejects Brown V Board history

[Centexfarmer]

 

[sparky95]

How does this decicion impact on the court case a few years ago that forced the legalisation of homosexuality in all states? The Supreme Court seems to be working through a wish-list for the religious right, with this and the partial birth abortion case. Will the gay case be challenged soon?

 

[brl18uk]

She tried to enroll her son in school two months after school started.

Clearly she did not do "everything properly." Properly registering a child for school happens before school starts.

The consequence for registering her son late was that the class was filled and she had to take him to another public school.

Our choices, our actions have consequences. But rather than accept the consequences and adapt to them, she got herself a lawyer and had a hissy fit about race even though that really was not the initial reason her son was disallowed from attending that school. The reason he was disallowed was she was two months late registering him and by then the class was filled.

This business about registering late is neither here nor there. She was denied for that reason, then denied again because of her son's race. Besides, if her suit had been frivolous, it would not have made it to the Supreme Court. They don't issue 185 page opinions on cases with weak factual bases. This was the real deal.

 

[frankfrank]

How does this decision impact on the court case a few years ago that forced the legalisation of homosexuality in all states? The Supreme Court seems to be working through a wish-list for the religious right, with this and the partial birth abortion case. Will the gay case be challenged soon?

What decision was that? I know about the decision where it was illegal to have sodomy laws in the states. Is this what you're referring to? I'm HOPING that the Supreme Court will be given an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade before the 2008 elections, because I think it would cause so much RAGE that some formerly-safe Republican districts may have trouble electing Republicans even to their City Councils. It seems almost obvious that the current court, with Kennedy having obviously been co-opted by the American Taliban, would overturn it.

If the schools were all up to a good standard, rather than some neighborhood schools being left to languish with shortages of fifty-year-old textbooks (and the ceilings or stairways literally be in threat of caving in) while others have state-of-the-art labs and highly effective small-class-size teaching, the racial composition of schools wouldn't even matter. I'm not even sure exactly what the answer is. With schools funded locally, communities such as East St. Louis and Compton will not be able to afford state-of-the-art schools, while places such as Winnetka and Santa Clara will provide more than enough property taxes to afford the very best for their children.

So, perhaps fund the schools on a state level? Well, that means that schools in Connecticut or Hawai'i will probably benefit from more funding than schools in Mississippi or New Mexico.

That leaves the question to FEDERAL funding of education. On the surface, the idea sounds fantastic; that somebody in Yazoo City should therefore end up getting the same quality education as somebody living in Redmond WA. However, this is THEORETICAL only; I don't need to go into the deficiencies of federal funding of schools IN THE REAL WORLD. The pitfalls are well-enough known that I don't think I have to tell anybody why this doesn't work, either.

So, what IS the answer? Does a workable answer exist? The competitiveness of the U.S. and its future in the world will definitely be shaped by what we end up doing with our schools. (It's not the only factor, of course; U.S. foreign policy, politics, corporate policy, war, etc. will also affect this.)

But, unless there IS a way to "fix" the schools so that EVERY child can be assured of an adequate opportunity for an effective education, pretending that we're "color-blind" is a mistake. Under the current arrangements, especially if students must now go to schools nearby (when going to "public" ones), some minorities WILL be almost guaranteed to receive inferior educations, and that is so wrong.

There actually was a time when the U.S. was capable of running at least some GOVERNMENT programs effectively and sensibly, but that ability seems to have been completely lost in the past 25 or 30 years.

 

[sparky95]

Yep, that was the one!