Never been an opinion clinger and certainly not married to this one but, before altering an opinion, I like to examine objective sources. You've made an assertion, which is fine; that's what most people do in comment sections. But you made yours under the appellation "Dr", implying some experience with academic rigor. Yet you omit reference, which was what I was hoping for but still haven't meaningfully received, which makes me suspect your assertion is of the lesser variety more commonly encountered, which is to say a personal opinion. I know that Perplexity isn't Google. I also know that advising someone to look something up is not the same as knowing your subject sufficiently to cite credible information (the Head Start website is a lame suggestion). You put Head Start in play with your comment. I was just hoping you might have something other than opinion to offer. Since you don't I'll quit bothering you. Thank you.
“We’d appreciate America more if we stopped acting like tourists in our own country—enjoying what it has to offer without taking responsibility for its well-being.”
I remember the young soldiers I’d get who had signed only a one- or two-year commitment, depending on specialty school duration. They were absolutely wasted billets, to a man. The last thing I want to see is such people compelled into the ranks.
National service (particularly outside of the military) holds a whole lot of value, and it would be good for the American public and American youth - look at what the Amish and the Mormons do with their placement of public service as a communal virtue.
It would not, regardless of our recruitment failings, be a good thing for today’s military - far too much legal restriction on training and enforcement of standards would lead to a majority DOD equivalent to McNamara’s Morons.
My Daughter spent a year in AmeriCorps in New Orleans for a year before she went after her PHD. It had it's up's and down's , she learned how to mud walls really well , and learned about power tools working with contractors and others. She also got a good course on bureaucracy and hurry up and wait type of work. AmeriCorps mostly farmed the people out to other charity's , the funny thing was the best run charity at that time , she found, was Catholic charity's , who would have figured ?
"...manning infrastructure projects; maintaining our national parks; supporting elder care, education, or border patrol..."
Good luck getting the unions, and therefore the Democratic party, to approve anything like this, unless the enlistees are made dues-paying union members.
We have National Service. It's called the National Guard, Military or Peace Corps... Thing is, so many kids are living at home with the parents till age 28 or so that no one needs to do any of those things when their rent, food and internet is paid for by mom and dad....
Present day schemes for drafting men for military service are wrongheaded. It is better to have professional armed forces made up of free citizens who chose to join up. There may be times such as 1941-1945 when a draft is necessary to save the country, but we are not in or close to a situation like that now. Drafting people to perform “service” in civilian labor gangs always should be forbidden. The correct name for it is forced labor, and it is a characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, not free societies. It is also involuntary servitude, and some of us may recall that we have an amendment that says something about that.
I love this idea for all the reasons you stated. It would address so many issues in our present day. I would have enjoyed doing this as a young adult (in the 90s) and suspect my kids would have too.
Why in the world should we trust the government to create positive opportunities? What's going to result from these career administrators and bureaucrats running the show is an army of TikTok-addled brownshirts.
Well, head start has been pretty damn successful, we need a head start for young adults. Either that or mandatory service in the armed forces, both boys and girls.
How would that work, then, Leanna? Many would simply refuse to work, and then what do you do? We've spent decades tearing down civilization in America. Rebuilding it will take a lot of time, and has to come before we can even consider forcing people to do anything.
Head Start has seen some success, but only in the sense that in an education world that is failing so miserably that even the most die-hard teacher's union leader *should* (but doesn't) take pause, a year of Head Start is better than a year of nothing. When some urban areas are reporting 2% or less of high school students achieving basic competency in reading and math, Head Start is like waving one hands and expecting to stop a hurricane.
What we need, instead, is a massive reduction in the size and scope of government. Let private industry employ people voluntarily - economic success provides far more opportunity than the government blob.
Head start has been around since before the Clinton administration. It’s one of the success stories. Please read more about it. Head start also educates parents. So it’s a more holistic approach. Head start success measurements show that over the long term, into high school, these kids do better.
Please read more about the complete failure of public education in many of our most impoverished areas. I'm not against Head Start, but the long-term studies on it are less relevant today because the whole system is in ruins.
I’ll be sure to let my daughter know that all her effort as a director at head start and the visible impact she observes just isn’t so. All that data they collect and report every year, just a waste. Investment in new and safer playground equipment a waste.
What would help head start enormously is the ability to hire teachers at something better than daycare wages…minimum wage.
Why do we persist at all these failed, wasteful things. Let’s just quit and let ‘somebody’ figure out something we could all feel good about spending tax dollars on.
Ummm.... public school teachers are not paid minimum wage. They do very, very well, including benefits. And if they have seniority under the irresponsible teacher-union-backed scale, they are quite wealthy and by then they don't need to work at all over the summer break.
My suggestion is privatization and a voucher system. Competition forces schools to focus on better outcomes for the students. Wealthy parents have options. Poor parents do not.
Please read about the failures in public education. As I keep saying, it's not that Head Start doesn't help - you seem determined to misread that - it's that with relatively recent changes in public education, exacerbated by the ill-advised COVID shutdown of the public school system (teacher's unions "won" at the expense of everyone there), things are so bad that even good policies like starting school a year earlier are leading to a shocking lack of even basic literacy in our most vulnerable populations.
Could you be specific about the "success" of the Head Start program? I've also read that it has never achieved or measurably contributed to its intended purpose. I'm not trolling you, I genuinely would like to see some reliable metrics showing successs.
I imagine any organization's website is going to claim marvelous success. I'm more interested in objective 3rd party evaluations. I know how to use Google; I was hoping you had specific references in mind when you made the claim to Head Start's success contrary to what resources I've read state. So, I'm assuming now that you do not. I'm not trying to be confrontational but when an interest group on one hand keeps beating the drum that society's efforts to ameliorate the plight of the disadvantaged have been an abject failure and that minority groups continue to fall further and further behind despite these efforts, I am puzzled when the same interest group on the other hand would then cite the success of these programs as reasons to demand more such programs. Everything I've ever read about Head Start is that longitudinal studies cannot demonstrate any closing of the educational gap, which is exactly in conformity with the poor performance of public education in general. Unless you can provide evidence to the contrary I'm continuing with the widespread conclusion that Head Start is just expensively-administered day care.
Okay. Best to cling to your opinion. Perplexity isn’t google. Just those kinds of assumptions that enable an entrenched opinion to remain so. This is why we find ourselves being armchair quarterbacks about the state of things, but with no nuanced perspective.
I graduated from college in 1968—the year they ended graduate student deferments but one year before the draft lottery. I managed to avoid being drafted by one day by enlisting in the Navy, where I went on to become a junior officer for four years. Serving with men from every walk of life and every socio-economic class was an incredibly valuable experience—and became the basis of my leadership and management skills which served me well throughout my career. I wish my children and grandchildren could have the same grounding-in-reality experience as I had. Too late for my children, but maybe not for my grandchildren.
This is a great idea. I think that every person who had their student loans forgiven by the Biden Administration should go first... I suggest that they could be on the cleanup crew at Guantanamo Bay...
Sending students into the countryside to work on behalf of "the nation" sounds like a great idea. It worked wonders for the Maoists in the 60s and 70s...
If public schools can't teach American kids to read, what makes anyone think that a public works program would be any better?
Elias, couldn’t agree with you more. One benefit you missed is that forcing national service on ALL socio-economic classes would help eliminate many current divides. A PhD might actually know a bricklayer, a white Wall Streeter would know a black musician, and so one. My generation, the Boomers/Yuppies, became so me-focused because we never were required to give back. Yours is more concerned with rights than with responsibilities or love of country. I have a Q in the queue to ask Tom McGrath, author of The Triumph of the Yuppies, if the yuppies would have turned out differently if they had been required to serve. BTW, I would make the requirement two years so that it is more meaningful. We can thank Bill Bradley for raising the requirement during his presidential campaign in 2000.
I think it's a great idea, perhaps it could be on a volunteer basis, while still being incentivized ? The no serve no vote idea is also a viable one. We have to get the younger generations to want more ownership in our great country vs disenchantment.... think we need to adapt tactics as they do in the SCHOOLS or at least make sure they are exposed to all that is great about our country. This is still the country that people from all over the world run to when they want to escape their own country. There is a reason for that. Let's make sure the younger understand that and what those reasons are. the rest of the world runs to we they want to escape their own country. There is a reason for that. Let's make sure the younger understand that and what those reasons are.
The programs already exist - and time in the PeaceCorps or in AmeriCorps count toward the 10 year government service requirement of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Maybe the programs and the reward need tweaking and some marketing, but they are there.
Disagree with those in this thread arguing for this as a requirement for voting. Some young people would not be able to do this for any number of reasons - illness, need to care for a family member (child, sibling, parent, etc.) If you’re a legal citizen over 18, the right to vote should be unencumbered.
It’s really simple: If you don’t serve, you don’t vote. If you’re not willing to put the nations needs ahead of your own, you shouldn’t be trusted to put the nations needs ahead of your own. Being a citizen should have meaning.
Instead we can’t find enough people to serve while our government forces those who do to pay off the debt of unwilling college students who serve nobody but themselves. Utterly perverse.
Young men today generally suck and need the opportunity to be liberated from their parents, hometowns, and screens with national service.
Never been an opinion clinger and certainly not married to this one but, before altering an opinion, I like to examine objective sources. You've made an assertion, which is fine; that's what most people do in comment sections. But you made yours under the appellation "Dr", implying some experience with academic rigor. Yet you omit reference, which was what I was hoping for but still haven't meaningfully received, which makes me suspect your assertion is of the lesser variety more commonly encountered, which is to say a personal opinion. I know that Perplexity isn't Google. I also know that advising someone to look something up is not the same as knowing your subject sufficiently to cite credible information (the Head Start website is a lame suggestion). You put Head Start in play with your comment. I was just hoping you might have something other than opinion to offer. Since you don't I'll quit bothering you. Thank you.
Great line, Elias:
“We’d appreciate America more if we stopped acting like tourists in our own country—enjoying what it has to offer without taking responsibility for its well-being.”
I remember the young soldiers I’d get who had signed only a one- or two-year commitment, depending on specialty school duration. They were absolutely wasted billets, to a man. The last thing I want to see is such people compelled into the ranks.
National service (particularly outside of the military) holds a whole lot of value, and it would be good for the American public and American youth - look at what the Amish and the Mormons do with their placement of public service as a communal virtue.
It would not, regardless of our recruitment failings, be a good thing for today’s military - far too much legal restriction on training and enforcement of standards would lead to a majority DOD equivalent to McNamara’s Morons.
My Daughter spent a year in AmeriCorps in New Orleans for a year before she went after her PHD. It had it's up's and down's , she learned how to mud walls really well , and learned about power tools working with contractors and others. She also got a good course on bureaucracy and hurry up and wait type of work. AmeriCorps mostly farmed the people out to other charity's , the funny thing was the best run charity at that time , she found, was Catholic charity's , who would have figured ?
"...manning infrastructure projects; maintaining our national parks; supporting elder care, education, or border patrol..."
Good luck getting the unions, and therefore the Democratic party, to approve anything like this, unless the enlistees are made dues-paying union members.
We have National Service. It's called the National Guard, Military or Peace Corps... Thing is, so many kids are living at home with the parents till age 28 or so that no one needs to do any of those things when their rent, food and internet is paid for by mom and dad....
Present day schemes for drafting men for military service are wrongheaded. It is better to have professional armed forces made up of free citizens who chose to join up. There may be times such as 1941-1945 when a draft is necessary to save the country, but we are not in or close to a situation like that now. Drafting people to perform “service” in civilian labor gangs always should be forbidden. The correct name for it is forced labor, and it is a characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, not free societies. It is also involuntary servitude, and some of us may recall that we have an amendment that says something about that.
I love this idea for all the reasons you stated. It would address so many issues in our present day. I would have enjoyed doing this as a young adult (in the 90s) and suspect my kids would have too.
I think it's a terrible idea.
Why in the world should we trust the government to create positive opportunities? What's going to result from these career administrators and bureaucrats running the show is an army of TikTok-addled brownshirts.
Well, head start has been pretty damn successful, we need a head start for young adults. Either that or mandatory service in the armed forces, both boys and girls.
How would that work, then, Leanna? Many would simply refuse to work, and then what do you do? We've spent decades tearing down civilization in America. Rebuilding it will take a lot of time, and has to come before we can even consider forcing people to do anything.
Head Start has seen some success, but only in the sense that in an education world that is failing so miserably that even the most die-hard teacher's union leader *should* (but doesn't) take pause, a year of Head Start is better than a year of nothing. When some urban areas are reporting 2% or less of high school students achieving basic competency in reading and math, Head Start is like waving one hands and expecting to stop a hurricane.
What we need, instead, is a massive reduction in the size and scope of government. Let private industry employ people voluntarily - economic success provides far more opportunity than the government blob.
Head start has been around since before the Clinton administration. It’s one of the success stories. Please read more about it. Head start also educates parents. So it’s a more holistic approach. Head start success measurements show that over the long term, into high school, these kids do better.
Please read more about the complete failure of public education in many of our most impoverished areas. I'm not against Head Start, but the long-term studies on it are less relevant today because the whole system is in ruins.
I’ll be sure to let my daughter know that all her effort as a director at head start and the visible impact she observes just isn’t so. All that data they collect and report every year, just a waste. Investment in new and safer playground equipment a waste.
What would help head start enormously is the ability to hire teachers at something better than daycare wages…minimum wage.
Why do we persist at all these failed, wasteful things. Let’s just quit and let ‘somebody’ figure out something we could all feel good about spending tax dollars on.
Anybody here got a suggestion?
Ummm.... public school teachers are not paid minimum wage. They do very, very well, including benefits. And if they have seniority under the irresponsible teacher-union-backed scale, they are quite wealthy and by then they don't need to work at all over the summer break.
My suggestion is privatization and a voucher system. Competition forces schools to focus on better outcomes for the students. Wealthy parents have options. Poor parents do not.
Please read about the failures in public education. As I keep saying, it's not that Head Start doesn't help - you seem determined to misread that - it's that with relatively recent changes in public education, exacerbated by the ill-advised COVID shutdown of the public school system (teacher's unions "won" at the expense of everyone there), things are so bad that even good policies like starting school a year earlier are leading to a shocking lack of even basic literacy in our most vulnerable populations.
Could you be specific about the "success" of the Head Start program? I've also read that it has never achieved or measurably contributed to its intended purpose. I'm not trolling you, I genuinely would like to see some reliable metrics showing successs.
I’d suggest going to the head start website and find publications. Try perplexity to help find suitable references.
I imagine any organization's website is going to claim marvelous success. I'm more interested in objective 3rd party evaluations. I know how to use Google; I was hoping you had specific references in mind when you made the claim to Head Start's success contrary to what resources I've read state. So, I'm assuming now that you do not. I'm not trying to be confrontational but when an interest group on one hand keeps beating the drum that society's efforts to ameliorate the plight of the disadvantaged have been an abject failure and that minority groups continue to fall further and further behind despite these efforts, I am puzzled when the same interest group on the other hand would then cite the success of these programs as reasons to demand more such programs. Everything I've ever read about Head Start is that longitudinal studies cannot demonstrate any closing of the educational gap, which is exactly in conformity with the poor performance of public education in general. Unless you can provide evidence to the contrary I'm continuing with the widespread conclusion that Head Start is just expensively-administered day care.
Okay. Best to cling to your opinion. Perplexity isn’t google. Just those kinds of assumptions that enable an entrenched opinion to remain so. This is why we find ourselves being armchair quarterbacks about the state of things, but with no nuanced perspective.
I graduated from college in 1968—the year they ended graduate student deferments but one year before the draft lottery. I managed to avoid being drafted by one day by enlisting in the Navy, where I went on to become a junior officer for four years. Serving with men from every walk of life and every socio-economic class was an incredibly valuable experience—and became the basis of my leadership and management skills which served me well throughout my career. I wish my children and grandchildren could have the same grounding-in-reality experience as I had. Too late for my children, but maybe not for my grandchildren.
Did you serve?
This is a great idea. I think that every person who had their student loans forgiven by the Biden Administration should go first... I suggest that they could be on the cleanup crew at Guantanamo Bay...
Sending students into the countryside to work on behalf of "the nation" sounds like a great idea. It worked wonders for the Maoists in the 60s and 70s...
If public schools can't teach American kids to read, what makes anyone think that a public works program would be any better?
The Democratic Party of America, DELENDA EST!
Elias, couldn’t agree with you more. One benefit you missed is that forcing national service on ALL socio-economic classes would help eliminate many current divides. A PhD might actually know a bricklayer, a white Wall Streeter would know a black musician, and so one. My generation, the Boomers/Yuppies, became so me-focused because we never were required to give back. Yours is more concerned with rights than with responsibilities or love of country. I have a Q in the queue to ask Tom McGrath, author of The Triumph of the Yuppies, if the yuppies would have turned out differently if they had been required to serve. BTW, I would make the requirement two years so that it is more meaningful. We can thank Bill Bradley for raising the requirement during his presidential campaign in 2000.
I think it's a great idea, perhaps it could be on a volunteer basis, while still being incentivized ? The no serve no vote idea is also a viable one. We have to get the younger generations to want more ownership in our great country vs disenchantment.... think we need to adapt tactics as they do in the SCHOOLS or at least make sure they are exposed to all that is great about our country. This is still the country that people from all over the world run to when they want to escape their own country. There is a reason for that. Let's make sure the younger understand that and what those reasons are. the rest of the world runs to we they want to escape their own country. There is a reason for that. Let's make sure the younger understand that and what those reasons are.
The programs already exist - and time in the PeaceCorps or in AmeriCorps count toward the 10 year government service requirement of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Maybe the programs and the reward need tweaking and some marketing, but they are there.
Disagree with those in this thread arguing for this as a requirement for voting. Some young people would not be able to do this for any number of reasons - illness, need to care for a family member (child, sibling, parent, etc.) If you’re a legal citizen over 18, the right to vote should be unencumbered.
Need to make it mandatory if there is any money left in the budget.
It’s really simple: If you don’t serve, you don’t vote. If you’re not willing to put the nations needs ahead of your own, you shouldn’t be trusted to put the nations needs ahead of your own. Being a citizen should have meaning.
Instead we can’t find enough people to serve while our government forces those who do to pay off the debt of unwilling college students who serve nobody but themselves. Utterly perverse.
Young men today generally suck and need the opportunity to be liberated from their parents, hometowns, and screens with national service.
And women,too. Make other people, not selfies, the focus of their young lives.