Reply to Do wrap-around resources, 3 free meals, after-school activities, etc. move the needle?

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Reply to "Do wrap-around resources, 3 free meals, after-school activities, etc. move the needle?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I was responding to the "You should work on" part of the post. As in, unless I am personally working hard to fix the social services funding problem, then I cannot complain about the effect of pouring all that money into social services on educational services. It's an argument designed to shut down this conversation and say, "we cannot change the status quo unless some impossible future goal is reached. so shut up." I disagree. I think we complain until the schools give up and the money is found somewhere else for social services, or we admit the truth, which is that low taxes are more important to Americans than social services. And then we recognize that restricting immigration actually follows from that premise. There are an awful lot of us who would love to see more of a social safety net, but don't really want our taxes to go up either.[/quote]

It's not an argument designed to shut down the conversation. It's just a fact. It's not going to happen without advocacy. And if you say, "X is bad," but you don't do something about it, then you're just complaining.

Also, increased funding of social services is not some impossible future goal.

If you think that social services should be funded, but not through education, then you need to advocate for that. Or, if you think that the most important thing is that education does NOT fund other social services -- whether or not those other social services get funded through some other means -- then you need to advocate for that, I guess.[/quote]

Much like making the school the purveyor (not just the location) for social services, turning the discussion to what I, personally, am or am not doing to change the status quo is an attempt to change the discussion in such a way as to remove the possibility of objections to the status quo. If you (or whoever) made the original comment meant to open a discussion about how to effect change through active means, he or she (or you) could have said that as a more general call for ideas for affecting change. Instead, it was posted as a pointed remark directed at a single person that was intended to indicate that clearly, a person who doesn't believe schools should be providing social services should shut up about it unless she can prove that she's got a better idea that she's actively pursuing. It does not matter what I do or don't do personally to change things when I'm not typing on DCUM -- that it neither provable (if I said I was lobbying daily, for example) or particularly relevant to conversation that was going on; the point of this discussion is whether or not the status quo is beneficial or not.[/quote]

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