Jan 30, 2012 -- 12:17PM, Girlchristian wrote:

Jan 30, 2012 -- 11:57AM, MMarcoe wrote:

Jan 30, 2012 -- 9:03AM, TemplarS wrote:

This is a consequence of not funding schools adequately.  There are many districts where teachers must purchase their own supplies to have enough to run the class effectively.

This is why millionaires and billionaires should start putting their idle money to use and buying supplies so the teachers don't have to.

Why shouldn't we all have responsibility to do this? If you can afford to eat dinner out once/week or once/month then you can afford to buy school supplies to help teachers, right? If you can afford cable and internet, then you can afford to buy school supplies to help teachers, right? The problem with this country is that too many people want someone else to use their money to help the poor or those that need it, rather than jumping in to help themselves. (Rant not directed at you....sorry!)

In truth the OP concerned NZ not the US.

Why rail at unknown Americans, many of whom pay high real estate taxes when they have no children in school. When and where we dine out and what cable and internet services we use are not part of the equation overall.

In the US we do have funding problems in school districts in which the tax base cannot support the schools. We do not live in a classless society; what we do about that is another can of worms. What would you propose and do?

The entire population of NZ is about the same as the population in greater Atlanta. Their attitudes and outlooks  do not essentially equate with much here.

Jan 29, 2012 -- 8:20PM, Lonesentinel wrote:

Link

Wow...and I thought we had it bad here in America.

Well, it's not as bad as some school districts in America telling American parents what books their children can READ, or what concepts they'll be permitted to LEARN, the way they do in some states, like Texas, from where the edicts "migrate" to the parents in other states.

There is misconception that Texas text books are the ones distributed  nationwide  and that is not the case. Texas has more say over its textbooks content because of the size of the Texas market and the way Texas buys texts.   The Texas Board of Education  buys texts books for every district and the Texas state board of education writes curriculum.  The technology  for printing  today  allows publherto tailor  books even for small markets and districts. Electronic books can even be more tailored even for individual  classes.  In some states each district buys directly from publishers but in Texas the districts  buys from the states  and  State determines  the content that it will buy. Text books arr bought with  funds from a permanently  endowed fund  and stored in TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY BUILDINGS ( remember Dallas in 63 and JFKs assassination ?    Texas often overrated its influence of other states, as Texas often overestimates everything.