Here's what I don't get. I have never met a person that is on the other side of this argument. I have never met an individual that likes Ted Kennedy. As far as I can tell, the people pushing these rules, and the zero tolerance rules, and the non-competitive crap are the minority, so why the hell are all of these rules getting implemented? Where is our backbone? When are we going to stand up and say "enough is enough already!"? My kids are in Catholic school because they can pick and choose the students. There is no mainstreaming problem children, so my kid with his obsessive quest to forge ahead in his education isn't waiting for the kid with Turret's in the back of the room constantly disrupting the class. There are no autistic children with a propensity for violent outbursts making it impossible to concentrate on learning. There are 29 kids in my son's first grade class, and when you peek through the window from the hallway, you wouldn't know there were more than 10. They are all already tying their shoes, the average reading level for this group of 6 year olds is 2nd grade, they are ahead of where they should be in math... I could go on and on. Now, I am not, in any way, shape or form, saying that every kid isn't deserving of an education. I think that they all are. I am not out to offend any segment of the population, but the fact is, kids with special needs need special places. This mainstreaming thing is a huge pile of crap, and it is where the rest of this is coming from. Teachers aren't equipped to handle these kids, students aren't equipped to handle these kids, and these kids aren't, for the most part, emotionally equipped to handle being mainstreamed. It's about their parents' egos, and it is a grave disservice to all of the children. Then there are the parents that don't give a crap about their kids, and the school is a convenient babysitter. The first generation of crack babies are hitting the elementary schools full force. These kids are missing quite a bit of their social circuitry. They simply don't have the social skills necessary to successfully function in a "normal" classroom environment. Many of them aren't capable of learning the social skills because the part of the brain that processes it didn't develop properly. They don't have a shot. These are the kids in public school. They aren't the majority, but there are enough of them to severely retard the learning process. A lot of the non compete rules are falling into place so as not to upset these kids that are wired wrong. This is how they are dealing with school shootings and playground violence, by setting kids up to snap. It doesn't make any sense to me, but then again, I think with my head and not with my squishy parts. My heart bleeds for these kids, but in all reality, they need to be dealt with, not coddled to. My city is a small city. We are a city of 35,000 people. We have a high school drop out rate of - are you ready for this? - 20%. That isn't a typo. I said twenty percent. There has to be a reason for that. Funny how that number coincides with them mainstreaming the alternative high school 3 years ago. Kinda makes you think. They took a relatively successful program for troubled teens, squished it into the regular curriculum and expected these kids to adjust. What they did was set them up for failure, and brought down the entire learning curve for the rest of the students. I could go on, but jesus christ. I just looked at how much I wrote already and I'm getting typer's cramp! Sorry about the rant. This struck a nerve. I guess what I'm saying is that we need to grow a backbone and tell Ted Kennedy and all of our local Teds to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up because they are ruining our children! As I always say, you have to be cold sometimes in order to appreciate the warm.