[Jimmyp117]

It is my Belief that no matter how much money a government can spend on an education system in today's society, children will not learn anything anyways.

Smart kids are out-casted, The guys who have had sex with the most woman are praised, what I'm getting at is, kids go to school to be social, and very few of them actually enjoy the classes they take.

This "Generation X" or what ever they call it, cannot be headed for places that are good. They care more about music then anything, they simply do not care.

The ones that do care, are the ones that have been out-casted, or even called crazy.

Of course, there is specialization where kids learn only what they are required to learn. when we used to have great navigators who were also captains of ships, people who could do multi-subjects rather then just a special field of expertise.

Now as for lack of morals, There is a town, that I won't name, but in this town in the Ottawa Valley, it has the highest teen pregnancy rate in all of Ontario, Keeping in mind this town has a population of only about 12 - 15 thousand, whilst in Ontario there is Ottawa and Toronto, which are major cities.

This town is the only town out of the surrounding towns to have income decline, while the other towns are having their average incomes increased.

You go to this town, and the tim hortons has the same people who were outside the day before, having a baby at the age of 14 is normal to the people raised in this town.

I was wondering if anyone could elaborate on this, or have any idea as to what im talking about because I find it extremely interesting.

[Omega]

This topic is closely related to something I have dedicated a lot of time to studying. In fact I've written up a research proposal micro-analyzing the mechanisms through which the education level of a woman impacts her decision to have children. It has everything to do with opportunity cost, as does the second part of this thread, or so I suspect.

What caught my attention is that you mentioned this town, having the highest teen pregnancy rate, is also facing decreasing income levels. It could be the case that exogenous factors are causing the income level to fall, which in turn is what increases the teen pregnancy rate. If the returns to a woman's decision to enter the work force are declining, her opportunity cost of having children in terms of income forgone is decreasing as well. This will result in her utility maximizing equilibrium between income earned and number of children to shift such that she will have relatively more children and spend relatively less time working. If this is true, then increasing the opportunities for higher income employment or higher education would alleviate the problem. Is this town lacking in access to an adequate education?

That is just a thought though. It is perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that causation runs the other direction. It may be the case that an increase in teen pregnancy is causing average income to fall. What I think is most likely is that both cases are true and that the situations are compounding and worsening each other.

To sum things up and bring this back to the topic at hand, the problem may not be a lack of morals, but rather economics.

[Jimmyp117]

The economics and Education within this town are 100%, including a brand new highschool, with state of the art computer systems.

The people within this town, and I'm not going to say just this town, But this community as a whole, are the type of teenagers, who, when seeing something on a movie, or a television show, will take that and use it as culture, if you get what im saying.

The people in this town have no morals whatsoever, but the thing is, is most of the town is catholic, and alot of the people believe in the bible, but have absolutely no morals.

The are the type of people who can be presented with evidence of anything and just ignore it, they simply lack the will to learn, even the people who do graduate, don't really know anything about the world, or politics of the world, none of these people could find france on a map.

[Omega]

There is no connection between religion and morality. One of the most unfortunate thing in human history is religion's hijacking of the idea of morality. If anything religion is detrimental to morality.

[Jimmyp117]

No I know that, I'm just really trying to understand, where society is heading if that is all that the next generation would have to offer.

[Jinsue]

Obviously this is a rather location specific case as not all places have the 'smart' kids outcast by any means.

I think when you get down to it, in these types of communities the teenagers and young emerging generations lack motivation. I would say because of poor parenting largely as well as the fact that they have not faced any really drastic social changes recently. There have been no world wars where families die and the shock can really hit home, there have been no family crushing depressions like the great depression, and now more than ever people can get by by linching off of the government. It mightn't be a great way to live but it sure works so why bother learning proper life skills when there has been no reason to need them?

If you make the education system harder then students will be pushed and challenged to excel as best they can; if the education system has a more significant influence on students' futures then they have to step up and perform better or fall behind in the rat race. Once they smarten up they'll realise the importance of it all and so the ends will justify the means in their eyes.

[Jimmyp117]

We'll if this is the best the next generation has to offer, we are very very doomed.

I am having a very hard time finding anyone who knows about this, I would say its definitively the parents fault, in this small town in particular, it goes as far back as the grandparents, even the parents are as bad as the kids in this town, It was voted one of the most scariest places in canada, simply because of the inhabitants of the town. It's a very scary place to walk through at night LOL.

[Dorothy]

I am not convinced that education and moral behaviour are linked. Seems like the educated are not that high on the moral scale if you consider that the most high powered men in the world had good educations and still are found stealing and engaging in unethical and immoral behaviour. A man with a brief case can steal more than a man with a gun.

So where do ethics and morals come from? They have to come from within. You have to have a powerful reason to behave morally and ethcially when it is not in your own interests (which is where the real test comes.)

[Jimmyp117]

Yes that is true, but it almost seems as though these kids cannot get an education BECAUSE of their lack of morals.

It's the fact they have no morals that they do not learn, even if they get an education, they seem to not have a clue in their head about anything, as they are focused on highly fabricated outside priorities.

[Omega]

People act on incentive. Somehow their incentives are misaligned. I think to ask why they are misaligned is the first step in solving the problem.

Jimmyp seems to think this is due to television and pop culture.