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Your post is a good example of "tangential thinking."

There is no coorelation between the amount of homework and how much
a kid learns.  If the school lets the teachers get away with blow-off
activities
during the classroom instructional time, they are going to have to assign a
lot
of homework to make up the difference.

The Jewish and Asian parents that were complaining were making two
complaints.
The first was not enough homework.  The second was not learning enough.
These
are two different issues.

But the telling thing is that the Anglo parents wern't complaining that
their kids
were learning too much, but only that they were getting too much homework.

All this is really beside the point though, because what matters to the
society is
the content and retention of what is learned, not the quantity.  Society
needs
high retention of subjects like critial thinking and analysis, and the
ability to
retrieve, comprehend and manipulate information.  It does not need a lot of
retention of rote memory - ie: we don't need a lot of people walking around
who have memorized the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and can answer all the
questions on Jeopardy, yet are unable to understand that a lease on a car
costs more money over the long haul than just buying it.

The sad problem with the schools is that since everyone's brain works
differently
everyone has to learn to think critically differently.  In short, educating
people on
how to analyse and use the information in the world requires instruction
that is
customized to the student.  By contrast, rote memory such as memorizing the
US Constitution verbatim, is easily done with an instructional program that
is
not customized, and is standardized.

Customized tutoring is much more expensive than standardized instruction in
a
classroom with a one-to-many instruction to student ratio.  Since the U.S.
society
has a majority of uneducated people in it, the majority in society aren't
willing
to pay for the increased cost of a proper education program, and will only
pay for the rote-learning programs.  Nor are the majority of people equipped
to
properly instruct their own children, being uneducated and non-critical
thinkers
themselves, they can hardly be expected to raise children who are critical
thinkers.

Ideally, parents would use the rote-memory learning school programs for
subjects like mathematics, music, language and a few other subjects that
are basically all rote memory.  Subjects like science, history, government,
the ones that require critical thinking and analysis, these would be handled
by the private tutors.  But, we are far from this ideal, and instead what
happens
is students, left to their own devices, choose subjects like history and
government which are the worst suited for rote-learning, because they are
regarded as easy A's, and ignore subjects like math and language, which are
the best suited for rote-learning, because they are regarded as hard.  It's
no wonder we have an education problem in the country.

Ted

Baloney.  This is an argument made up by people that want to extend CAFE
to trucks.  Which by the way I think is a good thing anyway, at least for
any
truck that is smaller than 300 hp.  Nobody really knows how many people
bought trucks vs smaller cars because of CAFE.  You assume that people will
always go larger if the size they want isn't available.  Incorrect
assumption.

Sure, there's a lot of trucks out there.  You don't know if people would
have
bought trucks anyhow even if big heavy cars were available.  You might
consider
that the station wagon market collapsed when people started equating station
wagons with the Brady Bunch.  A truck and a station wagon have similar
utility in being able to haul around a lot of crap that is inconvenient to
haul
around in a big heavy car.  For all we know the reason the truck market
is perking along right now is that it's become the modern day replacement
for
a station wagon.  Half the trucks on the road I see have tops on the beds
anyway, making them look even more like station wagons.

Hmm you start out telling me I'm wrong then lame out by saying there's
no reason to argue.  Yah, right.

Yes it is, but as the anti-anti SUV people keep telling me, they didn't buy
their SUV's because their dicks were too soft, they bought their SUV's
because they -needed- them.  (although generally they fail to come up
with many reasons they actually need them that hold water, but I digress)

Your going to have big vehicles because people need them for hauling
around God-knows-what.

Your going to have small vehicles because people need them so they
don't spend all their money on keeping gas in a vehicle.

Nobody has come up with a solution that will either get rid of all the
small vehicles, or get rid of all the SUV's, unless you ban one or the
other.

I've traveled before.  In Europe people tend to live in a lot smaller area
and so mass transit becomes feasible, and a lot of people use it and don't
even own a vehicle.  I would hazard a guess that because of this, they
aren't
runing out to Home Depot every weekend for a load of plywood to fix up their
apartment.  I would also hazard a guess that in countries with a declining
population
that there's not a lot of families with a lot of kids that need hauling
around.  In
short, there's plenty of sociological reasons that a large car disparity
doesen't
exist in other countries that are stronger than CAFE factors.

I don't holdout much hope for a long term (ie: 3-5 year) serious increase in
fuel
prices.  There is just way too much proven oil reserves in the world for
that.  The shortages we are having now are just as a result of a few people
who happen to live on top of some of the largest reserves, having the
mistaken
belief that they actually own them.  But, our president George Bush has
shown
them who really owns all that oil, so I don't forsee any long term problems
getting it unless some whiny Democrat gets into office who actually thinks
that
people who live somewhere should be left alone!

Ted

You're right that he's wrong, but it's not so much that he's dimwitted as
that he's simply ignorant.