Quite the enlightening nutshell. Care to elaborate?
I have seen first hand the sense of entitlement that our culture has today. It is prevalent in schools, sports, the workplace etc. Entitlement destroys one's work ethic and sours one's overall outlook on life in general. As a nation, we have seen the temporary hand up turned into the perpetual hand out. For too many people, dependency upon others has become a way of life.
As a way of potentially addressing some of the academic woes in our society and socialistic leanings of the entitlments, I would suggest that education be returned back to being a privilege. Not a financial privilege, but an I need education to better myself in the world and therefore value my education kind of privilege. If a student doesn't want to be in school, doesn't want to learn, he or she is stealing the resources of the other students. Imagine a teacher that would have a classroom full of engaged students, or at least void of the students who abuse the system. How much more would they accomplish? How much less stress would the teacher and other students have? By eliminating the easy out of government entitlements, each person would become individually responsible for themselves. By tying it to a high school diploma, the student would have 12 years of purposeful education under their belt. With that as their upbringing, would they not more likely be a positive contributor to society?
As for the government, there are not too many projects the national government has been involved in that they have not screwed up. There is a reason our constitution was written as a document that more described what the government cannot do instead of describing all its potential growth. We are the United States and I think the Federal side needs to be minimized and the state and local side be better utilized. The further away you concentrate the power from the people, the less likely it is that power actually represents the people who chose it.
Thanks for the question. I hope my musings were clear as it is difficult for me to write complete thoughts on the mobile.
