What I wonder is, what are students getting out of these core classes they don't want to be taking? Not much, in my experience as both a student and a teacher. I retained nothing from the stats and science courses I took in college. I learned just enough to get a good grade, and promptly forgot it. I teach writing classes, which for most college students are their least favorite class. And, I'm not sure how much my students who do not want to be there or do any writing are getting out of it. They take as many short cuts as possible. Some plagiarize. Would they be better off not being required to take a writing course, but instead, when they get into a situation in which the quality of their writing matters--a course in their field of interest that is writing-intensive, a job that requires writing--they could work on their writing because they were motivated to do so? I don't know, but I'm not sure they'd be any worse off.

Same here. I'm also not seeing anti-college bias coming from the poor. At all. I work at an inner-city university. If anything, the poor are far more likely to buy into the myth that if you just go to college and work hard you'll get a good job and be set for life more than any other group. My first-generation college students are much, much less cynical about the value of an education than others, and certainly much less cynical than most people in their 20s and 30s I know who have been to college. Nearly everybody I see questioning the value of a college education today is a college-educated person who has experienced first-hand the problems that come along with accruing debt in your late teens and early twenties to pay for an education that does not in any way ensure you'll get any job, much less one with decent pay.

I'm not really sure of the question. My DS is six years older than his little sister, and will be seven years older than his little brother. He gets lots of privileges they don't get, obviously. He also has significantly more responsibility. If we're talking about things like the first-born inheriting everything or something, then no. But I do think an older child shouldn't be limited to what their younger siblings are able to do, so in that sense I'd say they are "entitled" to things the youngers can't do, at least not yet. I also had the same experience others mention of my sister being allowed to do things at a younger age than I was. Things I had to wait until I was out of the house to do, she was able to do at 16 and 17.

Between $2000 and $3500. Closer to one end or the other depending on whether I'm teaching at the time. It's enough to get by, but not really enough at this point to do things we'd like to do, like saving up for college and retirement and a down payment on a house. We're happy, though.

This has nothing to do with homeschoolers; in fact, it has exemptions for home educators. If a student graduates before they are 18, they're fine. Think of it this way: the way things are right now, education is compulsory until 16. But, if somebody graduates from high school at 14, which sometimes happens, they aren't forced to keep going for two more years. I wouldn't touch the HSLDA with a ten-foot pole, personally. They seem to mainly be pushing a political agenda that I don't agree with, rather than providing help for homeschoolers. Plus, the vast majority of legal challenges to homeschooling involve divorce/custody situations, and the HSLDA won't get involved with that, so they really aren't providing their members with legal help when it's going to be most needed.

I would be very unhappy and uncomfortable with that. I send DS to VBS at a large Episcopal church each summer, and nothing even remotely theologically objectionable (to me) goes on there. It's all about God's love. This summer, DS wanted to also go to a VBS that a few of his friends were going to, at an Evangelical Covenant Church. I was a bit worried, but so far it seems like it's going fine. They talk about God's love and how everybody sins but God forgives us. There hasn't, as far as I can tell, been any "You must believe in Jesus if you want to go to heaven" talk, which I'm extremely glad about. I'm actually going to hang out there tonight with DS, because he wants me to come along, so I'll see for myself.

This describes us pretty much exactly. I think part of the issue is that everybody wants their child to have a better, easier life. My DH's parents didn't go to college. They had to deal with my FIL being laid off for about a year after the factory he worked in closed, and my MIL having to take on low-paying retail jobs, and both of them doing work that was pretty physically demanding (and that caused, for my FIL, some physical problems). To them, my DH going to college would mean he never had to struggle like they did. My DH and I are coming from a totally different place. I have an M.A. and he has a doctorate. We're struggling with a horrible job market, particularly for academics, wages that aren't enough to cover our student loans, and having invested a lot of time and money into degrees that don't seem to be providing us with a reasonable pay-off. So, for us, it often seems like having our children take a different route would spare them the struggles we've had.

I completely agree with this. I think it's wrong that parental income must be considered in giving out financial aid for people over 18. Parents shouldn't have to foot the bill for college if they don't want to, no matter how much money they have. But, I think we should totally overhaul how college is paid for, anyway, and have a system that is much more publicly funded, like they do in much of the world.

Our main library, which has the teen center, has the same policy. I tend to think the idea is to keep out creepy adults who might be going in there to try to pick up teens. I find it a bit annoying, because I like to read YA fiction, and I can't get into the room. I also think it's overly paranoid. But, given that a lot of the Detroit libraries seem to be places where sometimes-intoxicated homeless people and vagrants spend the day, I can see why, in this context, it might make sense.

Some libraries have children or teen sections that are closed off from the rest of the library. I know that they have a pretty noisy story hour at both our main and branch libraries: they just hold it in a section where the noise won't bother people looking for a quiet place to read.

This is very well-put. I like it.

Sure, if we're talking about a violent rapist living next door. But, if we're talking about somebody who was convinced of statutory rape--consensual sex with a willing partner who was a teen under a certain age--then I'm not seeing what danger the daughter would be in, unless she was the type to seek out sex with an older man. I got hit on by plenty of times by older men when I was a teenager. I worked as a waitress in a pizza place when I was 16, and it was pretty routine for older male patrons to hit on me (I assume that's the case for most teen girls waiting tables). I ignored them, and they shut up. That was it. Sure, if I'd responded positively to their advances, and wanted to sleep with them, we may have ended up having sex. But, they weren't looking to force me into anything, and I was totally and completely uninterested in any kind of romantic or sexual involvement with older men. They just didn't pose a danger to me, at all. This is why I really take issue with putting men whose crimes are consensual sexual relationships with teens on the registry. I really don't see how those men pose a threat. If your daughter is the type who is going to respond positively to the advances of an older man (assuming he'd even make them--many of these men had the relationships in their 20s, and now that they are older, aren't interested) then that's a problem that I don't think a registry is going to solve. If your daughter isn't the type who is going to respond to the advances of an older man, then a man who has no history of violent assault doesn't pose a threat.

I was in my 20s before I knew that anybody believed the earth was less than 10,000 years old. I think it's largely regional. I grew up on the east coast, and I honestly didn't know a single person, no matter how religiously conservative, who didn't believe in an ancient earth. I now live in SE Michigan, and I still don't know anybody, no matter how religiously conservative, who thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

I'm an Episcopalian. While I don't personally know, I trust scientists who do know how to measure these things that the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. I don't think there's any possible way the earth is less than 10,000 years old, though.

Our main library has, during the summer, Wii competitions once every week or two, in the teen section. There isn't a Wii there full-time. The idea is definitely to draw kids to the library. I don't know, I think it could work. I know that in our library, they want to make the teen center a safe "hang out" place for teens, and not just a place to check out books, especially in the summer.

It's not that they are hovering, it's that they are asking for information that it is illegal to give out. It's that an 18 year old is a legal adult, and so legal rights they didn't have before kick in. It's not just parents you can't discuss grades with. I cannot discuss my students' grades with ANYBODY without written permission. If the lines of communication you have with your child shut down to the point where he or she won't talk about grades or mental health issue or assaults, then that's a serious problem in the parent-child relationship. I would not blame the school for that.

Just don't plan on going into academia. I don't know a single person who went into academia in the last 5-10 years--including people who actually landed a tenure-track job within a few years of completing their doctorate--who aren't struggling financially in a serious way. My BIL who didn't go to college makes more money than my DH with his doctorate. Unless you are independently wealthy, it's a horrible move. I feel like the (numerous) professors who talked me out of getting my teaching certificate in a two year grad program (which still would have gotten me in a lot of debt and probably wouldn't have guaranteed me a job--a good friend of mine has a degree and teaching cert from a very prestigious public university, is $80K in debt, is left wondering every year if her contract will be renewed, and now is being asked to take a pay cut for the second year in a row) and instead urged me on to grad studies in English lit are guilty of malpractice.

I'd say if the registries aren't making that distinction, that's a really big problem.

The problem is, if that's the case, how can we possibly justify making young people foot the bill for it? "Hey, if you want any chance of getting a decent job--not a sure shot, mind you, but just a chance--you'd better be willing to pay about $10K/year if you're going to go to a public university and $30K/year if you're going to a private university, and you can expect the cost to rise about 7-10% every year"? That is just wrong. And I don't blame anybody--young people or parents--for being mad and cynical about it.

I do think for many people that's it. The thing is, you can point to how a college degree will pay off down the line, but many people in their 20s are frustrated because they are trying to start their lives, and being saddled with a huge load of student loan debt while being unable to find a good-paying job, if they can find a job at all, is very frustrating. People want to be starting their lives. They want to be marrying, starting families, putting down payments on homes, and those things seem more and more out of reach. At the very time when these young people should be able to start building their lives, they can't. Sure, when they are in their 40s, they'll probably begin reaping the rewards of their college degree, as their peers who didn't go to college hit ceilings in salary and advancements. But, for now, they're stuck trying to figure out how to pay $300+/month on student loans on top of all of their other expenses, when they are barely making more than minimum wage, and peers who didn't go to college are, at this point, often doing better.

I live in an area with a horrible economy, but when I was job searching several years back, jobs looking for somebody with a BA and 3-5 years experience, paying $18-20K, were typical of what was out there. My husband made $24K when he began his job. He had a master's degree and about five years of research experience at the time. This isn't about individuals making bad choices. This is about a broken system, where college costs keep rising and wages for new grads (those lucky enough to find jobs) aren't even close to keeping pace.

You wouldn't let your girls be at home alone if you lived next door to a guy who, when he was in his late teens or early 20s, had consensual sex with a girlfriend who was 15 or 16? Why? What possible threat would he pose to your daughters?

I'm a bit wary any time we only get one side of the story. In this case, social services really can't say anything, so we're only hearing what the dad has to say. Without knowing the details, I'm not willing to say that it's an outrageous abuse of power.

I'm not anti-college. I think the university systems that have in Europe are excellent. I would love for my children to enter a system like that. I am very much troubled by our American system, though. College costs are rising much, much faster than inflation, and wages are stagnating. Students are coming out with debt that they can't pay off even if they are fortunate enough to find a job. And that's only going to get worse. I can't blame parents who took a second mortgage on their home and had their kids get $20K into debt to finance a college education being bitter and cynical when said child hasn't been able to find a job after two years of looking and is living back at home. And sadly that is the reality for many, many families right now.

I think that's exactly the problem. If she opens this up to the aunt, then how many other guests, maybe from the groom's side, will be offended that they didn't get invited? We just don't know.