h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes there were appeals, as the hair incident occured several years ago. Following that, the case was settled for, if memory serves, 1.3 million.
I must admit here that after reading over my entry,(vague, and disconnected) I must remember to do these before the end of the first six pack. Further, I must also note that I really can't stand Clinton. (Gees, I really should be telling you something that you couldn't figure out on your own.)
O.J.? Well, I never really thought he actually murdered them. It just doesn't fit well on him. So I agree with the verdict as well, my point was that if he had not had the money to pay the lawyers, he would be sitting on death row with those guys most likely.
In defense of the public defenders, however, I can't deny that they are; overworked, underpaid, and horribly mistreated even by the people that they aren't getting paid enough to defend.
If the legal system in this country is to work as it was intended, then equal punishment for equal crime should be the systems primary goal. Along with that should be that every criminal have access to the same level of defense that would be accessible by the President. Not withstanding an individual's financial condition. I realize though that this is practically impossible. The amount of time that cases would take to prosecute would likely triple. So the people with no money suffer while the rich walk.
All of this is to say that even with the unequality of justice in this country, the system is basically functioning as well as it can in the environment that it must contend with. Trying to change it would just complicate matters making them even more incredulous. Knowing this, is it any wonder that average people attempt to exploit the system for all they can get? Is it surprising that Clinton walks while some other poor sucker sits in jail for 90 days for perjury because he lied about where he was at a certain time on a certain day?
Of course not, but it does make for some fairly interesting rantings.

Finally I too would be among the masses, if the oportunity came my way, and I saw the chance to make a buck from a ridiculous lawsuit (short of losing a portion of my anatomy that I couldn't easily regenerate). Because whether or not I beleive that these things are valid or stupid, and regardless of my distaste (bordering on hatred) for the average lawyer money, is after all, money and I am very susceptable to "Gold Fever". So hand me that boiling cup of coffee, though I think I could probably think of a better way to spill it, say, on my foot causing me to press the accelerator to the floor in reaction to the pain, thereby causing a fairly good but "mostly harmless" collision with some decorative but heavy object. In which I would sustain minor injuries in addition to the burn on my foot. Then sue for pain and suffering both the fast-food, and whoever put the large and heavy object in a place where someone who has just burned his foot and lost control of his vehicle could run into it.
Unfortunately, having found myself at the verge of these in the past, self preservation always seems to intervene and I miraculously avoid the potential incident which would have otherwise provided me with grounds for a wonderful lawsuit. After which I always curse myself for being so quick to recognize a hazardous situation, and missing the oportunity to become wealthy at last. Also, I unfortunately still have a moral fiber or two of my own which prevents me from being able to stage something. Well, that and the knowledge that no matter how perfectly I set it up, or how perfectly it was performed, I would in the end lose money rather than make any, I'm simply not that lucky.

Oh, well, life goes on, and for the most part, I'm happy.
Except that the battery in my digital watch just died.

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm picking on you, but this hit my mind as I was reading your reply.

"All of this is to say that even with the unequality of justice in this country, the system is basically functioning as well as it can in the environment that it must contend with. Trying to change it would just complicate matters making them even more incredulous."

That's apathy. People do things that are wrong because they know nobody will call them on it. Firestone and Ford figured nobody would call them on their wrongdoings. Southwestern Bell gets away with overcharging us in Oklahoma because they worked the law to where they can't get audited but once every four years, nobody (with influence) called them on it when they passed the law. It's up to us to get involved and tell our elected officials what we do and don't want them to do. Even if it's hopeless you are still making an effort. I personally think Jesse Ventura isn't quite as bright as some of our leaders, but he saw a political system gone wrong and he got involved. He DID something and I respect that a lot. I think Al Gore is a bright man who could do a lot, but he's too stuck sniffing out money. Have you seen Michael Moore's show, "The Awful Truth"? The episode where they sent a real pimp to Washington said it best.

Punative damage awards are there for a reason, they are to PUNISH a company that abuses the trust of its customers. If a company hurts you, how do you send it to jail? You can't put every employee in jail, and putting the assets in jail hurts workers who might have had nothing to do with it. Therefore punative damages are a form of punishment that is meant to both alter the behavior of the company and help compensate the victim. What do you do when the company makes more money from breaking the law and paying punative damages than by abiding the law? I heard recently (haven't been able to verify it yet) that McDonald's had another hot-coffee incident with sombody getting severe burns. Why do they have to serve the coffee so $^&! hot? Because they make more money by selling stale coffee than by taking the time and money to make a fresh pot every hour or so.

Picking? Heck no, I don't think so, and it wouldn't matter even if you were. I love this stuff, it gives me a chance to say what I feel instead of what is politically correct, and when wrong or out of context I expect to be called on it, that's what makes it so enjoyable. Even if not noted for being right. We all are here(at least I am) to have a little fun, express opinions that we would feel uncomfortable expressing in other environs, and to get the feed-back from those with differing opinions to add to our own collective reasoning concerning "Life the Universe and Everything".
Myself, I am usually reserved of voice and action, here, I can at least play the part of the "crazed lunatic activist" that lies cowering under some hidden rock within my collective psyche.


Now to the point. While it is true that the idea of "punitive damages" as a valid and plausible way of punishing a company for it's wrong doings. The American legal system has arranged itself in such a fashion as to encourage the practice of "wrong doing".
Consider, if you will, the most battered of all companies. I refer to that most "EVIL" of all corporations R.J.Reynolds. Even though the "punitive damage" suits continue to rise against this so called "purveyor of death" have any of it's executive staff had to take pay cuts??. Who, for all of the billions of dollars paid out to the survivors of cigarette related death victims, has had to bear the brunt of those outpourings of funds? Not the executives of R.J. Reynolds, but the farmers, and those who choose to pay no attention to the repeated warnings. It is I, those like me, and the farmers who have paid the highest price, not to mention the employees of all cigarette manufacturers that have been laid off and left to fend for themselves causing local increases in unemployment who have paid for the company's indiscretions, not the companies themselves.
Likewise, who has paid for the mishaps at McDonald's? Not Micky D's, no, as I'm sure you are aware very few of these are owned by the parent company, but by franchises. One large lawsuit can result in that franchise going bankrupt, costing not only the job of the hapless employee who was told by his boss to turn the temp up on the coffee, but the loss of a hundred jobs as the franchise collapses.
Were all of these employees to blame for doing as they were told?
Think about it. Punitive damage lawsuits rarely (if ever) reach the executives, who are truely the ones at fault, but only hurt the people that they are supposed to be helping, by causing higher prices and higher unemployment.
I agree, however, that under the current set of laws this is often the only recourse, but ask yourself this. Is the president of Firestone going to have to take a pay cut in order to pay for the damage suits that will eventually result from all of these hearings?
If you believe so, ask the guys who were involved in the developement of the suspect tires. In fact, ask all of the Firestone employees who will be layed off due to loss of sales on Firestone tires. Then ask yourself again concerning the validity of "punitive damage" lawsuits.

Hit me back. I dare you.
(He says with an uncharacteristic leer on his face).

Until next time. Smile. It's still a pretty good life after all and remember there's nothing so broken that a few good men can't fix, so long as it's not dead.

Oh, dang it. I almost forgot.
Concerning telephone companies. I too am under the thumb of an overbearing telephone company. I like most on the east coast am subjected to the supressive, repressive forces of "Sprint". I currently am employed by an ISP, but even that cannot break the grip of Sprint. I requested a DSL line for my residence. I am well within the service range, and I am capable of paying for the service, yet Sprint says that my own employer cannot provide me with the sevice I want, and what reason?? They have given none. Why? Because the don't have to. In my portion of Virginia they are THE ONLY local telephone service I and many others can get.
Last I heard this constitutes a monopoly, last I heard this was an illegal situation. Sprint doesn't care. They know that eventually they will be called on this. Sprint will then be done as "Ma Bell" was and like the Gov. would like to do Microsoft, they will be fined, and then split into smaller companies and in the end the executives will double their income while employees suffer.
So there's to that.

Congress is looking at passing a law requiring auto and auto part manufacturers to keep better records of safety testing. This is a direct result of Firestone "missing" safety documents pertaining to the current situation. Failure to keep the proper documents would be a CRIMINAL offense! Hoo-rah! Unfortunately I think that means the corporate secretaries will take the brunt of any investigation. Write your congressman and let them know how you feel about this legislation! Let him know how you feel on everything!

Too darn lazy, and far too nonplussed by the whole political system.
I mean it's all well and good to rant and rave, but as I said before, I still believe the system is working as well as it can under current conditions.

Then if the system is working as well as it can, it is time to replace the system. If it weren't for the fact that we're all eating well, this system of government would have been overturned a generation ago. Not that that would have been a bad thing... Thomas Jefferson himself said we should have a revolution every generation. In nearly two and a quarter centuries, the US has managed to muck up its legal system with piles of foolish and outdated regulations, legal precedents, and an unnavigable bureacracy. Because of its complexity, it is nearly impossible to locate exactly which part has gone wrong in any given situation. Sound familiar? It should... it's exactly the sort of thing the colonists rebelled against in the first place.

Didn't somebody say that democracy was the worst of all possible pollotical systems................ except all the ones that had come before?

That was the opinion of our 'founding fathers'. That's why they formed a representative democracy. Not that it works much better. No matter how you set up a government, somebody will find a way to rig it in their favor. That is why the people represented by the government must stay involved. If you don't fight for your rights, you will lose them.

Oh, I agree. Just because it often seems as though taking action gets you nowhere, doesn't mean that it isn't important to make yourself heard/give it a go. At worst, it can prevent things going further down the toilet. Unfortunately, given that this kind of thing takes time and effort, it if you do get involved in something, it would probably be about an issue you feel very strongly indeed about, and then the slowness of change (or even the fact that virtually nothing does change, at least when you are there to see it) can breed total dissallusionment. Still, some fantastic improvements have been made to people's lives. I wonder if all those people who fought for women's rights would think it was a wasted effort (all right, we are not at an ideal point now. I am arguing against my naturally cynical and bitter instincts here).

The trouble is that most of the nations who have effected big improvements (or at least changes) in the way their society is set up have done so only as a result of crisis - revolution, defeat in war etc - and whilst these factors have made, say, Japan or America arguably among the best places to live now, I personally wouldn't have wanted to live through the traumatic period during and immediately following said crisis. Revolutions and wars are nasty businesses.

Fortunately the public's increasing distaste with war and bloody revolutions is having an effect. Most of the revolutions that occured at the end of the cold war were relatively bloodless, Yugoslavia being the exception. Looking at the Gulf War you realize it was sanitized by the media. Daharan (sp?) Road was gruesome, but overall the war wasn't as violent as most.

Yes, take most of the East of Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And Germany. And hopefully Korea. Perhaps this is one area where nauseatingly overdone media coverage will have a positive effect.

The wars may have been bloodless, but so many books offered to our kids today aren't! (How do you like my seguay back to the topic?)

Somebody a long time ago said something to the effect that of course pedophelia should be banned because its illegal...but that's not entirely true. The act of pedophilia is illegal, as is child pornography, but writing about pedophilia or about child pornography is not illegal. Following the same logic, any book that contains murder should not be given to children to read.

While I don't believe Lolita belongs in a Primary School's library, it certainly belongs in a high school's library. EL Doctorow's novel Ragtime was assigned reading for me in my Junior year of high school (age 16-17). There is one fairly graphic scene in the novel involving a character hiding in a closet and observing a woman undress. I was definitely happy I attended a liberal school.

On the subject of banning hate speech and racism in books, Narnia isn't the only children's classic that contains such problems. Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan novels are filled with racist remarks about Arabs and Africans. Some have argued for banning Mark Twain's Huck Finn because of the use of the "N" word, even though Mark Twain was a strong abolitionist, and its quite clear from reading the novel he isn't being racist.

As suggested, the best way to deal with racism in classics is not to ban the classics, but instead to use it as a means to start a discussion.

As a final note, there is one book that is filled with sex, violence, and hatred. It is banned in America's public schools. Some of the same people who argue for the banning of other books, are arguing for returning this book to the school reading list, despite its sex, violence, and hatred. Of course, the book I am talking about is The Bible.

Who's Bible? Well...the Bible of those who wish to return it to the school reading list, of course, not Your Bible or My Bible, they get to decide ... what a silly question.

How this relates to Harry Potter, I don't know, but at least it gets us back on books.

"As a final note, there is one book that is filled with sex, violence, and hatred. It is banned in America's public schools."

I don't believe the Bible has been pulled out of any school libraries, and students are allowed to carry them with them if they want. They just can't open them in the middle of a lecture or when they should be doing other work. Teachers aren't allowed to teach the Bible, but in certain circumstances it can be used as a reference (i.e., the Bible's influence on world history). I believe the Bible has every right to be in a school library, as well as the Koran and other religious texts.
I also believe that just because a book has a word that may offend some people doesn't mean it shouldn't be in a school library. There's a father of a local student trying to get Huckleberry Finn banned because the N word 'distressed' his son. Taken out of context it might be distressing, but the book has to be judged as a whole. I've read plenty of books that had little details that some people would burn the whole book for, but the merits of the books often overpowered any negative tone that could be interpreted.

The thing that most fail to realize is the simple fact that when you tell a child no, he wants to know why.
Why should we hide these or any other books from kids or anyone else, have we moved suddenly back to Berlin during the reign of Hitler. Literature, like movies, is just that. It is the parent that allows the child's mind to wander into areas best left alone.
I have two children; daughter aged nine, son aged six. My daughter's favorite character in the movies is Sylvester Stalone mostly for First Blood, then Cobra, then Cliffhanger. For T.V. she absolutely is in love with the Crypt Keeper from "Tales From The Crypt". She will not grow up to be the perpetrator of some ghastly replay of Columbine, in fact she will readily tell you the difference between what is seen on T.V., in Computer Games, and in the Movies and that which is real.
Let's face it when you see the same guy killed in five different movies, you get the idea that it's fake. Even before it's pointed out to you. My daughter and son can pick out the actors they have seen in other movies, or even in T.V. comercials. They both understand the difference between reality and the fictional. Further they both know and understand the finality of death, having had pets, and relatives who have died, traumatic as such an experience is to a child, it robs them of the truth of life to hide such things from them.
I get so upset when I hear someone say, "Oh you shouldn't bring kids to a funeral, it far too upsetting for them." IF THEY ARE NOT CONFRONTED WITH THE REALITY OF DEATH THEN THEY WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE REALITY OF BEING HUMAN.
Screen what my kids see? Sure we do, we watch it first, then we watch it with them. Pointing out the various actors, pointing out glitches in continuity and cinematography (and pointing out fundamental flaws in the behavior of certain characters), all the while enjoying the movie.
Want a real shocker, the favorite of computer games on our home network, which at last count was five computers, is MechWarrior3. We have a team that is nearly unstoppable, but if we lose? Well hey, no-one is upset, we just work on our strategies a little more, and try again. During a game? Heck yeah we yell at each other. "Dad! I'm getting my butt blown off over here, where are ya?!?" My son said to me just today.(His computer is next to mine). I didn't get there in time as I was dealing with my daughters onslaught of missiles at the time. My wife finished him off, then the two of them (wife, and daughter) laid me to rest. After the game, my son says to me. "Dad, don't you remember in Top Gun, never leave your wingman. It's okay though we'll get'em next time." Then we all came to the dining room and had some ice cream together. Happily I might add.
All this talk about society, and violence in movies, and on T.V. is just most parents saying "Well I'm not to blame." In other words "JUST A DAMN CHEAP WAY TO GET AROUND THE FACT THAT IT IS THEIR FAULT AND NO ONE ELSES. Let me say that again. IT IS THE FAULT OF THE PARENTS AND NO ONE ELSES. I don't care how many violent movies a kid sees, I don't care how many violent video games a child plays, I don't give a blasted flying shot at a rolling doughnut how many guns there are floating around the house. A child who has had the proper attention and guidance from his/her parents will not simply pick up a gun and arbitrarily shoot half a dozen people, there is no way in heaven or on earth you can convince me that it was due to some game, or some movie.
When a child does this it is because he/she has run into a problem that he/she cannot cope with. He or she doesn't feel that mom and dad can help them, probably because they know what the response will be. "Oh gees son/daughter, you think that's a problem? Why don't you grow up. If you had to deal with... " blah de blah de blah. The exact words vary but come to the same. They can't go to the teachers because they, again, know what they will hear. To us it's an old story but to that or any other particular child it is something new, and seems insurmountable. It is the job of the parents to make themselves, not just mom and dad, but their child's friend and trusted companion. The person they know they can come to with any problem without fear of being berated for it, or pushed aside because daddy/mommy had a tough day at work.
Our formula? Easy, our kids are the most important things in our world and we tell them so. We also tell them that we will give to them anything they NEED, they will have to work hard for what they want just like me.
We tell them that when they have a problem, We will listen to their side, and then we will listen to the other side and we will advise them as to how to handle it. We will sit and talk with them, explaining their options and when necessary we will intervene on their behalf when we beleive they are in the right.
We are consistant, what is wrong today will be just as wrong tomorrow. What is right today, will be just as right tomorrow. If we make a promise, We will deliver, or have a very good reason why not which we will readily give when asked, also there will be interest paid on the debt. In accordance with this, We expect the exact same thing from them.
NO PUNISHMENT IS DEALT UNTIL ALL THE FACTS ARE AVAILABLE. Usually it ends with an admission of guilt and the obvious question, "What do you think should be done about this?" (They know the harsher they are on themselves, the easier my wife and I will be). But we know when there is no admission that we must search further for the answer. More importantly, they know we will and that we will stand behind them.
There are no secrets kept unless they will benefit a family member(Christmas for example). They know that if they confide in us, their secret is safe unless some action needs to be taken, and it is their decision as to the nature of that action.
These are the basics. So much more could be relayed here, but there is neither time nor room.
Simply put. I have no qualms about taking the responsibility for the actions of my children, for they do now and will in the future follow what I and my wife have taught them. (The size of their eyes when they saw what a .44 magnum does to a gallon jug of water, I thought I was going to have to pick their very eyeballs up, dust them off and try to stuff them back into their faces).

One final note please. I used to hate seat belts till I had kids myself. IF YOU DON'T MAKE YOUR CHILDREN BUCKLE UP WHEN THEY ARE IN THE CAR IT SAYS VERY PLAINLY THAT YOU DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER THEY LIVE OR DIE. I buckle these days, because I make them buckle. Fair is fair after all, right? (and no, I haven't been in any serious accidents where seatbelts would have made the difference, nor do I want to be. In fact I haven't been in any accidents, short of a couple of bumps that didn't amount to five bucks worth of damage???? knock on wood.)

Oh well, life is still for the most part, fun.
Isn't this a great place, I feel so much better now.
Next subject please.

You deserve a big hand for that and speaking for all parents on H2G2 I am sure everyone will agree. Hell, it ought to be on the front page. And my husband, as a teacher, would applaud it the loudest. It puts the "parent" back in "parenting". Teachers are having to do that increasingly and aren't getting so much teaching done, and God knows where that will lead us.

I'll be the devil's advocate here...
So what do you do when the parents WON'T be responsible, or when parents don't know how to handle certain situations? How do you help those children develop?

This is a question I don't believe there is a good answer for. First thing that comes to mind is (shoot the lazy b******d's) punish the parent instead of the child, but what then. Then you have a bunch of kids with parents in jail, parents loose their jobs, then you have a bunch more homeless indigent kids. This is definately not the right idea. The point is short of preventing child birth all together, it is impossible to force a person to be a good parent, more-so if they have no desire to be.
Unfortunately parenting is for the most a learned skill, we learn from our own parents, and if we learned correctly we also found out about and learned from their mistakes. Even more unfortunately in far too many cases what we learned was not what we should have learned.
Is there a solution to this delema?
If so I don't know what it is short of transforming the US into a better version of the former Soviet Union where in the state would take over parenting for those that didn't want/couldn't do the job themselves.
!
Hey maybe if there were the serious threat of that actually happening?????
Like this if your child chronically misbehaves, the government takes over raising it, and then after a while sends it back home to spy on your subversive behavior.!!!!
Will it have to come to that???
If the trends don't change. Look out people.
Remember this, the last few presidential campaigns have focused on reducing the role of government in daily life. Note that neither of the candidates in this race have mentioned reducing government roll in anything yet have both indicated that they would increase the governments role concerning prices of various products and services. Further they they have promised that the government would invade other areas of commercialism as well, concerning what types of movies we can watch, what type of music is acceptable, what type of language is acceptable in the media, the level of violence on T.V., in other words were back to the A-Team again.
Watch out people it's beginning to sound alot like government control of everything, look around, there's always a trade off. If we get the gov. out of one area we let'em in another.

Anyway life is still for the most part a barrel of laughs
never a dull moment, and so many things to complain about.
Still having fun, and awaiting the next subject eagerly.

It is a subject that we could stick to for a while. What do you do?

* What do you do when your kids are ready and willing to concentrate in class and half the other kids are running round the classroom and swearing at the teacher?
* What do you do when you see parents talking to their kids in public in a way that is offensive or just plain stupid?
* What do you do when you see someone's child going to pot (that may be a typically English expression - it basically means getting screwed up) because both parents are out at work? Maybe both parents really do have to go to work to feed their families?
* What do you do when you see that a parent rejects its child?
* What do you do when you know that a parent is an alcoholic?

These type of people will not listen to you. They will not listen to the social services people. They will not listen to the education authorities. Deep down, they probably even love their children in their own ways and separating them from their kids won't be the answer.

If the State wants to intervene, it would be far more constructive to put any money into showing parents what they are doing wrong and helping them to do things better - without shaking fingers at them, of course.

Take the worries off their shoulders and leave them free to enjoy their children. I should get on my soap box now and blame the consumer society (there are families who own only the clothes they stand up in and their Nintendo with 30 games.) and peer pressure resulting from that. And blame whatever it is has caused this lowering in standards - standards such as responsibility and a sense of value.

On a more practical level, teach people to cook and feed their kids properly - wrong food also causes lethargy and concentration problems. And it needn't necessarily cost more to eat sensibly.

Perhaps there's just too much noise going on. No wonder we all have trouble concentrating sometimes.

But - can we have any influence on any of these factors?

Taking each of your questions in turn.
* What do you do when your kids are ready and willing to concentrate in class and half the other kids are running round the classroom and swearing at the teacher?
You asked for it, so here it is. This is an issue of respect plain and simple. You'll find that the teachers who have the respect of their class do not find themselves in this situation. Also bare in mind the the respect of a child is not gained from their fear of what you will do, but their fear of what you might do. An example? Sure. An episode of Cosby in which the young Vici (?) took a job as a substitute and almost gave up the career because the class made fun of him, he in turn on the advise of an older teacher took some steps and got the class' attention. Horribly abreviated as the episode was it still proved the point. It is important for any teacher no matter what grade or subject to get both the attention of the class and it's respect.
This can be managed in many ways. My wife marvels at my ability with children sometimes, she questions me, "Why do they listen to you and not to anyone else?" I figure I've been around longer than they have, and I just outsmart them. I use tact, I laugh everytime I feel like I want to be mad. I give them credit where credit is due, and I advise rather than command, and I explain why one choice is better than the other.
Example. My son (6) changed the settings for his desk top. It looked very wierd and it made it difficult for him to navigate through his system. I told him to fix it so that it was at least usable. Of course he couldn't remember what he had done.
I wanted to get mad and say things like. "I go to work every day and fix everybody elses problems and now I've got to come home and fix yours too? Why did you do this? Okay, no computer while I'm not here!" Instead I laughed and said. "Well I'm proud of you for getting in there and LEARNING about the settings, but what you've done here makes it very hard for you to do anything doesn't it? ... "How about this, if you change something remember what you changed, so if it doesn't work you can change it back. How about you and I fix it, huh kiddo?"
This of course worked out very well, and though he still pokes and presses stuff, he remembers what he has done, and though this behavior has resulted in my having to reinstall Windows 98 on his computer twice, I won't have to do it again because he now knows how. Simply, he is more important than the computer or my agrivation, and I feel that about all children. Their well being and growth should be paramount to anything else in our lives. Isn't that why teachers are teachers? It certainly couldn't be because of the money.

In order to save space, I'll go one at a time.

Question 2
* What do you do when you see parents talking to their kids in public in a way that is offensive or just plain stupid?
The definition of "stupid" is at question here. Most of the time what you are seeing if the parent is yelling and ranting at the child, is an outpouring of frustration at the childs behavior and their inability to cope with it.
There is nothing you can really do in this situation except feel sorry for the child. My comments concerning government intervention were made with humor in mind and not as a serious proposal. We as parents must always strive to remember what it was like to be a child. Qustions which may seem "stupid" or pointless to us, usually have some great meaning to the child or at least they think it has some importance. Even I must at times tell my kids, "You don't need to know that." or even "Well, I'm not sure as to the why, but I will try to find out." The point is, that a child in this day and age needs all the answered questions that they can get, no matter how trivial those answers my seem to us as adults.
A sad situation which occured in my presence was a mother I saw on a bus, the child was looking out the window and apparently had asked his mother what the animals were that he could see. She told him "Honey, those are cows, that's where we get bacon from."
Obviously this could have been just a momentary mental "burp", yet sadly it may also have been that the mother truley didn't know.
I any case, poor education still can not be blamed soley on teachers, nor soley on the parents. Poor education can only be blamed on the current educational system, which mandates that children be moved through the system without regard to what they know or don't know.
Yet if we hold children back, what happens then? They are ridiculed by the kids who moved ahead, and by the ones they are now in class with. This child will most likely be forever an underachiever.
What then is the appropriate solution?
Honestly? I have no clue.
This is an area for the structuraly minded, who can account for the learning speed of each individual child and I ain't him.

Next to follow.