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[agnoster]

I've done some math. My courseload is 30 LP, or "Leistungspunkte" (Achievement Points?), each LP is estimated to be 30 hours of work. The semester is about 13 weeks. 900 hours over 13 weeks comes to about 70 hours a week, plus my 80hr/mo job (19ish hours a week)... my schedule's gonna be pretty packed. I've been more on less on vacation for

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[heatrose]

hm, well, to use the same metaphor, i'd say its more that there are vast disparities between parents (aka socioeconomic classes), and there are certain very powerful congealed masses that have managed to acquire more parental power than most of the parents themselves (corporations)... and there is a system that encourages this to happen (modern american capitalism).

going in another direction with the metaphor but keeping the congealed-mass-pseudo-parents in the mess, it's also more like blaming the teacher when some of the kids are bullying most of the other kids, and the parents who have the time, money, and interest are doing even more bullying than the kids, of everyone. yeah, so there are a lot of groups to blame in there, but the teacher should be doing certain things, like taking the sticks away from the bullies and teaching them the things that are really important for their education (or at least trying damn hard to), and not accepting the bullying by the congealed-pseudo-parents who have no business being involved at all (even if they offer him apples/campaign contributions).

(in fact, this metaphor doesnt do a bad job when you think about some charter school businesses)

of course there are other issues-- the media, the culture of political apathy/felt and real disempowerment that runs rampant, etc. the latter i think is what you were getting at, and that's definitely fair, but one of the few things obama was not vague about before the election was in saying health care is a right, not a privilege. and i wasnt expecting him to mean health care is a right-- for businesses who want to profit from it.