Fact Checker Needs to Check his Facts

Let me first respond to that Farang Dave’s fact checker comment, “a man who has been married 4 times and lectures the rest of us on how to have a happy marriage has some enormous balls.” Clearly he has no concept of experience.
Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment. I stated the mistakes I have made to show that I have walked down the paths that I am advising others not to go down. And yes the submittals I make are my opinions. However,
I believe I have ample experience upon which to base my opinion of the US educational system. I have had six children go through it, and have taught at the University level. My second wife was a grade school teacher.

There is so much statistical evidence of the poor educational outcomes for boys that even the biased mainstream media are starting to report on it. Try to read The Atlantic Journal article from July/August 2010, The End of Men. Also, here is an excerpt from, The Growing Gender Gaps in College Enrollment and Degree Attainment in the U.S. and Their Potential Economic and Social Consequences; Prepared by: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, Prepared for: The Business Roundtable Washington, D.C. May 2003:

“While post-secondary degree attainment clearly has improved among the nation’s adults over the past two decades, the gains in degree attainment were far more pronounced among women than men. As will be documented in this report, the size of the gender gaps in college enrollment and degree attainment have widened considerably over the past two decades. Yet, attention to the issue of gender imbalance in post-secondary education has been less than adequate. Objective analyses of key educational outcome data clearly indicate that males continue to fall behind females in the primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational areas. <emphasis added by OFB> With modest exceptions, the research community has been relatively quiet on this issue.7 Mention of this problem has frequently been met with strong opposition from women’s advocacy groups with concerns sometimes
rooted in the fear that drawing attention to the dramatic reversal of the “traditional gender gap” will result in a movement to slow down the sustained progress made by women…..The weaker degree of educational attainment among
men is an issue that should be of concern to not just men but to women and to society as a whole. From an economic perspective, weaker educational attainment among men results in a reduction in the size of the skilled labor force—a resource
that is vital to keep the nation’s economic engine humming—and in labor productivity and economic growth. In the social arena, men play numerous roles: as husbands, fathers, breadwinners, and role models for young men. Marginalization
of men on the educational front will jeopardize the ability of men to perform these vital economic and social functions that are key to strengthened family life and safe, stable and prosperous communities.”

Note this was 8 years ago. Nothing has changed in the mind set that we need to do ever more to encourage and mentor young women to attain educational goals, while kicking to the curb any concern over the lagging performance of boys.

Here is a graphic of the trends on US college degree attainment percentages by gender:

Stipulating these numbers have not changed in the past 4 years, I may have slightly over stated the percentages when I said 2/3rds of college degrees are going to women. It is closer to 60% than 66%. I don’t feel this disproves my statement.

As to his assertion that I am “despicable and shows an attitude similar to men in Arab countries who harass women who don't wear a scarf or a burqa in public” for not being willing to throw my sons under the bus in order to (maybe)
improve the safety of our sisters and daughters on campus, I think he is totally missing the point. He seems to ignore the text of the edict from the civil rights wing of the Department of Education which I provided. It just doesn’t suit
his argument so he ignores it. Please tell me how letting panels of academics, absolutely including a Women’s Studies professor, adjudicate rape cases on campus, with a standard of proof that is merely slightly more than 50% probability
of guilt, is going to protect any woman on campus.

He cites a study to disqualify my assertion that campus assaults are grossly inflated, http://www.ncjrs.govpdffiles1/nij/205521.pdf. However,
he does not do due diligence to look into the basis for the study. The portion that states that campus assaults is under reported and gives the same statistic I said was BS, is by reference to another study (footnote 5):

Title: The Sexual Victimization of College Women.

Series: Research Report

Authors: Bonnie S. Fisher, Francis T. Cullen, and Michael G. Turner

Published: National Institute of Justice, December 2000

Subject: Campus crime, rape and sexual assault, and stalking

This study is biased, in the same ways I have seen first hand in similar studies performed at a campus where I worked. The researchers do not rely on asking young women if they have been sexually assaulted, raped, or harassed, because this would lead
to the under reporting that they deplore so much. Instead they ask “screening questions”. Let me post a few from the study (you have to look deep into the study to get at the actual questions):

Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone made or tried to make you have sexual intercourse or sexual contact when you did not want to by simply being overwhelmed by someone's continual pestering and verbal pressure?

Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone attempted but not succeeded in unwanted or uninvited touching of a sexual nature?

Not counting the types of sexual contact already mentioned, have you experienced any unwanted or uninvited touching of a sexual nature since school began in fall 1996? This includes forced kissing, touching of private parts, grabbing, fondling, and rubbing
up against you in a sexual way, even if it is over your clothes.

Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone attempted but not succeeded in making you take part in any of the unwanted sexual experiences that I have just asked you about? For example, did anyone threaten or try but not succeed to have vaginal, oral,
or anal sex with you or try unsuccessfully to penetrate your vagina or anus with a foreign object or finger?

All of these are more severe than what I saw in a similar “study” at my campus. In that study merely having a man look at you on the campus shuttle bus was considered sexual assault. Much of what is a normal part of dating and romance now
falls under the category of campus sexual offenses. She doesn’t even have to say no at anytime; she just has to decide that the touching (or anything else) was unwanted (based on reflection the next day). There have been some great Saturday
Night Live skits based on the nothing more than the literal reading of the sexual guidelines being issued on campuses in the US. No real boy and girl would ever follow the guidelines under which your son will be convicted.

Let me posit a hypothetical situation to Khun Farang Dave, based on the study questions above. Say your son is on campus and has met a nice girl. They become boyfriend and girlfriend. One night in a moment of passion while necking he tries to “go
to second base” (touch her breast through her blouse), as they said in my day. In those golden days of yore, if she decided it was unwanted, the worst that could happen is that she could slap your face and breakup with you. Now according
to the second question above your son has just committed sexual assault. He will be tried by a bunch of professors, including at least one man hating lesbian that thinks all heterosexual sex is rape. The girl’s assertion that it happened
is all it will take to convict him in this kangaroo campus court. He will be expelled and pretty much barred from any campus in the US. This happens even if the police and courts say that no offense has taken place (read the edict I included in
my prior post).

Another scenario, Khun Farang Dave, has your son in a deepening relationship with the young girl above, progressing on to what we used to call heavy petting. She has never stopped the progression of activities, and seems to approve of them (the slut).
His fingers wander into the gates of hell (as my parish priest used to call it when advising us young men). Now, according to the last question above, he is guilty of rape. This poor pitiful girl has just been raped. We must do what ever is necessary
to put a stop this abuse. No one’s civil rights, presumption of innocence, or right to due process under the law should stand in the way of punishing some man for this heinous crime. The fact that the young lady in question would not agree
with the description of the activity as rape has no bearing on the results of the study.

This is how the sexual offenses industry inflates the statistics on campuses in the US. If you intend to refute my assertions you will have to do a lot more research. Citing bogus, biased, studies will not do it.

Let us posit a third scenario, outside the issue of the study cited. Khun Farang Dave, your son is at a frat party where beer is being consumed (oh the horror!). He sees a girl from one of his classes that he has a bit of a crush on. He starts to talk
with her while they both have a beer or two. She invites him to her room. Once in her room she unzips his pants, takes out his regenerative organ, and performs fellatio. The next day he is arrested for rape and sodomy. It matters not that she
was the aggressor. Women have absolutely no responsibility when it comes to sex. The fact that she had had anything to drink makes her incapable of consent; therefore your son will rot in prison for years and be on a sexual offenders list for
the rest of his life. Or, on the other hand, let us say your son talks with her for a while, then goes back to his room never having touched her. The next day he is arrested for rape. Over half of all campus rape charges are false. Look at the
statistics compiled by the False Rape Society. Do you want that same kangaroo court to decide if your son was guilty of rape on the preponderance of evidence?

The point of all of this is that these changes have zero to do with protecting our sisters and daughters from assault on campus. They have everything to do with pushing a political agenda. And that agenda is neither Republican nor Democrat. The agenda
is Feminist, and it is served by both parties. It is conventional wisdom in US politics that he who loses the women’s vote loses; period. By the way, I have two daughters that have gone through college and miraculously neither was sexually
assaulted, even without these increased protections.

Let me move on to another point. Khun Farang Dave stated, “Now throw in the fact that males on average make more money than females for the same job. So women are better educated but make less money than men? What does all this mean? I have no
fucking idea!” Let me tell you what it means. It means you are a fucking idiot that listens to the feminist propaganda to the point where you are incapable of independent thought. If you eliminate the choices men and women make in their
lives, women are paid more than men. In a study of never married, no children, men and women between 22 and 35 women made slightly more than men, about 1 to 2 %. Also, in a recent study of priorities people use to decide where to work and what
jobs to seek, women predominated in the area of prioritizing their home life. Men predominated (almost to the exclusion of women) in the area of maximizing income. They overlapped in the area of seeking work life balance, with a higher percentage
of women than men. In a study of middle managers (over 51% of managers in the US are women), 16% of the women were seeking the CEO position while over 46% of the men were trying for that position. Could all of this be why men make more?

Let us look at the propaganda figure of women making $0.77 for every $1.00 men make. This is life time, and based on the effects of choices made by individuals, not due to some patriarchal conspiracy. Let me ask anyone that has worked in the US, “If
the company you work for could save 23% on labor costs by hiring rhesus monkeys to do the same work, would you be on the unemployment line right now?” If women did the same work for 23% less, no company would have a single male employee.
Any company that did not take advantage of this would be driven out of business by competition which did. So, from where does the discrepancy arrive? On average, men in total work about 8.1 hours for every 8 hours a woman employed at the same
job works. This is hardly significant. However, over 80% of those working 50 hours a week or more are men. Over 80% of serious work place injuries occur to men. Over 90% of fatalities due to work place injuries occur to men. So, just maybe, the
discrepancy is due to men working longer and harder at more dangerous and dirty jobs. Why do men make more money than women? Because they have to. Men usually have a woman at home to support. And, if he isn’t making more than the woman
at home, she won’t be at home for long.

My intent in my previous submittal was not to say that the educational system in Thailand was superior to that in the US; I was merely pointing out that all is not well in the US. I was trying to show that the grass is not always greener on the other
side of the fence. The grass may just be a different shade. Stick also took my submittal to be advising people to use the Thai school system over the US school system. Once again, that was not my intent. Neither I, nor any of the men to whom I
referred in the article, are planning to move to Thailand after retirement. Since my wife is from the Philippines, most of her friends here are Filipinas. This means a lot of their husbands are planning to retire to the Philippines. A couple of
them are retiring to Latin America; Mexico and Colombia. All of us intend to send our kids to private, mostly Catholic, schools in these foreign countries. From what I read on Stickman's site, this option is very expensive in Thailand, around
$20,000 was recently quoted. This is similar to the rates here in the US. In the Philippines the cost is much more reasonable. And yes Farang Dave, to a small extent, this does mean I will be substituting one indoctrination for another. The difference
is that they will be indoctrinating my children with values I share. I would contend that a Jesuit based education will do more to indoctrinate a child with intellectual rigor and appreciation for hard work than it will of church dogma. My 19
year old son’s girlfriend is from a well off family, so, of course, she went to private schools. The private schools were Catholic, even though her family is not Catholic. It seems they had no issues with religious indoctrination; at least
not enough to overcome their appreciation for the quality of the education.

My youngest son is a senior in high school. Based on my bitter experience, that thing that Farang Dave dismisses, I had him tracked to an international baccalaureate program while he was in the sixth grade. The magnet school that had the program was part
of a diversity effort, therefore it was totally PC. You have to play the game. If you wait past the sixth grade I found it is too late. This program is similar to the ISB School discussed by Phrakhanong Pete. In the 1950’s US diplomats
were concerned about moving their children around and having constantly changing curricula. So they standardized a program that all the schools they sent their kids to would use. It is a very well rounded and demanding program. If my son passes
the final program exam (not just individual course finals) he will be credited with completing the first year of college (in state only). So it is possible to get your sons a good education in the US public schools. You will have to fight for
it, and know what you are doing. Unfortunately, it took a few bad experiences with my older sons for me to find this out. My daughters had no such issues. So if you are bringing your sons to the US for a free public education, I am just cautioning
you that it is not all skittles and beer.

Farang Dave puts all my angst down to my wanting to retire to the Philippines while having a child (true). He posits that my opinions of the US educational system are all to assuage guilt on my part (I don’t think so, but I may be biased). He then
leapt to the defense of his country in a blazing display of righteous anger and patriotism. He fails to remember that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.

What I tried to point out was that several men in a similar situation had all come to what I thought was a rather unusual conclusion. The point I wanted to make, and which I seem to have failed to elucidate in my prior submittal, is that the cultural
environment in the US is not conducive to happiness for either men or women. Happiness for either is impossible when one gender is at war with the other. If you have not lived in the US recently you can not judge how severe it has become. I, and
the Dads I referred to in my prior article, have decided we do not want our (future) children raised in that war zone.

Stickman's thoughts:

While interesting, this is getting too far away from Thailand which is the focus of this site. The reason I ran it is that submissions are currently coming in at nothing more than a light dribble.