I suppose the fallacy was not a claim of correctness due to actual popularity. It was a claim of correctness due to non-existent popularity. We don't all agree.
Lack of money for pens and paper seems to be fake. Remember that they are dirt cheap. Blowing the budget on computers, then claiming that you can't afford pens and paper, is a great tactic to fight for an unjustified funding increase. When I see millions of dollars being spent on football stadiums, my blood boils. Clearly, the budget is far too large. It is purposely misallocated. You could increase the budget enough to buy every student a ream of paper and a box of pens every day, and there still wouldn't be enough money for pens and paper.
I know a person who taught in a DC school. There is no teaching. Nobody is willing to cooperate. That's how it goes, and no amount of money will fix it.
Spending all our money on bad students will harm society. We need high achievers. We need the gifted. Money spent on the better students is more productive, leading to great engineers and scientists who will produce the civilization-enabling technology.
If you own a trailer home in a bad trailer park, and you also own a cute townhouse in a fashionable neighborhood, where should you spend the money to install a marble floor? Putting the marble floor in the trailer home is a wasted investment.
Calling an article from the Cato Institute, which was published in the Washington Examiner (you know, the same one that published op-eds claiming that most climate models are worthless, by an author who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in fossil fuel company money?) is hardly a less-biased source. And the author's own funding is hardly independent and unbiased.
Lack of money for pens and paper is not fake. I'll link a few articles below to help you, just from this year, but it's not. I mean, it's just not. That's the reality of public schools. I don't know how else to convince you. Feel free to Google News or DDG "lack of school supplies" and you'll hit a ton of additional links from all over the country [1][2][3].
In any case, your last couple paragraphs are getting a little of base, but yeah, it boils my blood to see that much money spent on football stadiums too. No argument there. Yes, programs for the gifted and high-achieving are needed as well. But refusing to get kids the basics of what they need to even start being successful simply because they come from a poor family isn't just unethical, it prevents kids who would otherwise being high-achievers from even getting in the race. That cuts society off at the knees.
Yes, there is "lack of school supplies", but not for lack of money. It's malice or incompetence, probably both.
Imagine that you are a school administrator. If you save money, your budget will get reduced since you obviously don't need it. If you spend the money on pens and paper, things will function OK and people won't vote to increase property taxes. If you blow the money on something else, so that you run out of money for pens and paper, you'll get sympathy and maybe more money.
Well, the solution is obvious. You need to engineer the budget so that you can't afford pens and paper. Buy a new mural. Replace perfectly functional carpeting in your office. Use up the paper by sending junk mail home with the kids. Replace the landscaping. Hire your cousin to seal the pavement.
Paper is $0.011 per page. Pens are $0.0865 each. It costs just $55.17 to give each student a new pen and 20 sheets of paper every single day for the entire school year. California spends over $20,000 per student. DC spends somewhere between $27,000 and $29,000 per student per year.
Just 0.19% to 0.28% of the budget is enough to fund that wasteful amount of pens and paper.
Comparison shouldn't be limited to the USA. Budgets in the USA are way above international norms, even ignoring the poor countries.
I suppose the fallacy was not a claim of correctness due to actual popularity. It was a claim of correctness due to non-existent popularity. We don't all agree.
Lack of money for pens and paper seems to be fake. Remember that they are dirt cheap. Blowing the budget on computers, then claiming that you can't afford pens and paper, is a great tactic to fight for an unjustified funding increase. When I see millions of dollars being spent on football stadiums, my blood boils. Clearly, the budget is far too large. It is purposely misallocated. You could increase the budget enough to buy every student a ream of paper and a box of pens every day, and there still wouldn't be enough money for pens and paper.
I know a person who taught in a DC school. There is no teaching. Nobody is willing to cooperate. That's how it goes, and no amount of money will fix it.
Spending all our money on bad students will harm society. We need high achievers. We need the gifted. Money spent on the better students is more productive, leading to great engineers and scientists who will produce the civilization-enabling technology.
If you own a trailer home in a bad trailer park, and you also own a cute townhouse in a fashionable neighborhood, where should you spend the money to install a marble floor? Putting the marble floor in the trailer home is a wasted investment.