[Carrie]

Hear hear to all of the above.
I'd love to get Kelsey comic books (I'm a collector and a huge Marvel nut myself) but his little brother shreds nearly everything he touches - even if it's made of metal. We can't wait until we can move back into a bigger house and give them different bedrooms so the little academic can have his library and destructo-boy can have... well... steel furniture? LOL

Colin I agree with you so much about "give him back his comic books". Egads, you don't squelch a love like that, you feed it! And with comic books you could expand into so many different areas... get him some books on Stan Lee, get him some art supplies and some books on how to draw, all kinds of things! It all starts with just a love of something.

Vouchers - thumbs up.

I forget now who said to stop blaming the gov't for everything (Aeon maybe?) but umm... who is to blame? It's the gov't that took away the small hometown schools and pushed the kids out of homeschooling and farmed them into their big public school institutions. It's the gov't that sets the SOLs (Standards of Learning) - and keeps dropping those standards more and more for both the teachers and the students. It's the gov't that creates the environment in which our kids learn in school... zero tolerance, ebonics as a second language, "tolerance" period...
And ultimately it's the gov't that should be held responsible for the results that are coming out of the schools. Shit rolls downhill. If the students aren't doing well, look at the teachers. If the teachers aren't doing well, look at the superintendent and the local school system. If the school system isn't doing well, look at the gov't that is funding it, hiring the superintendents, hiring the teachers, and setting (lowering) the standards.