Is the Era of the Traditional Family Over in America?

Is the Era of the Traditional Family Over in America? Survey Suggests Yes by Kevin J. Jones at National Catholic Register. Most Americans don’t place a high priority on marriage and children compared with their careers and friends, a new Pew Research Center survey says, and a large minority of Americans are pessimistic about the future of marriage and family. Patrick T. Brown, a family policy expert and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told CNA that the increasing number of people uninterested in having children or getting married “should help us recognize that we are entering a new era.” Read  

Education Toward Sanity by Dan Loesing at First Things. Chesterton called education “the responsibility of affirming the truth of our human tradition and handing it on with a voice of authority, an unshaken voice.” We need schools (and colleges, and home-schooling parents) that understand this responsibility. We need schools that teach each student that even if he must be first-rate in his trade, he is also “a fine fourth bagpipe, a fair fifteenth billiard-cue, a foil, a fountain pen, a hand at whist, a gun, and an image of God.” And we need schools that do so because they believe what they teach. “That is the one eternal education; to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.” Read 

Reigniting the Fires of Catholic Education by Regis Martin at Crisis Magazine. If education is not to be a matter of merely filling buckets which happen to be empty, as the poet Yeats once put it, but of lighting fires that have gone out, how are we to set them blazing again? Where is the kindling wood? And who’s got the match with which to light the fire? Read 

C.S. Lewis’ Work Continues to Gain Popularity 60 years after His Death by Jonathan Luxmoore at Our Sunday Visitor. “Although Lewis wasn’t a professional theologian, his acute sense of the world Christianity portrays was just as profound as the best modern theologians,” [Judith] Wolfe said. “He also realized Christian literature was failing to present good and holy characters who were also interesting — the evil ones were always more compelling. By portraying Christ as the lion Aslan in the ‘Narnia’ stories, he hoped to reveal the attractiveness of the good in real life.” Read 

No, Big Tech Doesn’t Have A Right To Speak To Kids Without Their Parent’s Consent by Clare Morell, Adam Candeub, and Michael Toscano at The Federalist. The experiment results are in—they are not good. In a recent advisory, the Surgeon General has declared a “national youth mental health crisis,” as both sexes report unprecedented levels of depression, loneliness, and anxiety — not to mention large spikes in the rates of self-harm and suicide among teens. Eminent researchers, such as Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt, place much of the blame squarely on social media. Read 

Cleveland Bishop Targeted for School Policy on Gender Ideology, but Tide Is Turning by Patti Maguire Armstrong at National Catholic Register. The mainstream media has not been reporting on stories such as 19-year-old Chloe Cole, who called on Congress in July to halt gender-reassignment therapies and surgeries for minors, saying her “childhood was ruined.” And at least 12 studies show that 4 out of 5 kids who question their gender grow out of it on their own. Those regretting the permanently damaging treatments realize they were not born in the wrong body, and could never become the opposite sex, and their underlying mental-health issues should have been addressed instead. That is exactly the sentiment of Bishop Malesic’s policy. Read 

Family Who Fled Germany to Home-School Their Kids Faces Deportation from the U.S. by Daniel Payne at Catholic News Agency. A German family that has lived in the United States for more than a decade after leaving their home country in order to legally home-school their children faces possible deportation next month, their supporters said. The Romeikes—father Uwe, mother Hannelore, and their then-five children—fled Germany in 2009 over the country’s severe compulsory education laws, which effectively outlaw home schooling and require all children to attend school outside the home. Read  

Florida Takes the Classic Learning Test by The Editorial Board at The Wall Street Journal. Florida’s state university system will now accept the Classic Learning Test in college admissions, after the board of governors voted this month to approve the CLT as an alternative to the national testing duopoly of the SAT and ACT.... The media coverage has been highly amusing. “The College Board, which oversees the SAT, said there is little evidence proving the CLT can adequately assess college preparedness,” NPR reported. Big news: Coke thinks Pepsi doesn’t adequately quench thirst. Read 

North Carolina Passes Universal School Choice by Jonah McKeown at Catholic News Agency. North Carolina last week became the 10th U.S. state to enact “universal” school choice by removing barriers to a state program that provides tuition assistance for students attending private schools. North Carolina’s General Assembly gave final approval Sept. 22 to a new state budget that aims to triple funding for the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Program and end income restrictions for getting a private school voucher, the Charlotte News & Observer reports. Every North Carolina family will be able to apply for tuition assistance to attend a K-12 private school beginning in 2024-2025. Read 

Throwback Thursday 

The School Choice Movement Should Focus on Parents’ Values by Patrick T. Brown at Institute for Family Studies on April 13, 2022. Empowering parents should follow a both/and strategy: Giving parents more opportunities to weigh in on public school curricular choices, while also giving them more power to pursue the educational opportunities that best suit their child…. Neither school choice alone nor curriculum transparency laws will be enough to address conservatives’ concerns with the K-12 education system. A more comprehensive rethinking of public education should move beyond pure choice, to proactively cultivating schools grounded in distinctive communities. But responding to the reality that public schools are not and cannot be neutral should lead state policymakers to give all parents more tools to respond. The current moment needs policymakers willing to prioritize giving each parent more agency over both where their child attends school, and what kind of values those schools attempt to foster. Read