Mental-Health Lessons in Schools Sound Like a Great Idea. The Trouble is, They Don’t Work

Mental-Health Lessons in Schools Sound Like a Great Idea. The Trouble is, They Don’t Work by Lucy Foulkes at The Guardian. Researchers have run many studies testing the impact of universal school mental-health interventions and have found that they don’t really improve mental health. When improvements are found, they’re small – a tiny average shift on a symptom questionnaire – and the quality of the research is often poor, meaning it’s hard to trust the findings. The best-designed studies show that interventions don’t work at all: no improvement in mental health symptoms, either immediately after the course of lessons or later down the line. Read

How to Stop Students From Cheating With AI by John J. Goyette at The Wall Street Journal. Cheating is rampant. Students turn to generative artificial-intelligence chatbots to do their readings, complete their take-home exams and write their papers. A January 2023 survey from Study.com found that 89% of college students had used ChatGPT to complete a homework assignment. Nearly half admitted to using it on at-home tests or quizzes, and 53% had turned in an AI-generated essay. Read

Slumming as Only Pharisees Can Do by Anthony Esolen at The Catholic Thing. “Tony,” said a high school friend to me, and he meant it, “you’ve got the brains and the good looks, but you don’t know how to dress.” That was in our Catholic school, and the boys all wore jackets and ties, and kept themselves clean-shaved, too, or else our good and wise Dean, Mr. Buzad, would call them into his office where they could perform that operation with an old razor and cold water. That came just at the end of a time when boys and girls took some care to dress in a somewhat formal way, at all appropriate occasions, lest they embarrass themselves. I see now that it was far more important than I knew. These proprieties, in school, were small acts of submission to something greater than us, and acts of charity toward one another. Read

New Learning Program Quickly Getting Results for LA Catholic Students by Theresa Cisneros at Angelus. At the start of the school year last fall, the group of kids who’d transferred from nearby public elementary schools to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church School in Oxnard were still learning English, and couldn’t read or identify certain letter sounds. But a few months later, something had changed. After 90 days of personalized instruction, the students now know letter sounds, can read full sentences, and have a higher level of fluency. Read

Reasserting Catholic Education with Dr. Ryan Messmore at The Catholic Current. Dr. Ryan Messmore from the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education joined Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., to talk about how Catholic education can be done better, and what that would look like. Listen

Gen Z Finds Meaning in Traditional Religion by Anne Hendershott at Crisis Magazine. Figures released by the Bishops’ Conference of France announced that 10,384 adults received the sacrament of baptism at the 2025 Easter Vigil. This is an increase of 45 percent over the 7,135 adults who were baptized in 2024 and a 90 percent increase over the 5,463 adults who were baptized in 2023…Recent convert to Catholicism Cameron Bertuzzi, a 38-year-old host of what was once a Protestant YouTube channel, said that he was moved to Catholicism after becoming convinced—through his reading and his engaging in online Catholic content, including Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire—that the traditional religion held the answers he was looking for. Read

Summertime Reading: Student Edition by Mary Frances Loughran at Cana Academy. Teachers are often asked by parents for suggestions for summer reading for their children. Vacations are the perfect time to enjoy reading a favorite author or from a preferred genre. While they may not rise to curricular material or may not be included on many syllabi, the following titles are great choices for summertime reading. Read

New Vision Book Tells the Inspiring Story of Fr. Michael McGivney by Paul Senz at Catholic World Report. Emily Tennant is the author of one of the most recent entries in the Vision series, Father Michael McGivey and the Knights of Columbus…This is the first children’s chapter book to tell the inspiring story of Blessed Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, son of poor Irish immigrants, who became one of the most influential priests the Church in America has ever produced. Read

An Urban Institute Study Reports Significant Benefits for Male Students Who Participated in EdChoice, Ohio’s School Choice Voucher Program. by Elizabeth BeShears at The Federalist. The Urban Institute’s new study shows that giving students — especially boys — access to private schools through vouchers can dramatically change their trajectory. Male students who participated in EdChoice were 86 percent more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their public school peers, and the program’s positive effects on college enrollment and graduation were strongest for boys, black students, and those from low-income backgrounds. Read

Conservative Group Urges Louisiana Republicans To Save School Choice From The ‘Chopping Block’ by Leif Le Mahieu at The Daily Wire. A conservative group on Sunday launched a campaign urging Louisiana lawmakers to save funding for the state’s school choice program. The Club for Growth rolled out a 30-second TV spot on Sunday political programs across Louisiana, pushing for lawmakers to save the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise program, which provides scholarships that students can use to attend private schools. Read

A Catholic Fix for American Higher Education? by George Weigel at National Catholic Register. Why are so many American colleges and universities in crisis? Drew Gilpin Faust, an accomplished Civil War historian, gave the answer, perhaps unwittingly, at her 2007 inauguration as the 28th president of Harvard University. Read

Throwback Thursday

True Scientific Literacy by Dr. Andrew Seeley at The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education on December 28, 2018. The Science Content Standards for California Public Schools proposes that the science curriculum has as its goal forming “scientifically literate citizens in the twenty-first century.” This means that by the time students graduate from high school, they should understand the “core concepts, principles, and theories of science.” Unfortunately, this list leaves out several things that should be even more important goals of a science curriculum. Read