Feb 16, 2023
Teen Girls Experiencing Record Levels of Sadness and Suicide Risk, CDC Says by Sarah Toy at Washington Examiner. Nearly three out of five high-school girls in the U.S. who were surveyed reported feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, a roughly 60% increase over the past decade, new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Though both high school girls and boys reported experiencing mental-health challenges, girls reported record high levels of sexual violence, sadness and suicide risk, the CDC said. In 2021, 57% of high school girls reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared with 36% in 2011. Thirty percent reported they seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, up from 19% in 2011. Read
Into the Silence by Sarah Cain at Crisis Magazine. While there has never been a utopian period, there were things of the past that are gone now and which we rightly lament. There were more occasions of quiet. Families read real books, and told stories, and wrote poetry of their own. These times required thought and, to borrow a modern phrase, “self-understanding”—not as a synonym for self-admiration, as it’s often used, but in the more literal sense. Read
Radical Inclusion Leads to Moral Confusion by Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann at Catholic World Report. The unparalleled happiness that proponents of so-called sexual freedom promised never materialized. Instead, we find among young adults alarmingly high levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Pornography and other forms of sexual addiction have become rampant and enslave many at a young age. The unravelling of sexual morals has continued for decades. Among the cultural fallacies is a prevalent notion that homosexual activity is healthy and normal, just another lifestyle choice. In recent years, our cultural confusion has now spawned gender ideology, asserting that human beings can deny their biological gender. Tragically, many young people have been pressured to undergo gender transitioning hormonal regimens and to mutilate their bodies by “gender re-assignment” surgeries. Read
I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle. By Jamie Reed at The Free Press. One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school. This concerned me, but I didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe. Read
School Choice Winning Streak? It’s the Culture War, Stupid by Robert Pondiscio at Washington Examiner. We’re less than six weeks into 2023, and already two new states, Iowa and Utah, have adopted “universal ESAs” or education savings accounts, which give parents unprecedented control over their child’s share of education spending, including the ability to use public dollars to pay for private school. Several other states including Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas seem poised to follow suit. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday became the latest to unveil a universal “education freedom account” that if passed would allow parents “to enroll their kids in whatever school is most appropriate for their family.” Read
Katie Hobbs Claims School Choice Will Bankrupt States by Jeremiah Poff at Washington Examiner. [Fox News Sunday host Shannon] Bream pressed [Arizona Governor Katie] Hobbs on her claim that the [education savings account] was going to bankrupt the state, noting that a nonpartisan study from the Common Sense Institute found that declining public school enrollment is saving the state $500 million annually, far more than the $377 million annual cost of the school choice program…. The study cited by Bream is not the only one that indicates school choice programs tend to save state funds. A study from Ed Choice, a pro-school choice group, found that school choice programs had saved states up to $28.3 billion in taxpayer funds. For every dollar spent on the school choice program, the study said states saved as much as $2.85 in education expenses. Read
Gov. Youngkin Condemns Black Lives Matter at School Push in Virginia Teachers Union: ‘This Will Not Be Tolerated’ by Elizabeth Troutman at The Daily Signal. The Virginia Education Association’s Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action toolkit champions BLM’s 13 principles in the classroom. It uses kindergarten through 12th grade lesson plans made by the education branch of the Southern Poverty Law Center to teach students principles including “transgender affirming,” “queer affirming,” “restorative justice,” and “globalism.” The principles promote critical race theory, a racial lens that teaches students to deconstruct American society on the premise that its institutions are “systemically racist.” [Gov. Glenn] Youngkin outlawed such education in a January 2022 executive order. Read
Big Win for DeSantis in Battle Over AP African-American Studies by Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online. Ron DeSantis has chalked up a major victory in his struggle with the College Board over the content of its AP African-American-studies (APAAS) curriculum…. [P]retty much all of the critical race theory (CRT), and the lion’s share of socialist agitation, has been removed from APAAS.... Critically important precedents have also been set. States have the power to pressure the College Board to modify its misguided curricular diktats…. The legitimacy of the College Board’s monopoly over college equivalency testing has also been called into question. Read
Gov. Kristi Noem Signs Bill Restricting Gender Transition Procedures for Minors in South Dakota by Abigail Adcox at Washington Examiner. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) signed legislation on Monday that will restrict access to puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and gender transition surgeries for people younger than 18, making hers the second state to pass legislation restricting transgender medical treatments for minors this year. The Help Not Harm bill will limit doctors from performing any sterilization surgery, including castration, hysterectomy, and vasectomy, or prescribing any drug that delays or stops puberty for anyone under 18. Read
Throwback Thursday
The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls by Jonathan Haidt at The Atlantic on November 21, 2021. [W]hen teens went from texting their close friends on flip phones in 2010 to posting carefully curated photographs and awaiting comments and likes by 2014, the change rewired everyone’s social life. Improvements in technology generally help friends connect, but the move onto social-media platforms also made it easier—indeed, almost obligatory––for users to perform for one another. Public performance is risky. Private conversation is far more playful. A bad joke or poorly chosen word among friends elicits groans, or perhaps a rebuke and a chance to apologize. Getting repeated feedback in a low-stakes environment is one of the main ways that play builds social skills, physical skills, and the ability to properly judge risk. Play also strengthens friendships. When girls started spending hours each day on Instagram, they lost many of the benefits of play…. Performative social media also puts girls into a trap: Those who choose not to play the game are cut off from their classmates. Instagram and, more recently, TikTok have become wired into the way teens interact, much as the telephone became essential to past generations. Read