Tag: education

Black or ‘Other’? Doctors may be relying on race to make decisions about your health | CNN

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Editor’s Note: CNN’s “History Refocused” series features surprising and personal stories from America’s past to bring depth to conflicts still raging today.



CNN
 — 

When she first learned about race correction, Naomi Nkinsi was one of five Black medical students in her class at the University of Washington.

Nkinsi remembers the professor talking about an equation doctors use to measure kidney function. The professor said eGFR equations adjust for several variables, including the patient’s age, sex and race. When it comes to race, doctors have only two options: Black or “Other.”

Nkinsi was dumbfounded.

“It was really shocking to me,” says Nkinsi, now a third-year medical and masters of public health student, “to come into school and see that not only is there interpersonal racism between patients and physicians … there’s actually racism built into the very algorithms that we use.”

At the heart of a controversy brewing in America’s hospitals is a simple belief, medical students say: Math shouldn’t be racist.

The argument over race correction has raised questions about the scientific data doctors rely on to treat people of color. It’s attracted the attention of Congress and led to a big lawsuit against the NFL.

What happens next could affect how millions of Americans are treated.

Carolyn Roberts, a historian of medicine and science at Yale University, says slavery and the American medical system were in a codependent relationship for much of the 19th century and well into the 20th.

“They relied on one another to thrive,” Roberts says.

It was common to test experimental treatments first on Black people so they could be given to White people once proven safe. But when the goal was justifying slavery, doctors published articles alleging substantive physical differences between White and Black bodies — like Dr. Samuel Cartwright’s claim in 1851 that Black people have weaker lungs, which is why grueling work in the fields was essential (his words) to their progress.

The effects of Cartwright’s falsehood, and others like it, linger today.

In 2016, researchers asked White medical students and residents about 15 alleged differences between Black and White bodies. Forty percent of first-year medical students and 25% of residents said they believed Black people have thicker skin, and 7% of all students and residents surveyed said Black people have less sensitive nerve endings. The doctors-in-training who believed these myths — and they are myths — were less likely to prescribe adequate pain medication to Black patients.

To fight this kind of bias, hospitals urge doctors to rely on objective measures of health. Scientific equations tell physicians everything from how well your kidneys are working to whether or not you should have a natural birth after a C-section. They predict your risk of dying during heart surgery, evaluate brain damage and measure your lung capacity.

But what if these equations are also racially biased?

Race correction is the use of a patient’s race in a scientific equation that can influence how they are treated. In other words, some diagnostic algorithms and risk predictor tools adjust or “correct” their results based on a person’s race.

The New England Journal of Medicine article “Hidden in Plain Sight” includes a partial list of 13 medical equations that use race correction. Take the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean calculator, for example. Doctors use this calculator to predict the likelihood of a successful vaginal delivery after a prior C-section. If you are Black or Hispanic, your score is adjusted to show a lower chance of success. That means your doctor is more likely to encourage another C-section, which could put you at risk for blood loss, infection and a longer recovery period.

Cartwright, the racist doctor from the 1800s, also developed his own version of a tool called the spirometer to measure lung capacity. Doctors still use spirometers today, and most include a race correction for Black patients to account for their supposedly shallower breaths.

Turns out, second-year medical student Carina Seah wryly told CNN, math is as racist as the people who make it.

The biggest problem with using race in medicine? Race isn’t a biological category. It’s a social one.

“It’s based on this idea that human beings are naturally divided into these big groups called races,” says Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has made challenging race correction in medicine her life’s work. “But that’s not what race is. Race is a completely invented social category. The very idea that human beings are divided into races is a made-up idea.”

Ancestry is biological. Where we come from — or more accurately, who we come from — impacts our DNA. But a patient’s skin color isn’t always an accurate reflection of their ancestry.

Look at Tiger Woods, Roberts says. Woods coined the term “Cablinasian” to describe his mix of Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian ancestries. But to many Americans, he’s Black.

CNN RED TIGER WOODS

“You can be half Black and half White in this country and you are Black,” says Seah, who is getting her medical degree and a PhD in genetics and genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “You can be a quarter Black in this country — if you have dark skin, you are Black.”

So it can be misleading, Seah says, even dangerous, for doctors to judge a patient’s ancestry by glancing at their skin. A patient with a White mother and Black father could have a genetic mutation that typically presents in patients of European ancestry, Seah says, but a doctor may not think to test for it if they only see Black skin.

“You have to ask, how Black is Black enough?” Nkinsi asks. And there’s another problem, she says, with using a social construct like race in medicine. “It also puts the blame on the patient, and it puts the blame on the race itself. Like being Black is inherently the cause of these diseases.”

Naomi Nkinsi is a third-year medical and masters of public health student at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has been advocating for the removal of race correction in medicine.

After she learned about the eGFR equation in 2018, Nkinsi began asking questions about race correction. She wasn’t alone — on social media she found other students struggling with the use of race in medicine. In the spring of 2020, following a first-year physiology lecture, Seah joined the conversation. But the medical profession is nothing if not hierarchical; Nkinsi and Seah say students are encouraged to defer to doctors who have been practicing for decades.

Then on May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.

His death and the growing momentum around Black Lives Matter helped ignite what Dr. Darshali A. Vyas calls an “overdue reckoning” in the medical community around race and race correction. A few institutions had already taken steps to remove race from the eGFR equation. Students across the country demanded more, and hospitals began to listen.

History Refocused BLM White Coats

Four days after Floyd’s death, the University of Washington announced it was removing race correction from the eGFR equation. In June, the Boston-based hospital system Mass General Brigham where Vyas is a second-year Internal Medicine resident followed suit. Seah and a fellow student at Mount Sinai, Paloma Orozco Scott, started an online petition and collected over 1600 signatures asking their hospital to do the same.

Studies show removing race from the eGFR equation will change how patients at those hospitals are treated. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Penn Medicine estimated up to one in every three Black patients with kidney disease would have been reclassified if the race multiplier wasn’t applied in earlier calculations, with a quarter going from stage 3 to stage 4 CKD (Chronic Kidney Disease).

That reclassification is good and bad, says Dr. Neil Powe, chief of medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Black patients newly diagnosed with kidney disease will be able to see specialists who can devise better treatment plans. And more patients will be placed on kidney transplant lists.

On the flip side, Powe says, more African Americans diagnosed with kidney disease means fewer who are eligible to donate kidneys, when there’s already a shortage. And a kidney disease diagnosis can change everything from a patient’s diabetes medication to their life insurance costs.

Dr. Neil Powe says by simply removing race from the eGFR equations,

Powe worries simply eliminating race from these equations is a knee-jerk response — one that may exacerbate health disparities instead of solve them. For too long, Powe says, doctors had to fight for diversity in medical studies.

The most recent eGFR equation, known as the CKD-EPI equation, was developed using data pooled from 26 studies, which included almost 3,000 patients who self-identified as Black. Researchers found the equation they were developing was more accurate for Black patients when it was adjusted by a factor of about 1.2. They didn’t determine exactly what was causing the difference in Black patients, but their conclusion is supported by other research that links Black race and African ancestry with higher levels of creatinine, a waste product filtered by the kidneys.

Put simply: In the eGFR equation, researchers used race as a substitute for an unknown factor because they think that factor is more common in people of African descent.

Last August, Vyas co-authored the “Hidden in Plain Sight” article about race correction. Vyas says most of the equations she wrote about were developed in a similar way to the eGFR formula: Researchers found Black people were more or less likely to have certain outcomes and decided race was worth including in the final equation, often without knowing the real cause of the link.

“When you go back to the original studies that validated (these equations), a lot of them did not provide any sort of rationale for why they include race, which I think is appalling.” That’s what’s most concerning, Vyas says – “how willing we are to believe that race is relevant in these ways.”

Vyas is clear she isn’t calling for race-blind medicine. Physicians cannot ignore structural racism, she says, and the impact it has on patients’ health.

Powe has been studying the racial disparities in kidney disease for more than 30 years. He can spout the statistics easily: Black people are three times more likely to suffer from kidney failure, and make up more than 35% of patients on dialysis in the US. The eGFR equation, he says, did not cause these disparities — they existed long before the formula.

“We want to cure disparities, let’s go after the things that really matter, some of which may be racist,” he says. “But to put all our stock and think that the equation is causing this is just wrong because it didn’t create those.”

In discussions about removing race correction, Powe likes to pose a question: Instead of normalizing to the “Other” group in the eGFR equation, as many of these hospitals are doing, why don’t we give everyone the value assigned to Black people? By ignoring the differences researchers saw, he says, “You’re taking the data on African Americans, and you’re throwing it in the trash.”

Powe is co-chair of a joint task force set up by the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Nephrology to look at the use of race in eGFR equations. The leaders of both organizations have publicly stated race should not be included in equations used to estimate kidney function. On April 9, the task force released an interim report that outlined the challenges in identifying and implementing a new equation that’s representative of all groups. The group is expected to issue its final recommendations for hospitals this summer.

Race correction is used to assess the kidneys and the lungs. What about the brain?

In 2013, the NFL settled a class-action lawsuit brought by thousands of former players and their families that accused the league of concealing what it knew about the dangers of concussions. The NFL agreed to pay $765 million, without admitting fault, to fund medical exams and compensate players for concussion-related health issues, among other things. Then in 2020, two retired players sued the NFL for allegedly discriminating against Black players who submitted claims in that settlement.

01 race correction Kevin Henry Najeh Davenport SPLIT

The players, Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry, said the NFL race-corrected their neurological exams, which prevented them from being compensated.

According to court documents, former NFL players being evaluated for neurocognitive impairment were assumed to have started with worse cognitive function if they were Black. So if a Black player and a White player received the exact same scores on a battery of thinking and memory tests, the Black player would appear to have suffered less impairment. And therefore, the lawsuit stated, would be less likely to qualify for a payout.

Race correction is common in neuropsychology using something called Heaton norms, says Katherine Possin, an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco. Heaton norms are essentially benchmark average scores on cognitive tests.

Here’s how it works: To measure the impact of a concussion (or multiple concussions over time), doctors compare how well the patient’s brain works now to how well it worked before.

“The best way to get that baseline was to test you 10 years ago, but that’s not something we obviously have for many people,” Possin says. So doctors estimate your “before” abilities using an average score from a group of healthy individuals, and adjust that score for demographic factors known to affect brain function, like your age.

Heaton norms adjust for race, Possin says, because race has been linked in studies to lower cognitive scores. To be clear, that’s not because of any biological differences in Black and White brains, she says; it’s because of social factors like education and poverty that can impact cognitive development. And this is where the big problem lies.

In early March, a judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the players’ lawsuit and ordered a mediator to address concerns about how race correction was being used. In a statement to CNN, the NFL said there is no merit to the players’ claim of discrimination, but it is committed to helping find alternative testing techniques that do not employ race-based norms.

The NFL case, Possin wrote in JAMA, has “exposed a major weakness in the field of neuropsychology: the use of race-adjusted norms as a crude proxy for lifelong social experience.”

This happens in nearly every field of medicine. Race is not only used as a poor substitute for genetics and ancestry, it’s used as a substitute for access to health care, or lifestyle factors like diet and exercise, socioeconomic status and education. It’s no secret that racial disparities exist in all of these. But there’s a danger in using race to talk about them, Yale historian Carolyn Roberts says.

We know, for example, that Black Americans have been disproportionally affected by Covid-19. But it’s not because Black bodies respond differently to the virus. It’s because, as Dr. Anthony Fauci has noted, a disproportionate number of Black people have jobs that put them at higher risk and have less access to quality health care. “What are we making scientific and biological when it actually isn’t?” Roberts asks.

Vyas says using race as a proxy for these disparities in clinical algorithms can also create a vicious cycle.

“There’s a risk there, we argue, of simply building these into the system and almost accepting them as fact instead of focusing on really addressing the root causes,” Vyas says. “If we systematize these existing disparities … we risk ensuring that these trends will simply continue.”

Nearly everyone on both sides of the race correction controversy agrees that race isn’t an accurate, biological measure. Yet doctors and researchers continue to use it as a substitute. Math shouldn’t be racist, Nkinsi says, and it shouldn’t be lazy.

“We’re saying that we know that this race-based medicine is wrong, but we’re going to keep doing it because we simply don’t have the will or the imagination or the creativity to think of something better,” Nkinsi says. “That is a slap in the face.”

Shortly after Vyas’ article published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the House Ways and Means Committee sent letters to several professional medical societies requesting information on the misuse of race in clinical algorithms. In response to the lawmakers’ request, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is also gathering information on the use of race-based algorithms in medicine. Recently, a note appeared on the Maternal Fetal Medicine Units Network’s website for the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean equation — a new calculator that doesn’t include race and ethnicity is being developed.

Dorothy Roberts is excited to see change on the horizon. But she’s also a bit frustrated. The harm caused by race correction is something she’s been trying to tell doctors about for years.

“I’ve taught so many audiences about the meaning of race and the history of racism in America and the audiences I get the most resistance from are doctors,” Roberts says. “They’re offended that there would be any suggestion that what they do is racist.”

Nkinsi and Seah both encountered opposition from colleagues in their fight to change the eGFR equation. Several doctors interviewed for this story argued the change in a race-corrected scores is so small, it wouldn’t change clinical decisions.

If that’s the case, Vyas wonders, why include race at all?

“It all comes from the desire for one to dominate another group and justify it,” says Roberts. “In the past, it was slavery, but the same kinds of justifications work today to explain away all the continued racial inequality that we see in America… It is mass incarceration. It’s huge gaps in health. It’s huge differences in income and wealth.”

It’s easier, she says, to believe these are innate biological differences than to address the structural racism that caused them.



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Explained | The U.S. student loan crisis and Joe Biden’s new cancellation plan

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The story so far: United States President Joe Biden has already released a new plan to cancel billions in student loan debt after the conservative majority Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) in a 6-3 decision on June 30 blocked his ambitious plan to cancel $430 billion in debt.

Although Mr. Biden has said the alternative plan is consistent with the Supreme Court ruling, it could still face a legal challenge, while the fate of millions of American borrowers — who may have to start repaying their loans once a pause on repayment lifts — hangs in the balance.

How big is the U.S. student loan debt?

As per the latest Federal Reserve figures, more than 45 million Americans owe a total of $1.77 trillion in student debt to the U.S. government. As per the Congressional Research Service (CRS), approximately 63% of the U.S. population over the age of 25 has at some time enrolled in some level of higher education and roughly 17% of the country’s population aged 18 or above has federal student loans. Meanwhile, the median student loan debt is just above $17,000.

Research by the nonprofit College Board suggests that over the past three decades, the cost of higher education has risen sharply in the U.S., doubling at private four-year colleges and universities and rising even further at public four-year schools. Between 2006 and 2019, the outstanding balance of student loans has nearly quadrupled.

In the U.S., the federal government is the primary source of student loans, running several loan programmes to help students and their families finance higher education.

These loans are authorised under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA). Under primary loan programmes, the U.S. government makes loans using federal capital, meaning funds from the U.S. Treasury Department, after which the outstanding loans become assets of the federal government.

What are repayment options for borrowers?

Once a student borrows a federal loan, they enter into a contractual obligation to repay the loan with interest. They can sign up for specific repayment plans, with repayment periods spanning a decade or more. Under a standard 10-year repayment plan, a borrower has to make 120 equal payments of principal and interest spread over a decade.

Then there are Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, the kind that President Biden wanted to alter in order to cancel student debt. Such plans cap the monthly payment installments at a share of the borrower’s discretionary income, say 10%- 15%; extend the repayment period over a span of 20 or 25 years, and forgive or write off any unpaid principal and interest remaining after that period.

What was Mr. Biden’s original student debt cancellation plan?

The plan, announced in August 2022, was supposed to cancel $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 a year or households making less than $250,000. The recipients of the government’s Pell Grant, who usually need more financial assistance, were to get an additional $10,000 worth of their debt forgiven.

College students qualified if their loans were disbursed before July 1. The plan made 43 million borrowers eligible for some debt forgiveness, with 20 million possibly having their debt erased entirely, according to the Biden administration.

The White House said 26 million people had applied for debt relief, and 16 million people already had their relief approved. As per the Congressional Budget Office, the program would cost about $400 billion over the next three decades.

The Education Department also proposed to improve the existing income-driven plan mentioned above, capping monthly payments for undergraduate loans at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from the current 10%. The administration claimed that the plan would mean lowering of the average annual student loan payment by more than $1,000 for both current and future borrowers.

Why did the plan run into trouble?

There were two legal challenges to the plan which landed in the Supreme Court—one involving six Republican-led States and the other filed by two students.

In the case filed by the students, they argued, among other things, that the Biden administration didn’t go through the proper process in enacting the plan. Texas-based U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, appointed by former President Donald Trump, opined that Mr. Biden overstepped his authority. To cancel the debt, the Biden government relied on the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, commonly known as the HEROES Act, which was enacted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack and allows the Secretary of Education to waive or modify terms of federal student loans during times of war or national emergency. The White House cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a national emergency.

The ruling, however, argued that the HEROES Act did not accord the Secretary the authority for mass debt cancellation. The judge said it only granted flexibility during national emergencies, adding that it was unclear whether debt cancellation was a necessary response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Mr. Biden had by then declared as over.

As for the suit by the six States— Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina— a lower court dismissed it, ruling that the States could not challenge the programme as they were unable to show that they wereharmed by it.

However, the case went to a panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, where all judges Republican President appointees, which put the programme on hold the next day. After this, the Supreme Court agreed to weigh in.

On June 30, SCOTUS held that the administration needs Congress’ endorsement before undertaking such a costly programme. The majority rejected arguments that the bipartisan 2003 HEROES Act gave Mr. Biden the power he claimed.

“Six States sued, arguing that the HEROES Act does not authorize the loan cancellation plan. We agree,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by the court’s two other liberal judges, writing that the majority of the court “overrides the combined judgment of the Legislative and Executive Branches, with the consequence of eliminating loan forgiveness for 43 million Americans.”

What is the Biden administration’s new plan and what’s next for borrowers?

The president announced on the day of the Court ruling that the Education Secretary had initiated a new rulemaking process for the alternative plan, this time using the Secretary’s authority under the Higher Education Act, 1965, the law governing most federal student loan programmes, as mentioned above.

“I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,” Biden said. “We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, with the so-called Higher Education Ac,” the President said. The plan is also going to take longer as the actual process of negotiated rule making could take as far as fall this year.

While the President contends the new path is consistent with the Court’s opinion, legal scrutiny could be expected. Meanwhile, advocate and legal scholar Luke Herrine, an assistant professor of law at the University of Alabama, wrote in a 2019 paper that the “compromise and settlement” authority, a clause in the HEA, empowers the Secretary of Education with the broad authority to “compromise, waive, or release’’ federal student debt.

Instead of the current Revised Pay as You Earn (REPAYE) plan, the income-driven plan Mr. Biden’s original programme sought to alter, the administration has proposed the new Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan. “This income-driven repayment plan will cut borrowers’ monthly payments in half, allow many borrowers to make $0 monthly payments, and save all other borrowers at least $1,000 per year,” says the factsheet on the plan. 

The specifics remain the same— requiring borrowers to pay half the current share of discretionary income at 5%. Instead of forgiving loan balances after 20 years of annual payments, this plan also forgivesoutstanding principal after 10 years. Additionally, the plan seeks to raise the amount of income that is considered non-discretionary and therefore is protected from repayment. As for borrowers currently facing uncertainty, the President says they will be able to enroll for SAVE later this summer, “before any monthly payments are due.” Borrowers who sign up or are already signed up for the REPAYE plan will be automatically enrolled.

Mr. Biden also announced an alternative to the pause on student loan repayments scheduled to restart at the end of the summer: a temporary 12-month “on-ramp” for repayment, from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024, during which missed loan payments will not harm borrowers’ credit and the threat of default will be temporarily removed.

What are the arguments for and against broad loan cancellation?

Numerous federal student loan repayment and forgiveness programmes providing targeted relief to individuals in certain circumstances currently exist. However, proposals for broader-scale student loan debt relief—including cancellation of all or a portion of federal student loan debt—have gained considerable attention in recent years.

As the cost of education increases while wages stagnate, it has become harder for students to pay off their loans. Studies also point out how federal grants and scholarships have not kept pace with the increasing cost of education and attendance.

President Biden has explained the need for loan cancellation by arguing that higher education “should be a ticket to a middle-class life, but for too many, the cost of borrowing for college is a lifelong burden that deprives them of that opportunity.” A White House factsheet notes that middle-class American borrowers struggle with high monthly payments and “ballooning balances that make it harder for them to build wealth, like buying homes, putting away money for retirement, and starting small businesses.”

CRS Research also points to the composition of borrowers, of which “black students were more likely to borrow Title IV” HEA loans for undergraduate and graduate education “relative to any other racial or ethnic subgroup”. It also finds that certain groups of borrowers (Black, American Indian, and lower-income borrowers) have made less progress in paying down the original principal of debt when compared with other borrowers.

The government also noted how student debt burden falls disproportionately on Black borrowers. “Twenty years after first enrolling in school, the typical Black borrower who started college in the 1995-96 school year still owed 95% of their original student debt,” the White House factsheet on student debt reads.

On the other hand, critics of broad-based cancellation of loans point out how one-time loan cancellation may fail to address the underlying causes of crushing loan debt. One major cause is the skyrocketing cost of education and the need for an overhaul of the system. Another factor flagged by studies is the increasing availability and utilization of loan repayment plans that allow borrowers to make monthly payments lower than the interest accruing on their loans, meaning negative amortization ​​which may result in a larger outstanding loan balance over time.

Analysts have highlighted that policies providing across-the-board loan cancellation may result in higher-income households receiving more cancellation benefits compared to lower-income households when the total dollar amounts cancelled or the savings in annual debt service payments are looked at. Besides, large cancellation plans may also significantly impact federal budgets and debt.

(With inputs from Reuters, Associated Press)

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New Jersey Schools Get Climate Education In Your Peanut Butter, Or At Least In Kids’ Hydroponic Lettuce

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It’s entirely understandable that thinking about climate change can be incredibly depressing. There’s so much that should have been done sooner, and the crisis has gotten so much worse than it would have been if the world had taken action 30 or 40 years ago. We’re finally doing some of what’s going to be needed to prevent the absolute worst of the worst case scenarios from happening, probably, as David Wallace-Wells wrote last fall (New York Times gift link), but the job is so much more urgent and we’re long past the point where everything could have been just fine. But nearly every time I write about climate, I’m also impressed that there are so many extremely smart people doing extremely cool things that will genuinely help the world transition to clean energy and keep the planet more or less habitable for big dumb mammals like humans and even writers of Twilight fan fiction.

Now, if you’re teaching about climate science to elementary school kids, you don’t want to bum them out and make them lose hope, in part because that’s what middle school is for, but mostly because it’s not going to get them enthusiastic about learning. Which is why we were so delighted by this New York Times article (another gift link) about creative things teachers in New Jersey are doing to fulfill the state’s mandate that climate education be included in every grade. The goal is to get kids thinking about problem-solving and understanding that what humans do affects the world around them — in good ways, too:

Tammy Murphy, the wife of Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, was the driving force behind the new standards. She said climate change education was vital to help students attune to the planet’s health, prepare for a new economy based on green energy and adapt to climate shifts that promise to intensify as this generation of children reaches adulthood.

But the state’s method of teaching its youngest learners about climate change arguably does something more profound: Instead of focusing on the doom and gloom, the standards are designed to help children connect with what’s going on in the natural world around them, and, crucially, learn how to solve problems.

In a lovely introduction, we see a class of first-graders brainstorming ideas about what might be done to help penguins in Antarctica adapt to a warming continent. The kids are very into it, suggesting things like helping the penguins migrate someplace colder, or giving them floaties, or maybe offering to let some penguins live in the kids’ refrigerator. And by golly, the kids really do give it serious thought, like the little science fiends small humans can be:

One boy said the birds could cool off in the water, but reconsidered after remembering all the hungry orcas awaiting them there.

Now, obviously, none of these measures is going to be adopted by the UN’s Ministry for the Future, especially since it’s as fictional as the penguin-filled Frigidaire. But the goal is to promote inventive thinking and to get kids engaged in science. In another more real demonstration, the first graders’ teacher, Michelle Liwacz, is growing hydroponic lettuce and spinach in the classroom, which the kids will have for a nice green salad. Here’s a tweet from the school’s principal, Jeanne Muzi, who also gets a mention in the Times story.

Currently, the Times reports, New Jersey requires that climate be taught in

seven out of nine subject areas, including social studies and world languages. The board is expected to vote this summer on whether to require that climate change be expanded to the two remaining subject areas, English language arts and math.

And that’s all to the good, considering that climate change is going to be a part of all our lives going forward. Yes, some grumpy climate denialists are unhappy about the idea, because learning anything at all is “indoctrination,” but the heck with them, they’re not simply wrong, they’re also not representative of New Jerseyans in general, 70 percent of whom said in a recent poll that they support climate education. National polling also shows overwhelming support for climate education.

The really important thing, says elementary science education professor Lauren Madden of the College of New Jersey, is to help kids learn about climate change in a way that’s empowering for them, which means not putting it off until they’re older:

“When we shield them from so much, they’re not ready to unpack it when they learn about it, and it becomes more scary than when they understand they’re in a position where they can actively think about solutions,” Dr. Madden said. “When you take kids seriously that way, and trust them with that information, you can allow them to feel empowered to make locally relevant solutions.”

The curriculum even includes very simple lessons for kindergarteners, who learn that everything is connected, like pollinating insects and the food we eat, or even, in a lesson the first graders clearly loved, how to think about cause and effect: Sharks seem scary, but if they disappeared, one little girl exclaimed, other fish would go hungry because many fish eat shark poop!

And by Crom, if learning about fish that eat shark poop gets kids thinking about the world and their place in it, we should all be excited that kids are learning about shark poop.

It’s such a good story. Go read the whole thing!

And don’t forget to join us this afternoon for the fifth installment of our Wonkette Book Club; we’re about three quarters of the way through Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic 2020 climate novel The Ministry for the Future, and — not really a spoiler — the War for Planet Earth is finally going in some cautiously optimistic directions. We’ll be back with that in a bit, so be ready to join the conversation, yes even if you haven’t done the reading, because damn it, the news is grim but there’s also a lot to be hopeful about.

Oh, and be sure to let the penguins out of the fridge now and then. They need the exercise.

[New York Times (gift link) / NYT (also gift link) / Photo: Ted Eytan, Creative Commons License 2.0]

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The Arabic language should be commonly offered in schools

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By Dr Carine Allaf, Senior Programs Advisor, QFI

Arabic is not just a language spoken in Arabic-speaking countries. It is a growing language within Europe’s own borders, and education policy should reflect this reality, Dr Carine Allaf writes.

Children who grow up in a supportive environment speaking two or more languages are more perceptive and intellectually flexible than those who speak one language, according to numerous research studies.

In Europe, language policy in education appears favourable, especially if compared to language policy in schools in the United States. 

Students across Europe begin studying their first foreign language as a required school subject between the ages of 6 and 9. 

Studying a second foreign language for at least one year is compulsory in more than 20 European countries. 

This is in stark contrast to the situation in the US, where only about 20% of students in primary and secondary schools are enrolled in a foreign language.

But perceptions of foreign languages and the difficulties of teacher supply offer a glimpse into the complexities of the current situation in European education.

Language learning comes with a number of benefits

What to say to someone who would say, “learning English is enough; why learn another language?”

There are neurological, economic, academic, and social advantages to learning an additional language and being bi- or multi-lingual, according to research data from the Council of Europe. 

Learning a second language changes the brain’s physical structure, and those who speak more than one language are viewed more favourably for employment. 

Not only are their skills useful, but they also demonstrate an ability to work with different types of people and are adaptable. 

Bilingual speakers outperform their counterparts on standardised tests, and those who speak multiple languages can communicate with more people around the globe. Their worldview is quite different from their monolingual counterparts.

There should be more room for Arabic learning

Despite a strong research base on the benefits of speaking more than one language, and despite strong language policy to teach languages across schools in Europe, the existing infrastructure focuses on languages like Spanish, French and German (and other official EU languages) with little, if any, emphasis on languages like Arabic. 

Learning another language isn’t the main argument that needs to be made – the argument is that a common option for an additional language needs to be Arabic.

In theory, European language policy is to provide “multilingual and multicultural of high quality from nursery level to the Baccalaureate, fostering a European and global perspective to educate children of different mother tongues and nationalities.”

Yet, in practice, while there is a strong appetite for language learning, the existing ecosystem for Arabic in schools across Europe — and, I would argue, the world — leaves much room for growth.

Considering all of this, there are two main areas that need to be addressed as just a first step to mainstreaming Arabic learning in public schools.

Arabic language learning is rife with misconceptions

First, there is the perception of the Arabic language. Yes, Arabic is not an official language of the EU and, as such, is not explicitly named in European language policy in schools, mainly due to its perceived value. 

The value of learning Arabic, as it stands right now, seems to only be related to religion, the Middle East, or national security. 

The fact is, the majority of Muslims do not speak Arabic. 

Actually, the top five countries with Muslim populations are not Arabic-speaking countries and are not technically in the Middle East. 

Furthermore, there are 422 million people around the world who speak Arabic, and it is an official language of 22+ countries, affirming it as a global language.

And Arabic is not just a language spoken in Arabic-speaking countries. It is a growing language within Europe’s own borders. Education policy should reflect this reality.

It’s not just a heritage language

When it comes to being taught in primary and secondary schools, however, the global standing of Arabic remains as a community, heritage, or mother tongue language that exists on the margins of mainstream schools and curricula. 

There is a small chance, if any, that Arabic would be offered as a global language at any public primary and secondary school. 

And while some countries offer some Arabic instruction for those who come from Arabic-speaking families, more often, it is taught in informal settings on weekends and outside of school hours, with no robust teacher training, curriculum, or oversight.

Yet, elite private schools and universities such as Sciences Po or Polytechnique in France offer Arabic as a global language to their students. 

We are witnessing an imbalance in the perception of Arabic language offerings in schools – on the one hand, it is an elite offering, and yet, on the other hand, it is spottily offered for heritage speakers.

Who teaches Arabic in Europe?

Second, and related to the perception, is the availability of dedicated and qualified Arabic teachers. 

When students recall their favourite subjects, it is because of a memorable teacher. If schools recount popular classes, it is also most likely because of the teacher that has built that program. 

The teacher is the backbone. While there may be plenty of Arabic speakers, finding strong Arabic educators is a huge challenge. 

Finding teachers with the proper qualifications is even more difficult. In our experience at QFI, we have seen programs crumble when key teachers leave – and this is not only the case for Arabic but for all subjects.

But how many Arabic teachers have you met? 

Not many; the path to becoming a certified teacher isn’t an easy or clearly chartered one, resulting in a low teacher supply. 

In some European countries like Sweden, schools locate teachers already in the country coming from Arabic-speaking countries and train them to become Arabic teachers. 

And in Spain, there is an existing agreement with an Arab country that sends Arabic teachers to work in schools. 

Those teaching can make all the difference

In other contexts, a school that wants to offer Arabic is just happy to find any Arabic speaker who is available to teach. 

Often, those teachers’ language skills aren’t assessed, nor is their understanding of teaching pedagogy and methodology. They may receive some training, but it is often not Arabic-language specific. 

And this is what brings us back to an earlier statement made “When students recall their favorite subjects, it is because of a memorable teacher.”

Memorable Arabic language teachers need support through their professional life cycle – beginning when they themselves are learning Arabic and considering a career path.

Pre-service programs should offer Arabic methodology courses, as well as courses on basic classroom management and brain development. 

Few schools of education or teacher preparatory programs offer such courses. These preparatory programs should frame their offerings with accessible language teaching research that draws from other languages and discussions on the nuances of Arabic.

Frequent teaching observations and touchpoints are the heart of any good teacher training program. 

Growing as a teacher requires self-reflection, observation and feedback, and a teacher needs a community of practice to learn from and grow with.

The world is changing, and our views should, too

Perceptions are changing because the world is changing. 

It is time to move beyond stigmas such as Arabic is “difficult,” only for “heritage” students, and has no utility. 

Education policies in practice need to reflect the Council of Europe’s commitment to plurilingual and intercultural education. 

Teachers need support and encouragement to build long-lasting Arabic programs that will equip learners with openness to languages and cultures and 21st-century global competencies. 

No, English is not enough. In today’s interconnected world, multilingualism, and more specifically, learning Arabic in public schools, is more beneficial than ever.

Dr Carine Allaf is a Senior Programs Advisor at QFI, a Washington DC-based organisation committed to advancing the value of teaching and learning Arabic as a global language.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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How are internally displaced Ukrainian children coping?

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In the final instalment of this two-part series, Euronews investigates how children in Ukraine have had their lives upended by Russia’s invasion. How are NGOs Save the Children and UNICEF tackling challenges posed by internal displacement and disruptions to education?

As of January 2023, there were 6.2 million internally-displaced people (IDPs) in Ukraine. The United Nations estimates that more than 3.5 million children across the country have “severe to catastrophic levels of needs”. Approximately 75% of parents have reported that their children have symptoms of psychological trauma as a result of the war with impaired memories, shorter attention spans, and a decreased ability to learn.

“We try to work with families inside of Ukraine, those trying to get their children back [those forcibly deported to Russia] but also families who have had their children returned”, Ajman Yamin, Save the Children’s Advocacy, Campaigns, Communication and Media Director for Ukraine told Euronews.

“This is one of the situations that is very sensitive for families. Sometimes after they get their children back they don’t even want to talk about it, because they worry that something else might come after,” he said.

Collective centres have been set up to cater to Ukraine’s displaced population. There are some 7,000 collective centres in the country but many of them lack child-friendly facilities and infrastructure for small children.

In addition, Save the Children has reported that collective site managers do not have the experience to deal with diverse groups of IDPs, such as ethnic minorities, people with specific needs, female-headed households with children, older people, etc., which can exacerbate IDP vulnerabilities and introduce barriers to accessing services.

To better address the needs of children, the charity has a large focus on reintegration through what Save the Children calls ‘child-friendly spaces’. These centres cater to children who are not up to speed with the education curriculum, provide space for parents to discuss their financial needs, and help children process difficult emotions through designated therapy dogs.

Educating a lost generation

Education comes in two parts, both formal and social as Ajman Yamin explained: “Children are trying to form their opinions of what life looks like. It is vastly important for them to socialise, and meet each other. And this is why we continue to push not only to work with the Minister of Education but also work with families on improving the quality of learning and making sure there are opportunities for children to speak to each other, learn from each other, and socialise which will help them develop a healthier view of themselves and of life.”

For many children in Ukraine, remote learning has become the norm. The shelling of critical infrastructure and residential areas has forced many schools in frontline areas to conduct lessons online.

Poor internet connection, energy blackouts, and a lack of suitable smart devices can disrupt lessons, while less than 30% of school children have access to a laptop or tablet.

As a consequence and after two years of remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many children are not educated or do not have the age-appropriate skills required by Ukraine’s Department of Education.

To facilitate both online and in-person learning, Save the Children has developed digital learning centres (DLCs) and mobile learning stations. Teachers are transported on purpose-fitted buses with learning materials to war-torn areas to provide families and children with educational support and to allow children to socialise together.

UNICEF is also on the ground providing essential services such as medical care, psychological support, family support, clean water and education.

“UNICEF is delivering both humanitarian assistance and humanitarian recovery all the way along that spectrum from bottled water and medical kits in frontline locations all the way through to supporting health clinics with power generation and all the equipment they need to get wastewater treatment plants back online and functioning again”, Damian Ranch, the Chief of Communications for UNICEF in Ukraine told Euronews.

“One of the most important things, as far as UNICEF is concerned, is ensuring that wherever children may be, no matter what the set of circumstances is, children get the opportunity to access learning, whether it be in a formal school setting or whether it be online,” he said.

For UNICEF, the focus remains on ensuring that children return to education as soon as possible. However, many humanitarian organisations in Ukraine depend on private donations to continue their work.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion nears the one-and-a-half-year mark, some experts fear compassion fatigue will hit financial supporters.

“The world has been very generous to Ukraine and to us [Save the Children] in particular,” said Yamin. “But sadly, the level of funding cannot meet the level of need, and the number of people in need is big” he continued.

Ukraine has a land mass of 603,700 square kilometres making it the second largest country on the European continent after Russia, this adds further logistical challenges. “It can take more than 14 hours just to get from the west to the centre, so that puts large demands on us,” explained Yamin.

“I think beyond UNICEF, it’s something that all organisations working in conflict zones worry about. But we have seen a significant decline [in funding] in 2023 compared to last year. I think people are looking ahead to 2024 and are worrying about how much programming they can put in place”, echoed Damian Rance.

While online learning is helping to bridge the gap for students in the interim, Rance warned that schools will not be repaired overnight. 

“Recovery and rebuilding are not just about infrastructure, this is also about rebuilding the community and society here in Ukraine so that it is child-centric and child-focused, one that puts children and their needs at the centre. And that requires, of course, significant resources,” he concluded.

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Cool TN Lady Gonna Fill The Social Studies Standards With Awesome Stuff Like ‘Barack Obama Did The Tornados’

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The Education Wars just never go away, and in today’s dispatch from the front lines we’ll look at Tennessee, where a rightwing conspiracy theory fan and anti-Muslim bigot has just been appointed to the committee that sets standards for the state’s social studies curricula.

Yr Wonkette already introduced you last year to Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the nutball Tennessee bigot lady, when she was a member of the state textbook commission that was tasked with making sure only “age appropriate” materials were in them. You may recall that Tennessee was considering a measure that would have required state approval of every last item in the collections of school libraries; the bill’s sponsor charmingly said that any materials not approved by the commission should be burned. Ultimately, the Lege settled for a different plan that gave the textbook commission the power to hear appeals of book challenges brought by parents, so the state could ban library books even after a local school board had gone through a challenge process and approved them. Hooray for compromise.

We guess that Ms. Cardoza-Moore must have either done a bang-up job on that commission, or at the very least that she has powerful friends in Tennessee, because clearly it’s the latter thing. She was chosen for the Tennessee Standards Recommendation Committee by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R), the slimebooger we came to know and loathe during the kangaroo court proceedings that expelled Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in April. Sexton also appointed her to the textbook commission in 2021, which is quite the coincidence.

In her new job, Cardoza-Moore will have a say in setting state standards for social studies classes, although we suspect she’ll just photocopy the course offerings at Hillsdale College and say “Done!” As Judd Legum points out in his Popular Information newsletter, Cardoza-Moore doesn’t actually believe in public schools; she’s homeschooled her own five kids, and she’s simply horrified that US history texts teach historical facts that make America look bad, such as the fact that the Constitution provided a framework for oppression of African Americans. In a 2020 Fox News interview, she blamed Common Core, because why not? She claimed, falsely, that schools no longer teach about the founding of the US, but instead skip ahead to the Civil War and Reconstruction so they can harp on all the slavery, those monsters.

“This is an outrage,” Cardoza-Moore exclaimed. “It poses the greatest national security threat to our constitutional republic.”

So yeah, she’s a real peach. She somehow also took issue with a textbook’s factual statement that the Republican Party was originally founded to fight the spread of slavery beyond the states where it was already allowed, complaining that it was “disinformation” because Lincoln was anti-slavery, which, yeah, that’s what the book said. She was mostly upset the book didn’t say that Democrats were pro-slavery and KKK, and also what about that Klansman Robert Byrd, huh?

Cardoza-Moore initially made her name in Tennessee politics by fearmongering about Islam, back when that was the thing the Right was certain would destroy America, because Barack Obama was president. She led some of the most paranoid opposition to a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, claiming that fully 30 percent of Muslims are terrorists and that the mosque would be a base for “radical Islamic extremists” bent on destroying Nashville’s Christian music industry.

During her 2021 confirmation hearing for her seat on the textbook commission, she explained that bad school textbooks are directly responsible for wrecking America and of course the riots that burned all cities in America to the ground in 2020, several of them more than once.

While America slept, the hearts, minds and souls of our students were being influenced by disinformation. Tragically we have seen the result over the past few months; our streets have been filled with rioting destructive American young people who have not been taught the values entrusted to us by our nation’s founders … nor have they been taught our nation’s history — history which many seem intent to destroy

See, if only kids been made to memorize more facts about how George Washington was a Christian and God wrote the Constitution, there might be a few more cities still standing in our great land.

As Legum details, Cardoza-Moore doesn’t seem to have met a conspiracy theory she didn’t glom on to. She’s said that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election, and that January 6 was a false flag attack by “Antifa.” I’m just disappointed that she doesn’t appear to have said anything about chemtrails. But she came kind of close in 2011, as Legum explains, when she

claimed that former President Barack Obama was causing “horrific tornadoes” because he made a speech that discussed the plight of Palestinians. Asked if she still held these views, Cardoza-Moore did not respond.

She also runs her very own “Christian Zionist” nonprofit called “Proclaiming Justice to the Nations,” which recently ran a press release on her appointment to the social studies standards job. In it, we learn that she has previously helped the Florida Department of Education screen textbooks, “a successful review effort that ‘caught and corrected dozens of books to prevent political indoctrination of Florida’s children,’ a spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis noted.”

In the press release, Cardoza-Moore reflected on the important task ahead of her, because

“The materials we will be reviewing can only accomplish the mission of educating good American citizens if our Tennessee textbooks are devoid of left-aligned historic revisionism and the toxic material found in the antisemitic Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Social-Emotional Learning and Ethnic Studies.”

Impressive how she got all the rightwing shibboleths in there!

The statement also emphasized that Muslim groups opposed her appointment to the textbook commission, presumably because if she has the right enemies, that just shows what a great job she’ll do for Tennessee students.

We can hardly wait to see what happens to Tennessee social studies standards. Haha, we kid, of course, because we read the history standards that Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission” came up with, so we have a pretty good idea. Good luck, kids!

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Malaysian tweens earn their ‘Tiger Stripes’ in Cannes coming-of-age body horror

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Issued on:

From our special correspondent in Cannes – A young girl’s experience of puberty gets the body-horror treatment in Amanda Nell Eu’s playfully rebellious “Tiger Stripes”, the first feature by a Malaysian female director to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. FRANCE 24 spoke to Eu about the making of the movie and its universal message.

A bold and stirring debut feature, “Tiger Stripes” offered an original take on the experience of menstrual metamorphosis – and a welcome distraction from the relentless rain that has dampened the mood here in Cannes.

Its Cannes screening, part of the Critics’ Week sidebar, was met with warm applause from a large and varied audience that included teenage pupils on a school outing.

One student said she saw a “universal message” in the film, noting that “difference isn’t always accepted – in France, too”. Another said it was important that male students saw it as well, though joking that “the boys in the class probably didn’t get the message”.

There are hardly any male characters in this female-centred movie, aside from a sweet but apathetic father and a charlatan guru who takes it upon himself to “drive the monster” out of the film’s menstruating protagonist – live on social media.

“Tiger Stripes” is powered by an exhilarating trio of TikTok-savvy first-time actresses whom Eu and her casting director initially reached out to on social media, owing to Covid-19 restrictions.

From left to right: Feisty trio Piqa, Deena Ezral and Zafreen Zairizal in Cannes for the premiere of “Tiger Stripes”. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

Set largely in the strict environment of a Muslim school for girls, it explores the wildly shifting dynamics at play between feisty 12-year-old Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) and her two best friends once she gets her period and starts experiencing other, frightening bodily changes that lead to her ostracisation.

Rejecting or taming the “monster” in Zaffan is as cruel as it is futile, the movie points out, in a defiant call to lift taboos on the female body and sexuality.

Can you talk us through the premise of your film and why you chose to draw on the monster genre?

I love to tell stories that are inspired by my own body and emotions, and that’s how it really started. I was thinking about what it was like when I was growing up, with puberty. It’s my weird sense of humour that to me puberty is like a body horror [film], because one night you look one way and then the next day you wake up and things have grown on you – and if you don’t know what’s happening to you it can be quite terrifying. I remember it was quite violent the way I rejected my changes and really didn’t want it to happen.

As a young girl you’re always told that you’re emotional, you’re hysterical. But you’re really going through a lot of things and sometimes you’re labelled as a monster. And so I thought, ‘Let me show a young girl who really does turn into a monster and what a monster really is’.

Why did you opt for a rural Malaysian setting?

I really wanted to tell a fairy tale and in that sense you never really know in what village or part of Malaysia it is. It’s always this idea of ‘once upon a time there was a young girl who lived far, far away’. Of course we have the jungle, society surrounded by wild nature, and I thought that was a nice idea for a fairy tale.

“Tiger Stripes” director Amanda Nell Eu. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

What would you say is specifically Malaysian, or Southeast Asian, about your film, in terms of its setting, themes and influences?

There’s the idea that monsters, ghosts or spirits – we have many names for them – are very much part of our community, and they’re also very much linked to nature. We believe there are many spirits living in trees, in waterfalls, in rivers. That was very inspiring, because I absolutely love the power that nature has. And to have that represented in a young girl was very exciting.

Of course the folk tales, the monsters, even the prosthetics were an homage to Malaysian B-movies from the 1950s and ‘60s, by the Shaw Brothers in particular. Those movies were always very gnarly and strange, and that was definitely something that I wanted to show on-screen.

How much did the film’s young cast inform and shape your movie during filming?

A lot! Of course I wrote the script and had my ideas of how it was going to be, but you throw all that away when you start auditioning and meeting talents. I love that they would always surprise me with their own personalities, their own experiences. It was very important to be with them every step of the way, moving with them, because they have so much energy that they want to unleash.

It’s also very much part of my personality. I do like crazy colours and bizarre things, and my personality worked well with the girls’ energy. I’m so connected to the girls; we could share and open up on whatever we were feeling. When we watched the film together yesterday it was so emotional just looking at their faces.


 

There’s a lot of love and hate between the girls on-screen; was it important to show that sorority is not a given?

I grew up in all-girls schools, so I know the experience where you love and support your best friend but you also really hate her and there’s jealousy and miscommunication. They go hand in hand and I love exploring female friendships that way. That was the balance of the film: to show both love and jealousy, and differences, and how you overcome that and support each other.

Zaffan’s is a lonely journey but it was important to show that you’re not alone if you share your experiences and stand proud.

It’s a universal message?

Telling the story of what happens to young girls is incredibly universal. There are so many parts of the world where women or young girls fear their own bodies or don’t have ownership of their bodies. There [are] people in power always dictating what they’re supposed to look like, what they’re supposed to wear, what they’re allowed to do and how they’re supposed to behave. It’s not just in Malaysia, it’s all over the world.

How does it feel to be the first female director from Malaysia with a feature here in Cannes?

It’s a mixed feeling. I don’t want to be pinpointed as a woman and yet at the same time I represent that voice and I’m so happy that I get to have my crazy voice represented here, because we don’t have that many female directors back home. It has also been many years since a Malaysian film has been represented in Cannes and so I hope this will help pave the way for more films that make it to the international market.

 

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

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Ron DeSantis Achieves New Dickishness Personal Worst

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has had a busy week, signing several bills that will further encrappen the state and make life miserable for LGBTQ folks, all in the hope that he’ll prove himself authoritarian enough to appeal to Republican primary voters next year. He’s been traveling across America’s Dangling Appendage signing bills restricting people’s freedom while claiming that Florida is the home of freedom, as long as you’re a rightwing evangelical. (We think we’ll just stop at “evangelical” from here on, since adding “Christian” to it just makes baby Jesus sad.)

Monday, DeSantis went to New College of Florida in Sarasota, the nice little liberal arts school he’s ruining to turn into a rightwing indoctrination center, to sign several bills aimed at purifying Florida colleges and universities of “wokeness.” It was his way of twisting the knife a bit, to remind the Liberal Elites who’s in charge. Your fascists love that kind of symbolic humiliation shit, like how a former German corporal insisted in 1940 that France surrender in the same railroad car where the 1919 Armistice was signed.

But sometimes the vanquished just won’t cooperate and admit they’ve been crushed, darn them. As Yr Wonkette noted Saturday, the official graduation speaker for New College’s commencement was Dr. Scott Atlas, Donald Trump’s Infect Everyone and Let God Sort ‘Em Out COVID adviser, which was supposed to be a sick burn on the libs. Instead of going along, New College students scheduled their own commencement for tonight, and civil rights attorney Maya Wiley will deliver the keynote speech. It’s as if those libs don’t even know they’ve been owned. Sad!

We Don’t Need No Education

As we say, DeSantis went to New College to ritually defile the corpse of his enemy, by signing bills that will further his goal of ramping up white grievance against higher education and nonexistent “liberal indoctrination.” The biggie is Senate Bill 266, which defunds and prohibits “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs in higher education, because as we all know from racist memes, diversity is just code for white genocide. DeSantis kept a lid on the open racism and went for the respectable old dog whistle of “reverse racism” instead, saying,

“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination. […] And that has no place in our public institutions.”

DeSantis proclaimed an end to diversity, crowing that “This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.”

In addition, the bill also cracks down further on academic freedom, specifying that general education classes — the core of classes for all undergrads — may not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics,” and must not be based on

theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.

Lasting effects of Jim Crow? Certainly not in Florida! America is perfect in Florida! A history prof could teach about redlining, presumably, as long as they don’t suggest that it created a structural imbalance in how wealth is accumulated in the US, because it’s just pure coincidence that some people inherited homes in neighborhoods that had restrictive covenants, while other people never saw such generational wealth transfer. Discrimination vanished after the Fair Housing Act in 1968, because it’s right in the name of the law, and how dare you suggest that the playing field was never level?

The bill also demands that gen ed classes of all kinds emphasize “Western Civilization,” the best civilization there is, and requires that humanities classes include works from the “Western” canon, although studying inferior books from less important cultures will be tolerated for now at least.

Other bills DeSantis signed Monday included House Bill 931, which prohibits colleges from requiring a “political loyalty test” — i.e., from committing to diversity or anything like it. It also requires that all “public policy events” include equal time for opposing views, which as far as we can tell means that if you have a Pride event you have to invite Matt Walsh.

Finally, another measure will weaken tenure protections for professors, who need to be kept in line with the threat of being fired if they get too mouthy about any of this.

‘Don’t Say Gay’ On Steroids, And Worse

To mark yesterday’s International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, which commemorates the World Health Organization’s 1990 removal of LGBTQ+ identity from its list of “mental disorders” — Jesus H Christ on a Segway, it took that long! — DeSantis signed four anti-LGBTQ measures into law, ensuring that civil rights attorneys and activists will at least have a booming business for the next few years as they work to shut that shit down. Honestly, it’s well past time that, instead of the Bugs Bunny gif, we instead force Florida back into the US of A and make it respect all its residents’ rights.

Florida’s state medical board last year adopted rules restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth. Yesterday, DeSantis made it a matter of law by signing Senate Bill 254, which prohibits puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery for minors (as we always point out, gender-affirming surgery is already extremely rare for patients under 18).

As indy journalist Erin Reed notes, this one’s far worse than the usual run of such bills, because it also bans nurse practitioners from providing any gender-affirming meds, which won’t just deny care to minors but to adults, since according to Florida healthcare provider SPEKTRUM Health, up to 80 percent of gender-affirming care in Florida is provided by NPs. As Reed reports, this has already led to appointments being cancelled and people losing access to medication.

The bill became effective as soon as DeSantis signed it, and the Human Rights Campaign reports that parents who are already suing to block the state medical board’s anti-trans measures are seeking an emergency order to block SB 254 immediately. Other lawsuits are certain to follow.

DeSantis also signed what might be the most restrictive “bathroom bill” in the country, HB 1521, as Reed explains.

The wording of the bill states that if a cisgender person is in the bathroom with a transgender person, an employee can tell the transgender person to leave. Should the transgender person not leave immediately for any reason, they will be charged with criminal trespass, which can carry sentences of up to 1 year in jail. […]

While the provisions do not ban all bathroom usage, they cast a wide net over an alarming number of locations that would fall under definitions of “public” in the bill. This includes all buildings owned or leased by any governmental entity, educational institutions spanning from elementary schools to private colleges and universities, numerous hospitals owned by universities, many sports arenas, convention centers, city parks, beaches, airports, and more.

The bill makes no exceptions for trans folk who have updated their gender status on official documents like birth certificates or drivers licenses, instead defining sex as a matter of chromosomes and genitalia, which opens the hellish possibility that people trying to relieve themselves in a stall with a locked door will be subjected to freaking medical investigations. It’s also a no-win situation, as Reed notes, since

Transgender people who are androgenous or pass as their gender identity will likely be challenged in the bathroom of their birth sex. Those trans people will then be forced to undergo the same investigation into their gender. In essence, it amounts to a ban on bathrooms for transgender people entirely.

HB 1521 goes into effect on July 1 — avoiding Pride month, isn’t that cute? — by which time the lawsuits challenging it may have made headway, we hope. If it isn’t already enjoined by then, get ready for lots of pushback, too, from cisgender folks who are challenged by toilet vigilantes. Sadly, in Florida, those cases may get the most media attention, because oh no, the “wrong” people are being harmed.

DeSantis also signed HB 1069, which expands the already awful “Don’t Say Gay” law to 12th grade, and will prohibit trans students from asking to please be addressed by their correct pronouns, as well as encouraging even more vicious censorship of books in classrooms and school libraries. It too becomes effective July 1. A final member of the shitshow quartet, SB 1438, expands Florida’s “obscenity” laws to include drag shows; it’s almost certain to be used to attack Pride parades. Reed notes it has “already led to cancellations of pride events, including the Treasure Coast Pride Parade.”

All of the bills DeSantis signed this week are blatantly unconstitutional, so this might be a good time to donate, if you can, to groups like Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign, or the ACLU of Florida. As the inevitable lawsuits against this fuckery ramp up, we’ll bring you more information on how to help. As Yr Wonkette likes to point out when we discuss the climate crisis, things are pretty fucked, but we have the advantage of being on the right side. Americans do not want this crap, and there’s a lot of mobilization to do — like the major federal lawsuit that’s just been launched by Florida parents, PEN America, and Random House against school library censorship, about which we’ll have more shortly.

Be an activist. Be an ally. Fight this shit with love and passion and smartassery (but don’t mistake snark for activism, you in the back, there). This humbug shall not stand, man.

[NBC News / NPR / Erin in the Morning]

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Concern grows around US health-care workforce shortage: ‘We don’t have enough doctors’ | CNN

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CNN
 — 

There is mounting concern among some US lawmakers about the nation’s ongoing shortage of health-care workers, and the leaders of historically Black medical schools are calling for more funding to train a more diverse workforce.

As of Monday, in areas where a health workforce shortage has been identified, the United States needs more than 17,000 additional primary care practitioners, 12,000 dental health practitioners and 8,200 mental health practitioners, according to data from the Health Resources & Services Administration. Those numbers are based on data that HRSA receives from state offices and health departments.

“We have nowhere near the kind of workforce, health-care workforce, that we need,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told CNN on Friday. “We don’t have enough doctors. We don’t have enough nurses. We don’t have enough psychologists or counselors for addiction. We don’t have enough pharmacists.”

The heads of historically Black medical schools met with Sanders in a roundtable at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta on Friday to discuss the nation’s health-care workforce shortage.

The health-care workforce shortage is “more acute” in Black and brown communities; the Black community constitutes 13% of the US population, but only 5.7% of US physicians are Black, said Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

“What we’re trying to do in this committee – in our Health, Education, Labor Committee – is grow the health-care workforce and put a special emphasis on the needs to grow more Black doctors, nurses, psychologists, et cetera,” Sanders said.

At Friday’s roundtable, the leaders of the Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Howard University and Charles R. Drew University called for more resources and opportunities to be allocated to their institutions to help grow the nation’s incoming health-care workforce.

“Allocating resources and opportunities matter for us to increase capacity and scholarships and programming to help support these students as they matriculate through,” Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, told CNN.

“But also, the other 150-plus medical schools, beyond our four historically Black medical schools, owe it to the country to increase the diversity of the students that they train,” Rice said, adding that having a health-care workforce that reflects the communities served helps reduce the health inequities seen in the United States.

Historically Black medical schools are “the backbone for training Black doctors in this country,” Dr. Hugh Mighty, senior vice president for health affairs at Howard University, said at Friday’s event. “As the problem of Black physician shortages rise, within the general context of the physician workforce shortage, many communities of need will continue to be underserved.”

A new study commissioned by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities estimates that the economic burden of health inequities in the United States has cost the nation billions of dollars. Such inequities are illustrated in how Black and brown communities tend to have higher rates of serious health outcomes such as maternal deaths, certain chronic diseases and infectious diseases.

The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions, analyzed excess medical care expenditures, death records and other US data from 2016 through 2019. They took a close look at health inequities in the cost of medical care, differences in premature deaths and the amount of labor market productivity that has been lost due to health reasons.

The researchers found that, in 2018, the economic burden of health inequities for racial and ethnic minority communities in the United States was up to $451 billion, and the economic burden of health inequities for adults without a four-year college degree was up to $978 billion.

“These findings provide a clear and important message to health care leaders, public health officials, and state and federal policy makers – the economic magnitude of health inequities in the US is startlingly high,” Drs. Rishi Wadhera and Issa Dahabreh, both of Harvard University, wrote in an editorial that accompanied the new study in the journal JAMA.

The Covid-19 pandemic “pulled the curtain back” on health inequities, such as premature death and others, Rice said, and “we saw a disproportionate burden” on some communities.

“We saw a higher death rate in Black and brown communities because of access and fear and a whole bunch of other factors, including what we recognize as racism and unconscious bias,” Rice said.

“We needed more physicians, more health-care providers. So, we already know when we project out to 2050, we have a significant physician shortage based on the fact that we cannot educate and train enough health care professionals fast enough,” she said. “We can’t just rely on physicians. We have to rely on a team approach.”

She added that the nation’s shortage of health-care workers leaves the country ill-prepared to respond to future pandemics.

The United States is projected to face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034 as the demand outpaces supply, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The workforce shortage means “we’re really not prepared” for another pandemic, Sanders said.

“We don’t have the public health infrastructure that we need state by state. We surely don’t have the doctors and the nurses that we need,” Sanders said. “So what we are trying to do now is to bring forth legislation, which will create more doctors and more nurses, more dentists, because dental care is a major crisis in America.”

In March, Bill McBride, executive director of the National Governors Association, wrote a letter to Sanders and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy detailing the “root causes” of the health-care workforce shortage and potential ways some states are hoping to tackle the crisis.

“Governors have taken innovative steps to address the healthcare workforce shortage facing their states and territories by boosting recruitment efforts, loosening licensing requirements, expanding training programs and raising providers’ pay,” McBride wrote.

“Shortages in healthcare workers is not a new challenge but has only worsened in the past three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnout and stress have only exacerbated this issue,” he wrote. “The retirement and aging of an entire generation is front and center of the healthcare workforce shortage, particularly impacting rural communities.”

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Let us now praise single moms | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Roughly 24 million, or one-third of all American children under age 18, are living with an unmarried parent, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center analysis of US Census Bureau data. And 81% of those single parent homes are headed by a mom.

This has been a growing trend since the late 1960s. The number of kids being raised by mostly single moms has more than doubled between 1968 and 2017.

Yet despite growing up in the middle of this trend, in the 1970s and ’80s, when divorce was increasingly common and “Kramer vs. Kramer” felt like the documentary of our childhood, and despite being part of a generation of latchkey kids who came home from school while parents were still at work, I was, I confess, embarrassed to be raised by a single mom when I was growing up.

For the majority of my 12 years of Catholic school, I was the only student who lived with one parent. And for that reason, I was also, demonstratively, the poorest kid in my school. We lived off one paycheck, or paychecks when my mom held multiple jobs at once. The modest child support went to school tuition.

Like most kids, I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be “normal.” “Why can’t we just be normal?” I’d often lament to my mom.

I was embarrassed by our car, which broke down; embarrassed that we didn’t seem to go anywhere for vacation; that I didn’t have brand-name clothes (thank God for school uniforms that greatly leveled the playing field); or video games; or cable TV; or anything else that my classmates had. I was embarrassed that my dad, who lived in a neighboring state, never came to any school events.

And I was teased for it. “Why don’t you get a new car?” “Your gym shoes are fake Nikes.” “Do you even have a dad?” I was often angry. I got into a lot of fights. When the principal’s office called home because I got into it with another kid, it was always my mom who had to come in.

Of course, my mother, like all parents, only added to that embarrassment. She was, and still is, artistically inclined and health-conscious. We went to museums and art stores instead of amusement parks and toy stores. I went to a summer camp run by cloistered monks … in heavy brown robes. My mom performed in community theater and sometimes roped me into bit parts. We went to clown school … together. At Christmas, I often got books and clothes. And my mom shopped for groceries at health food stores, which was much more unusual back then and involved a lot of bulk foods, homegrown sprouts and warm, freshly ground peanut butter. I had an all-carob Easter one year. I was embarrassed by my un-tradable school lunches and embarrassed at meals when friends spent the night.

Sitting under a framed movie poster of Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi,” my friend would stare at an unappetizing breakfast bowl of “natural” cereal I poured for him out of a bulk food bag. His breath would blow a few rice puffs out of the bowl and across the table. “We can drizzle honey on it!” I’d say, as if that would solve everything. And then he’d go home to eat his Honeycomb or Count Chocula or whatever.

“Why can’t we just be normal?”

There has been a lot of research over the decades that has shown children of single parents report more family distress and conflict and live at a lower socioeconomic status compared to those growing up in two-parent households. Two-parent families usually have more income and are generally able to provide more emotional resources to children, and that’s also a reflection of how little the United States in general does to support working mothers with parental paid leave and access to more health services and quality education.

And of course, it’s difficult to compare single parenting outcomes to hypothetical alternatives. For many, a single mom can create a much safer or more stable environment than living with an abusive parent and spouse. Just growing up in an unhappy marriage has an effect on children.

A 2017 study, however, looked at the long-term effects of single parenthood on kids and found that it had nearly no impact on their general life satisfaction. The authors also found no evidence “supporting the widely held notion from popular science that boys are more affected than girls by the absence of their fathers.” What mattered most in terms of thriving, they concluded, was the quality and strength of the relationship between children and parents.

A separate 10-year study on single parenting that collected data from 40,000 households in the UK came to a similar conclusion last year. “There is no evidence of a negative impact of living in a single parent household on children’s wellbeing, with regard to self-reported life satisfaction, quality of peer relationships, or positivity about family life,” the report states. “Children who are living or have lived in single parent families score as highly, or higher, against each measure of wellbeing than those who have always lived in two parent families”

Speaking for myself, I’d go further and say there were benefits to being raised by a single mother, that it was foundational to becoming the adult I am now.

Being raised by a single parent required an Emersonian amount of self-reliance. I got myself to school in the morning, figured out how to apply to college, paid my way through that education and embarked on a career with no shortcuts or introductions. Our poverty made me class-conscious even as I earned my way into the middle class myself. My role model for what women are and should be was smart, strong, independent and deserving of all respect.

Even my childhood embarrassment was character-building, giving me a deeper sense of self-worth that is dependent neither on material things nor the opinion of those I don’t admire.

I’m not embarrassed now. Being raised by a single mother means the opposite to me today: I have a pride in her for enduring so much (including the indignity of a son perpetually embarrassed by our situation).

But even as a kid, I thought of her as a role model of resilience and resourcefulness. She imparted integrity, a love of the arts and a sense of occasion for the things I loved, like “Star Wars” and Orioles baseball. Before the age of 10, I was exposed to classical music, classic film, anti-nuclear activism, boxing (as participant) and yoga (long before it was a thing people did at gyms). And her exuberant creativity meant she was also a lot of fun growing up. We once invented a board game about the holidays of the world’s religions. On weekend mornings, we went to a park near a music conservancy to hear musicians practice while we ate our granola breakfast.

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    • Nothing about the financial and logistical stress of our years together kept her from raising a responsible, decent, curious, creative and accomplished son with very high life satisfaction. She gets more credit for that than any other individual, except maybe me. I’m not embarrassed, I’m grateful.

    Let us now praise single mothers. All of them. The “weird” ones. The struggling ones. The driven ones who choose to parent alone. The widowed, who didn’t. The brave ones who divorced for the well-being of their kids and/or themselves. They are all raising about 19 million children right now, and they need all the support they can get.

    This story was original published in October 2019. It has been updated.

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