When Mom's an Ex-Con
Much is made of the ill effects of fatherlessness on children, but another risk factor has gone virtually unremarked: Children whose mothers abuse narcotics or have served time in prison experience significantly higher rates of crime, drug abuse, poverty, incarceration, and premature death later in life. Two doctors in Providence, Rhode Island, have stepped forward to try to break this particular "intergenerational cycle" of social pathologies with a mentoring and scholarship program they hope will be replicated elsewhere.
Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE) selects disadvantaged youths whose mothers have been in jail or abused drugs and matches them with sponsors who commit to paying their tuition ($1,500 to $3,000 a year) for three to four years at a local approved private or parochial school. In addition, the sponsor mentors his or her charge. Twenty-five children, mostly black and almost all fatherless, have been chosen for the first cohort, which starts this fall. "Piecemeal intervention doesn't work," says cofounder Kevin Vigilante. With these kids, "we have to have major intervention early in life." RISE also plans to raise money for a long-term study of each participant's behavioral and academic outcomes over 16 years. "We're interested in seeing what works and what doesn't," says Vigilante, a former candidate for Congress from Rhode Island. "No study like this has ever been done."
* For more information, contact the executive director of RISE--tel.: 401-421-2010.
A New Approach to Delinquency
By focusing on the young thugs who are well on their way to becoming superpredators-the street "sharks"-America's juvenile-justice system frequently neglects the not-so-tough first-time offenders-the "minnows." Usually sentenced to probation, these minnows receive virtually no supervision and often conclude that crime has no consequences. They are thus very likely to become predatory "sharks" themselves.
A community-based program in Philadelphia known as the Youth Aid Panel (YAP) is trying to salvage these young delinquents by proving that crime does have consequences. Staffed entirely by volunteers from the inner city, YAP is essentially a pre-trial diversion program. A young offender can choose to avoid criminal prosecution by appearing before a YAP panel and pledging in writing to comply with its punishment. Punishments typically include a combination of public service, restitution, curfew, noncontact with the victim, counseling, and letters of apology.
Community-based volunteers frequently check offenders for compliance. (Noncompliance results in a trip to court). Many minnows welcome adult supervision and are genuinely changed by it. The overall recidivism rate among offenders who have appeared before YAP since 1987 is 20 percent-less than a third the national rate for young offenders.
* "How Philadelphia Salvages Teen Criminals" by John J. Dilulio Jr. and Beth Z. Palubinsky, City Journal, Summer 1997.
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Jefferson Awards With support from Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike, the American Institute for Public Service is now in its 25th year of honoring the unsung heroes whose volunteer work makes America a better place. Here are some of the winners of its annual Jefferson Awards presented at the Supreme Court in June: Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the Race for the Cure, who has raised more than $65 million for research and treatment for this dread disease; Oseola McCarty, a maid and laundress who donated her life savings of $150,000 to scholarships at the University of Southern Mississippi; Michael Danziger, the president of the Steppingstone Foundation of Massachusetts, who promotes academic excellence among poor inner-city children and gives them scholarships to private schools; Dawn Degenhardt, who has adopted nine children of her own and created the Maine Adoption Placement Service; Momma Hawk, whose Recovering Gifted Child Foundation turns likely candidates for prison on Chicago’s West Side into academic performers; Vernard Gant, executive director of the remarkable Cornerstone School in Birmingham, Alabama; and private investigator Debra Peel of Panama City, Florida, who volunteers her time to produce a weekly televised news segment, "Crime of the Week," that has helped identify the perpetrators of over 170 crimes. For more information, contact the American Institute for Public Service—tel.: 302-323 9659. |
Welfare Reform in Maryland
As states work more often with private social-service organizations to reform welfare, one program in Maryland stands out. Known as C-DAP (Community-Directed Assistance Program), it links welfare recipients with support groups of church volunteers. Since its inception in 1994, 21 welfare recipients have enrolled in C-DAP and 14 have not returned to Maryland's welfare rolls.
C-DAP applies a team approach. Typically, one C-DAP member will help the welfare recipient find affordable day care, another will look for job openings, a third will provide transportation, and a fourth will offer budget counseling. This reduces volunteer burnout and increases the participant's network of contacts. C-DAP volunteers put in 400 to 500 hours with a single participant over a six-month period, compared to 39 hours per individual by a typical government case worker over a similar period.
Volunteers are willing to challenge self-destructive behavior and encourage thrift, punctuality, and personal responsibility-something the old welfare system rarely did.
* "Thy Neighbor's Keeper" by Amy L. Sherman, Reason, Aug.-Sept. 1997.
Guide to Bilingual Education
As a parent with a Hispanic surname, Linda Chavez once had to fight to get her son, who spoke no foreign languages, out of bilingual-education classes at his local school. As the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, she recently published a booklet to guide others through the bilingual-ed maze. An estimated 3 million public-school students in the United States can be classified as having a limited English proficiency (LEP). How quickly such students learn English in the classroom often depends on the prevailing bilingual-ed philosophy of their school district. In some areas, the bilingual-ed establishment tries to keep LEP students out of English-language classrooms and in native-language classes for five to seven years, out of an unproven belief that nonnative speakers will fall hopelessly behind in English-language classes. Also, some students might be misclassified LEP on the basis of faulty tests, biased surveys, or even the ethnicity of surnames.
Fortunately, residents in most states with large foreign-language populations are allowed to opt out of the bilingual-ed straitjacket, but many parents do not know their rights. For these parents, Chavez and CEO analyst Jorge Amselle have published a Guide to Bilingual Education. The guide answers basic questions in both English and Spanish about the pitfalls of bilingual education and describes bilingual-ed policy and parental rights in the 10 states with the most LEP students.
* Center for Equal Opportunity--tel.: 202-639-0803, fax: 202-639-0827, parents' hotline: 800-819-2343, Web site: www.ceousa.org.
Guide to Environmental Education
American public schools are increasingly enamored of environmental curricula that teach Johnny and Sally how to love the earth. Jane S. Shaw and Michael Sanera, free-market environmentalists, see nothing wrong with that-as long as teachers and textbooks get their facts right. Unfortunately, they have found, environmental curricula often contain more propaganda than truth, and seem to be intended to make schoolchildren feel guilty and fearful about the health of the planet. Their response: Facts, Not Fear: A Parents' Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment. The books slices through scientific misinformation about recycling, acid rain, ozone depletion, threats to the world's rainforests, and global warming among other topics.
Sample items: The United States has more standing timber now than it did in 1920, and the timber acreage is growing; air quality has dramatically improved in recent decades despite substantial economic growth; economic development subsidized by governments is actually more harmful to rainforests than American beef consumption. Shaw is an associate of the Political Economy Research Center, in Bozeman, Montana; Sanera is the director of the Center for Environmental Education Research, at the Claremont Institute.
* Facts, Not Fear: A Parents' Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment by Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw (Regnery).
Charity and Lawsuits
According to Senator Spencer Abraham, our current "litigation explosion" is severely harming America's non-profit organizations and charities. They are being forced to spend time and resources fighting costly, frivolous lawsuits, rendering them less effective in their good works.
Abraham proposes three reforms to curb frivolous lawsuits. First, conflict-of-law rules governing lawsuits between parties from different states should be revised to force the plaintiff to sue using the rules of the state in which the defending charity has the most volunteers. Under such a system, states that consistently decided in favor of the plaintiff (such as Alabama) would risk losing their economic benefits, as large nonprofits relocated to less plaintiff-friendly states. Second, the doctrine of "joint and several liability," under which a plaintiff can obtain full damages from a defendant only marginally at fault, should be scrapped, and liability limited to the proportion of fault. Finally, punitive damages should be capped at $250,000 or three times the amount of economic damages. This would bring relief to nonprofits by reducing the economic incentive to engage in frivolous lawsuits.
* "Litigation's Stranglehold on Charities" by Spencer Abraham, The Public Interest, Spring 1997.
A New Headache for Employers
Recent laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1991 have spawned a whole new legal field: "employment law," distinct from the earlier "labor law." Whereas labor law focused on collective bargaining and the conditions under which employers must recognize labor unions, employment law, writes Walter K. Olson, seeks to regulate "a wide range of personal interactions that includes job assignments, employee evaluations, benefit packages, and working conditions."
Unfortunately, much of the new law is vague and subject to broad interpretation. For example, employers are supposed to refrain from creating a "hostile" working environment, yet no one knows what this means in practice. A litigation explosion has ensued. In 1996 alone, the Americans with Disabilities Act generated 50,000 new filings of discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. An unintended consequence of employment law is that employers have grown reluctant to fire incompetent workers. The result is virtual tenure for the incompetent--"a choice," writes Olson, "that has profound implications for the future of business . . . and our collective mental health."
* The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law is Paralyzing the American Workplace by Walter K. Olson (Free Press).
Computers in the Classroom
President Clinton has called for a massive federal effort to make computers "as much a part of the classroom as blackboards," and U.S. teachers seem to support him. In a recent poll, they ranked computer skills as more important than European history, biology, chemistry, and physics. Yet the case for the computerized classroom is seriously flawed.
It is widely argued, for example, that computers enhance student performance in a wide range of subjects. In fact, there is very little reliable evidence linking computers to greater student achievement. Similarly, it is claimed that computer literacy should be taught as early as possible. But while jobs increasingly require computer skills, adults can become computer-proficient very quickly.
While the benefits of computers are dubious, the costs are high. Because computers are so expensive, schools are cutting back in art, music, and physical education. Yet research suggests that these programs enrich children's lives far more than computers can. Moreover, in their headlong rush to computerize education, many schools are neglecting fundamentals, like reading, thinking, listening, and talking. By holding out the illusion of a technological "quick-fix" to our educational problems, computers may well be an obstacle to genuine educational reform.
* "The Computer Delusion" by Todd Oppenheimer, Atlantic Monthly, July 1997.
Families Under Fire
Parents are under increasing assault, writes Dana Mack, from a "family-hating" culture that believes "experts," rather than parents, know how best to rear children. This culture seeks to transfer power from parents to a government-supported professional elite. Parents she interviewed were especially critical of child welfare authorities who recklessly intervene in family affairs; of judges who handle divorce, custody, and adoption disputes in ways that harm parents and children alike; of schools whose "life-skills" courses challenge parental values; and of the media, which sexualizes even young children. Along with economic pressures on women to work and a growing tax burden, these trends threaten the American family's survival.
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Jesters in Robes For years, Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin publicized egregious examples of government waste with his annual "Golden Fleece" awards. In that spirit, the Family Research Council inaugurated in June the first annual "Court Jester" awards for questionable judging. And the winners are: The Out of Order Award, "for a decision in which a judge finds citizens incompetent to manage their local affairs, opting to manage them himself." Winner: Russell Clark, a federal trial judge in Missouri who, in an effort to achieve racial diversity in Kansas City public schools, imposed $1.7 billion in tax increases to pay for lavish facilities and programs. The "Overruled!" Award, "for a decision in which a judge makes a mockery of democracy." Winner: Thelton Henderson, a federal trial judge in California who blocked the implementation of the California Civil Rights Initiative last fall on the grounds that banning racial preferences was itself discriminatory. The See-No-Evil Award, "for a decision in which a judge turns a blind eye to crime--insisting that criminals are victims of society." Winner: Rosemary Barkett, of the Florida Supreme Court and the 11th Circuit, for numerous rulings opposing the death penalty and favoring defendant’s rights. The Invisible Ink Award, "for a decision in which a judge sees invisible words in the Constitution, but can’t see the words that are really there." Winner: federal judge Steven Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, for finding that individuals have a constitutional right to ask for a physician’s help to commit suicide. The Lifetime Achievement Award, "to a judge whose career on the bench provides example upon example of decisions meriting the above awards." Winner: Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court. * For more information about the Court Jester Awards, contact Family Research Council—tel.: 202-393-2100, fax: 202-393-2134. |
To remedy this situation, Mack proposes seven pro-family initiatives:
- Tax relief with significant exemptions for parents with dependent children;
- More generous family leave policies;
- Tougher decency standards for the media;
- Empowering parents through school choice;
- Tightened legal definitions of child abuse and neglect to protect families against harassment by Child Protective Services;
- Passage of a Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution upholding parental authority;
- Empowering grassroots community institutions, not government, to tackle such problems as teen pregnancy, neighborhood safety, and character development.
- The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family by Dana Mack (Simon & Schuster).
Marriage, Myself, and I
In the past 30 years, Americans have come to think about the family in a radically new way, claims writer Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. Americans used to differentiate sharply between the marketplace and the family, regarding the former as the realm for pursuing individual interests, the latter defined by duty and self-sacrifice. Starting in the mid-1960s, however, Americans began to view family life through the prism of self-interest. "Broadly described," writes Whitehead, "this change was away from an ethic of obligation to others and toward an obligation to self."
This change in attitude has given rise to "expressive divorce"-the view that the dissolution of a marriage is not a tragedy that undermines the social order, but an entitlement that offers individuals the chance to remake themselves and live more emotionally satisfying lives. And if divorce makes one or both parents happier, it should also enhance their children's well-being.
Recently, however, there has been a growing recognition of the highly damaging effects of divorce, especially on children. "If we do not act with deliberate speed to reduce divorces involving children," Whitehead concludes, "we will surely become a nation with a diminished capacity to sponsor the next generation into successful lives as citizens, workers and family members."
