Last updated on: June 21, 2017 at 10:04 pm By Jennifer Fitz
Pediatrics has just released a study on childhood firearms injuries and deaths, and this CNN article is typical of the news coverage. Unless you read very carefully, deep into the article, you would get the idea that we are having an epidemic of young children shooting one another.
Now all causes of firearm injury and death should be causes for concern. If the CNN story helps parents become more careful about common-sense safety measures, that’s good. We need more of that. Please be particularly careful about preventing drowning, which is the leading cause of accidental death in children ages 1-4 (390 deaths in 2015) and allowing your children in or near motor vehicles (351 deaths in the 5-9 age range and 412 deaths in the 10-14 age range.) You can find those figures by going to the CDC’s Leading Cause of Death Reportsand requesting the age groups and years of interest.
But if we look at the data from the Pediatrics study being cited by CNN and others, we can see that guns are, though a concern, less deadly than either water or automobiles, for children 12 and under. Still, we should be careful around all three.
From a public health standpoint, however, two figures from the Pediatrics study leap out:
-African American boys being murdered (n=389).
-White boys committing suicide (n=404).
Those two categories alone make up 61% of the firearms deaths among minors.
The causes of firearms death matter significantly when considering public policy decisions. Consider, for example, the 6,787 deaths by motor vehicles among the 15-24 year old age group in 2015 (CDC). What are the causes? Texting and driving? Drinking and driving? Those are issues we respond to quite differently than, say, vehicular homicide, which is again different from suicide. Stiff blood alcohol limits and DUI penalties will do virtually nothing to prevent premeditated murder.
The same is true with firearms. Since we know that the bulk of firearms deaths among minors come from two distinct, identifiable risk groups, it is logical that we should target the bulk of our gun-violence prevention efforts at those two risk groups. The Pediatrics study is astounding in how clearly it confirms what many have long suspected, that homicide among African American boys and death by suicide among white boys are two leading public health concerns on which we should focus our attention.
Last updated on: May 31, 2017 at 5:49 pm By Jennifer Fitz
I have always enjoyed writing. In school and then at work as an accountant, I was the person who ended up with the writing jobs. If you leave me with no computer for more than about a day, I will somehow get hold of pen and paper and start writing stuff. But I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a writer. I didn’t know how to make the transition from “person who likes to write” to “writer.”
Obviously I’ve made that transition now, and the people responsible for making that change happen are the Catholic Writers Guild.
I attended my first CWG conference online, while my children ran around the house making and un-making things, and then got bored and went out into the backyard and dug a giant pit. Eventually, a few conferences later, we had to get the septic tank drain field replaced, and at that time the earth-moving guys filled in the pit; also, by then, I had learned how to be a writer.
I’ve attended several of the CWG’s live conferences, which are always held in conjunction with the giant trade show for all the Catholic book stores. It is a wonderland for a Catholic writer. The writer’s conference side of things is big enough to have good speakers and loads of useful information, but small enough that you can get to meet people, ask questions, and even talk to editors and publishers. The trade show has every cool new book, game, gift, or other nifty Catholic thing going. You can meet authors, get free books signed, and if you walk the trade show floor you’ll meet some of funnest, friendliest people in the Catholic world.
There are other larger Catholic press organizations. The Catholic Writers Guild is distinctive in that it is run by and for its members, and we are 100% committed to faithfulness to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Our members range from never-published aspiring writers to people making their full-time living in the field. We are authors, columnists, editors, illustrators, and publishers — if it has to do with publishing, it’s relevant. Some members write explicitly Catholic work, others are Catholics who write for secular venues.
Last updated on: March 10, 2017 at 10:27 am By Jennifer Fitz
In discussion online recently, the topic of child welfare came up. Question of the day was, “How do we provide adequate state supervision in order to ensure parents aren’t using homeschooling to cover up abuse or neglect?” My answer: State supervision doesn’t work.
It does not work in foster care. Here we are speaking of the most extensively state-supervised family population in the nation:
Sally Schofield, the foster mother of Logan Marr, was found guilty June 25 of wrapping the 5-year-old’s body with 42 feet of duct tape during a “timeout,” causing the little girl to suffocate.
Schofield could face up to 40 years in prison for the child’s death.
“The child-welfare system failed Logan Marr in every possible way,” said Richard Wexler, the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. “They failed her … by … ignoring her cries of abuse and they failed her by letting her die in that foster home.”
Six weeks before she was killed, Logan was on a visit to her birth mother when, in the presence of a child-welfare worker hired to supervise the visit, she complained that her foster mother was hurting her. “She did this to me and I cried ’cause it hurts me,” the child is heard saying on a videotape, although she isn’t seen.
Despite this information, there was no immediate investigation and Logan’s child-welfare worker failed to make a required quarterly visit to the foster home.
Foster care is the ultimate in state monitoring of families. Foster parents are background checked, their homes are inspected, and they are given personal training on appropriate parenting methods. Details vary from state to state, but each foster child is assigned a personal social worker and usually a second set of eyes (the Guardian ad Litem), in addition to all the mandatory reporters the child encounters in daily life.
If ever we were going to be 100% sure a child was being kept safe through state-supervised monitoring, it would here. And yet, even though most foster parents and children do just fine, cases of abuse do occur.
But the Schools are Safe?
Our insistence that government contact or just “being out in public” are means of protecting children from violence is a delusion.
At the small public high school my children attend, two of my daughter’s classmates were assaulted by other girls in the first few months of school. One was knocked unconscious by another student’s locker-room prank; another had to file assault charges against the student who repeatedly bullied her until the attacks escalated into physical violence. The administration responds — the incidents haven’t gone ignored — but the reality is that our decision to stop homeschooling and send our children to public school was a decision to move them from a safe environment to a violent environment.
Other parents experience the same thing. Across town, a friend’s eighth grader transferred from private school into a public middle school in an affluent neighborhood. In her first few months at the school, she’s witnessed one attempted suicide and one attempted murder. (In both cases, the weapon of choice was the three-story staircase — throw the victim over the railing). Daily contact with teachers and administrators in no way picked up on the fact that the special-needs student was growing suicidal, nor in the other case that one student was being bullied by another to the point of attempted murder.
Government supervision does not prevent violence, and it does not detect mounting violence before it reaches dangerous levels.
The final concern targeted at homeschoolers is “educational neglect.” What if the children aren’t learning what they are supposed to be learning? For example, what if the kid is supposedly enrolled in Algebra II as a junior in high school, but actually the child can’t even tell if 56 is divisible by 2? Wait — no, that happened at my son’s public high school.
How about if your 9th grade English class is so incompetent that the teacher has to read aloud all the novels in class (which are grade-level appropriate, not slacking) because otherwise the students would definitely fail? What if your 9th grade geography students can’t pass a map test identifying the continents?
That would be my daughter’s public school classes.
I have nothing but sympathy for the teachers who have inherited these students and are doing their best to educate children who have no business being promoted grade after grade. But do not try to convince me that if only homeschoolers were supervised like public school students, educational neglect wouldn’t happen. Educational neglect is the name of the game in public schools.
What Works to Protect Students?
I am not arguing that because there are problems in government-supervised programs that therefore we should pretend there are no problems in private life.
I am only saying that the evidence is overwhelming that government oversight does not protect children. It does prevent violence in families, it does not prevent violence at school, and it does not prevent educational neglect.
It simply does not work.
Therefore, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that if only we applied a failed method in a different context, suddenly the method would start working.
What does work? Strong families and honest citizens. I know that’s pie-in-the-sky, but it’s also true. The students who excel in the public schools are the students whose parents value education and value their relationships with their children. The teachers and administrators who excel are those who value education and value their relationships with their students.
The dividing line on protecting and helping children isn’t public vs. private. It isn’t government-oversight vs. citizen privacy. The dividing line is good vs. evil.
Goodness cannot be state-mandated, and that is why state supervision fails time and again.
What Laws Then?
We do need laws — strong laws — against harassment, abuse, assault, and true neglect.
Where we go wrong is in thinking that sending government officials in to supervise the private lives of citizens is the effective way to enforce those laws. It has been proven time and again that this intrusion is no guarantee of safety, and at times even opens the door to greater abuse.
We would do better to let the police and justice system prosecute identified crimes, but focus our prevention efforts not on micromanaging family life, but on identifying those environments that do foster strong family life and strong communities and replicating those successful efforts as best we can.
Just ask the Soviets. Police states don’t work. Don’t waste your time.
Last updated on: February 28, 2017 at 1:33 pm By Jennifer Fitz
This article from The State newspaper came to my attention this morning. It concerns a proposed law that would, its opponents say, make it easier for developers to build on wetlands and other protected areas.
I haven’t researched the law, so I’m not writing on the particulars of it. Like many conservatives, I’m generally in favor of less bureaucracy rather than more. Like many conservative conservationists, I don’t automatically fall in with every single “green” idea heaped on the environmentalist buffet. I think it is important, however, that we not abandon common sense no matter which way we tend to lean on a given question.
Common sense on wetlands and floodplain development is this: You are not an amphibian.
Please do not build your road, business, or dream home smack in the middle of next year’s big flood.
South Carolina’s been hit two years running with disasterous flooding, and that’s a new experience for us. You know what else is a new experience for us? All these people who live here now. Development is crazy. Our metro areas are bursting with new neighborhoods. There are billboards on the interstate begging people to apply for essential jobs in the types of infrastructure industries that keep civilization rolling.
The two situations are certainly linked. Development in the flood plain leads to flooded developments. Development outside the flood plain increases the likelihood of flooding in the drainage areas, because concrete just doesn’t hold water the way a stand of pine trees and scrub oak will.
Now South Carolina is a terrible place to live, and anyone who is thinking of moving to the South should definitely go straight to Atlanta or Raleigh-Durham and leave the rest of us alone — but in theory I’m not opposed to a bustling economy. But the hotter our economy, the more careful we have to be about wet- and damp-land development.
Aerial photo of South Carolina flood damage while a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the South Carolina Army National Guard’s 2-238th General Support Aviation Battalion Detachment 1, conducts a sandbagging mission to Columbia, S.C., Oct. 7, 2015.(U.S. Air National Guard photo by Airman Megan Floyd/Released) Via Wikimedia [Public Domain].
Last updated on: February 2, 2017 at 2:30 pm By Jennifer Fitz
The other week a friend was sharing in a private discussion group about how her child was being bullied over at the local public school. She asked for advice and prayers, then added, “I’m hoping we can get financial aid for Catholic school for next year.”
That comment caused another member of the group to say, “You know, it was at Catholic school that I was bullied all those years. I begged my parents to take me out, but they wouldn’t.”
About that same time, another friend, in a completely different conversation, shared how he’d been teased and ostracized during his long years in Catholic school. Just because there’s a Jesus-stamp on it doesn’t mean the school is good for your child.
But then again, just because you have bad memories of St. Malicious doesn’t mean every other Catholic school in the nation is a pit of depravity — it doesn’t even mean St. M’s is still the same place it was last time you checked. As I wrote over at the Conspiracy about our first semester in parochial school:
The administration actively works to promote kindness and encouragement among the students.
Recently on the drive into town my daughter told me she had to write a persuasive paper, and she had chosen the topic ofwhether there ought to be school uniforms. She asked my opinion, and I gave her the long list of reasons mothers love uniforms (thank you, school, for a simple, stain-resistant, affordable set of uniform options). I finished up by adding, “And that way, for example, a mean girl can’t say oh your skirt is so ugly, because she’s wearing the same skirt.”
To which my daughter replied: “Mom. This is St. Urban’s. We don’t have bullies. The worst thing that happened is that Scholastica wanted to play with Benedicta at recess but not Ignatia, and then they all ended up playing together anyway.”
Not every school is the same. Because St. Urban’s has been around for years (this week’s school history lesson: Let’s talk about that time Sherman burned the school down), I’ve heard both good and bad going back decades.
My daughter isn’t being educated in 1984 or 2004, she’s being educated today. She’s not sitting in a desk at Our Lady of the Insurrection or St. Pretensius, she’s sitting at the school that serves our parish. What matters is: What is myschool like today?
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain.] From the photo description: “A Jesuit priest and several Ursuline nuns survey the ruins of the boys’ school and dormitory at St. Peter’s Mission near Cascade, Montana.” Apparently the poses for Catholic newspapers go back a century-and-some. Everyone Get in a Semi-Circle and Gaze at the Same Object just never goes out of style.
I am writing to you in these tumultuous times to ask for your help with a very important work of mercy — a whole collection of works of mercy, in fact. Now before I make my plea, let me begin by thanking you for your hard work and dedication to the good of this country.
I have seen the fervor with which you have reacted to the news of a pending Calexit. Some of you have gazed in disbelief at the news reports. Can this really be happening? Is it possible for us to shed California without the assistance of a massive earthquake?? We have only to look across the Atlantic to know that such marvels can indeed come to pass.
But others of you, reading the signs of the time, have sprung to action in the quest for national harmony at this critical hour. You have sacrificed your November ammunition budget, or dug into your stash of gold coins, and contributed to collections for the building of a border wall across the desert and mountains of the western edge of what is often called “East California” but are actually American states known as Nevada and Arizona. You have shipped crates of Duck Dynasty t-shirts to be mounted on flag poles to help lost hikers identify the border where the wall is not yet complete.
That’s not all! You have gone door to door in your neighborhoods looking for stranded Californians and offering them space in the beds of your pick-ups for the long journey west. Many of your churches have participated in the “Baybound” alternate emergency bus company, canceling youth group holiday mission trips so that expats could be delivered home immediately, without having to stop at the bus depot in Reno and risk succumbing to second thoughts.
For all these works, you are to be commended. But now I beg of you, in your enthusiasm, not to forget those who need you most: Californians who wish to remain American citizens.
Please remember, in your charity, that there are residents living in pockets of the west coast who do in fact have the sense God gave a doughnut, and they assiduously desire to retain citizenship in a functioning democracy. This Sunday, churches and gun stores across the red states will be taking up collections to help these hapless victims of circumstance escape while there’s still time. Please be as generous as you are able.
During this collection, we’ll also begin organizing Transition Assistance Teams to provide mentoring and practical help to the refugees resettling in your area. Please consider whether would you be able to help with any of these important goals of cultural re-integration:
Preventing new home buyers from falling for the deceit of unscrupulous price-gougers. Many Calexit refugees truly believe it’s normal to pay half a million dollars for a run-down two bedroom house in a bad neighborhood.
Gently reminding newcomers that after they secure employment, they can look in the immediate vicinity of their new workplace for affordable housing. In the red states, the land around corporate headquarters is not strictly reserved to the executive class.
Reviewing with refugees the content of certain important legal documents, such as The United States Constitution. Because of the system of Higher Re-Education in California, many young people have come to believe that they are supposed to respond to the peaceful transition of power by engaging in acts of vandalism. You will need to quickly nip that idea in the bud, or someone’s gonna end up getting shot.
Finally, I ask you to search your hearts and pray for guidance as to whether you can become a Desensitivity Coach. This important job is not for those who grow impatient when instant results are not possible. If you join this important ministry to suffering Calexit refugees, know that it may take months, years, even decades for your new neighbors to overcome a lifetime of dubious formation.
While it seems evident to anyone raised in a pluralistic society that it’s possible to hold differing opinions without thereby harboring visceral hate towards one’s opponent, Calexit refugees have not had the benefit of your upbringing. They must be guided through processes such as Not Requiring Everyone To Do Exactly What I Want Them To, and Respecting Actual Religious Belief, Not Just Slapping a Co-Exist Sticker on the Window of the Business We’re Shutting Down for Failing to Conform.
Many heartbreaking cases have been reported of Calexit refugees requesting they be fined or jailed and their property confiscated for failing to abide the local Opinion Police. Day after day you’ll have to read through the Bill of Rights with them, and explain that words mean what they say, and that we follow the law here.
But I have confidence in you! I have seen the diligence with which you’ve demonstrated your desire to resolve the Calexit situation peacefully, and I know that you will come through for your new neighbors in need.
God bless!
Your Red State Friend
Map By Gage (2016 Electoral College map) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons. Recall, reader, that I trust Donald Trump about like I trust a ticked-off copperhead. But weirdly, that doesn’t make me want to give up on the US Constitution; it makes me want to see the rule of law followed all the more rigorously.
You can like her politics or not, but at least we as a nation have hope that there are some moderately-competent politicians in the pipeline for less disastrous election years to come.
Meanwhile, let’s talk about South Carolina’s habit of taking personal days every time the weather gets extreme on us. By “extreme” we mean “no good for either swimming, or fishing, or golf, now what??”
Why do we shut down?
Why do we evacuate the coast three days ahead of a storm that might be terrible, but it also might not amount to much by the time it gets here? Why do we stay home for the mere possibility of a inch of snow?
It’s because we have poverty and humility both.
We ask ourselves things like, “Which is worse: Three days forced vacation in the upstate, or becoming the new Katrina?” The upstate’s nice. “Which is worse: Kids who don’t own winter coats stuck in freezing buses on the highways like happened in Atlanta when they got surprised by too much snow, or sitting around with the family having a cup a cocoa?” Cocoa for the win.
We aren’t omniscient. We can know a lot about what might happen with the weather, but we can’t know everything.
We do know that our infrastructure is modestly decent for day-to-day living, but no one’s invented a Magic Expanding and Strengthifying Ray to cause our roads and bridges and hotel supply to suddenly grow 10,000 times bigger if we need to quick empty the entire coast in half an hour.
The work-around is to rely on caution, preparation, and solidarity. Why yes, the schools in Greenville have to shut down so that Charleston can evacuate, because we don’t keep a fleet of buses sitting in parking lots waiting for a big hurricane to strike every twenty years. We just borrow the Greenville school buses.
Or take snow. We could divert lots of funding into storing snow plows and chemicals and all the stuff they use up north to keep the roads running through the winter, and that stuff could sit in storage most days of most years. Every other year or so it would get used one day. Or: You could just go home and be with your family for that day.
If we had solved all our poverty problems, and gotten our roads and sidewalks and dams and bridges in order, and were wondering what to do with all the tax revenue sitting around after the schools got so shiny and stellar cash just bounced off the walls, maybe we’d be in a position to allocate more funds to the Never Having To Take Off Work For The Weather cause.
We’re not in that position.
Meanwhile, remember kids: The South is terrible and backwards. Stay away. You’ll hate it here.
SC State Flag courtesy of Wikimedia, Public Domain.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In