WSJ: Stanford is #1

Rodin's Burghers of Calais in Memorial Court, Stanford

Many years ago I was accepted to Stanford's undergraduate program but didn't go. Though grateful for how everything worked out, I do feel a twinge of road-not-taken regret when I see yet another article extolling the glories of the Farm:

Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings.

Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college.

Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings. Ivy League schools also figure prominently, with Yale University, Princeton University and Harvard University finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Two other Ivy League schools—Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania—come in at eighth and ninth, respectively.

Beyond the marquee names, the rankings’ distinct methodology highlights some institutions that don’t have as much name recognition but still help their students achieve remarkable success.

Babson College—the small Wellesley, Mass., school focused on business and entrepreneurship—retained its No. 2 spot from last year. Claremont McKenna College, near Los Angeles, clocked in at No. 6, and Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., ranked 10th.

The University of California, Berkeley, is the best-ranked public school, at No. 7 overall, and five other public schools from the state cracked the top 25...

The value of Stanford
Stanford scored well across the rankings’ metrics, including a high graduate salary score and a short amount of time to pay off the net price of college.

Raj Palleti, a 2024 Stanford graduate, says his computer-science education at the school has opened doors. While at Stanford, he interned at Nvidia and co-founded an AI startup, alphaXiv, where he is the chief operating officer. The company’s community platform helps researchers accelerate work with AI tools.

Palleti credits Stanford for fueling students’ drive and talents for innovation. “They have so much of an emphasis of like, ‘Oh, you should just build cool things,’ ” he says.

Karuna Taesopapong, a Stanford economics major who graduated in 2024, recalls discussion-focused, hands-on courses. One involved an energy-market simulation, where students had to navigate supply shortages and power outages to maximize profits.

“That’s the reason why you go to Stanford, because you try to get those niche insights and hear about stories that you wouldn’t necessarily get anywhere else,” she says. She now is the growth leader at a startup called Onton, an AI-powered home-decor shopping engine.

Ever since Business School Dean Jonathan Levin became its president, Stanford has been tacking toward the political center, a wise place to be for one of the world's top universities.

Low Hanging Fruit

Bret Harte elementary principal Hilinski (Mejia/Chronicle)

At the cost of $500 per student per year, a San Francisco elementary school has seen "jaw dropping" improvement in literacy skills: [bold added]

[San Francisco principal Jeremy Hilinski's] school-based assessments showed that 80% of the kindergarten and first-grade students participating in the tutoring were mastering foundational literacy skills by the end of the year, which was a “gigantic” improvement, he said.

Chapter One is a private tutoring company providing trained, paid tutors who are based in specific classrooms each day, working individually with students for five to 15 minutes at a time on letter recognition, letter sounds and other foundational reading skills. The students who were tutored saw their grade-level literacy rates jump to 54% from 24% in the limited period, according to initial progress reports.

“There’s no shortage of programs going into San Francisco schools for literacy,” he said. “This one actually worked.”

And it only costs $500 per student per academic year, with the donations-based San Francisco Education Fund covering the cost for just over 1,000 mostly K-2 students for the final five months of the past school year...

The Ed Fund not only paid for the tutors, but also covered the cost and staffing required to manage the program — work that included scheduling the tutors and coordinating with teachers as well as all the other bureaucratic and logistical issues that administrators and educators don’t have time for.

Individual instruction of "five or 10 minutes each day" was enough to show results; it may explain why parents who spend time reading to their kids can make such a difference. It may also explain why home schooling, for all its drawbacks, produces kids who are on average superior academically to those who graduate from public school.

According to a Census bureau 2024 report San Francisco spent $23,654 per student in FY2022. Where all the money went remains a mystery, but it's clear that "administrators and educators don’t have time for" a $500 proven program that helps children read.

Illiquidity + Greed = Disaster

(Table from University Business)

The nation's largest universities have tens of $billions in endowment funds, yet are experiencing a cash squeeze. [bold added]

Over the past couple of decades, no group of investors has piled into what are called alternative assets more eagerly than the endowment funds of major colleges and universities. In their rush to emulate the stellar success of Yale University’s endowment head David Swensen, who died in 2021, educational institutions pulled tens of billions of dollars out of stocks and bonds and poured it into hedge funds, private equity, venture capital and other investments that don’t trade publicly.

The result looks nothing like the portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds that has long been a guidepost for many investors. On average, in fiscal 2024, educational endowments with more than $5 billion in assets held only 2% in cash, 6% in bonds, 8% in U.S. stocks and 16% in international stocks, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers. That left two-thirds of their total holdings in private funds and other non-traditional assets that can’t readily be turned into cash.

Now you understand the life-or-death panic that seized such elite institutions as Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern and other universities when the Trump administration threatened to cut off their federal funding. Even though their endowments hold billions of dollars, much of that immense wealth might as well be stored on the planet Proxima Centauri b, about 4.2 light years away.

These universities are slashing budgets, freezing their hiring and scrambling to raise money any way they can.

An investment rule that's easy to understand but emotionally difficult to implement is to keep enough liquidity to cover cash needs, even during a down market or a shortfall from a funding source like the Federal government. It's a hoary lesson that one doesn't need an MBA from Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton to follow: greed and pride can be your downfall.

Don Peter

Don Peter (1938-2025)

Donald Gene Peter was a bear of a man. 87 when he died last month, he still looked the part of the offensive lineman who pushed aside linebackers for Stanford. We were on the Farm in different decades--he in the '50's and I in the '70's--but they may as well have been in different centuries. When Don played, Stanford's mascot was an Indian, the school was part of the Pacific Coast Conference (one of the predecessors to the Pac-8), and face masks on helmets were not required.

High school and college football was just the start of a lifelong devotion to sports:

Along with teaching history, Don coached football at Downey, Mills, and Burlingame High Schools. He also founded and coached the Burlingame Rugby Club that won the national championship.

It's cliché, but up until the very end Don was giving to his extended family, to his church, to his community, and public education:

Don's parents instilled in him the importance of contributing to his community. In the 1970s, he oversaw the conception and building of two creative playgrounds at Herbert Hoover Elementary in Burlingame with his first wife, Sally. He organized dozens of reunions and hosted backyard parties with his second wife, Elizabeth.

At the memorial service on Saturday we arrived a few minutes early but had to park at the shopping center across the street. The church was filled, and we sat in the overflow room in the back. His children said how much they loved him and will miss him. I will, too.

FAFO Comes to Child Care

(First edition photo by Bauman Rare Books)

A man named Spock has been blamed for why the baby boom generation purportedly lacked the strength of character of its predecessors. No, it wasn't Star Trek's famous Vulcan but Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), sold over 50 million copies after World War II and revolutionized the thinking about child care.

Dr. Spock de-emphasized the fixed scheduling and withholding of affection promoted by pre-war education experts and advocated training of each child as an individual. (Personal note: my mother had a copy of Baby and Child Care on her bookshelf, and while I think my brothers and I turned out okay academically we certainly weren't as "tough" as our parents.)

(Lenneman/WSJ)

There is another philosophy now taking hold, best captured by the acronym FAFO. For the uninitiated, Grok explains (note: your humble delicate blogger has masked the "F" word with asterisks):

The term FAFO stands for "F*** Around and Find Out." It originated in American slang, particularly within online and social media contexts, as a pithy warning or retort implying that someone will face consequences for their reckless or provocative actions. The phrase gained traction in the early 2010s, especially on platforms like Twitter (now X), Reddit, and meme culture, where it was used humorously or defiantly to highlight cause-and-effect scenarios.

Its roots can be traced to informal, confrontational language often heard in street or bar settings, but it exploded in digital spaces due to its blunt, catchy nature. By 2020, FAFO was widely used in political, social, and cultural discussions, often tied to situations where someone’s actions lead to predictable repercussions. The term has since been adopted in various contexts, from casual banter to protest slogans, and even appeared in merchandise and media.

No specific individual or event is credited with coining it, but its spread was fueled by viral posts and memes, particularly during heated online debates.

Now back to FAFO in childhood education:

FAFO (often pronounced “faff-oh”) is based on the idea that parents can ask and warn, but if a child breaks the rules, mom and dad aren’t standing in the way of the repercussions. Won’t bring your raincoat? Walk home in the downpour. Didn’t feel like having lasagna for dinner? Survive until breakfast. Left your toy on the floor again? Go find it in the trash under the lasagna you didn’t eat.

Parenting that’s light on discipline has dominated the culture in recent decades. But critics blame the approach for some of Gen Z ’s problems in adulthood. They cite surveys that show young adults struggling with workplace relationships (was it because their parents never told them “no”?) and suffering from depression and anxiety (was it because their parents refereed all their problems?).

For parents who have spent years trying to meet their children’s emotional needs without slipping into overt permissiveness, FAFO can sound blessedly simple.

The reaction against Dr. Spock's methods didn't start with FAFO; "tough love" came into widespread use in 1968. Actions have consequences, and kids can't always count on their parents--or a forgiving world--to bail them out.

Still Appreciated by Termites, Though

Your humble blogger went to school before mobile phones, before the Internet, even before there were personal computers (I received my MBA in 1975, one year before Apple was incorporated).

Mine was a generation that did all its research in libraries, and index cards were the pathway to getting information. Today most index card drawers are empty--if they haven't been tossed out--but at Yale they have been repurposed:

If you open one of the hundreds of card catalog drawers that line the south side of the Sterling Memorial Library nave, you won’t find any cards; online catalogs have rendered them obsolete.

But you might find a surprise. Over the past few years, students and other visitors to the library have created a tradition of leaving notes in the drawers to be found by others. Some are inspirational (“keep chasing your dreams, but don’t be afraid if the path to your dream changes”) and some are aspirational (“2016. In eight years, I’ll return as a Yale student”), and they are written in many languages. It’s a delightful adaptive reuse: hardware that was once used to organize the search for knowledge now holds the promise of serendipity.

Now if I can just find a use for my slide rule....

Not Over the Hill Yet

Normally I pass on Internet quizzes, e.g., "how much do you know about this week's news?", as nothing more than clickbait for ads and traffic, but I had to test myself on the WSJ's Do You Know as Much About Personal Finance as These Savvy High-Schoolers?

Yes, there's some ego involved. I have a Finance MBA (though it's 50 years old) and am a long-retired CPA, but I should have at least a high-school-level knowledge of personal finance, right?

Right, though I confess I would probably have gotten wrong a question about crypto.

Memorial Day Tragedy

It's possible to smile at the headline. However, once the scope of the tragedy is made known, humor evaporates.

 

Gelson's Market parking lot in center

California dad dies during driving lesson with his daughter

A California father died in a crash on Memorial Day while he was teaching his 15-year-old how to drive in Orange County, police said.

The father, identified as 64-year-old James Politoski, was being driven by his daughter, who has a driver’s permit, Lt. Jesse Schmidt with the Laguna Beach Police Department told SFGATE.

In a social media post, Laguna Beach police said the driver crashed through a fence from the parking lot of Gelson’s Market in Dana Point. The car then plummeted down an embankment on Coast Highway between Wesley Drive and Montage Resort Drive. The preliminary cause of the crash appears to be confusion between the brake pedal and gas pedal, Schmidt said.

Laguna Beach police arrived at the crash at around 2:45 p.m., and the father was pronounced dead at the scene. The daughter was transported to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo with significant injuries, police said.

As of Wednesday morning, the teenager was in stable condition at the hospital and expected to survive, Schmidt said.

Learning from my dad and uncles, I got my Hawaiian driver's license when I was 15. I also taught a couple of people from my generation back in the '60's and '70's.

When it came time for my son to get his license, I realized that I didn't have the requisite knowledge, nor could I handle the aggravation. We enrolled him in lessons, and he passed the driver's test on his first try. I encourage any person trying to get his license to sign up for personal instruction; it is money well spent.

Old School

In order to minimize cheating using artificial intelligence tools, colleges are requiring handwritten test answers in blue books:

Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it.

It’s called a blue book.

The mere thought of that exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages is enough to make generations of college kids clam up—and make their hands cramp up.

But inexpensive pamphlets of stapled paper have become a surprisingly valuable tool for teachers at a time when they need all the help they can get.

Your humble blogger is familiar with the argument that artificial intelligence will be so intertwined with their lives that students should be encouraged, not discouraged, from using AI to solve exam problems. I think the counter-arguments are stronger: 1) college is perhaps the last environment where students can be forced to think for themselves without the use of AI, and tuition monies would be better spent on thinking rather than looking up information; 2) how hard is it, really, to learn how to use artificial intelligence? An employer who thinks AI is both necessary and difficult can easily sponsor a one-day class for its employees.

Blue books were good enough for us, and they should be good enough for our grandchildren.

Artificial Education

As a boomer, I am glad most of my life was spent before smartphones (the iPhone was introduced in 2007) or even the Internet. I learned how to write, solve problems without looking up the answer, and focus on tasks for hours without being distracted. Speaking of writing, here's another reason to be grateful that I received my education when I did, and yes, I would have been tempted to use artificial intelligence (AI) had it existed. [bold added]

(Illustration from Kent State U.)

There’s a Good Chance Your Kid Uses AI to Cheat

A high-school senior from New Jersey doesn’t want the world to know that she cheated her way through English, math and history classes last year.

Yet her experience, which the 17-year-old told The Wall Street Journal with her parent’s permission, shows how generative AI has rooted in America’s education system, allowing a generation of students to outsource their schoolwork to software with access to the world’s knowledge.

Educators see benefits to using artificial intelligence in the classroom. Yet teachers and parents are left on their own to figure out how to stop students from using the technology to short-circuit learning. Companies providing AI tools offer little help.

The New Jersey student told the Journal why she used AI for dozens of assignments last year: Work was boring or difficult. She wanted a better grade. A few times, she procrastinated and ran out of time to complete assignments.

The student turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, to help spawn ideas and review concepts, which many teachers allow. More often, though, AI completed her work. Gemini solved math homework problems, she said, and aced a take-home test. ChatGPT did calculations for a science lab. It produced a tricky section of a history term paper, which she rewrote to avoid detection.

The student was caught only once.

We are now in the second stage of the AI arms race in education. Teachers are using software to detect the use of AI, and students are using AI to "humanize" their writing.

Students don’t want to be accused of cheating, so they’re using artificial intelligence to make sure their school essays sound human.

Teachers use AI-detection software to identify AI-generated work. Students, in turn, are pre-emptively running their original writing through the same tools, to see if anything might be flagged for sounding too robotic.

In the workplace of the near future, using artificial intelligence will be a necessary skill. It will also be important to have human workers who can think for themselves. I am very happy to be retired and will be neither a worker or supervisor in that environment.

3.14159265

Today is Pi Day, and we commemorated the occasion by ordering an extra-large #2 (salami, mushrooms and sausage) from Toto's.

π is the Greek symbol for the value of a circle’s circumference divided by its diameter. Pi is the first irrational number (a real number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers) that I ever came across. The elementary-school arithmetic books only took pi out to four digits, i.e. 3.1416, but that felt unsatisfying. I looked up pi in the library and memorized it to eight digits,3.14159265. After high school I never had to use pi in a calculation, but I still know it, just like long-defunct telephone numbers.

BTW there was a lunar eclipse today. The congruence of the moon and pizza on the same day prompted me to play the 1953 Dean Martin hit while munching on Toto's #2.

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie, that's amore
When the world seems to shine
Like you've had too much wine, that's amore

Great Moments in Real Estate Marketing

You don't need this home if Susie just wants to go to Cal (Street view/Merc)

Palo Alto homes have always commanded a premium over already-pricey Peninsula real estate because of PA's highly rated school distrct. This, however, is next level. [bold added]

A home listed for sale at $4.8 million on Friday in Palo Alto boasts that since its 2017 rebuild, the children of every subsequent owner have gone on to Harvard or Stanford, “paving the way for even greater achievements.”

“Now, it is ready to pass on its extraordinary energy to the next family,” the listing reads.

The five-bedroom, four-bathroom home appears to have been staged to highlight the children’s academic success — the framed diplomas and acceptance letters are poised above the mantel, featuring prominently in some of the photos.

That's a lot of pressure on the child. If he or she doesn't get into Stanford or Harvard (or an Ivy or MIT or CalTech), the parents will have overpaid substantially for a comparable house that they could have gotten for at least $1 million less in other Peninsula cities.

Let's hope the feng shui is strong with this one.

False Flag Operation at City Hall

SF sheriff's letter (Red underline added)

In an obvious false flag operation three men claiming to be part of DOGE invaded SF City Hall and a school district building. [bold added]

Three men wearing MAGA hats, Department of Government Efficiency T-shirts and fake badges stormed several offices inside San Francisco City Hall and a nearby school district building on Friday demanding that workers hand over sensitive documents, sources said...

[Sheriff's spokeswoman Tara] Moriarty said City Hall workers refused the intruders' requests and called sheriff’s deputies, at which time the individuals fled the building. Moriarty said the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t believe that the individuals were actually representatives from DOGE.

Then at about 12:40 p.m., a San Francisco Unified School District worker who works in an administrative building at 135 Van Ness Ave. said that three men matching the description of the City Hall intruders walked inside the former school making similar demands.

The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to media, said that the three men stunned school district workers when they got past security and started walking up and down the hallways “being rowdy” and harassing random people.

The worker said the three men freely walked through the building while videotaping workers on their phones before leaving 10 minutes later. She described them as young guys in their 20s who were intentionally trying to provoke people. One of them had a badge with an expletive on it.

“They came in saying ‘we are DOGE, what are you doing?’ to people,” the employee said. “They told one woman that she’d be fired by Monday. I thought it was strange, but some other people might’ve been afraid.”

It could be a sign of how much the political and media landscape has changed that both San Francisco officials and the Chronicle stated upfront that Elon Musk and DOGE were not responsible.

The attempt was amateurish, the intent to provoke was obvious, and luckily everyone kept their cool. I hope these guys are caught quickly and the book is thrown at them.

Democrats: You Created Your Own Destructor

President Trump will sign an Executive Order that will keep biological males out of women's sports in schools and colleges.

Trump will sign an order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” Wednesday afternoon, said people familiar with the matter, including a White House official and a member of Congress...

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly what the contents of the order would entail, but one option is for the president to direct the Education Department to interpret federal Title IX rules as barring the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports categories. People on different sides of the issue have anticipated that the department would then base its policies and future regulations around this interpretation, issuing guidance to schools to act accordingly—and investigating alleged violations.

The scope of the order stands to instantly affect any educational institution that receives federal funding—which includes almost every college in the U.S., as well as the majority of K-12 schools. The Title IX provision in the Education Amendments Act of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational activities, though the meaning of that has been hotly contested for decades, mostly recently focusing on its application to transgender students.

In the face of such an order likely affecting all but a handful of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 1,100 member schools, the NCAA has indicated that it will move rapidly to change its rules.

“We’re a national governing body and we follow federal law,” NCAA President Charlie Baker told Republican senators in a series of contentious exchanges over the issue during a hearing in December. “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”

...There are 27 states that have sweeping restrictions on the participation of transgender girls and women in school sports. There are policies mandating their inclusion in another 14 states, which are estimated by transgender-rights advocates to have a larger population of transgender students.

The point of this post is not to debate the rightness or wrongness of President Trump's men-in-women's-sports Executive Order but to point out the dangers of allowing the Federal Government to have financial sway over society's institutions. Perhaps, if you are a liberal, you quietly cheered when the Federal Government threatened to withhold payments to Catholic hospitals that refused to provide abortions.*

How does it feel now that the Trump Administration is using the power of the purse to bend society to its will? You created your own Destructor.

*Question, answered by Grok: did the Federal government threaten Catholic hospitals if they did not provide abortions?

The situation regarding the federal government and Catholic hospitals providing abortions is complex and has evolved over time. Here's a detailed overview based on the available information:

Legal Background:
Federal law, specifically the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), mandates that hospitals provide necessary stabilizing treatment in emergency situations, which can include abortion if a woman's life or health is at risk. However, this conflicts with the religious directives of Catholic hospitals, which generally prohibit abortion.

Legal Cases:
In 2016, a federal court dismissed an attempt by the ACLU to force a Catholic hospital system to provide abortions, calling the challenge "dubious" and stating that the ACLU lacked standing to sue (Washington Times, 2016).

In 2022, a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. government could not require Christian medical groups, including Catholic hospitals, to perform abortions or gender transition surgeries under the Affordable Care Act, affirming their religious freedom (Reuters, 2022).

Investigations and Warnings:
In 2023, the federal government conducted an investigation where it was found that two hospitals, which included a Catholic facility, violated federal law by refusing to provide an emergency abortion, putting a woman's life in jeopardy (PBS News, 2023). This was a warning to hospitals about the necessity to comply with EMTALA over state abortion laws.

Policies and Practices:
Catholic hospitals operate under the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" set by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which prohibit abortions except in very specific circumstances where the life of the mother is at immediate risk. This often leads to conflicts with federal mandates like EMTALA, where emergency care might necessitate an abortion.

Public and Legal Discourse:
There have been instances where women reported being denied emergency abortions at Catholic hospitals, leading to severe health risks or the need to seek care elsewhere. This has sparked legal battles and discussions about the balance between religious freedom and patient rights to emergency care (ACLU reports, various dates).

In summary, while there have been instances where federal agencies have highlighted that Catholic hospitals must comply with federal emergency care laws, these are not typically framed as direct "threats" but as enforcement of existing laws like EMTALA. The tension arises from the intersection of religious directives and legal obligations, leading to legal disputes rather than explicit threats. However, enforcement actions or investigations by federal agencies can be perceived as pressures or threats to change practices to comply with federal law.

No Congratulations are in Order

For decades boys' performance in school has lagged that of girls. Recent studies show that boys are catching up, but there's no joy in why that's so:

Girls have lost ground in reading, math and science at a troubling rate, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of student test scores across the country.

Since 2019, girls’ test scores have dropped sharply, often to the lowest point in decades. Boys’ scores have also fallen during that time, but the decline among girls has been more severe. Boys now consistently outperform girls in math, after being roughly even or slightly ahead in the years before 2020. Girls still tend to perform better in reading, but their scores have dropped closer to boys.

The findings suggest that pandemic learning loss hit girls particularly hard in ways that haven’t been addressed by schools. The most recent test scores show that girls haven’t yet recovered. This comes following longstanding gains for girls and women in educational attainment.

Theories abound why girls seemed to suffer more during the COVID lockdown:

Shutting down schools might have hurt girls more because they tend to do better in school generally, said David Figlio, a professor of economics and education at the University of Rochester who has studied gender gaps in education. “Girls have a comparative advantage in school and you take schools away, they’ll suffer more,” he added.

Another hypothesis is that girls took on more household duties during the pandemic—including taking care of younger siblings—so were less able to focus on school.

Boys can catch up to girls by bettering themselves or because girls have gotten worse. When the reason is the latter, no congratulations are in order,

Hospital Chaplaincy

Spiritual care volunteers and staff at Stanford Hospital Chapel

Before an Episcopal priest can be ordained, he or she must complete several months of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). In CPE the students minister to non-Christians as well as Christians, much as priests do in the real world.

Clergy that I have spoken to have said that their most intense and rewarding experiences have occurred while they did their CPE as hospital chaplains. [bold added]

Hospitalized patients and their families often struggle with religious and spiritual quandaries but can’t attend their houses of worship or don’t have one. Chaplains thus fill crucial gaps. As the religious makeup of the U.S. has changed in recent years, their profession has begun to do so too. Board-certified chaplains are now increasingly trained to help patients of diverse beliefs. To learn about their vocations, I [note: Columbia prof. of psychiatry Robert Klitzman] recently conducted an in-depth study, speaking with 50 chaplains from across the country and from different faiths.

While chaplains aid countless patients, they are in many cases marginalized and underfunded. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allows for direct reimbursement for spiritual services only within the Veterans Affairs system. Offering spiritual care for hospice patients enrolled in Medicare is mandatory but not directly billable. As a consequence, many hospitals have no chaplains; some rely on local volunteer clergy, who know only their own faith, or on other healthcare professionals to fill in for spiritual care...

Chaplains are often the only staff with time to talk to patients, whom they can therefore get to know well. I learned of one patient who phoned the on-call nurse every day at 2 a.m., complaining of pain. The staff tried altering his medicine without success. Finally, a chaplain spoke to the patient, who turned out to be carrying significant guilt from his mother’s suicide when he was 18. When the chaplain arranged for the man’s elder siblings to talk about it, they were “aghast,” the chaplain told me. “They reminded him that their mother had mental-health issues: ‘Don’t you remember?’ It was like a 50-pound weight had been lifted. After that, he never again called the nurses at night.”

Chaplains also serve as critical mediators in conflicts among patients, families and physicians. At another hospital, a teenager who was dying wanted to donate his organs. Soon he was brain dead and on life support, which surgeons planned to remove in the operating room. The boy’s family wanted to be present when he died, but the surgeons refused for fear that they’d disrupt the procedure.

Presented with an impasse, a chaplain negotiated a solution: The family would dress in sterile gowns and stay in the theater for three minutes. The family and physicians sang “Amazing Grace,” the boy’s favorite song. When he died, the mother said to the chaplain: “Thank you for that gift. . . . We got to sing my son into heaven.”

In my research it wasn’t uncommon to learn of medical professionals wary of spiritual care, which they saw as having no medical benefit. Yet spiritual counseling can help patients choose palliative care when the treatments available are both futile and painful.

In facing serious disease, millions of patients find themselves pondering the eternal. Most of us will die in hospitals, far from any religious institution, and might benefit from chaplains’ care. Our healthcare systems would do well to recognize and value them more.

Spending one or two nights in a hospital changes a person. Although WiFi is now commonplace, the hospital environment is not conducive to endless Internet surfing or scrolling through social media. The patient confronts thoughts he may not be accustomed to having, especially if he is non-religious.

In his hour of need, there may not be family members the patient is comfortable talking with, and he can't bother medical personnel, whose focus is usually confined to the health of our physical bodies.

That leaves the hospital chaplain, whose job has expanded to being ready to converse with those who are members of different faiths-or no faith at all. In an increasingly irreligious society the irony is that the need for chaplaincy services has never been greater.

Cupertino Contretemps

(Illustration from them.us)

Just when I thought the Chronicle was a decent newspaper that kept its news and opinion sections separate, it produces this headline:

A Silicon Valley teacher used pronouns in a TK class. Parents demanded they go back ‘in the closet’

The slant from the headline? Pronouns are relatively harmless, "back in the closet" harks back to the historic suppression of homosexuality, and "parents demand" hints that they're intolerant uneducated rubes, probably religious. However, digging into the article reveals that non-binary pronouns are being taught to four-year-olds in Transitional Kindergarten.

The individual at the center of the battle teaches 4-year-olds in transitional kindergarten at Dilworth Elementary School and was placed on leave in August after parents complained that they were discussing content they did not believe was appropriate for young children. Supporters of the teacher, including many experts in early childhood development and instruction, said the criticism appears to be leveled against the teacher’s gender identity, not what they’re teaching.

The reporter's bias is evident. She accuses the parents of transphobia ("against the teacher’s gender identity, not what they’re teaching") by using the "many experts...said" ploy. She also adopts trans pronoun language ("what they're teaching" not "what she's teaching").

I agree with the parents that non-standard pronouns are wholly confusing for kids who are learning the alphabet and basic arithmetic. Teach four year olds the fundamentals, then branch out to nuances and exceptions when they're years older. Parents' protests, IMHO, have nothing to do with animus toward the teacher's personal characteristics, just the content of his or her instruction.

Get the woke ideology out of elementary schools, and the kids will have a much better chance of getting into a good college (if that's what they want).

The Executive Function Coach

(Illustration by Kilbride/WSJ)

Here's another child-raising specialty that didn't exist when our kids were growing up. Demand is exploding for the Executive Function coach.

Executive function skills fall under three big headings: working, or short-term, memory; inhibitory control, which involves putting urges and impulses on hold; and cognitive flexibility, the ability to plan, reason, solve problems and manage multiple tasks. In practical terms, EF might coaches show students how to break down assignments and projects into bite-sized pieces and estimate the time each will take; establish a daily schedule, with time for study, exercise, socializing and sleep; and develop a plan to avoid getting distracted by technology and social media.

Psychologists in schools and private practice report seeing a flood of requests from parents for executive function help for their kids, and experienced EF coaches are struggling to meet demand...

The rise in demand for student EF coaches coincides with a rise in ADHD diagnoses and mental health problems in young people. Technology is fragmenting kids’ attention, and student life has become far more demanding. Juggling school, sports, extracurriculars, volunteering and college admissions requires careful time management.

“The number of choices available to a young person has increased so substantially,” says Grant Leibersberger, founder and principal of Boston-based Focus Collegiate, which offers EF coaching to kids with learning differences who are going to traditional colleges. “Their brains aren’t wired for all these choices so early on.”

Your humble blogger has observed young adults who have not been able to deal with electronic distractions. We see them on the road every day and give them a wide berth.

Executive Function training isn't just for kids.

HENRYs

In 1980 the "young urban professional" (YUP-py) was identified as a significant cohort, and ensuing demographic acronyms have never stopped coming.

DINKs (double income, no kids), BOBOs (bourgeois bohemians), WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) all have had their place in the sun. Now there are HENRYs (high earner, not rich yet). [bold added]

Fifteen years ago if you’d told April Little that she’d make $300,000 a year, she would have pictured a life free of financial stress.

“The white picket fence—I have the whole visual in my head,” says Little, 38 years old, a human-resources executive turned career coach in Rochester, N.Y. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but when I got to that proverbial mountaintop I realized there’s a lot of expenses. And I still don’t own a home.”

So go the plush-but-not-too-plush lives of the Americans who qualify as HENRY—high earner, not rich yet.

Little makes multiple six figures running her own business but carries $90,000 of college and grad-school debt. Child care and education for her three children would be so costly that she and her husband decided the better option was for him to leave his radio job to parent and home-school full time.

New census data show 14.4% of U.S. households bring in $200,000 or more a year, a near record. Yet the money doesn’t have the buying power those earners wish it did, partly due to the rising prices hammering us all and partly due to the supercharged costs of things like houses and cars. HENRYs describe feeling stuck on a hamster wheel—a nice one that other hamsters envy—but running in place nonetheless.

Oh come on, you’re thinking. You’re asking me to feel sympathy for Audi-driving, Chase Sapphire-loving, Whole Foods-shopping consultant types with kids in private school?

Well…not exactly. But what they’re feeling is a version of what a lot of Americans at every income level face—making more money but not feeling like there’s a surplus. The essence of being a HENRY is feeling a gap between what you have and what you think you need to be comfortable.

What these high earners consider essentials might be termed luxuries (or nonsense) by the rest of us, but it’s also true that it takes more money to feel rich these days. And their great fear is becoming a HENRE: high earner, not rich ever.

The outlays for housing, private schools, transportation, and health care, not to mention education indebtedness, are often underestimated by 20- or 30-year-olds who think they have made it with a $200,000+ starting salary.

Even HENRYs whose futures look bright can't relax, since the loss of their high-paying job could be disastrous.

Speaking from the experience of being a previous generation's HENRY, I had visions of being able to quit when I was 40 but didn't achieve that psychological comfort zone until I was in my mid-60's. Hard work and technical abilities, while necessary, were IMHO not as important as finding a trustworthy life time partner and keeping one's health. (Having a little luck helps, too.)

No Wonder the Courts Are Clogged

The basis of the lawsuit (Chron photo)

Your humble blogger, a non-lawyer, has viewed with aghast the burgeoning laws and regulations that over his lifetime "growed like Topsy".

And there's no natural brake to this phenomenon. A wrong or injustice is noted, some citizens cry "there ought to be a law", and the legislature responds. Presto, a law is created which governs a human activity that was heretofore outside the legal system's ambit.

Is it any wonder that the courts are backlogged?

A 7 year-old girl handed a drawing to a classmate, a lawsuit resulted, and the case may be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.[bold added]

A California 7-year-old was banned from drawing pictures at school and forced to sit out recess for two weeks for adding “any life” below Black Lives Matter on a picture she drew and gave to a Black friend, punishments that led to a federal lawsuit.

At the core of the case, which could see its way to the Supreme Court, is a simple question: Do first graders have First Amendment rights? ...

What happened at Viejo Elementary School three years ago is undisputed. The student, identified as B.B., drew the picture, which also included four colored-in ovals representing herself and three friends, after a lesson on Martin Luther King, Jr., and gave it to her friend, M.C., who took it home, where her mother saw it.

The mother emailed the school, saying she wouldn’t “tolerate any more messages given to M.C. at school because of her skin color” and that she ‘trust(ed)’ the school would address the issue,” according to court records.

The principal confronted B.B. and told her the drawing was “inappropriate” and “racist” and that she couldn’t draw at school anymore and had to apologize to her friend. When she returned to class, her teachers told her she was not allowed to play at recess for two weeks.

A year after the incident, B.B.’s mother learned of her punishments and later sued the school district and administrators, claiming her daughter’s First Amendment rights were violated. She lost in the district court.

[Defense attorney Caleb] Trotter said he believes the judge erred in the fact that the drawing was not disruptive and then relied on a New York Times article, which was not part of the case record, to deem the “any life” part of the drawing as offensive, associating it with the “all lives matter” controversy.

“Testimony in this case clearly shows neither student knew any of what this meant,” Trotter said. “The school created this situation by introducing these adult topics.”

The legal issue at hand is whether then-7-year-old "B.B." has any free-speech rights, and the District Court ruled against her (really, her parents, who had sued the school district for suspending her). But the school district, IMHO, should never have introduced the Black Lives matter/All Lives matter dispute into a second-grade class, then punished a student for her misunderstanding of the subtleties.

According to the people who are eager to find offensiveness under every rock, "any life" is an allusion to "all lives matter", which reveals the racism of the writer or speaker. For the school district to a) buy into this interpretation and b) punish the 7-year-old for her bad thinking is a gross overstep of in loco parentis. For your humble blogger the removal of identity-politics ideology from public education, especially elementary schools, can't come too soon.