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Posts by Paul Costello1

The kids are not okay, and D.C. schools stand to lose crucial therapists

April 26, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Students and advocates have expressed concern while pleading with lawmakers to invest more, despite budget cuts, toward mental health services in schools

Perspective by Theresa Vargas
Metro columnist April 19, 2023 at 3:43 p.m. EDT

Last spring, Briana D’Accurzio was one of two mental health therapists at one D.C. school. This year, she is the only one. That’s not because fewer students at the school are experiencing anxiety and depression. That’s not because fewer students at the school are facing struggles at home or with their peers. And that’s not because fewer students at the school are harming themselves or contemplating suicide.

“The need is just as great as it was last year,” D’Accurzio told me on a recent morning.

The crisis in American girlhood

She explained that limited resources meant difficult decisions had to be made, and one of those decisions involved moving the other therapist to another D.C. school. That has left D’Accurzio alone to cover a school with nearly 1,600 students.

“If I was able to take all the referrals I get, I would have a caseload that is double, triple, quadruple what I have now,” she said. But she can’t take on every case, so she often has to refer students to clinicians outside of the school, and that process can mean scrambling and waiting, she said.

The kids are not okay. They are not okay in many places across the country, and they are not okay in the District. That should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to what students have been forced to face in recent years on top of normal childhood challenges: a pandemic that snatched from them loved ones and stability, gun violence that is taking from them classmates and a sense of safety, and an opioid epidemic that has left them contemplating carrying Narcan in hopes of keeping their peers from overdosing.

Children keep seeing grown-ups killed in the nation’s capital. They’re victims, too.

School-based therapists, educators and child advocates have seen up close how D.C. students are struggling, and they are worried. In recent weeks, I have spoken to some and listened to the testimony of others, and they have expressed a shared fear: that the city’s proposed budget could cause schools to lose crucial clinicians at a time when vacancies are already going unfilled.

“I can’t picture having less,” D’Accurzio said. “We need so much more, so thinking of having less is really scary.”

In recent weeks, advocates, educators and students have testified in front of city lawmakers, pleading with them to add $3.45 million to the proposed budget to sufficiently fund the community-based organizations that place mental health clinicians in schools across the city. The ask is small compared with the cost of failing those children, but it comes at a time when the city is looking to slash spending.

Schools brace for challenges as once-in-a-lifetime cash runs out

“In a year of tough choices, we urge you to continue to prioritize addressing the youth mental health crisis,” Judith Sandalow, the executive director of Children’s Law Center, said in testimony delivered at a budget hearing on Friday. “Unless there is sufficient funding to allow [community-based organizations] to continue to offer competitive pay, incentives and professional support to clinicians, the entire program is at risk.”

As proof of the need, Sandalow cited the findings of a 2021 DC Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Some of the data she noted: 28 percent of middle school students have seriously thought about killing themselves, about 12 percent of middle and high school students have taken prescription pain medicine without a doctor’s prescription, and more than 19 percent of middle school students and more than 25 percent of high school students reported that their mental health was “not good” most of the time or always.

Several students also testified on Friday, sharing their own experiences and calling on the city to add the funding to the proposed $19.7 billion budget.

One student described struggling to find a clinician in Southeast Washington. He said he goes to school every day but doesn’t have access to a therapist in the building. He said when he asked for places to get help outside of school, he was given locations nowhere near where he lives. “To me, this is unacceptable,” he said.

Another student spoke from inside a moving car. The high school sophomore said she had started cutting herself in middle school, and at 16 she still cuts herself and struggles to control her anger. She described meeting with clinicians over the years but never getting enough time to spend with any of them to open up. “Us youth are mentally struggling. Us youth are screaming for help,” she said. And there aren’t enough mental health professionals, she said, “to hear our cries.”

On a school day, a student sat inside D’Accurzio’s office. The 18-year-old didn’t want to share her name, but she wanted to talk about why it’s important for students to have access to therapists in schools.

Students face so much pressure to succeed and the world places so many problems in front of them that they need a space where they can talk to someone without judgment, the teenager said. She described getting that when she walks into D’Accurzio’s office. The teenager said she often advises friends and relatives to take care of their mental health needs.

“It shouldn’t be something you should be ashamed of,” she said. “It shouldn’t be something we put aside for later. It should be a number one priority.”

She’s right — the mental health needs of the city’s children deserve to be prioritized. D.C. lawmakers will have to make some difficult decisions before finalizing the budget, but providing enough funding to make sure schools don’t lose clinicians should be a no-brainer.

D’Accurzio works for Mary’s Center, a community organization that has placed clinicians in more than two dozen D.C. schools. On the hard days, D’Accurzio said, she thinks about the students who have stepped into her office with complex needs and have successfully graduated out of therapy. Some have told her, she said, “I didn’t see myself alive at this time.”

“If we didn’t have mental health professionals in the schools to attend to their needs, I worry what their future would look like,” she said. If schools lose clinicians, she added, that “would be detrimental to the entire community. It would be detrimental to the students we’re servicing. It would be detrimental to their families.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/19/schools-therapists-dc-budget/

How to defend against the rise of ChatGPT? Think like a poet.

April 26, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Jaswinder Bolina’s “English as Second Language and Other Poems” is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

And so we’ve come to the end of the world again, and this time, it will be death by a thousand chattering bots. But apocalypse aside, most striking to me about ChatGPT and other large-language-model artificial intelligence systems is what their chatter reveals about us — specifically, our language, education, work and the grimly redundant human condition.

I happen to be a poet and teacher of poetry, so language, education and the grim human condition take up most of my Outlook calendar. In thinking about AI, I’ve become preoccupied with — and weirdly heartened by — its utter banality.

AI bots aren’t so much artificially “intelligent” as they are opportunistically efficient at learning from the bland patterns in our language. Entire industries have been built around cliched and predictable writing and thinking, from adspeak to clickbait media to the formulaic pop songs, movies and television that suck up our free time. There is so much blasé filler for AI to mine, and every sentence, paragraph and document on ChatGPT’s kill list is another example of human expression so devoid of personality that the person is rendered superfluous.

As AI proliferates, this lack of originality in our daily language is what will render so many of our jobs irrelevant. But this is where I become optimistic. Because to me, it’s clear that one of our best defenses against the rise of the writing machines might be to learn how to think like a poet.

Sure, I’m biased, but consider what the making of a poem — that small (or large) artifact William Carlos Williams famously called a “machine made of words” — can teach us.P

Diametrically opposed to cliche, poets are trained to invent and reinvent language to arrive at fresh expressions of our angst, joy, anguish and wonder.

Tracy K. Smith: “The universe is expanding. Look: postcards / And panties, bottles with lipstick on the rim, / Orphan socks and napkins dried into knots.”

Though poets do focus on our gnarly existential predicaments, the poet’s first job is to keep language from stagnating or, worse, from boring us to death.Advertisement

Ross Gay: “… and thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart, / this gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw.”

Sometimes manic, sometimes depressive, poetry might indulge in bouts of narcissism and embellishment, but most of all, it must be earnest, singular and unpredictable.

David Berman: “… and if the apocalypse turns out / to be a world-wide nervous breakdown, / if our five billion minds collapse at once, / well I’d call that a surprise ending / and this hill would still be beautiful, / a place I wouldn’t mind dying / alone or with you.”

In a word, it must be human.

Despite the laudable achievements of our science, technology and engineering, it’s funny how language, not mathematics, could be the hill humanity dies on.

So, here we stand even as our algorithms whiff on their AP English exams, as they crank out bad jokes, lousy fiction and crappy poems:

“I am but a vessel, / floating on the sea of time, / Drifting on the winds of change, / A soul in search of rhyme.”

This, ChatGPT3’s response when prompted to write a poem in the style of Jaswinder Bolina, goes on for eight unremarkable stanzas before culminating in its hackneyed conclusion:

“Let us embrace the journey, / And all its twists and turns, / For in the end, we shall find, / That every step we take, in life, we learn.”

While I appreciate its optimism, this jejune algorithm might be using the word “we” a little too loosely. This is because, even if it could convincingly mimic the highly selective diction and syntax in my or anyone else’s poetry, it has no access to our idiosyncratic interiority.

It can’t remember the faces of the people I’ve loved or pained, the names of those who have hurt or needed me. It never felt the humidity breezing in through a summer window, the taut urgency of awaiting a call from the oncologist, grill smoke in the bleachers, or the melody of my mother calling me down to roti.

Here is ChatGPT’s ultimate weakness laid bare. It knows nothing of life except what it learns from us, and to learn, it needs our language. But where that language model is small, unusual and unpatterned, the machines can’t ape us.

There is a lesson in this, especially if you’re worried about your or your kids’ employment prospects. I’m not going to suggest that you tear down the walls of your cubicle and join me in the local hipster cafe. But I am going to suggest that the workers of the world, like poets, become more attentive to sensations and ideas no disembodied algorithm can experience or invent.

This means expressing experience in words and sentences that are tactile, empathetic and original. It means learning to do some of this by taking classes in creative writing, music, theater, painting and dance; by studying and making literature and art, those allegedly pointless pursuits that our culture and our universities have increasingly neglected. It means applying the lessons learned in creative enterprise to other industries, to invent new and more humane ways of using technology to answer human concerns and solve human crises.

Now, when the ability to distinguish between rote and original thinking will matter more than ever, focusing on so-called STEM and other professional fields alone — the clarion call of career counselors and university administrators — will not be enough.

After all, AI is coming for our doctors, coders, engineers and lawyers, too. Even in these fields, the career paths that wind into the yellow wood of our AI-enhanced future will belong to those inventive enough to use technology in ways no algorithm can emulate or predict.

So, let the bots inherit our dead language, dull thinking and workplace drudgery. Let the rest belong to us. Whatever we make in that real and surreal future will have to be inimitable, human and true — which is to say, it will have to be something like a poem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/20/chatgpt-poetry-ai-language/

What Is Future-Mindedness?

April 19, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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What Is Future-Mindedness?

By Nate Barksdale

Future-mindedness, or prospection, is the ability to envision and think about the future.

It’s something that so many organisms do that it’s been described as a core organizing principle of animal and human behavior. Countless animals use prospection to adapt their behavior to their environments, allowing them to improve their chances of finding food or a mate, and to avoid danger. It’s also something humans seem to be especially good at: thinking about the future helps us make decisions, set and achieve goals, and cultivate cooperation and generosity.

How Does Prospection Work?

Thinking about the future is closely tied to memory. Knowledge of the past is a critical ingredient for predicting what might happen next. Studies show that people asked to envision specific future events occurring in a familiar setting like their home describe the events with more sensory details like sounds, smell or visuals then they do when prompted to imagine the same events happening in an unfamiliar place. In terms of brain function, prospection is thought to deeply involve the brain’s “default mode network,” which is active when people are not engaged in particular tasks. This suggests that prospection is a way of keeping our minds active and attentive during downtime by engaging in “mental time travel” to simulate and prepare for possible future scenarios.

How Is Envisioning the Future Helpful?

A fundamental use of prospection is in evaluating which actions to take or to avoid. Studies in rats and humans have examined the parts of the brain used in navigation, highlighting the close connection between remembering locations and simulating expected actions. Beyond simpler tasks like planning routes, multiple studies have shown that how we think about the future (and about our future selves) can influence all kinds of decisions. 

For instance, many of us underestimate the value of future benefits—it’s easy to feel the present opportunity cost of saving for retirement but harder to internalize the future benefits of increased savings. But by actively thinking about and identifying with our future selves, we can counteract that tendency and and properly evaluate tradeoffs. When we feel more connected to our future selves, we become more willing to delay gratification for a greater reward. 

Does Future-Mindedness Change as We Age?

While infants show very basic abilities to think about the future, children make a leap between ages three and five in their future-mindedness. One study found that at least one aspect of prospection — the ability to create detailed descriptions of past and future episodes — may peak around age 21 before declining. Failing to think about the future enough, or thinking about it in detrimental ways could contribute to and may even cause conditions including depression, addiction, anxiety, and ADHD. But a growing body of studies suggest that there are techniques that can help people practice and improve their prospection in order to encourage psychological growth and alleviate symptoms of certain disorders. 

The Future of Future-Mindedness

Many basic questions about the nature of prospection have yet to be fully worked out, including how different forms of future-mindedness (from mind-wandering to delay discounting) relate to each other and function at the neurological level. Researchers are also beginning to investigate factors that influence individual and group differences in prospection. For instance, people in Western countries tend to use more detail when simulating future events than do people from East Asian countries, and women tend to use more detail than men. Why might these discrepancies occur and what differences do they make in people’s lives? We also need to build out our understanding of what happens when prospection goes wrong — when mind-wandering becomes depressive rumination, or when people’s ability to think about the future wanes due to mental disorders or the simple fact of aging.

Still Curious?

Read more about how we can feel more connected to our future selves — and why we should want to.

The Greater Good Science Center has a detailed white paper on Future-Mindedness, commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation.

University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center has established Prospective Psychology to further the science of prospection.

https://www.templeton.org/news/what-is-future-mindedness

4 Books That Taught Me Much More Than My Expensive Degree

March 29, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Margaret Pan  On Medium

When affordable books have much more value than expensive courses

I don’t regret the time I spend in college but, in hindsight, the things I learned sitting in endless lectures and studying dozens of textbooks had little value for me after my graduation.

I quickly realized that the place to seek the knowledge I needed to progress in life and grow as a person wasn’t a classroom, but a library.

There’s a quote by Jim Rohn that goes,

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

I couldn’t agree more with these words. People tend to underestimate books, their power, and the knowledge they can offer you. Yet, most of the things I’ve learned worth knowing in life, I’ve learned from books.

Here are four spectacular books I can confidently say taught me much more than my expensive degree.

You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney

Photo credit: Goodreads

How smart do you think you are?

This probably doesn’t come as a big surprise, but humans aren’t the rational creatures we think we are.

Most of the time we don’t see the world as it really is. From the number of friends we have on Facebook to the smartphones we choose to purchase, we’re constantly deluding ourselves.

The culprits responsible for our errors in thinking? Cognitive biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies. Once we understand and learn to recognize them, the better and more logical our decision-making will be.

In this spectacular book, the author examines how our biases taint our perception of the world, by delving into a wide range of psychological research and breaking down 48 psychology concepts.

Why you should read this book:

What I loved about this book is that it pushes you to challenge your perception of the world and everything you thought you knew about the way your brain makes decisions.

Since it covers a wide range of concepts, most of the information in it is extremely valuable in the process of becoming more self-aware, and making more rational decisions at work, at home, in your relationships, and even in your daily interactions.

It’s also evident (and important) that the author did his research — everything he says is backed by data and studies — which gives the book credibility.

“THE MISCONCEPTION: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is. THE TRUTH: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that’s OK, it keeps you sane.”

“You can’t rage against the machine through rebellious consumption.”

“We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

Against Empathy by Paul Bloom

Photo credit: Goodreads

It seems that nowadays people are almost obsessed with empathy. But did you know that empathy can lead to inequality and immorality?

That our ability to sense other people’s emotions and feel for them might be prejudiced and selfish?

I didn’t know that using empathy as a moral guide could be bad for me until I read this book.

The author, who’s a psychologist, argues that empathy often clouds our judgment and leads us to make unfair decisions in every area of our lives.

Backing his arguments with scientific findings, he explores empathy’s limitations and shows us a better alternative: rational compassion.

Why you should read this book:

Empathy isn’t perfect nor is the solution we need to help others.

That’s the #1 lesson the book teaches you, which, IMO, is an extremely important one, considering people’s obsession with “improving their empathy”, and “learning new empathy techniques”.

By reading the book, you’ll understand the distinctions between selective empathy and rational compassion and you’ll learn how to use the latter in order to make better decisions, and genuinely contribute to making the world a better place.

“If God exists, maybe He can simultaneously feel the pain and pleasure of every sentient being. But for us mortals, empathy really is a spotlight. It’s a spotlight that has a narrow focus, one that shines most brightly on those we love and gets dim for those who are strange or different or frightening.”

“The idea I’ll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling — whatever one chooses to call this — is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we’re better off without it.”
― Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

Firestarters by Raoul Davis Jr./Paul Eder/Kathy Palokoff

Photo credit: Goodreads

What is the difference between people who think about making things happen and those who actually make them happen?

That’s a question none of my college professors or dozens of textbooks could answer…but this book did.

Featuring stories about successful people from a variety of professions (CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc), each describing what helped them become achievers, it’s one of the few books that genuinely motivates you to actively pursue and realize your dreams.

Why you should read this book:

If you’re tired of reading the same boring and practically useless recommendations you see in the majority of self-help books, you’ll be surprised by the nuggets of wisdom displayed in this book.

The authors offer plenty of practical advice on how you can discover what you truly want out of life, and what steps you can take toward achieving it.

However, if we’re being honest, sometimes reading some piece of advice, no matter how useful, isn’t enough, right?

That’s why the authors have gone one step further, including self-assessment exercises, checklists, questions to spark your thinking, and other practical tools in the book — all of which will inspire and help you “ignite your own fires”.

“Introspection is a form of self-management. You reflect. You decide. You change. You allow yourself to grow.”

“People’s confidence in their abilities influences how they approach life. Their dreams are likely anchored to what they feel they can achieve.”

“If you want to make a difference, you must live like no one else and strive to achieve goals that others view as impossible to reach.”
― Raoul Davis Jr., Paul Eder, Kathy Palokoff, Firestarters

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Photo credit: Goodreads

This is one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books and is pretty close to my degree since geopolitics was examined and analyzed in 1/3 of my courses.

None of those courses examined geopolitics in such a rich, informative, and engaging way as this book though.

Geopolitics is the study of the influence of geography on political decisions and gives you an idea about the dynamics between global economic, social, and political forces.

You might not be particularly interested in history, politics, or geography, but you need to have a basic idea of the way leaders of nations think and act, especially now you’ve seen the impact of the Russia- Ukraine war on the whole world.

The book takes you on a journey through the world by using maps, facts, and his spectacular sense of humor, explains the complex relationship between them, and showcases how geography constrains their leaders.

Why you should read this book:

You know that feeling when you watch the news but have a hard time following what’s being analyzed because you have no idea of the events’ background?

Well, it’s about time you read this book.

Even if geopolitics isn’t your thing, the book is a must if you want to be better informed about the relationships between various nations around the world, and how much geography plays in a state’s destiny.

Upon finishing it, you’ll have a better understanding of global current affairs and much more knowledge than the average person has about politics, history, or geography.

“What is now the EU was set up so that France and Germany could hug each other so tightly in a loving embrace that neither would be able to get an arm free with which to punch the other.”

“Sometimes you will hear leaders say, “I’m the only person who can hold this nation together.” If that’s true then that leader has truly failed to build their nation.”

“Why do you think your values would work in a culture you don’t understand?”
― Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

Thank you for reading! If you liked these book recommendations, consider subscribing to my monthly book newsletter! It’s free, and each month you’ll get book reviews, recommendations, and reading tips!

If you enjoy reading stories like these, consider signing up to become a Medium member and get unlimited access to my and other incredible writers’ stories on Medium. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a small commission. Thanks!

https://baos.pub/4-books-that-taught-me-much-more-than-my-expensive-degree-c8ca0ca475b4

Hope and Grit: Companions on the Road to Change

March 22, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Hope and Grit: Companions on the Road to Change

Philosopher of education Sarah Stitzlein on the power of pragmatist hope.

By Annelise Jolley

This piece is from the Templeton Ideas archives. It was originally published in 2021.

In 2016, psychologist Angela Duckworth published the book Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance. Grit was an instant NYT bestseller. Even before the book’s publication, more than eight million people watched Duckworth’s 2013 TED Talk on the subject. Since then, a spate of articles and education initiatives have sprung up with the goal of helping Americans become “grittier.” Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance toward a single goal.

Duckworth posits that grit, rather than talent, is the secret to achievement. It is the defining trait that sets high achievers above the rest.

Maybe it’s not surprising that grit has caught on from the classroom to the workplace. American culture prizes tenacity and self-reliance, and our systems reward a stick-with-it, bootstraps approach. Grit, after all, gets results. 

Duckworth believes grit can be cultivated, which is good news for those with their sights set on a far-off goal. Psychologists and education philosophers have also found evidence that grit is teachable, leading schools such as KIPP public charters to incorporate grit into their education model. For philosopher of education Sarah Stitzlein, cultivating the character traits that produce good citizens is exactly what schools are for. But Stitzlein believes that there’s another virtue worth pursuing in the classroom and beyond, which she calls “pragmatist hope.”

A muscular kind of hope

Why “pragmatist”? Stitzlein uses this term to define a kind of hope that is concerned with what works. Pragmatist hopers don’t just cross their fingers and expect things to get better; they move toward a brighter future by acting, evaluating the success of their actions, and adjusting accordingly. This is a muscular hope, employing creative problem solving and imagination rather than simple optimism.

Instead of fixating solely on a long-term goal, people who hope pragmatically focus on concrete, immediate changes that inch them along in the right direction. It’s like a scientific hypothesis: we act on our hope, see if the action produces change, and then adjust our hopes as necessary. Consider the teacher whose students are falling behind on online assignments because they don’t have internet access at home. Rather than expecting the situation to improve (simple optimism) or expecting them to find their own solutions (grit), the teacher changes the homework format. His long-term hope that his students succeed academically is built brick by brick through immediate action.

Just like grit, hope can be cultivated—in the classroom and beyond. How? Through practice. We make a habit of enacting this scientific-hypothesis approach to hope. We work with classmates, colleagues, and family members to bring about positive change. When failure arrives, as it inevitably does, we learn from our mistakes and design a new hypothesis. Instead of throwing up our hands, we begin again.

A guide for practicing grit

This kind of hope can also serve as a guide for how—and when—to get gritty. For Stitzlein, an emphasis on grit alone is incomplete. By advocating for individual perseverance at all costs, a focus on grit can blind us to entrenched social problems. In other words, if we are gritty purely in advancing individualistic goals, we might miss the need for systemic change, or overlook the needs of those around us. In the classroom, for example, poorer students may not have the capacity to persevere toward a long-term goal when immediate needs consume their attention. This isn’t an indication of their lack of “grittiness;” rather, it’s a sign that something bigger needs to change. 

This is where pragmatist hope comes in. We need to engage in higher-level thinking to discern where it makes sense to apply grit, and when it might be counterproductive.

Pragmatist hope focuses on this higher-level set of concerns. While grit has the power to spur us onward and keep us working on the task at hand, we need hope as a map. 

When we practice pragmatist hope alongside passion and perseverance, this big-picture hope acts as a guide, showing us when and how to tap into tenacity. Once we discern the best path forward, we can employ grit to see the desired changes through.

Historical, collaborative, and collective

Pragmatist hope is historical, encouraging us to find a path forward by looking back. Those who hope pragmatically look to movements throughout history that have generated positive change, and evaluate their success. For example, activists who fight for racial equity can look to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and imagine ways to apply similar approaches today. 

Activist, philosopher, and public intellectual Cornel West is another advocate for pragmatist hope. He reminds us of its realistic, rather than idealistic, nature. In his book Hope on a Tightrope, West writes that “real hope is grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naïve projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing the real work.”

This historical element of hope takes into account the complexity of progress. Pragmatist hope resists oversimplifying history and makes space for reality, both historic and present: its challenges, unexpected curve balls, and failures. Because this virtue is concerned with the common good, it emphasizes collaboration to achieve collective goals. This cooperation is also a pragmatic choice, because we go further when we work together. Social, political, and economic change is a collective effort of many. 

Hope and grit are similar in that they demand hard work and action. While grit promotes tenacity, pragmatist hope advocates flexibility—and both are essential companions on the long road of change. To move toward the better future of which West writes, we’ll need to practice hope and grit in tandem. We need grit to persevere through setbacks, and hope to see the larger picture. Whether in the classroom, workplace, or neighborhood, cultivating these virtues can move us closer to the collective flourishing of all.

Article Link here


Science of forgetting: Why we’re already losing our pandemic memories

March 20, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Richard SimaBRAIN MATTERS

Science of forgetting: Why we’re already losing our pandemic memories

How much do you remember about the past three years of pandemic life? How much have you already forgotten?

A lot has happened since the “Before Times.” Canceled proms, toilet paper shortages, nightly applause for health workers, new vaccines, waitlists for getting the first jab, and more.

Covid disrupted everyone’s lives, but it was truly life-changing for only a sizable subset of people: those who lost someone to covid, health-care workers, the immunocompromised or those who developed long covid, among others.

For the rest of us, over time, many details will probably fade because of the quirks and limitations of how much our brains can remember.

“Our memory is designed not to be computer-like,” said William Hirst, professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York. “It fades.”

Why we might forget a pandemic

Forgetting is inextricably intertwined with memory.

“A basic assumption that we can make is that everybody forgets everything all the time,” said Norman Brown, cognitive psychology professor researching autobiographical memory at the University of Alberta. “The default is forgetting.”

To understand why we may forget parts of pandemic life, it helps to understand how we hold on to memories in the first place. Your brain has at least three interrelated phases for memory: encoding, consolidation and retrieval of information.

When we encounter new information, our brains encode it with changes in neurons in the hippocampus, an important memory center, as well as other areas, such as the amygdala for emotional memories. These neurons embody a physical memory trace, known as an engram.Our memories are centered around our life stories and what affected us personally the most.

Much of this information is lost unless it is stored during memory consolidation, which often happens during sleep, making the memories more stable and long-term. The hippocampus essentially “replays” the memory,which is alsoredistributed to neurons in the cortex for longer-term storage. One theory is that the hippocampus stores an index of where these cortical memory neurons are for retrieval — like Google search.

Finally, during memory retrieval, thememory trace neurons in the hippocampus and cortex are reactivated.

Notably, memories are not fixed and permanent. The memory is subject to change each time we access and reconsolidate it.

What we remember tends to be distinctive, emotionally loaded and deemed worthy of processing and reflecting upon in our heads after the event happened. Our memories are centered on our life stories and what affected us personally the most.

Against this neural backdrop, the pandemic would seem unforgettable. It was a frightening, historic event, the likes of which most people have never encountered before.

Information overload and monotony interfere with memory

Butso much has happened, it was difficult for our brainsto encode the overload of information we had to sift through — masks, social distancing, superspreaders, more cases, more deaths, new waves and new variants such as omicron and delta, and who even remembers all the subvariants?

“This is a very fundamental memory phenomenon,” said Suparna Rajaram, psychology professor who researches the social transmission of memory at Stony Brook University. “Even for such salient emotional events and salient life-threatening events, that the more you have of it, the more you will have trouble capturing all of them.”New memories, which happen by simply living more life, interfere with memories of older events.

Even Rajaram, who is conducting pandemic-related memory research, said she and her colleagues have difficulty recalling some of the events they are asking their participants about.

New memories, which happen by simply living more life, interfere with memories ofolder events. New events are more salient and easier to remember because we are more likely to talk about them and “rehearse” them,by repeatedly remembering and reconsolidating them. Stress, something the pandemic produced in abundance, also interferes with the creation of new memories.

In addition to information overload, the pandemic was monotonous for many people stuck at home. “It was very much the same and the same thing over and over again,” said Dorthe Berntsen, professor of psychology specializing in autobiographical memory at Aarhus University.

When events are uniform, they are harder to recall. “The memory sort of puts it together as almost one event,” she said. “So therefore, I think we will have quite unclear memories from those specific years.”Press Enter to skip to end of carousel

Who wants to remember a pandemic?

Here’s another reason we forget: As a society, many people don’t want to hold onto their covid memories.

People tend to view the future more positively than the past, Rajaram said. This future-oriented positivity bias occurs because the future can be imagined in many ways compared to the past, which is fixed.

Emotionally evocative and dramatic events are more likely to be remembered, but even those memories fade and distort.Within a week of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hirst and a consortium of researchers around the United States asked over 3,000 people in the United States to relate their experiences and feelings around the event.

When the researchers followed up just a year later, about 40 percent of people did not accurately recall those memories. Yet they remained “supremely confident that they were absolutely right,” said Hirst, who studies social aspects of memory.

The least reliable aspect of our memory is remembering how we felt at the time.

“If you ask people to remember how they felt the first few days after 9/11, it’s more like what they feel right now than what they actually felt the first few days after 9/11,” Hirst said.

Remembering the past is something we do in the present, with all our current emotions, knowledge and attitudes. This reality may have direct implications for how we look back on covid and contend with the future.

Will covid be part of your life story?

Covid affected everyone but the mark it leaves on our lives and thus our memories will vary drastically.

Over 2,000 Americans still die each week as of the third anniversary of the pandemic lockdowns. At least 1.1 million people have died in the United States and 6.9 million worldwide. The loved ones left behind are less likely to forget the pandemic.

Among front-line health-care workers, many suffer from burnout or continue to deal with the trauma of bearing the brunt of the pandemic. At least 65 million people worldwide are dealing with the lingering, often debilitating effects of long covid.Covid affected everyone but the mark it leaves on our lives and thus our memories will vary drastically.

“I would say the pandemic, for many people, will be remembered as this kind of gray interlude,” Brown said. “And for some people, it will be a life-changing kind of event or period. And they’ll remember differently.”

Our autobiographical memory is structured by life transitions, and for many, the transition into the pandemic was gradual and the transition back to a semblance of normal more gradual still.

“In order to really kind of staple one’s autobiographical memories into history, history has to take your life and turn it on its head,” Brown said.

The risk of collectively forgetting another pandemic

How society decides to commemorate the pandemic will probably affect whether and how it lives in our society’s collective memory, and what future generations learn from our experiences.

While parents pass along their knowledge and family history to offspring, these communicative memories only last for two or three generations: we may know something about our grandmothers or even our great-grandmothers, but almost nothing further up our family tree.

Without cultural artifacts — books, movies, statues, museums — the same may happen for memories of the covid pandemic, consigned to the entropic dustbin of history. As of now, there are no official permanent memorials for the pandemic.

The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 infected a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million people — more than the military casualties of World Wars I and II combined. But it seemed to fade quickly from collective memory, which was only revived with the arrival of our current pandemic.

“Will the covid-19 pandemic have the same fate and memory?” Rajaram said. “I think to the extent that the past is a predictor of the future, the answer is yes.”

But our future history is not yet decided. Governments and institutions have the resources and intragenerational structure key to keeping collective memories alive.

“And the question is, do we feel the moral imperative not to let the story end with us?” Hirst said.

Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/13/brain-memory-pandemic-covid-forgetting/

Deeply Affected by the Pandemic, Youth Are Committed to Helping Others

March 16, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Coronavirus and young people: How is COVID-19 affecting millennials?

July 14, 2020

Young people in America have been hit hard by COVID-19, but they’re taking action to help their communities and it’s influencing their political views and engagement.

Young people in America have been uniquely and disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that may both hinder and reshape their participation in civic life. Most K-12 schools and universities have either closed or transitioned to an online learning format, which has usually entailed reduced in-classroom time and diminished educational opportunities. Unemployment rates for young people in the labor force are the highest ever recorded. Social distancing measures have also inhibited peer-to-peer contact and relationship-building among young people, which are key pathways for civic growth and identity development.

However, CIRCLE’s new national poll of young Americans finds that, in spite of these challenges, young people have stepped up to meet the moment. Though they face drastic economic hardships, they still feel motivated to engage in activism and in the upcoming election. Our polling data also demonstrate that, as young people are adapting to the new realities of life under COVID-19, they need support to help them thrive during this unprecedented crisis. The poll highlights the need to apply an equity lens to these efforts: policymakers, campaigns, and other stakeholders in the ecosystem of electoral engagement must focus especially on young people of color in order to minimize the inequitable impacts of the pandemic and to ensure youth of all backgrounds can fully tap into their civic potential.

Top findings from our recent poll include:

  • Two-thirds of young people report feeling moderately or significantly economically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and 46 percent of Black youth not in school report being unemployed.
  • Young people have stepped up to the plate to help their communities: two in three young people have fact-checked information about the coronavirus, and 30% of youth have made masks to protect others.
  • Young people strongly disapprove of the federal government’s response, and the youth who have paid the most attention to the pandemic are the most interested in engaging in the upcoming election.

About the Poll: The first wave of the CIRCLE/Tisch College 2020 Youth Survey was fielded from May 20 to June 18, 2020. The survey covered adults between the ages of 18 and 29 who will be eligible to vote in the United Stated by the 2020 General Election. The sample was drawn from the Gallup Panel, a probability-based panel that is representative of the U.S. adult population, and from the Dynata Panel, a non-probability based panel. A total of 2,232 eligible adults completed the survey, which includes oversamples of 18- to 21-year-olds (N=671), Asian American youth (N=306), Black youth (N=473), Latino youth (N=559) and young Republicans (N=373). Of the total completed surveys, 1,019 were from the Gallup Panel and 1,238 were from the Dynata Panel. Unless stated otherwise, ‘youth’ refers to those aged 18-to 29 years old. The margin of error for the poll, taking into account the design effect associated with the Gallup Panel is +/- 4.1 percentage points. Margins of error for racial and ethnic subgroups range from +/-8.1 to 11.0 percentage points.

Young People Have Stepped Up During the Pandemic

Over the past six months, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed many dimensions of young people’s lives in America—creating even broader disparities and adverse consequences that schools, youth-serving organizations, and other community leaders will need to address. Our polling data demonstrate many of the ways in which young people have adjusted to this new normal and how their behaviors and attitudes toward engagement within their communities have shifted.

Young people have felt the negative economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two-thirds (66%) of say that COVID-19 has had a moderate or significant impact on their economic situations, and only 13% say it’s had no impact at all. For young workers, half of whom are employed by the service industry, layoffs have hit particularly hard. Almost 3 in 10 youth report not being employed in full- or part-time work, and that rate is even higher (33%) for the youngest adults (ages 18-24).

The pandemic has also created many other challenges for young people. While youth in our poll were evenly split on whether COVID-19 has decreased (39%) or increased (37%) their daily responsibilities, there were differences among youth in school and in the workforce. Youth who were not employed in full- or part-time work were more likely to say they had more free time (44%), as did young people who were attending school. In contrast, youth who still had a job said that the pandemic actually increased their responsibilities (40%) compared to those who saw a decrease (37%).

While youth who are still employed may feel added stress from working remotely or taking on additional tasks at work, those who are not engaged in work or school may struggle to find productive ways to spend their time. These burdens likely compound for the over 7 million youth who are also parents, 5 million of whom were in the labor force as of this March, according the Census Current Population Survey (CPS). Parents of young children have reported feeling burned out due to school closures, limited childcare options, and the pressure to juggle remote work and childcare duties

Whatever their time commitments, young people seem to be inspired by this crisis to engage in activism. The vast majority (84%) of youth in our poll said that young people like themselves can do helpful things for their communities during these times. That belief has resulted in COVID-related civic activism. We asked about eight actions that young people could take to help others during the pandemic, and 93% of young people said they had performed at least one, including 38% of youth who had performed five or more. For instance, two in five youth have either worked as poll workers or would do so if given the opportunity—potentially substituting for the many elderly poll workers who, because of the pandemic, may not be able to take on those duties on Election Day.

Despite reports to the contrary, young people are also leading the way on safety efforts: over 80% of youth maintain social distance and wear masks, and 30% have made masks to help protect others. Finally, young people seem to be pitching in to provide family and friends with guidance on how to approach the pandemic. Over two-thirds of youth have fact-checked information about the coronavirus, and a quarter of all youth have translated health information for family and friends, including 35% of Latino youth.

As past CIRCLE research has noted, young women have been more likely than young men to engage in activism, and this pattern holds when it comes to assisting in response to COVID-19. Of the eight pandemic-related civic actions, 43% of young women said they had taken five or more. By contrast, just one-third of men had done at least that many, and young women were more likely to have taken all but one of the actions (volunteering as a poll worker).

Black Youth Hit Hardest by the Pandemic

The pandemic has already changed the ways Americans participate in elections and in democracy more broadly, and the barriers hindering young people from participating in civic life could be magnified further unless youth are supported in an equitable manner. Research has shown that the virus is disproportionately affecting people of color nationwide; Black and Latino residents have been up to five times as likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as White people. Furthermore, according to the Economic Policy Institute, Black youth face the double disadvantage of higher unemployment rates due to the pandemic and a higher likelihood of working in “essential” frontline jobs.

Our polling data depict drastic disparities between Black youth and their peers. Nearly half (46%) of Black youth who are not currently in school are also not employed—almost double the unemployment rate of White youth (25%), Asian youth (24%) and Latino youth (26%). Accordingly, though majorities of each racial group reported feeling affected financially by COVID-19, Black youth were at least 7 percentage points more likely than other young people to say that the pandemic was causing a “moderate” or “very significant” economic impact. Yet while most youth whose finances were significantly affected by COVID-19 reported having more free time, Black youth were 10 percentage points more likely than White youth to say that it actually increased their daily responsibilities. Being overburdened and underemployed can engender distrust with the systems designed to help young people survive this series of crises. Given the rate at which they are more likely to be affected, Black youth report feeling more negatively than White youth about both state and federal governments’ attempts to address the impacts of COVID-19.

Another warning sign pointing to potential inequities lies in who is able to transition their lives to new virtual paradigms. Seven and a half percent of young people say that, during COVID-19, they don’t have sufficient access to the Internet—which corresponds to roughly 3.5 million youth who lack adequate connectivity. However, for Black youth, that rate rises to 12%. As schools switch to online curricula, social gatherings move to video conversations, and workplaces transition into remote settings, Internet connectivity is a necessary resource. That many youth—and disproportionately Black youth—lack Internet access is a serious inequity in their educational, economic, and civic lives.

The Pandemic Is Shaping How Young People View Politics

In light of the pandemic, young people have an increased awareness of the ways in which the ecosystem of electoral engagement can affect people’s daily lives—and they have changed their behaviors and attitudes accordingly.

Two out of five young people (40%) have reported paying more attention to news during the COVID-19 crisis, compared to a quarter of youth (26%) who say that they have been paying less attention. The youth who are paying the most attention to news, perhaps unsurprisingly, are those who have been the most economically affected and those who have found their responsibilities increase the most due to COVID. This relationship is notable because both paying more attention to news during the pandemic and suffering economic hardship because of COVID-19 are associated with interest in engaging with electoral politics.

Compared to youth who have paid less or the same attention to news during COVID-19, young people who have paid more attention to the news were 14 percentage points more likely to say the pandemic has helped them realize how much political leaders’ decisions impact their lives,  and 10 points more likely to say the election’s outcomes would matter to their communities. These young people were also more likely to underpin that belief with action. Forty-six percent of youth who were paying more attention to news took 5 or more actions to help respond to the pandemic, whereas just one-third of youth who were paying the same or less attention to news had taken that many. Similarly, youth who were significantly economically affected by the pandemic were more likely to believe that this election was important and more likely to take five or more COVID-related civic actions, suggesting that young people who are following COVID-19 closely are motivated to make their voices heard at the ballot box.

The pandemic has also caused many young people to reevaluate their faith in government and institutions. Young people are distrustful of the President and of the federal government’s ability to deal with COVID-19—reinforcing their overwhelming disapproval of the Trump administration—but they are more optimistic about responses at a local level. Just one in five youth (19%) say they view the federal government more positively as a result of its response to COVID-19, well short of the 49% say that they view the federal government more negatively, and only 17% of youth approve of President Trump’s response to the pandemic.

However, young people’s opinion of state responses to COVID-19 is more mixed: 35 percent of young people each said that they now viewed their state government more favorably, and the same percentage said they view it more negatively. Given the wide range in each state’s responses to COVID-19 and their varied success or lack thereof in slowing the pandemic, more differences emerge when we examine the data by region. Young people living in Southern states and Midwestern states—regions which have seen quicker reopenings of public places and ensuing resurgences in COVID infections—viewed their state governments’ responses more negatively on balance. For youth living on the coasts, the opposite was true: they viewed their state governments more positively. This relationship held even when considering partisanship, as youth living in each region supported Biden over Trump by similar margins.

Conclusions

Young people have stepped up to help their family, friends, and communities during a period of national and global crisis. Our polling data illustrates that not only have young people largely been adhering to public health guidelines, but they’ve also been investing their energies in a variety of ways to help their neighbors and communities. In many ways, our data contradicts common stereotypes of young people as self-absorbed and paralyzed by anxiety. Even in this moment of profound crisis when anxiety is justified and when youth could be forgiven for focusing on how the pandemic is affecting them, they are showing a remarkable desire and ability to think in terms of helping their communities and strengthening democracy.

That said, our data highlights how COVID-19 has negatively impacted young people in various ways, and Black youth have borne the brunt of its impact in terms of employment and responsibilities. As the nation adjusts to civic life under the penumbra of COVID, stakeholders should recognize that shifts in electoral, educational, and civic systems should be designed for equity.

Authors: Kristian Lundberg, Rey Junco. Poll Analysis #1: Youth and the 2020 ElectionPoll Analysis #2: Growing Voters Ages 18-21

https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/deeply-affected-pandemic-youth-are-committed-helping-others

Youth Are Interested in Political Action, but Lack Support and Opportunities

March 16, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Why Demonstrating Is Good for Kids - The New York Times

January 30, 2023 Young people continue to believe in their—and their generation’s—political power, but some don’t feel qualified to participate.

Lead author: Ruby Belle Booth
Contributors: Alberto Medina, Kelly Siegel-Stechler, Abby Kiesa

Following a 2022 election cycle in which youth (ages 18-29) played a critical role, our exclusive survey reveals that more than half of young people still believe the country is on the wrong track, and many express major concerns about American values and institutions. At the same time, a majority of young people see politics as important to their personal identity, and more than three in four youth say they believe they can get involved and improve things in their communities. 

Some youth are putting that belief into action through various forms of civic and political engagement, and many more say they might do so if given the opportunity. But too many young people—often those from historically marginalized groups—continue to say they don’t feel well-informed or qualified enough to participate in political life. That points to ongoing challenges in ensuring the equitable civic preparation and participation of all young people.

Major findings from our youth survey include:

  • 55% of young people (ages 18-29) say the country is going in the wrong direction and only 16% believe it’s on the right track.
  • 76% of respondents believe young people have the power to change the country, and 77% believe there are ways for them to get involved.
  • A third of youth (32%) have signed a petition or joined a boycott, and 1 in 7 youth have participated in a march or demonstration, with even more youth (28%) saying they plan to protest or would do so or would if presented with the opportunity.
  • Half of youth say they’re “as well-informed as most people” and only 40% say they feel well-qualified to participate in politics.

Concerned and Distrustful—but Hopeful

The majority of young people (55%) believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, with 16% saying it’s on the right track and the rest (28%) saying they’re not sure. There are some differences among groups of youth: for example, youth of color are more likely than white youth to say the country is on the right track or that they are unsure. Some of that may be partially explained by young people’s partisan preferences, since youth of color are more likely to support Democrats and their view of the current presidential administration may shape their view of the country’s direction.  Young people who reported that they didn’t vote in 2022 were more likely to say they weren’t sure how they felt about the way things are going in the United States.

When asked why they feel the way they do about the direction of the country, many young people who say the country is on the wrong track cite inadequate action on issues they care about like inflation and cost of living, crime, and inequality. Some youth who are pleased with the country’s direction cited progress on some of those issues or the results of the 2022 election as reasons for their optimism. Crucially, while some young people who stated they weren’t sure how they would characterize the direction of the country said they weren’t following politics, others said they had mixed feelings because they saw both good and bad things happening in the country.

Many youth are also concerned about the country’s values and distrustful of major institutions. Nearly two-thirds of young people (62%) expressed concern about the values of the American people, and 45% said they believe that the country is failing to live up to its promises of freedom and fairness, compared to just 18% who believe the country has lived up to these promises.

Less than a third of young people said they trust either of the two major political parties, their state government, Congress, or the President. Among political institutions, the GOP and Congress garnered the highest levels of distrust from youth: 49% and 41%, respectively.

Youth also expressed distrust in large corporations (53%) and major news media (46%); the latter is especially concerning given the important role of news organizations in young people’s electoral learning and engagement. As with the direction of the country, there are important differences by race/ethnicity (51% of white youth distrust major news media, compared to 43% of young Latinos and 35% of Asian and Black youth) that may also correlate with differences in partisan leaning.

With regard to many institutions in American life, about a third of youth said that they neither trust nor distrust the institutions. As with young people who said they’re not sure how they feel about the direction of the country, their ambivalence may reflect a lack of access to/information about a particular institution, or complicated feelings about institutions in which youth see both negative and positive elements.

Young people also have mixed feelings about democracy itself. Only a quarter of young people said they feel confident about democracy in the United States, compared to 31% who are not confident and 43% who said neither. But even as they have major doubts about the democracy they see around them, youth are more optimistic about the potential of democracy: 50% agree (and only 13% disagree) that the democratic system “is capable of creating change” in the country. Similarly, 75% agree that voting is an important way to have a say in the future of the country.

That may be one reason why, despite the tensions between young people’s ideals and the realities of American democracy, more than half of youth (53%) said they are hopeful things will get better in the country.

Youth Know they Have Power, but Need Information and Support

Young people’s hope for the future may also be a reflection of their belief that their generation can and should engage in civic life and effect change. At the same time, there appears to be a gap between young people’s interest in political participation and whether they feel prepared and qualified to do so.

Young people have a strong sense of both individual and collective efficacy: 74% said that there are things they can do to make the world a better place, and 76% believe that their age group has the power to change things. Even more (83%) recognize the potential of young people working with other generations to create change. 

In addition, almost two-thirds of young people (62%) say that their political views are a somewhat or very important part of their personal identity. Young women of color, LGBTQ youth, youth with college experience, and the older segment of the cohort (ages 25-29) are all more likely to say that politics are an important part of their identity, indicating both how marginalized identities and educational and lived experience can contribute to the formation of such political identities. 

However, while a majority of youth have a strong sense that they could achieve change and a strong personal political identity, many don’t feel informed or qualified enough to participate in politics. Only half of youth say they feel they’re “as well-informed as most people,” which underscores our previous finding that 1 in 5 youth who did not vote in 2022 said they did not have enough information about the candidates or the voting process.

Even fewer youth in our survey (40%) say that they feel well-qualified to participate in politics, and youth from groups that have historically held less political power were even less likely to feel qualified. For example, 34% of youth of color say they feel qualified to participate in politics, compared to 44% of white youth. Young people ages 22-29 were also more likely to feel qualified than youth ages 18-21, who are often neglected by parties, campaigns, and organizations.

Whether a young person feels qualified can have a strong impact on participation at the ballot box and beyond, as evidenced by the fact that 53% of youth who voted in 2022 said that they felt well-qualified, compared to just 22% of those who didn’t vote in the midterms.

Some Youth Are Taking Action, Others Want More Opportunity

Young people’s sense of whether they’re well-qualified to participate in politics may be shaping, not just their voter turnout, but their willingness and ability to engage in other forms of political action. Young people’s participation in activities like volunteering for political campaigns, donating money, attending protests, or joining boycotts has risen in recent years, and our 2022 survey finds that youth are engaging in these efforts at rates similar to 2018—a year that was marked, in part, by youth-led gun violence protests after the Parkland school shooting.

That said, relatively few young people are participating in some of these political activities, perhaps owing to a majority of youth feeling they’re not qualified to do so. However, with regard to nearly every type of political engagement we asked about in our survey, far more young people said they plan to do it in the future or would be interested in doing it if they were presented with the opportunity. That suggests it may not be a lack of interest, but a lack of access, that is preventing a significant number of youth from engaging in political life.

Among the types of political engagement we asked about in the survey, signing a petition/joining a boycott, following candidates on social media, and attending demonstrations were the actions most frequently taken by youth. More than 1 in 7 young people said they’ve been to a protest or demonstration, and an additional 28% who haven’t yet done so said they plan to do it, or would do so given the opportunity. That means more than 40% of youth are interested in this type of political engagement.

Notably, while just 7% of youth said they have volunteered for a campaign, three times as many (21%) expressed interest in doing so, which suggests there is strong untapped potential for campaigns and candidates to recruit young people. Similarly, while only 2% of young people say they’ve run for office, more than 1 in 10 said they might do so. Our research has recently explored how young people are increasingly interested in running for office but face various barriers that must be addressed through explicit encouragement and support.

This new survey data underscores ongoing trends in young people’s civic engagement: youth are interested in getting involved and understand they have the power to effect change, but they sometimes lack the information, support, and explicit opportunities to do so. The fact that less than half of youth feel well-qualified to participate in political life also speaks to a lack of systemic, developmental support for young people to develop as voters and civic actors and find their voice within democracy.

Addressing these issues will require a commitment to the work we describe in our CIRCLE Growing Voters framework: multiple institutions working together to create diverse pathways for all youth to enjoy electoral learning and engagement opportunities.

CIRCLE Growing Voters

Released in 2022, the CIRCLE Growing Voters report introduces a new framework to transform how communities and institutions prepare youth for democracy. It includes major recommendations for organizations across sectors to do this work more equitably and effectively. Read the Report and Learn More

About the Survey: The survey was developed by CIRCLE at Tufts University, and the polling firm Ipsos collected the data from their nationally representative panel of respondents and a sample of people recruited for this survey between November 9 and November 30, 2022. The study involved an online survey of a total of 2,018 self-reported U.S. citizens ages 18 to 29 in the United States. The margin of error is +/- 2.2 percentage points. Unless mentioned otherwise, data are for all 18- to 29-year-olds in our sample.

https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/youth-are-interested-political-action-lack-support-and-opportunities

Youth Right Now: The State of Kids in America

March 14, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Youth Right Now Club kid looking at camera

Posted 08/19/2022 by Jim Clark, President & CEO, Boys & Girls Clubs of America in Our Experts

It is an interesting time to gauge how kids are doing, as millions of students head back to school just over two years into a global pandemic. Usually, a new school year brings excitement for new beginnings, if not some sore shoulders from overstuffed backpacks.

But in 2022, parents, caregivers, educators and youth development professionals have worries they didn’t have just a few years ago:

How will the ongoing COVID pandemic affect the year ahead? Will students be able to catch up on what they’ve missed? How are kids feeling about their safety? Mental health needs are growing like never before – what do young people need right now? And in a rapidly shifting workforce, how can we equip teens with skills and experiences to be successful?

As the leader of Boys & Girls Clubs of America and as a father, it’s been one of the most challenging times in my career to comprehend what today’s kids are going through and the ramifications yet to come. While the past few years have been hard on all of us, I think it’s a uniquely challenging time to grow up.

Yes, it’s been astounding to see how resilient kids and teens have been and continue to be – navigating virtual learning and school closures, masks and safety policies, social unrest and increased violence in communities. I’m moved by the stories of Boys & Girls Club kids and teens who have pitched in to help their communities, spoken up for causes they’ve cared about, and found consistency at their Club when the only constant was change. But we cannot overestimate the impact the last few years have had on kids, from trauma to disrupted learning.

While it may be some time until our nation can measure the effects of the past few years, today Boys & Girls Clubs of America is proud to share Youth Right Now – our pulse on America’s kids and teens. 

YOUTH RIGHT NOW EXPLORE DATA & INSIGHTS FROM AMERICA’S KIDS & TEENS

Youth Right Now provides insights from more than 100,000 kids and teens on pressing matters like mental health, their readiness for life after high school, and their safety and success.* This data set, owned and managed by Boys & Girls Clubs of America since its origins in 2011 is, to our knowledge, the world’s largest private data set on kids and teens.

While I encourage you to dig into the insights, here are the takeaways I find most valuable:

  • It’s more important than ever that young people have safe, nonjudgmental adults they feel comfortable approaching about tough topics. 
Ability to cope with challenges infographic

  • Data shows that kids are struggling with their abilities in coping with challenges, which we know they’ve seen plenty of in the past years. And when they’re stressed about something, they often try to keep it secret. Having a caring adult in their lives who they trust and can go to when times get tough is more critical than ever.

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  • After years of social disruption and as youth grow up in a 24/7 online world, kids and teens need to build essential soft skills. 
    It’s heartening to see a generation confident in much-needed abilities such as leadership and setting goals, but data shows roughly half of
Workforce Readiness infographic
  • kids and teens’ conflict resolution skills needs improvement, and about a third could improve their teamwork. 

    Soft skills are in steep demand from employers; to meet this need, Boys & Girls Clubs embed essential skill-building from ages 6 to 18 through programming and career exploration, as well as job readiness training for older youth.

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  • Just as social skills have been impacted by an increasingly digital world, so has youth safety as kids spend more and more time online. 
    While online platforms offer exciting ways for youth to interact, learn, and express their interests, they also bring risks to child safety – including cyberbullying, lowered self-esteem and exposure to inappropriate or harmful content and people. 
Cyberbullying infographic


  • With kids spending so much time online, it reaffirms the need for consistent, trusting relationships with a caring adult and the development of online safety skills from an early age – especially as our data shows that kids and teens are 16% less likely to report cyberbullying than in-person bullying, preferring to keep their online interactions private from the adults in their life.

You can read more about these insights and access resources for parents and caregivers here:

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YOUTH RIGHT NOW
EXPLORE DATA & INSIGHTS FROM AMERICA’S KIDS & TEENS

The past few years have taken a steep toll on today’s kids and teens – but the data also depicts a resilient and empathetic generation. In fact, when making a decision, 86% of youth say they try to think about how other people will be affected. And 92% want to help when they see someone having a problem.

As the nation’s largest youth-serving organization, Boys & Girls Clubs of America is working alongside Clubs and communities nationwide to ensure what is top of mind for today’s youth is top of mind for all. 

After all, great futures for America’s kids depend on all of us today. 

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Jim Clark
President and CEO
Boys & Girls Clubs of America

https://www.bgca.org/news-stories/2022/August/youth-right-now-the-state-of-kids-in-america

The Student Knows- MyScore

March 8, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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MyScore privileges  a different site and source of knowledge.
It makes the student the expert, not the teacher. Not the parent. Not the researcher. What does that mean?__________________________________________________________

A DIFFERENT KIND OF RESEARCH
The researcher wants to know specifics. She wants to know if a child is fearful, what is the source or sources of that fear? If the child is scared of failing a math exam more than failing a history exam, that is significant, and especially so if that speaks for 60% of the class. Then a teacher can do something to demystify and de-terrorize the whole math exam experience.

If I learn that the children are not hopeful about the future, and I narrow it down to specifics. I discover they have less hope about being successful at school, but more hope about making friends.  That too is useful knowledge. I can shape a more hope-inducing curriculum.  The approach clearly makes the researcher the expert of the knowing. He has the interpretive tools to know what to look for and how to act on what he learns.

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POWER TO KNOW AND ACT
These are all normal examples of knowledge that privileges the researcher to know and act on the findings. But is it as simple as that?
Surely this arrangement is more than just about knowledge. It is about power too. It is about who knows enough to act and who knows enough to interpret.

Two questions go unasked.

1.What is the role of the student who is surveyed here?

2. What is that role compared to the role of the researcher?

One is only exercising the power to be known, to be the teller. How they come to know what they know is not of interest.

The other is exercising the power to know, and to tell what they are told in an authoritative context. All power resides on that side of the equation.

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