Curated Resources for Christian Leaders for August 23, 2023
Readings for Christian Leaders in Congregations, Denominations, and Parachurch Organizations With ForthTelling Innovation Insights from George Bullard
In This Edition:
‘The Death of Public School’ Review: Find a Place to Learn — from the Wall Street Journal
I’ve Reported on Dementia for Years, and One Image of a Prisoner Keeps Haunting Me — from the New York Times Magazine
‘The Death of Public School’ Review: Find a Place to Learn — Read HERE
Cara Fitzpatrick is the author of this book. This review appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 13, 2023. The review is by Naomi Schaefer Riley who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. To connect with the book on Amazon, go HERE.
“What is a public school? Is it an institution that is paid for by the public? One staffed by government employees? One that teaches a publicly approved curriculum? One that educates a broad swath of the public’s children? In the view of Cara Fitzpatrick, the author of ‘The Death of Public School,’ it possesses all of these qualities, and properly so. That more than a few parents don’t agree—or have become disenchanted with the idea of public schools altogether—is a source of concern for her.
For Ms. Fitzpatrick, a veteran reporter and an editor at the education site Chalkbeat, the public school’s death—or at least its decline—is attributable mostly to conservatives, who have, as her subtitle has it, “won the war over education in America.” They have advanced their attack, as she sees it, by supporting school choice, school vouchers and charter schools.”
ForthTelling Innovation Insights: We have not yet read the book. Only the review. We are advocates for public schools and see that school choice, school vouchers, and charter schools may provide added value academics while at the same time creating a separate but unequal educational pathway. Education is more than what happens in the classroom. It is the full social and culture experience beyond the classroom.
Public schools are in trouble, and our overall education and life development systems must be addressed. The chatter, debates, and demands focused on public school systems take away from the quality of education. Underfunding is also a huge issue.
We do wonder why people want to serve on public school boards, as administrators in school systems and individual schools, and to teach in the classroom. It must be out of a deep sense of calling. Otherwise they would walk away.
I (George Bullard) spent 1st through 12th grade in public schools. I have reflected on that experience in a post to be released in The Bullard Journal on Thursday, August 24th. If you are not a subscriber, sign up HERE for free.
I’ve Reported on Dementia for Years, and One Image of a Prisoner Keeps Haunting Me — Read HERE
Words from Katie Engelhart, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, who has written extensively on dementia and aging. This article appeared in the New York Times on August 11, 2023.
“Timothy Doherty, a senior officer specialist at F.M.C. Devens, which houses federal prisoners who require medical care, estimates that 90 percent of the men he oversees ‘don’t know what they did. Some of them don’t even know where they are.’ Mr. Doherty helps to run the Memory Disorder Unit, the federal prison system’s first purpose-built facility for incarcerated people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.”
“In recent years, I have reported on many aspects of life with dementia. One image has especially haunted me: that of a prisoner who, as a result of cognitive impairment, no longer remembers his crimes — but is still being punished for them.
We don’t know exactly how many people in American prisons have dementia because nobody is counting. By some estimates, there are already thousands, most of them languishing in the general inmate population.
Older adults represent one of the fastest-growing demographic groups within American correctional facilities. Between 1999 and 2016, the number of prisoners over 55 increased by 280 percent, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts; over the same period, the number of incarcerated younger people grew by just 3 percent. This trend is largely attributed to “tough on crime” reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, which lengthened sentences and ensured that many more people would grow old and frail and then die behind prison walls.”
“Whatever we are currently accomplishing or mean to accomplish, it seems to require that America’s prisons undergo a strange and maybe absurd conversion: into something that more closely resembles a locked-down, fenced-off, barbed-wire-enclosed nursing home.”
ForthTelling Innovation Insights: This is a heartbreaking article. It is one of those situations where there may be only three percent of our country who are aware of this and have developed an opinion. Our initial emotional response is that this is tragic. This borders on inhumane. It brings to mind the classic thought a humankind’s inhumanity to one another.
What are your thoughts? We would love for you to leave a comment below.
One good factor is that something is now being done to provide memory care.
The only thing more inhumane would be to release these people to society without a fail-safe plan for how they would function and receive care on the outside.
Regardless of the crimes committed by their prisoners, they are still persons of worth created in the image of God. This is one of those situations for which our society has not found a redemptive solution. Do you have a solution to suggest that fits the category of the unconditional love of God?
May we search our hearts for one and not cast stones.