Esther J. Cepeda

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Welcome to Esther J. Cepeda's archive of columns published by The Washington Post Writers Group and other publications. 

 

Follow Esther on Twitter: https://twitter.com/estherjcepeda

 

 

 

Hispanic families still face higher hurdles at school

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- It's tough being a teacher -- the unrealistic expectations, the high stakes, the low pay and the lack of respect for the profession. But, trust me, it's even harder being a teacher of color in a profession that is 80 percent non-Hispanic white nationally, and over 90 percent in most school districts outside of major urban centers.

It's not as though white teachers aren't professional, nice or supportive. It's more that, outside of the classroom, they often forget that not everyone in the room is white, and they let fly how they really feel about their students of color.

Over the years, I've heard some teachers talk serious trash about their students -- including cracks about who would land in jail or end up a lawn maintenance laborer. But even teachers who wouldn't dare let something so crass about a student leave their lips falter when it comes to complaining about parents.

Now, I'll be the first person to point out that teachers deal with flighty, rude, demanding and overly involved parents, as well as uncooperative and totally absent mothers and fathers.

But even though parents of all races and ethnicities fall short of the optimal amount of engagement with the school community, it always seems like teachers get extra irked when Hispanic students' parents fall short.

Unfortunately, what often looks like parental disengagement is actually family hardship.

"Most working low-income [Hispanic] parents have jobs with characteristics that can present challenges to raising children, such as low monthly earnings, nonstandard work schedules (i.e., work schedules outside of daytime hours during Monday through Friday), and limited access to employer-sponsored health insurance," according to a new report from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families. "This is true across race, Hispanic ethnicity, and nativity status."

The authors, Elizabeth Wildsmith, María A. Ramos-Olazagasti and Marta Alvira-Hammond, go on to say that "job characteristics, such as number of hours worked, work schedules, commute time, and paid time off, can shape the amount of time and energy parents are able to invest in their children. For example, parents who work long or nonstandard schedules may spend less time with their children and have difficulties establishing and maintaining family routines."

(And the commute time mentioned above doesn't even take into account the phenomenon of immigrant and Latino families fleeing urban crime and poor schools for suburbs where there are often few public transportation options to get to and from work. But anyone who spends much time in outer-ring suburbs of major metropolitan areas can attest that despite rain, snow or sub-zero temperatures, Hispanic men and women can be seen riding bikes to work on major county roads that were not meant for bicycle traffic.)

The authors continue, "Research finds that nonstandard work schedules may reduce time spent with children and closeness between parent and child. Low wages, unstable jobs and variable or nonstandard work schedules can increase stress and take a toll on parental psychological well-being, increasing family conflict and harsh parenting."

I once had a heart-wrenching conversation with a Latina mom who worked as the night custodian at one of the schools where I taught. Her daughter was struggling in fourth grade, complaining of stomachaches and exhibiting signs of anxiety. Mom was deeply sad and worried that she wasn't available at night to go over homework or read bedtime stories because she was out working to ensure everyone at home was fed.

She wasn't alone. Among low-income Hispanic parents, nearly one-third of foreign-born fathers and one-quarter of U.S.-born fathers had three or more job stressors like irregular work hours, a long or difficult commute or multiple jobs. Roughly one-quarter of low-income Hispanic mothers (U.S.- and foreign-born) had three or more stressors. And yes, as the number of work stressors increases, so does the likelihood of adverse outcomes for the kids.

Policy fixes include incentives for more employers to provide full-time jobs and more flexible and reliable work hours. And for communities to offer more access to affordable, high-quality child care, with more weekend and evening coverage. Also, expanded access to non-employer health insurance or health care services and a transportation infrastructure that makes it possible for families to get to jobs, to midday or evening parent-teacher conferences, and to health services when needed.

Empathy, too, will help.

Many times teachers get very frustrated when our young students come to school lacking focus for their learning. But, too often, people jump to conclusions without taking the difficult work lives of low-income parents and families into account.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Doomed to repeat what?

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- It hardly seems possible, but it's happening: Students have gotten so fed up that they've resorted to legal action to get the education they need to become productive citizens.

As The Associated Press reported last week, a group of public school students and their parents filed a class-action lawsuit against Rhode Island's governor and the state's education officials, claiming that the state fails to prepare young people to fully participate in civic life.

The students are asking the federal courts to confirm the constitutional rights of all public-school students to a civics education that adequately prepares them to vote, exercise free speech, petition the government, serve on a jury, write a letter to a newspaper's editor, participate in a mock trial or otherwise actively engage in their communities.

Musah Mohammed Sesay, a high school senior and co-plaintiff in the suit, told the AP that he hasn't been exposed to the basics of how local government works or how decision-makers are held accountable by the citizens they govern.

It's a sad scene. Rhode Island doesn't have a civics-education requirement, doesn't require teachers to be trained in civics, and doesn't test students on their knowledge of civics and American history, according to Michael Rebell, a lead counsel in the case and a professor of law and educational practice at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, who was interviewed by the Providence Journal.

Rebell said that the skill set is so low on the state's educational radar that the position of social-science coordinator within the Rhode Island Department of Education has been vacant for six months.

The department counters that it requires three years of history/social studies to graduate from high school, and that it has grade-level standards that specifically talk about civics. But having standards on the books is one thing. Ensuring that educators are knowledgeable enough to teach the subject and then having an assessment in place to gauge how well the students learned it is quite another.

The Rhode Island suit, which could go as far as the Supreme Court, is not the only instance of students demanding that their education meet the most basic standards of usefulness in the real world.

In November, students in Lowell, Massachusetts, notched a victory. After a nine-year advocacy campaign, they succeeded in pushing for a law requiring the state to strengthen civics-education requirements. The law mandates that American history, social sciences and civics be taught in public schools. It also requires the schools to implement student-led civics projects for children in eighth grade and high school that encourage students to work with public officials and learn how their government works.

Meanwhile, a nonprofit organization called the Civics Education Initiative is pushing for states to require high school students to pass a test of 100 basic facts about U.S. history and civics before they can graduate. The questions are pulled from the same test that all immigrants are required to take to gain citizenship.

So far, the organization has gotten 28 states to pass such a requirement -- or something similar -- and Texas is considering the move as well.

These changes to education policy can't come soon enough. The Nation's Report Card civics scores in 2014 among eighth-graders showed no improvement from their dismal level in 2010. Less than one-quarter of students scored at the level of "proficient" or better, and only about half said they found their civics coursework interesting "often" or "always."

Earlier this year, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation surveyed 1,000 randomly selected American adults with a multiple-choice quiz about civics. The results were appalling:

-- Only 13 percent knew when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, with most incorrectly thinking it occurred in 1776.

-- 60 percent didn't know which countries the United States fought in World War II.

-- 57 percent did not know how many justices serve on the Supreme Court.

These conditions -- the marginalization of a civics education and children having to sue to get one -- create a perfect storm.

They provide the right mix of ignorance, apathy and gullibility that can lead to the dismantling of our public institutions, our government and our democracy.

How are young people supposed to know that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it if they never learn the adage to begin with?

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

Critical thinking: In short supply and looking to get even scarcer

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- If it seems like "fake news" is evolving into an epidemic, it's due to the calamitous lack of a crucial skill: critical thinking.

What's worse is that critical thinking is one of those abilities that most people mistakenly believe they're good at -- leading them to fall for and spread fake news even more.

Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults say they've improved their ability to reflect and use evidence, logic and analysis to make decisions since graduating from high school, according to a new survey by the Reboot Foundation, a Paris-based nonprofit that is pushing the teaching of evidence-based reasoning skills.

Yet almost 50 percent of respondents said they don't typically plan where they'll get their information before engaging in research -- the very practice that suggests they are weak critical thinkers. About one-third of respondents said they will usually use only one source of information when making a decision.

Part of the reason is that while most people think that critical thinking skills are a necessary tool to navigate today's fast-moving, complex world, the very topic can be a dense, impenetrable snooze.

"As I started to do this research, I bought 40 to 60 books, including 'Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies' and, trust me, if you open these books you'll find yourself falling asleep after not too many pages," said Helen Lee Bouygues, the foundation's co-founder and president.

Bouygues took on the Sisyphean mission of bringing critical thinking to the masses after observing her own 7-year-old daughter completing a homework assignment. Though her daughter was sitting inches away from a book that she'd already read about King Francis I of France, she turned to a web search to complete her homework task of finding some basic facts -- Wikipedia was simply easier.

"I realized that my daughter is fundamentally growing up differently than I did," Bouygues told me. "Not only do we need to impart these critical thinking skills to children at an earlier age because of the easy access to information and misinformation they have at their fingertips, but research on neurological brain development is very clear that children are actually capable of learning these skills at a young age. This should give us some urgency about trying to figure out how to get parents and teachers to teach critical thinking in concrete ways that won't put kids to sleep."

Sure, it would be nice if more people had the ability to quickly and easily synthesize different ideas, seek out opposing viewpoints and engage in fact-based debates. But it's also imperative to our democracy and our intertwined fortunes. In a future that will require better skills at teasing out fact from fiction, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots threatens to grow exponentially.

"Our goal is to do this survey every year -- so this one serves as our baseline -- but already we have found that people with incomes over $100,000 per year are about twice as likely as those making under $50,000 per year to believe that it's important to teach critical thinking skills to children," Bouygues said. She also noted that people with higher incomes were likelier to say that it is important to debate with people who hold opposing views and people with lower incomes were likelier to avoid people with whom they disagree.

It will be an uphill battle to give the topic of critical thinking mass appeal, but the Reboot Foundation hopes that it will be able to eventually disseminate simple tips for integrating some of the skills into everyday school and home life.

"We know that parents and teachers are very busy, and we're all just trying to get through the day," Bouygues acknowledged. "But it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to make little adjustments. Have conversations about what kinds of sources of information are reliable. Ask your kids to explain to you how they made a decision that day. Practice having discussions in positive, rational ways."

This is the same advice I give to parents when they ask how they can improve their students' reading or math skills: Forget about highly structured lessons or purchasing study materials, just focus on having meaningful conversations with your kids that focus on them getting the opportunity to explain their thinking.

(It works wonders on adults, too.)

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Trump praises pilgrims but demonizes today's migrants

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- We're nearing the end of a long, harrowing year in which Latinos have faced daily demonization as a threat to the American people. We've watched horrifying images of women and children from Mexico, Central and South America caged like animals at the border, and we have endured public humiliation and violence from people emboldened by President Trump's rancor toward virtually anyone who isn't white and male.

Last week, the president released a Thanksgiving proclamation valorizing the pilgrims who arrived on Native American land to "establish a home in the New World" after facing "illness, harsh conditions, and uncertainty, as they trusted in God for a brighter future." Just days later, we saw American soldiers shooting rubber bullets at families massed at the border who were seeking to exercise their legal right to plea for asylum.

Only the willfully blind could ignore the parallels between those white, angelic pilgrims of the past and the dusty, dark-skinned migrants now caravanning from Honduras and other Central American countries to the U.S. border, telling reporters along the way that they hoped "God will touch Trump's heart."

And yet here we are, again gaping at photos of what sure looks like international human rights violations: U.S. Border Patrol guards shooting chemical weapons canisters into a crowd on the Mexican side of the shared border at Tijuana, as mothers choking on tear gas cover the faces of their babies and children still in diapers.

So much for "treating all with charity and mutual respect, spreading the spirit of Thanksgiving throughout our country and across the world."

It is painful to see these events unfolding, though there's always the hope that such gruesome visuals will shock people into mustering an ounce of pity for fellow human beings who are in such dire straits that they've put their faith in Trump's capacity for compassion.

Is that hope misplaced, though?

Even the globally viral image of 3-year-old Syrian migrant Alan Kurdi's dead body on a Turkish beach in 2016 did nothing to prevent the deaths of thousands of more Syrian refugees and the further closing of European countries' borders to them. So what hope do Central Americans have?

A sliver, at least.

For one, to the sizable pan-Hispanic population in the United States, the migrants we see on TV and in photos aren't frightening or foreign -- they look, act and sound like our families, friends and neighbors.

Additionally, migrants from south of the border have a long and proven track record of being able to enter the U.S. and not only thrive, but contribute greatly to both the economy and our culture while simultaneously assimilating completely -- seeing themselves as fully "American" -- while exhibiting deep pride in their heritage.

Better than that, however, is knowing that we, as seemingly impotent onlookers, actually do have some power to influence what happens to the modern-day pilgrims at our southern border.

"Think back to the zero-tolerance policy that the president put in to place earlier this year; there was a tipping point over the summer when he realized he clearly overreached," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan advocacy organization. "That tipping point occurred when local institutions started to press their elected representatives to take action."

Noorani told me that the most effective way to relieve the migration crisis would be for the U.S. to help get the Central American countries on their feet, economically, and for us to recalibrate our relationship with Mexico. But he said that the best thing that individuals can do is speak up.

"Every day Americans have to stand up and say, 'I am a leader in my community and I think this is wrong.' They have to press their institutional leaders -- go to their pastors, police chiefs and school principals and ask them to go to legislators," Noorani said. "Online dissent and sharing of these images is important. But what's going to capture the attention of the administration in a different way is for our local civic institutions to help speak to government leaders for us and say, 'This does not represent us, or who we are.'"

There are many organizations you can donate to that are attempting to aid the migrants who have amassed in Tijuana. But even just reaching out to anyone who has the clout to talk to people in Washington can move things in the right direction. Contact your community leaders and let them know that lobbing tear gas at women and children is unacceptable. It will have more impact than just feeling helpless and sad in front of your TV or social media feed.


Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Nazi sympathizers on the rise because people don't know their history

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- The sickening photo of dozens of Wisconsin high school boys apparently giving a Nazi salute sparked so much media outrage last week that even Gov. Scott Walker shook his head and said, "They're just a bunch of idiots."

The well-dressed boys were photographed outside a county courthouse last spring at prom time, and about two-thirds of them had their right arms raised in what looks -- to anyone with eyes in their head -- to be a Sieg Heil salute. One student also appears to be making the upside-down "OK" hand signal that white supremacists use to mean "white power."

To be fair, the parent who took the photo -- who also owns a photography business -- said that he had simply asked the boys to wave "goodbye" for the camera, and that the final result had been misinterpreted. However, several news outlets also reported that some of the boys meant it, possibly as a joke.

Har. Dee. Har. Har.

One student at the school, Jordan Blue, told media outlets that some of his classmates were goofing around. He told CNN that the episode was "a scary moment, and it was very shocking and upsetting."

But what's even more upsetting is that some of Blue's fellow students at Baraboo High School felt otherwise.

Nate Mathis-Vargas, a white father of two girls who attend the high school, spoke to the podcast "It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders" and said that he was appalled by the picture. He also said that he was concerned for his daughters -- not only because they go to school with people who either hold white-supremacist beliefs or think it's a joking matter, but also because many students didn't even understand the problem.

He discussed the incident with his daughters and found that "they weren't aware of a lot about the Nazi army itself, so they didn't understand what that meant, which was more shocking to me than the picture itself," Mathis-Vargas said. "It's like: How did they not teach that? How do they not know that?"

Sadly, those kids are not alone in their ignorance.

A study released last summer by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which pursues restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs, delivered the alarming news that 11 percent of all Americans and 22 percent of millennials hadn't heard of the Holocaust or weren't sure what it was.

The study also found that 31 percent of all Americans and 41 percent of millennials believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust. (The number is actually around 6 million.)

Forty-one percent of all Americans and 66 percent of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was (it was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp), and 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force.

As amazing as it may sound, only 10 states -- New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Connecticut and Kentucky -- have legislative requirements about the teaching of genocide and the Holocaust in their public schools, according to the New York-based Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

It's not perfect -- not all of those states have a commission or task force to keep genocide education comprehensive, rigorous or up to date. Still, it's something, and another 18 states have told the center they are committed to passing or strengthening their legislation.

In the absence of such education, Mathis-Vargas' daughters were angry about the backlash over the photo, because they didn't understand what was wrong with what the boys had done. All they saw, according to Mathis-Vargas, was their school being attacked and their friends demonized and even threatened. "It opened my eyes about what I need to do as a parent on talking to my kids about these things," the father said. He added that he hoped the school would start offering more instruction to prevent these kinds of misunderstandings in the future.

Hopefully, the "future" won't be too late. Already, hate crimes in America have spiked by 17 percent over 2017, with a corresponding 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks, according to FBI statistics.

Ignorance fans hatred. On Election Day, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist won 56,000 votes in the western suburbs of Chicago. Thankfully, he lost. But his candidacy is proof that America needs some serious schooling before it relives history's worst mistakes.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Food banks need your cash and here's why

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Charities often ask for donations around the holidays because that's when people are likeliest to be feeling generous, but hunger runs rampant every month of the year, and it actually peaks for children in the summer when school is out.

Food banks in particular tend to time their drives around Thanksgiving, because so many people are out stocking up for the big dinner that it doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice for shoppers to throw an extra package of stovetop stuffing, a can of concentrated soup or a box of cake mix into the food bin at the door of their local supermarket.

This is a good deed, and no one should be dissuaded from attempting to make a local family's holiday dinner a little fuller or sweeter.

In fact, I'm usually the one doing the nudging, asking readers to be generous because a whopping 40 million Americans, including more than 12 million children, experience food insecurity or day-to-day hunger.

But in the 13 years I've been urging generosity at turkey time, the scope of the problem -- and of the solutions -- has expanded in many directions.

The percentage of the U.S. population experiencing low or very low food security has gone up over the past decade due to the failure to recover from the Great Recession, the decrease in the number of high-paying middle-skill jobs and the rise of low-paying service-sector occupations.

And the world is burning up.

That's not hyperbole. If you think it is, try telling that to the people who are fighting to survive the California wildfires, which, as of this writing, had claimed 59 lives, left hundreds missing and rendered untold numbers displaced.

Which is where the food banks come in.

Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger-relief organization, works year-round to position emergency food supplies throughout the country. So when earthquakes, hurricanes or wildfires hit, member food banks are ready to deploy food, water, equipment and supplies with a network of 2,400 trucks. Then the organization stays in communities to help them with long-term disaster recovery efforts.

Right now, the organization is coordinating in California with the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, as well as with FOOD Share, Inc. and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, among many others.

Sue Sigler, executive director of the California Association of Food Banks in Oakland, told me they're supplying food to shelters and evacuation centers, and coordinating with local governments and first responders to ensure the right type and quantity of food gets to those who need it.

"Unfortunately, because we saw this type of devastation during the Tubbs Fire almost exactly a year ago, we know that there is a long-term recovery that needs to be supported with food," Sigler said. "Folks who have lost homes and employment will take many years to become self-sufficient again, so there is both an immediate and long-term need for food assistance."

Most people experiencing food insufficiency are well past the point of just needing a can of crispy fried onions to sprinkle on top of a green-bean casserole.

The reality is that the enormity of the need requires sophisticated logistics to transport fresh milk, meats, fruits, vegetables and other foods and staples long distances from corporate donors and bulk sellers in far-flung warehouses to the people who need them.

This is why, generous readers, if you really want to make an impact on the lives of people who dearly need nourishment, please open your wallet.

"With respect to how people can help, cash donations are the most preferable," Sigler said. "Food banks obtain food at far below retail cost, and have many other costs as well, such as extra staffing, transportation costs, and much more."

Please find a way to donate the cost of a box of cereal or a value pack of mac n' cheese to your local food pantry (locate it here: https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank]).

Or find a little extra in the month's budget to donate to the tens of thousands of people who won't have a home for Thanksgiving because of the California fires or other disasters.

Giving your extra dollars via website or text or app may not feel as good as plunking packaged food into a bin at the grocery store, but it will go further, and help more people than you can imagine.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

It's about time to stop being snarky about millennials

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- It's a terrible idea to make too much of the campaign victory of any politician, but an exception is in order now that New York has elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress: It's time to drop the snarky jabs about millennials.

There's no question that the fact Ocasio-Cortez is 29 is worth celebrating. Young people are woefully underrepresented in governing roles, and their exuberance, fresh ideas and open minds could help them connect with a more diverse demographic.

Yet in a society that is obsessed with being youthful and on the cutting edge, we sure look down our noses at even the most accomplished young person if he or she has the temerity to like avocados, toast or -- insert patronizing tone here -- avocado toast.

Just set the food preferences aside and note that the disparagement that Ocasio-Cortez's detractors heap upon her centers mostly on her democratic socialist political beliefs but also leans heavily on her age.

Adjectives like "spoiled," "entitled," and "vacuous" are appended to "millennial" and deployed to heighten the fiction that, if you're to believe the criticism on newspaper-website comment sections, Ocasio-Cortez is so post-internet ignorant that she believes money falls from the sky and that everyone should get everything for free.

Let's be clear: The woman graduated from Boston University with degrees in international relations and economics. I'm pretty sure she knows more about where money comes from than 98 percent of the adult U.S. population.

A less charitable reading would be that Ocasio-Cortez's membership in a generation that is frequently mocked was a gift to those who want to root against a woman trying to gain political power but don't want to appear openly misogynist.

Surely there's some of that. But, most likely, some older people openly despise millennials because they are free-spirited and possessed of the idealism and naivete that every young person deserves to indulge in before the realities of a life's difficulties grind away a little bit of the optimism.

Sadly, as it has been noted time and again, millennials don't have it as easy as everyone assumes. They aren't all trust-fund recipients who took gap years in Europe on their parent's dime. And when they fail to live up to those easy stereotypes, they're mocked for not being as wildly rich and successful as they're made out to be.

Case in point, there was a media uproar when it came out that Ocasio-Cortez can't afford to put down a deposit, and first and last month's rent, in the nation's capital, one of the most expensive cities in the country (one-bedroom apartments average about $2,200), plus pay moving and living expenses before getting the first paycheck from her new job.

Neither could most of America, never mind a young person who has been open about having student loans she's still paying. Someone who, until recently, was working as a server in a bar.

At least in this instance, level heads, even from opposing camps, came to Ocasio-Cortez's defense.

"It's perfectly appropriate to criticize the kinds of anti-market policy prescriptions a socialist like Ocasio-Cortez is likely to recommend. But let's not beat up on her for failing to have as much access to wealth as the average member of Congress," wrote Robby Soave, an associate editor at Reason.com. "This problem should inspire sympathy, not scorn."

Sure, we can have sympathy and even chalk up Ocasio-Cortez's "first-world problem" to folksiness or "relatability."

Better yet: Cut out the millennial condescension.

By most measures the youngest millennials are 22 and the oldest are 41. It's a range so incredibly wide, a populace so diverse and heterogenous across geography, race, ethnicity and socio-economic class, that lumping them all into one category of detached, internet-obsessed narcissists is every bit as offensive as the religious, racial and gender-based stereotypes we all know are both in poor taste and off-limits in polite company.

Young people are America's present and future. If we don't like them, we should point the finger of blame toward ourselves -- and who bought all those pre-teens their internet-enabled smartphones and laptops for their bedrooms and didn't set limits? -- instead of piling on.

Just be nice! Remember, we need those idealistic young people to pay into Social Security and take care of us in the not-too-distant future.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Latino journalists weigh in on Midterm Elections 2018

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Incredibly, Hispanics can simultaneously be the center of a national conversation yet be virtually ignored when it comes to discussing immigration as a factor in the elections.

With few exceptions, Latino journalists, political scientists, demographers and immigration experts -- were all but shut out of English-language election-night reporting and analysis that, in many cases, focused on the role immigration and Hispanics played.

"How can we be 59 million Latinos in the U.S. and not be invited to the news desk? MSNBC had a Latinx reporter from USA Today -- ONE. Shaking My Head," tweeted Rebecca Aguilar, the founder of the Latina Journalists Facebook group and diversity chair of the Society of Professional Journalists.

This is why I took to Twitter to ask Latino journalists for the election-night insights the whole country should have benefitted from but didn't.

Many of the responses I received said that the dearth of Latino journalists and pundits was especially galling in light of this year's big headlines. "Latinos were suddenly disappeared from election coverage despite Hurricane Maria, [the] Puerto Rico vote, Central American migration, border-security issues, candidate wins, etc.," said Tanzina Vega, the host of WNYC's "The Takeaway."

Journalists on the ground were eager to talk about delays, broken machines, rejected ballots and poor customer service at the polls, misfires that were amplified by underwhelming investments in basic Latino voter outreach.

"We don't have leaders in place that are making our votes important. Here in Chicago, at my polling place, there was no Spanish translator," said Susan Rivera, a freelance writer at WGN-TV. "I had to help a Mexican couple in their 80s, two elderly Puerto Rican women [and] an 18-year-old new citizen vote. The 18-year-old I helped stood out the most ... she had basic, fundamental questions about voting. Who is reaching out to Latinos ahead of elections?"

Not only did campaigns underinvest in helping new Latino voters cast ballots, there were reports from all over the country that organizations providing interpreters for languages like Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Hindi and Bengali weren't allowed to translate for the people they showed up to assist.

"The Democratic Party has A LOT of work to do with Latino/a voters. A LOT," said Maria Hinojosa, president of the Futuro Media Group and co-host of the "In The Thick" political podcast. "They could have delivered Beto [O'Rourke]/[Andrew] Gillum. And then the perennial question: Who are these Republican Latinx voters in Texas and Florida? What moves them? And if they vote Republican now under Trump, then, will they ever turn away?"

Suzanne Gamboa of NBC News noted three details that often get overlooked: "Latino Tailored outreach in Spanish and English has impact. There are still enough Latinos voting Republican to help Republicans win in some places. [And] the 'suburban vote' includes Latinos."

Indeed, most of the writers that weighed in said something along the lines of what freelancer Claudia Garcia-Rojas shared: "Latinx people are treated as a monolith. There's little to no reporting, for example, on why such a big percentage of Latinx people voted for GOP folks. The face of Latinx issues are Mexicans, but even within the Mexican diaspora, there are differing political views. Better reporting by media, please."

Questions about why so many Latinos vote Republican referenced Democratic Rep. O'Rourke's loss to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas. But even though O'Rourke -- who is not Hispanic -- lost the race, his Latino-centric campaign sent a few clear messages.

"A bilingual and bicultural Anglo was the major force behind driving Texas Hispanic turnout," said Roque Planas, a national immigration and political reporter for The Huffington Post. "Targeting a message to specific Latino communities and staking out clear positions on their issues is as important -- or maybe more so -- than the ethnicity of the candidate."

Multiplatform journalist Matthew Reich, editor of the "In Focus: America" newsletter, added, "I think it has to be understood a candidate needs an 'overall' message for Latinx people beyond immigration." Journalism student Luciano Gonzalez of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro added, "In many cases, it wasn't the big media attention and celebrity endorsements that won the day for either party but solid ground game and organizing."

I'll let Refinery29 reporter Andrea Gonzalez-Ramírez close out with a thought on the opportunity that last week's elections illuminated: "Women of color, including Latinas, are 10,000 percent electable. But there needs to be institutional support, both from Latinx and mainstream organizations, in order to create a pipeline for future candidates."

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

What can the U.S. learn from China's education methods?

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Here's a shout-out to fellow gray-hairs who learned math the "old-fashioned" way, by memorizing simple formulas along with facts about addition and multiplication. This technique is anathema in today's classrooms.

But might the old ways ever come back into vogue?

I would have said "when pigs fly," but then I read Lenora Chu's can't-put-down book "Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve." Chu writes about her first-hand experience with the alarming -- and ultimately effective -- Chinese way of educating children.

I picked up Chu's book out of mere curiosity about what it must be like to work as a journalist while trying to raise a family in a country so different from our own. And while the details of Chu's son Rainey's difficult start at an exclusive Shanghai preschool are enthralling, the real story is about how Chinese culture helps explain the country's consistent dominance of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The secret is, obviously, that it's a test-crazy country. But those tests are laid upon such foundational principles as reverence for teachers, respect for math and a firm belief in the transformative power of hard work.

"China affords teachers more status than any other country, a global education nonprofit found in a 2013 survey (though I had proof enough in the jitter that overtakes my hands when I talk to Rainey's teachers)," Chu writes.

It goes far beyond mere professional status. According to Chu, doing well in school is "the ultimate way to respect your parents, since good grades and test scores are the path to financial stability, and the ability to provide for" parents in old age.

A child's obedience to and respect for elders transfers to teachers, whose authority is absolute and never questioned -- not even by Western parents who, like Chu, believe children should be given at least some measure of autonomy over themselves in order to mature and learn at their own pace.

In addition to the much-maligned rat race of grueling standardized testings -- which serve as the gatekeeper to most jobs and careers in China -- is the Chinese attitude toward ability.

The Chinese believe in luck and fate, but their guiding philosophy is that anything is possible if you work hard enough. Teachers and parents start with the assumption that every child is able to become a disciplined, focused learner. Chu writes that children are then reminded at every turn that "if there's a goal worth accomplishing, day-to-day life might be absolutely and miserably unpleasant for a spell. ... Hard work is the most important thing."

In stark contrast, Americans are conditioned to believe in innate ability -- hereditary traits that either make you good at something or not, regardless of effort. This is, at least in part, why Americans are unashamed to go around saying "I'm not good at math," whereas the Chinese, as a whole culture, value math every bit as much as we value reading ability.

Lastly, of course, are the differences -- rigor, extreme challenge -- in the actual methods for teaching subjects like science and math.

And, yes, it's true the Chinese use -- gasp! -- rote memorization, skills drilling and repetition to teach the fundamentals.

"In early science education, especially, 'many more children learned from direct instruction than from self-discovery,'" Chu noted. "A 2015 OECD report found that teacher-directed instruction is actually associated with higher scores in science (and inquiry-based instruction with lower scores). Kids in countries with more teacher-directed instruction were also more likely to express interest in pursuing a science-related career. I most enjoyed the stark takedown of a group of education researchers who wrote in the Educational Psychologist that 'the past half-century of empirical research' provides 'overwhelming and unambiguous evidence' that minimally guided instruction is essentially a failure.'"

Music to this teacher's ears! I've seen the damage done to students who can't thrive without structured instruction and opportunities to practice until attaining true mastery.

Not all of China's methods are transferrable (or desirable) outside their culture, but the United Kingdom is piloting direct instruction of whole-class, mastery-math teaching. That's because, as Chu quotes an architect of the PISA academic rankings, "'The Chinese memorize what needs memorizing and use the rest of the time to go very deep in conceptual understanding.'"

If it works for U.K. students and they pivot toward deep understanding of math and away from mile-wide, inch-deep curriculum, us oldsters may stand a good chance at being able to help our grandkids memorize their math facts someday.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Latinos in Trump's America don't scare so easily

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- President Trump is playing the media, his detractors and his supporters with his pre-election stunts. Overruling the Constitution to end birthright citizenship? Sending troops to the border to combat the supposed hordes of potentially terrorist-filled migrant caravans?

Yeah, right.

These are the kind of shiny distractions Trump uses to dog-whistle at his base, hoping to satisfy their craving for fewer immigrants in this country, particularly dark-skinned ones.

The troops the president wants to deploy to our southern border will be able to do nothing more than provide logistical support to the Border Patrol, such as building tents and shoveling manure. That's because using the military to enforce immigration or criminal laws at the border -- or to perform any other law enforcement activities -- is itself illegal.

Plus, scads of legal experts, and influential Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, know that a push to end birthright citizenship will never bear fruit. The rest of us can take cold comfort in understanding that it's all basically campaigning to energize hard-right voters ahead of the election.

It's also just one more example of brazen hypocrisy to suggest a radical use of executive authority to keep immigrants shut out of American life. Meanwhile, Republicans screamed bloody murder every time President Obama tried to use an executive order to mitigate immigrant suffering.

But make no mistake: Although Trump's actions are primarily for the purposes of using hatred to drive people to the polls, his secondary objective of making life harder for immigrants and anyone who might sound or look like one is also going swimmingly.

In September, elementary school students in La Quinta, California, were celebrating their Mexican heritage by donning brightly colored folkloric costumes and performing traditional dances at the library. They were told to scrub their presentations of any references to Mexico, and the coordinating teacher was told that next time the students should perform patriotic songs like "Yankee Doodle."

And last week's Halloween brought with it a raft of racist costume news stories, like the one about the Kentucky dad who thought it'd be cute to dress his 5-year-old as Adolf Hitler and himself as a Nazi soldier. A news story about the guy's extracurricular activities as a Civil War and World War II re-enactor noted that he had dressed up as a Confederate soldier last year, and his Facebook account is littered with "White Pride Doesn't Mean Hate" posts.

None of this is any kind of coincidence. President Trump has valorized white supremacists while demonizing anyone who isn't white or Christian. As a result we're living in a country where Jewish people are again being slaughtered in their places of worship just for being Jewish -- just like African-Americans since before the Charleston church shooting and to this day.

But back to the border.

Yes, the border, where crossings have been declining for years since a peak in 2000.

And birthright citizenship, in the country where births to unauthorized immigrants has been on the decline since 2009.

And to Hispanics, 54 percent of whom, according to the Pew Research Center, say it has become more difficult to live in this country as a Latino since the 2016 presidential election.

Trump and his acolytes apparently want to make sure it stays that way, but quite possibly are simply reacting to their own fears that Latino voters will someday come in to political power that they could command if they were more reliable voters.

Perhaps they should be scared. Intimidation tactics can be a double-edged sword, with the potential to either cow a people or galvanize them.

Nothing I've seen suggests that Latinos and other voters of color are giving up. But I have seen plenty of flabbergasted and sorrowful social-media posts from friends who are, for the first time in their lives, concerned for their safety and well-being in the country they've called home for generations.

According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, more than 7.8 million Latinos are expected to cast ballots this year. This would represent a 15 percent increase in turnout and a 6.9 percent increase in the Latino share of the vote from 2014.

So, bring it on Trump. You can try your best, but take it from me and about 30 million other Latinos who are eligible to vote this week: We don't scare so easily.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Colleges need to embrace diversity, not exploit it

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- My guiding philosophy in life has always been to go where I'm not wanted. This includes the insular, majority-white world of journalism, the insular, majority-white world of public education, and the insular, majority-white world of governing nonprofit organizations.

I've always said that those institutions needed me more than I needed them, because diversity equips them to speak more effectively to an increasingly multicultural America. It was an economic pitch, one that scores of Fortune 500 corporations have adopted and profited from.

But marketing wisdom tells us that the profit motive for diversity only works for products or services looking to gain market share -- luxury products are basically immune to changing tastes because their appeal is exclusivity.

This is why it's unlikely, despite ongoing court challenges, that Harvard University will be forced to change much about its methods for admitting what it believes is the right mix of students for its campus.

A key part of Harvard's appeal is how difficult it is to get into. This is what gives graduates from elite universities so much cache in the marketplace -- though apparently not enough to overcome racism, considering that studies have shown that white candidates with degrees from highly selective universities still get more employer responses per resume than black candidates.

The truth is that, even today, I would jump at the opportunity to study at Harvard, but I fear it would be fraught.

You see, even though I wish more Asians, Latinos, Native Americans and African-Americans could go to Harvard, I cringe at the thought of those students -- with all their hopes, dreams and sense of accomplishment for just getting in -- being on campus at least partly for the sake of enabling schools to boast about their diversity statistics.

Schools that have actively worked at being designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) have made commitments of time and money in the form of diverse teaching staffs and grass-roots outreach to those communities.

But elite universities are not primarily dedicated to nurturing first-generation college students for the sole purpose of promoting social mobility.

Harvard's mission statement is lofty, seeking to create "a diverse living environment, where students live with people who are studying different topics, who come from different walks of life and have evolving identities [where] intellectual transformation is deepened and conditions for social transformation are created."

This sounds pretty awesome, but I've been down that road before. Trust me, being the campus diversity -- and representing a whole demographic for a mostly white peer group -- is soul-deadening.

I secured a full-ride scholarship to a prestigious graduate program in marketing at Northwestern University, but became every class' "official Latina," routinely called upon to enlighten my white classmates about Hispanic consumers' struggles in the barrio with English-language acquisition, gangs, and discrimination -- none of which I'd ever experienced.

Being the diversity-scholarship recipient, which is how it felt the other students saw me, was no fun.

This is the opposite of how I've felt when observing the warm, nurturing environments of HSIs like Chicago's Dominican University, which is nearly half Latino, about a third white, and 17 percent Asian, black and international.

On a campus that has made its mission to serve Latinos and other students of color, it's difficult to imagine anyone feeling like they were admitted for the sole purpose of rounding out the life experiences and social interactions of people so rich they've been sheltered from having to get to know people of other races.

Yes, this is a thing -- for at least a decade, academic research has found that school integration potentially benefits white students more than students of color. Even scholars who research bilingual or dual-language programs have worried that white students benefit from Latino students' culture and native-language skills more than the students working to learn English while maintaining their mother tongue.

What it all boils down to is that students are increasingly seen by universities as consumers with choices. And while all high school students should aim high, they should also aim to be welcomed at schools that are looking out for them, rather than proffering an added diversity benefit for a college's core, white, customers.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

R.I.P Sears, I'll miss your snacks and cartoons

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- I know nostalgia is a bad look, but please bear with me -- this Chicagoan is feeling the Sears bankruptcy deep in the solar plexus.

Although to this day my hatred of shopping is a tremendous disappointment to my mother, who has no one except my poor dad to drag to the mall, I still mourn the passing of the department store that loomed so large in my childhood.

Hours that felt like eternities were spent crawling under racks of women's clothing, sitting in front of banks of televisions and trying on ill-fitting clothes for a new school year. I also remember getting shooed out of the sports-equipment department for playing pool on the floor-model tables or, alternately, out of the home department for tucking myself into the lushly pillowed miniature display beds.

Especially at Christmas time, I put in what felt like overnight shifts at Sears stores all over Chicago's North Side as my mom struggled to find just the right glove-scarf-wallet set for an uncle or the perfect outfits for our family pictures.

But it isn't as though there weren't many joys to be had at Sears.

I'm old enough to remember when my neighborhood location had a full-service cafeteria. Oh, how my mouth still waters at the thought of the chocolate cake, the green Jell-O with whipped cream and the domes of pudding that awaited me at the end of the cafeteria-style food line.

And they had a candy counter.

Never mind those fancy-schmancy Marshall Field's chocolate Frango mints. Our Sears had a full-service bulk candy counter that attracted little kids, like me, who would press our faces up to the glass-paneled windows in front of the bins holding chocolate-covered raisins, malted milk balls, candied orange slices, roasted nuts, chocolate stars, puffy orange "circus peanuts," and shiny gumballs.

The clerk would portion out your candy with a giant metal scoop, weigh it on an industrial stainless-steel scale -- and hand it to you in a sheet of paper expertly twisted into a cone before your eyes.

And the popcorn! So often you'd walk into the store and instantly smell the hot, fresh buttered popcorn, often flavored with cheese or caramel. It was hand-dipped when you paid for it and delivered in what, even then, were old-timey, red-striped wax bags.

Another thing I loved at my neighborhood store is that there was a cashier on the top floor where customers paid their monthly Sears bill in person. In the waiting area there were a couple of coin-operated cartoon booths that someone had rigged to play for the kiddies even without putting in a coin, so you could get a nice dose of Heckle and Jeckle, Woody Woodpecker and Mighty Mouse while mom paid on her layaway or the credit card.

It's silly to get sentimental about the closing of an icon of merchandising, a triumph of capitalism -- I haven't stepped foot in a Sears for, probably, a decade. I hate shopping, remember?

But I still love flipping through old Sears catalogs. Sure, the big-hair time capsules of the 1980s and early 1990s (the classic Big Book was discontinued in 1993) are fun when you spot one at a garage sale.

I proudly own a Fall 1909 Consumer's Guide (a 1979 reproduction, alas) and little else gives me the pleasure I derive from Sears' lists of "Factories That We Own Or Control In Addition To Our 40-Acre Plant."

There was a saw factory, a cream separator factory (in addition to the "economy cream separator" factory), one for vehicles, another for washing machines and others for making agricultural implements, furniture, paint, shoes, cameras, guns and revolvers, organs (plus other instruments) and wallpaper, just to name a few.

For each lament that Amazon is subsuming the retail industry, we can look back at a catalog that sometimes ran for thousands of pages and offered price lists and ultra-detailed line drawings of everything from "genuine diamonds and solid gold 14-karat mountings" to horse saddles, miners' tents, disc talking machines (phonographs), Dr. Hammond's Nerve and Brain Tablets ("A great remedy for weak men") and brass, E-flat cornets.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, is said to have dreamed of building "the next Sears," and so he has.

Rest in peace, old Sears.

Those of us who love scrolling through Amazon.com for motion-activated toilet-bowl night lights, velvet-lined caskets or clamps for do-it-yourself nose jobs will enjoy it while it lasts -- and then, surely, leap toward whatever the next "Cheapest Supply House on Earth" turns out to be.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Malnutrition and obesity are a national security threat

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- My 17-year-old son and I lock horns nightly when bedtime approaches and he hasn't consumed his pre-negotiated 7 ounces of milk for the day.

It's the same battle that comes up at dinner if he didn't eat his daytime serving of fruit. Our meal then becomes a slog of cramming the bare minimum of fruit and vegetables down him to aid his growing skeleton.

"You don't want to be like your brother, do you?" I ask, referencing his older sibling who was raised under the influence of early-2000s parenting books that said to ignore how our own parents did things and not force toddlers and young children to clean their plates or eat foods they didn't care for until their palates matured. "He had two broken bones by the time he was your age!"

So my younger son powers through dinners garnished with his short list of tolerated green vegetables, a multivitamin and vitamin C supplement, and a dose of fish oil since he'd sooner saw off his own leg than let fish pass through his lips.

He's a young adult who spent his formative years in a daycare setting and then a public school system that made him believe that French-toast sticks drenched in pancake syrup with fruit-flavored sugar-water mislabeled as juice was a proper breakfast. He was habituated to cheese crackers as a "snack" and to pizza and chocolate milk as daily lunch options.

At least he's trim and fit. But I fear that the day he moves out, his nutrition will start suffering.

Hey, we tried -- in no small part because my husband and I had the privilege of going to college, where we learned about nutrition and the importance of physical fitness. In that sense, we breathe the same rarified air as the policymaking elites. Yet these influential power players fail to recognize that America's obesity crisis is not only a health emergency, but also a national security risk.

"I talk a lot about this in Washington, D.C., where people look at each other in disbelief when I say obesity is a national security threat," said Tom Spoehr, a retired lieutenant general who served in the Army for 36 years and is a member of "Mission: Readiness," a bipartisan coalition of more than 700 top retired military leaders who advocate for children's wellness. "They say, 'How can this be? Everyone I see is healthy, they're out running, I see everyone at SoulCycle; this doesn't resonate.' That's especially how the media outlets on the coasts see it.'"

Spoehr told me it's a constant struggle to get people to understand that millions all over the country are overweight and suffer from malnutrition (a seemingly oxymoronic state that occurs when people take in too many high-calorie, low-nutrient foods) to the point that the military can't fully staff its ranks.

Nationwide, 71 percent of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 don't qualify for military service. And out of that group, obesity disqualifies 31 percent of them from serving, according to "Unhealthy and Unprepared: National security depends on promoting healthy lifestyles from an early age," the third and latest health report from Mission Readiness.

This past year, the Army fell short of its recruiting goal by 6,500 people because they couldn't find young people who wanted to serve and were in good enough shape to pull it off.

What's more, even those who do make it fare worse in the field than previous generations.

"While not all injury can be traced to obesity, one study found that there were 72 percent more medical evacuations from Iraq and Afghanistan for stress fractures, serious sprains, and other similar injuries -- injuries associated with poor fitness and nutrition -- than for combat wounds," noted the report.

Spoehr underscores that there are no easy fixes: "We're going to need a web of solutions -- there's no one federal law that is going to change this."

It's going to take everything from more recess and gym classes in schools to enabling a culture of cooking real, healthful food at home, better food consumer education and many other changes to modern life.

Most of all, our citizenry must recognize how truly unwell the 40 percent of adults and 20 percent of kids ages 6 to 19 who are obese are. And then they must understand that countless political, economic and sociocultural factors like the interests of big-food corporations and our fetishization of junk food will need to be upended in order to restore a bare minimum of health to vast numbers of Americans.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

The Nation's Civic Health Depends on all of us

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- You can't throw a rock these days without hitting a book, news headline or podcast episode about the impending end of democracy.

I'm no doomsayer but, yes, it's coming.

Not just because of increasing political polarization, the influence of corporate money on elections or any of the other usual suspects. It'll be just plain apathy and ignorance that finally do us in.

Let's start with these little nuggets of information. Of the 1,000 randomly selected American adults who recently took a multiple-choice quiz:

-- Only 13 percent knew when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, with most incorrectly thinking it occurred in 1776.

-- 60 percent didn't know which countries the United States fought in World War II.

-- 57 percent did not know how many justices serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

-- Only 24 percent could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37 percent believing he invented the lightbulb.

-- 12 percent incorrectly thought Gen. Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War; 6 percent thought he was a commander in the Vietnam War. (He served in WWII.)

I could go on with more startling results from the quiz conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (WWNFF) but, frankly, it's too depressing.

This level of cluelessness doesn't just happen in a vacuum. It's been coming on for some time as civics education has gotten crowded out of public school curricula by an increased push to get more kids proficient in reading, math and writing.

We'll have to wait until next year to learn how our nation's students fared on the National Assessment of Educational Progress civics assessment in 2018 -- the test is administered every four years -- but the 2014 test was a sad scene.

Scores among 8th graders showed no improvement from their dismal level in 2010. Less than one-quarter of students scored at the level of "proficient" or better, and only about half said they found their civics coursework interesting "often" or "always."

No one knows where the blame lies for today's students being low-performing in civics.

It could be anything from poor teaching to the educational trend of telling students that rote memorization is unnecessary in the age of the internet search engine. Perhaps the educational philosophy of "constructivist" learning -- which means that students create their own knowledge based on their own experiences -- just isn't moving the needle.

But none of those exactly explain why, as the WWNFF's survey noted, people 65 years and older scored the best. Only 19 percent of people under 45 passed the quiz, with 81 percent scoring a 59 percent or lower.

Ironically, there is a little-known subsection of the American population that has passed a similar test -- 10 questions on U.S. civics from a pool of 100 questions -- and there's no question that they did so because passing was deeply personally meaningful to them.

I'm speaking, of course, about naturalized U.S. citizens.

They take a speaking, reading, writing and civics test as just a small part of their application for citizenship. Then, at their ceremony, they swear to support our Constitution, renounce allegiance to all other countries, and vow to bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law.

So how can we make civics and history personally meaningful to young people in school and to the adults who are navigating the governmental structures that have so much influence over nearly every aspect of their lives?

There may be no alternative. As climate change-related weather events decimate whole regions of our country, trade pacts continue to reshape the American economy and voter behavior keeps being threatened by partisan lawmaking and foreign interference, we will need to hold our elected leaders accountable for ensuring that we aren't doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Whether you live in a rural area that doesn't have adequate internet connectivity or in an urban enclave where clean, lead- and chemical-free water isn't readily available, chances are you're part of a community that needs to know how its government works now more than ever.

Every impending disaster has the potential to also be an interesting opportunity. You can either feel as though the country you grew up in and love is changing too quickly for you to adapt and thrive, or you can commit yourself to understanding how we got here and how, together, we can change direction for the better.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

Sandeep Jauhar brings the heart home in "Heart: A History"

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- My husband claims that every Spanish song he's ever heard includes the word corazon. So if he doesn't understand anything else, he knows it has to do with matters of the heart.

In love songs, as in life, the heart is at the very center of things, serving as a vessel for endless metaphors: It can be big, small, brave, chicken-y, the seat of the soul, a fountain of emotions, or just a machine susceptible to high-stakes plumbing issues.

The heart is also the apparatus through which Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, author of the captivating memoirs "Intern" and "Doctored," has confronted his own mortality as well as the death of both grandfathers and his mother.

In his latest book, "Heart: A History," Jauhar takes readers on an intensely personal journey that started the moment he noticed he was having a hard time breathing after walking up stairs. Jauhar wondered whether his work as a first responder on 9/11 was catching up with him or if his ancestry was closing in.

For a reader like me who usually devours almost every popular medicine, psychology and science book that comes down the pike -- whether about cannibalism, teeth, cadavers, nutrition or men who mistake their wives for hats -- it takes a lot more than a midlife crisis-induced trip into the inner workings of a particular organ to make a book worth the read.

Jauhar delivers on emotional, technical and historical fronts.

For however many books about advances in medicine I've read, I had never heard about the story of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, an African-American physician who performed what is believed to have been the first open-heart surgery.

As Jauhar puts it, "Until that summer day in 1893, surgery had scarcely ever been attempted on a live human heart. Though it is difficult to fathom today, when invasive cardiac treatments are at the forefront of medicine, the heart was essentially off-limits to doctors until almost the beginning of the 20th century. All major human organs, including the brain, had been operated on, but the heart stood apart, encased in historical and cultural prohibitions much thicker than its membranous pericardium."

In 1891, Williams, a self-taught surgical apprentice who completed his training at the medical college that eventually became Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, had set up Provident, the first African-American owned and operated hospital in America.

He had to invite the public into his operating room once a week to create trust with a marginalized community that had learned, through years of mistreatment, that modern medicine was not set up for blacks to have successful health outcomes.

Williams' incredible success story is tempered by others in "Heart: A History" that reflect some of the racism that has created fear of mistreatment at the hands of supposed healers.

In the late 1950s, when C. Walton Lillehei, pioneer of a procedure that used catheters and pumps to circulate blood between two humans in order to repair heart defects, needed a volunteer to help an ailing black man, even the volunteers of last resort -- white inmates at a penitentiary -- refused to help the black patient. Lillehei resorted to using a dog's lung to oxygenate the man's blood and he quickly died on the operating table.

Jauhar also tells us about women, like Mary Hopkinson Gibbon, who was essential in developing the first heart-lung machines that have made modern surgical heart procedures possible.

Mary assisted her husband, Dr. John Gibbon, in the painstaking work of performing early experiments on stray cats and dogs. This work yielded a precise method for keeping the animals alive for several hours by circulating blood and oxygen with a machine so the heart could be operated on safely.

Jauhar relays other historical events, current-day case studies and personal experiences in beautiful, poetic language. The book wraps up with a call to investigate how psychosocial factors like interpersonal connectedness, joy, state of mind, the safety of our neighborhoods and the environment affect our health and well-being.

No one knows whether the human heart's journey from being seen as an "inviolable sanctuary" to what one writer called "an object of surgical assault" will eventually result in sure-fire medical technology for extending life beyond our current spans.

But if you learn nothing else from "Heart: A History," know that your views on this promise will vary depending on how good you feel after a brisk walk. Maybe listening to some sappy love songs can help.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Women are increasingly finding their voices, and they're going to use them

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Would it surprise you to learn that even in academia -- a supposed bastion of liberalism and equality -- women are two-and-a-half times less likely than men to ask questions in academic seminars?

In a new article published in the journal PLOS One, researchers crunched data on 250 talks at 35 institutions in 10 countries as well as survey responses from about 600 academics in various disciplines around the world. Their conclusion: Both men and women sometimes don't ask questions when they want to but, unlike men, women said they hesitated for reasons like "not feeling clever enough" or not being able to "work up the nerve."

It's a particularly important finding because these numbers were collected before Trump was elected in 2016, and they will doubtlessly shift dramatically now that the Trump era has opened the floodgates to unprecedented ire toward women -- and what is quickly becoming a muscular backlash to it.

During the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, we got to see a nominee to the Supreme Court -- usually an avatar of balance and temperance -- display stunning impertinence to a female senator. He responded to Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar's question about whether he'd ever blacked out by turning the question around on her, as if she were the one accused.

After a break, during which he surely consulted with his lawyers, Kavanaugh apologized to Klobuchar. But it doesn't change that fact that, based on the judge's fiery demeanor, the outcome would have been much different had the tables been turned. As Klobuchar commented to CBS the day after: "If I was in his courtroom and acted like that, he would have thrown me out."

At a bare minimum, no doubt.

A few days later, there was the spectacle between President Trump and Cecilia Vega, ABC News' senior White House correspondent. Trump picked Vega to ask the first question at the Rose Garden news conference announcing the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

As Vega reached for the microphone, the president remarked, "She's shocked that I picked her. She's in a state of shock."

Vega responded: "I'm not. Thank you, Mr. President."

Trump, with a snide tone said, "That's OK, I know you're not thinking. You never do."

Vega was, no doubt, incredulous and visibly annoyed as she said, "I'm sorry?" -- not as an apology but as in, "Come again?"

But Trump dissembled and said, "No, go ahead."

The next day, at a rally in Mississippi, Trump repeatedly mocked Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers. Trump called those who support Ford -- another way of saying "women" -- "really evil people."

During the years of Trump's candidacy and presidency, people of color have felt that white Americans have been emboldened to proudly admit to their racist beliefs and take them out on unsuspecting dark-skinned men and women.

The same goes for misogyny, a condition as old as the hills. But hatred of women -- actual violence-inducing hatred against women -- gained momentum after Hillary Clinton's failed run for the presidency.

Absurdly, in the era of the #MeToo movement, with its well-attended women's marches and a raft of female office-seekers in the upcoming midterm elections, there's an emerging narrative being pushed by some on the right that posits that it is men who are in danger -- of being victimized or having their lives ruined by the angry women they've mistreated.

Don't worry, this male victimhood narrative isn't going to take. There are too many women out there willing to come forward with their stories of humiliation, abuse, belittlement and rape to be disregarded as partisan plants, deployed to escalate the culture wars between the right and left.

And, based on what I've seen so far, there are too many men who care about the physical and emotional safety and well-being of the mothers, sisters, wives, friends, colleagues and bosses in their lives to pretend that we aren't in the middle of a watershed moment in history.

One in which men will become acutely aware of the potential consequences of disrespecting women and change their behaviors accordingly.

It may not happen as soon or as quickly as we would like, but right now this correction feels inevitable.

The world has changed a lot since 2016, and it has made women find their voices. And, increasingly, they aren't satisfied with just asking questions -- they're demanding answers.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Alyshia Galvez: How NAFTA destroyed the way some cultures eat

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- A few weeks ago, my aunt came to visit from Mexico for the first time in nearly 20 years. During her month-long stay, my family and I were treated to hand-made sopes -- a deep-dish tortilla topped with beans, meat, cheese and a meticulously minced raw salsa -- and pozole, a chicken, corn and hominy soup so time-consuming to prepare that my mom usually only makes it at New Year's.

These kinds of from-scratch, labor-intensive meals are what Alyshia Galvez, a professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College/City University of New York, calls milpa-based cuisine, a term derived from the Spanish words for "maize field."

In her new book, "Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico," Galvez describes this style of cooking as found across a wide variety of regions in Mexico. They share a core set of ingredients like ground corn and the kinds of fresh vegetables and plants -- squash, beans, tomatoes, chiles -- that can be grown in a small field close to home to create meals that are made fresh immediately prior to their consumption.

This way of eating is nearly the opposite of what is generally considered "Mexican food" in the United States (especially if you stop to consider the brain-numbing reality that a Harris poll recently found: Taco Bell is Americans' favorite Mexican restaurant). And it is in danger of becoming extinct.

That's because NAFTA, and other trade policies, have incentivized people all over the world to migrate for work or take jobs in factories for low wages -- breaking up their way of life. This has made an attractive alternative of the super-cheap, ultra-processed foodstuffs that industrialized food manufacturers are increasingly finding it harder to sell to nutrition-conscious Americans.

"Along with their counterparts in other countries, rural and low-income Mexicans have provided a market for producers of industrial foods to offset declining sales in the United States," Galvez writes. "[Yet] economic trends and policy decisions that have taken ancestral ways of eating out of the reach of the average Mexican citizen [are also] making traditional foods available as a high-value, high-status commodity to be 'elevated' and reinterpreted by global elite chefs."

In a recent interview, Galvez told me that she became interested in connecting the dots between trade, food policy, migration and health in both the U.S. and Mexico when she started seeing loved ones in Mexico becoming ill with the same kind of weight-related diseases -- obesity, diabetes and heart disease -- that afflict so many Americans, even though those people never migrated.

"I wasn't really aware of those interconnections at all; trade wasn't something I was particularly interested in," Galvez said, "But I pulled on one string and all these other strings unraveled. The story of how NAFTA has altered the food system in the whole continent, and the health effects, affects every single one of us."

Galvez touches on such issues as the rise of the avocado, how soda taxes get watered down by corporate interests and the role of "personal responsibility" in how populations eat (spoiler: make fresh fruits and vegetables more expensive and harder to find and poor people will turn to cheap, processed foods). She ultimately wants people to understand the unintended consequences of wide-ranging trade deals, and she does it by appealing to our self-interest.

"Sure, we get access to fresh fruits and vegetables from Mexico year-round, but the takeaway problem is fundamentally about democracy," Galvez said. "When these deals are negotiated behind closed doors by the executive branch, with Congress then voting up or down, we all lose, because these policies affect 99 percent of the population in three countries, yet we are not at the bargaining table. Very specific interest groups and corporations are at the table, and they get their well-defined wish lists met. If we care about democracy, then we have to care about representation and about who is being taken into consideration when these deals are made."

Still, as President Trump renegotiated the trade pact of what will reportedly be called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), Galvez said, "I'm in the uncomfortable position of hoping [Trump] doesn't recklessly trash NAFTA. There would be a lot of pain for everyone involved. We can't afford the crumbling of our current food system. ... We just don't realize how intertwined and interdependent we are. [Drastic changes] could cause an incredible logjam on products we depend on daily. We'd see unbelievably high costs, farmers would see their crops rotting on the vine and hunger on a massive scale."

The evolution of how we eat is a fact of life. But negotiating away the gastronomical cultural heritage of whole countries -- including ours -- in the name of enhanced trade, is not a deal many would make if they were aware of what was at stake.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

Is the idea of free college ready for prime time?

 

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Gubernatorial candidates in Maryland, Arizona, Connecticut and at least seven other states -- plus even more candidates for Congress -- are running on plans to make college free or "debt-free," according to the industry publication Inside Higher Ed.

But how much impact on college attendance, graduation and lifetime earnings do such programs actually have? There are no definitive answers, but some indicators aren't exactly reassuring.

According to a study by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a nonprofit based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the underprivileged don't get a lot out of college and, perversely, those who benefit most from a college degree turn out to be students with middle-class backgrounds.

The institute's analysis of a data set that included 50 years of interviews with 18,000 Americans found that "the career earnings premium from a four-year college degree (relative to a high school diploma) for persons from low-income backgrounds is considerably less than it is for those from higher-income backgrounds ... [and] we find that education not only has much lower absolute returns for persons from low-income backgrounds, it also has much lower proportional returns."

A small earnings boost, coupled with student loans that can never be discharged through bankruptcy, sounds like a raw deal to the first-in-their-family students who have been most encouraged, inspired and practically pushed into pursuing a college degree.

So while the campaign-speech catnip of free college sounds enticing to those who want a shot at a middle-class life, the benefits of a free educational lunch may be nothing more than a crowd-pleasing mirage.

A study by the Brookings Institution on one of the first randomized control trials of a debt-free college program looked at students in the Milwaukee Public Schools program who were promised up to $12,000 to pay for college -- an amount that would cover all tuition and fees at the local two-year college or at most of the in-state four-year institutions. But the study found that the incentive had no effect on whether students went directly on to college from high school.

The programs didn't randomly hand out free tuition like candy, either. Students were required to graduate on time from a Milwaukee public high school with at least a 2.5 cumulative grade-point average and a 90 percent class-attendance rate.

The students were also required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which, because it requires parental tax information, often serves as a proxy for how much the student's family supports their desire to attend college.

Still, even though the students in the program did exhibit more motivation to attend college -- and filled out more applications to college than they might have otherwise -- the totality of the investment in getting the students across the finish line of a degree was not significant. In the end, only 21 percent of the students enrolled in The Degree Project with the Milwaukee schools met the performance requirements to unlock the college funds, basically the same as the control group.

"We identify three related reasons why the effects were not more substantial," the report noted. "(a) The performance requirements greatly reduced the number of students who could plausibly receive the funds; (b) the performance requirements, combined with the temporary, small-scale design, meant that the program did not have the catalyzing effect on high schools that otherwise similar programs have seen; and (c) the context in Milwaukee -- particularly, the very low level of academic performance and lack of counselor resources -- may have been particularly ill-suited to make a performance-based aid program work well."

Leaving aside the size of the program and its location -- though one would have to imagine that communities with low academic performance and few resources would be the most attractive target for such economic-mobility spurring programs -- the performance requirements are particularly problematic.

The American public, with its aspirations of meritocracy, seems unlikely to ever support a program that doesn't require, at a minimum, the middling grades that produce a 2.5 GPA (about a high C or low B). This bar can be harder to reach for low-income students who are struggling against many factors to make the grade.

Worse, according to the authors, even though performance standards might seem like they might, "induce students to work harder and become more academically prepared for college," they don't. "The main effect of performance requirements, then, is to provide more funds to higher-income families, which only reinforces existing disparities."

As with so many other well-meaning efforts to reduce inequalities in society, free college seems like it has great potential but requires far more pilot programs and longitudinal research. Before making promises to young people, we must design programs that won't have the unintended consequences of leaving needy students economically insecure after promising them that college is the ticket to a financially prosperous life.

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

COLUMNIST NOTE: Three representatives of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, including Brad Hershbein and Timothy J. Bartik,  the authors of the report on career earnings emailed me after this column was published expressing concerns about the research I cited. They wanted me to point out two things:

1) The data show that "college still has a good economic return for most Americans, including the poor and other disadvantaged groups." I was simply emphasizing that any mass, national programs to make college more accessible to people with lower incomes should be further studied. Their op-ed on the report referenced in my column is here: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/opinion/college-does-help-the-poor.html

2) Another researcher wanted me to note that the Milwaukee program information I included is not the best for extracting generalizable insights due to several factors, including poor program design, and that it should not be considered typical. It's true that programs have varying degrees of effectiveness and outcomes. Here is some more in-depth information on the pros and cons of other promise initiatives: 

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/09/18/understanding-the-design-of-college-promise-programs-and-where-to-go-from-here/

 

Be ready to defend your life

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Last week, Gabrielle Giffords nailed it: "Three workplace active shooting attacks in just the last 24 hours should spark outrage in every American. No matter where you work, learn, play or live -- you have a right to feel safe, and I'm horrified that that's no longer the reality in America."

The former Arizona congresswoman was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in 2011. She states the obvious, and it stings.

No matter your walk of life, chances are you don't feel 100 percent safe in your community and harbor at least a little fear that your schools, churches or movie theaters could be the next target of someone's indiscriminate rage.

But as Illinois police officer Andrew Mannino recently told an audience: "You can feel scared, but you don't need to feel helpless." Mannino spoke to about 30 people who gathered Aug. 30 at the police station where he works in Lake in the Hills, a small-town exurb 50 miles from downtown Chicago, for a course called "Civilian Response to Active-Shooter Events."

Throughout the free two-hour training, Mannino shared gun-shooting statistics and explained how deaths at Columbine High School in 1999 could have been prevented with proper training. He also emphasized that when acts of violence occur, innocent bystanders must believe, first and foremost, that "you have the right to survive."

It was a message of empowerment, followed by specific steps for reacting to an active-shooter event. The people in the room -- older couples, school secretaries, parents with teen kids, military vets, young guys sporting gun manufacturer T-shirts, and women of all ages -- had come out listen on a warm, late-August weeknight.

Mannino first illustrated how surviving an active-shooter event depends on purposefully resisting crowd pressure to go on as if nothing is happening even as shots are ringing out or someone is behaving bizarrely.

"There is a theory called social proof that says even when something is obviously amiss, most people will look to the reactions of others surrounding them and then conform to their behavior so as to be in step with the crowd," Mannino said as he introduced video clips of researchers filming passersby ignoring a planted actor writhing in the street.

In these clips, pedestrians looked around, saw everyone else ignoring the "suffering" stranger and walked quickly past him or her. However, the moment one person stopped to check on the sufferer, almost all other passersby also stopped to inquire or offer help.

This knowledge alone, Mannino said, could make the difference between life and death, "which is why it's important to respond to a life-threatening situation quickly. Other people will follow if we lead the way."

Leadership in an active-shooter situation starts with being aware of your surroundings, specifically potential exits like doors, windows and fire escapes, at all times. If you hear gunshots -- and remember that a burst balloon or car backfire isn't likely to be a repeated pop-pop-pop -- run and hide.

If you avoid an attacker and an escalating situation immediately, your action will cause others to react, too.

Second, deny an attacker access to your area -- by locking doors behind you or creating a barricade, turning off lights, putting your phone on silent and staying out of sight.

Lastly, if you have to, fight for your life. "You have the legal right to defend yourself. And don't fight fair," Mannino said. "Be aggressive, use anything you can get your hands on as a weapon and go for the eyes, face and groin." Mannino even suggested that school workers and teachers can keep items like hammers in their classrooms that are harmless if kept out of the sight of students but could help for self-defense in an emergency.

The aftermath is just as important: Call 911 and don't guess at any questions you are asked. When the police arrive, follow commands, show your hands and don't make any sudden movements.

It's important to visualize yourself making these moves and practicing in your mind so that you're ready to react if the unthinkable happens.

Is this any way to live?

No, of course not. It's sad and maddening, and none of us wants to live in a world where teachers keep heavy tools in their classrooms for a just-in-case that isn't outside the realm of possibility.

But absent meaningful changes to a society that is breeding and enabling "active shooters," isn't it better to believe you're at least a little prepared to survive and aid others than to feel utterly helpless?

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

 

Dads: Don't forget your sons look to you for how to treat women

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- What's it like to be a boy these days?

It's a frequent thought for me as I navigate my son's 17th year of life in a world where the scourge of toxic masculinity shares the public consciousness with admiration of spectacularly muscled sports stars and big-screen superheroes whose worth is predicated on their physical prowess.

In my house, the desire to adventure on the high seas or crawl through the trenches of World War I via immersive video games competes with the pressure to get out to the gym to pack on muscle for the sake of measuring up to, let's face it, practically every dude on TV or in movies.

I thought raising sons would be easier than raising daughters, because the gendered societal pressures girls deal with is so overwhelming. But boys aren't exactly cake-walking through adolescence.

In a nationally representative survey of 1,000 boys and girls ages 10 to 19, boys' responses to pressing questions of the day exemplify the difference between what parents and elders say boys should be and what boys infer from their actions.

For instance, though adults typically say that honesty, morality, ambition and leadership are the traits that society values most in men, boys are likelier to say that society most values strength and toughness in boys.

Seven out of 10 boys personally feel pressure to be physically strong, according to a survey by Plan International USA, an independent development and humanitarian organization focused on girls' equality and children's rights that commissioned the research. Forty-four percent of older boys (14 to 19) feel pressure to be "willing to punch someone if provoked," and about one in three younger boys (10 to 13) feel the same way.

Chillingly, the strongest correlation with feeling pressure to be physically strong and ready to fight is exposure to boys (and men, including family members) who make sexual comments and jokes about girls.

The report, "The State of Gender Equality for U.S. Adolescents," noted that, "The more frequently boys are around other boys who make these comments, the more likely they are to feel pressure to be strong and ready for violence."

Boys are routinely goaded into "bro behavior." One in three boys ages 14 to 19 said they feel pressure to "join in when other boys talk about girls in a sexual way." And this was most heavily correlated with having male family members who make sexual comments and jokes about women.

Forty-seven percent of boys ages 14 to 19 have heard their dad or other male family members make sexual jokes and comments about women (compared with 34 percent of girls) -- instances that are also among the most prevalent factors correlated with thinking it is OK to ask a girl for sexy or naked pictures.

And boys are swimming in this sort of talk. Six in 10 boys hear other boys making sexual comments or jokes about girls at least once a week. One-third of boys ages 14 to 19 said they hear this daily, and that several times a week or more they hear male characters on TV or in movies making sexual comments and jokes about women characters.

"One of the most startling findings from the survey is the frequent rate at which boys are hearing their fathers or male family members making sexual jokes and comments about women," the report stated. "[It's] a glaring reminder that the messages being communicated to boys could be perpetuating continued harmful attitudes and behaviors toward girls, particularly in light of more awareness around sexual experiences, the importance of consent, and what constitutes harassment."

In addition to dehumanizing women, the cumulative effects of being submerged in these attitudes oppresses boys' psyches, leading to feeling pressured to hide their emotions when they feel sad, anxious or scared.

This isn't entirely new information. Past academic research has noted substantial differences in how fathers talk to daughters vs. sons: Dads tend to unconsciously talk about emotions and use more language referencing the child's body with daughters, and engage in more achievement-related language and physical play with sons.

The work of shaping boys into respectful, self-aware men is everyone's job -- indeed, we need the whole "village" to take a stronger role in eradicating demeaning talk about women. But it's clear that dads and male relatives of boys have an outsize opportunity to set an example of respect for women that will reverberate across generations.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group