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Teens and Achievement: let's look again

...But maybe it just takes a wider, freer eye to recognize something new to express instead of just rolling into our own small circles.

While pondering the above challenge, which appeared here on Wednesday, I noticed that a few of my friends had posted an article on Facebook that had been published on Psychology Today, titled A Nation of Wimps, by By Hara Estroff Marano, who claims that:

But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps.

It is interesting to note that the article begins with the word "Maybe" but as the author gathers rhetorical speed, all caution is abandoned for the tone of grave and important certainty with which the above-quoted judgment is delivered. The article asserts that surveys of college counseling centers (conducted since 1988) are where the effects of over-protective parenting are first seen. We will have to accept that even though there is no study or survey cited (only isolated, anecdotal evidence is offered) to support the author's claim that the increase of psychological problems among students is linked to a shift in the way American citizens parent (and no scientific proof offered that such a shift has occurred), that there was some kind of sound scientific method used in this survey to determine that college students' mental problems are both more frequent and more severe (as described in the article):

By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses. It takes a variety of forms, including anxiety and depression—which are increasingly regarded as two faces of the same coin—binge drinking and substance abuse, self-mutilation and other forms of disconnection. The mental state of students is now so precarious for so many that, says Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, "it is interfering with the core mission of the university."

The author of the article suspects that parenting styles have changed since the early 1980's; this suspicion is driven less by empirical evidence and more by the nature of the author's professional training in psychology, which posits that all psychological disturbances are caused by some combination of poor "nature" and/or poor "nurture," where parenting has a greater role in determining outcomes. The greatest problem with the claims made in the article, though, is that it offers no proof that parents are behaving any differently in the 21st Century than they did in the middle of the 20th Century. The assumption that an increase in psychological disturbances (or conversely, an increase in psychological wellness) is always caused by changes in parenting styles has such cultural currency today that an article such as this one can be published and reviewed without the reviewer or editors finding anything amiss.

The other assumption that the author makes in the article is that the purported increase in college student psychopathology has something to do with a higher emphasis placed on achievement. But how was this claim tested? What standards of measurement were used? Again, we don't know. In fact, there have always been stressors that put human beings at risk for psychological disorders; why would the drive to achieve be any more severe or damaging that the exigency to survive?

If we can make the claim that more college students are struggling with psychological issues and stress (again, it's important to remain cautious, since this article is already an unreliable source for its central thesis), then perhaps applying a "wider, freer eye" to this problem could yield a different judgment. First, we might ask what has actually changed since 1988? Across the board, the percentage of U.S. citizens who report that they belong to any form of of religion has dropped significantly since the 1990 census. While other trends and shifts in demographics have been measured by various studies, as well as by the census, the particular shift among adults who consider themselves Christians (which dropped from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008) is indeed a factor that would impact students' mental health (the combined change for all other religions practiced in the United States was only 0.5%, which would not make any significant impression on the overall state of college student psychological coping).

That a change in religious practices effects psychosocial competence has been studied scientifically and documented in numerous studies. In just one of those studies, researchers found that "Intrinsic religiously motivated members, in general, manifested more favorable competence attributes than less intrinsically motivated members" ("Religious Participation, Religious Motivation and Individual Psychosocial Competence," Kenneth E. Pargament, et al, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion).

If a significant shift in parenting styles has occurred in the United States since the early 1980's, then this shift has yet to be studied and documented. If there has indeed been an increased emphasis on achievement in our culture, this incidence would need somehow to be quantified and measured before it could be accepted as fact.

Yet what has been scientifically observed and measured already offers an avenue whereby a more interesting and complete judgment might be made about any increase in college student psychosocial disorders. Why is this important and evident fact ignored?

Parents, and their attempts to raise their children in a world fraught with the particular dangers the 21st Century offers, will continue to bear the brunt of the blame for any undesirable behaviors that appear in their children, as long as we, as a culture, continue to ignore the impact of a worldview that shuts out all possibility of an answer to any of the most basic questions that people ask (particularly when they reach the developmental stage of the college student): Why are we here? What use are we? Why are we given this life and not some other life? etc. This worldview has become increasingly dominant as U.S. citizens abandon religious practice.

Islamophobia and Mother Teresa - Communion and Liberation

Islamophobia and Mother Teresa

The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque at Ground Zero has resulted in the outrage of many Americans and the recent public discussion about "Islamophobia" in America. These events provoke us to affirm the following:

1. We notice a growing tendency to manipulate circumstances to serve as a pretext to create a public furor that demands people make a choice between one of two pre -packaged, ideological positions. We refuse to engage in a debate about whether or not to build a mosque at Ground Zero. The reality of Islam in America brings up questions that go much deeper than that of the construction of one mosque.  Indeed, one critical and open question is how contemporary American culture comes to grips with the human person's religious sense.

2. Many of those among the cultural elite, as well as many who hold the levers of power in our nation, have abandoned the religious tradition that informed the lives of the vast majority of their ancestors: Christianity. They have reduced it to a moral code or a vague myth, linked to a man dead for more than 2,000 years. Instead, they have embraced a "scientific" outlook on human life. But science provides no answer to those questions that continuously gnaw at the human heart, such as the problem of justice, the meaning of human life, or the problems of suffering and evil. In fact, science tends to stifle them.  Hence, contemporary American culture finds itself weak and tremendously uncertain about any response to universal human inquiries and longings.

3. Just over two weeks ago, we marked the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa of Calcutta's birth. One who looks at her sees a resplendent human person, overflowing with love for everyone, especially strangers of different religions. Her humanity touched all: religious and atheist; Muslim and Hindu; rich and poor. Mother Teresa's life invites anyone who seeks truth to open his or her heart and mind and take a fresh look at Christianity.

4. For serious Christians, the challenge of Islam, the large-scale abandonment of Christianity, the emptiness of the dominant culture, and the witness of Mother Teresa signal the urgent need for conversion. Pope Benedict XVI recently said that "conversion...is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close communion with Jesus as a real and living Person."  The Pope brings us face to face with the defining difference between Christianity and Islam: one religion bases its response to the human person's religious sense upon a message delivered 1,400 years ago, while the other offers the experience of a Man who died but is alive and present with us today.  As Fr. Juliàn Carròn, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, recently affirmed: Jesus' message and even all the miracles He performed were not enough to overcome the sadness of His disciples on the road to Emmaus --only His risen presence could ignite their hearts once again.

5. We are not Islamophobic, nor do we fear our post-modern world.  On the contrary, we invite all to look at Mother Teresa and at the Man to whom she gave her life.  In His Person, present with us today, all can find the Truth that alone will deliver the freedom America promises.

Communion and Liberation

September 11, 2010

Notes

Benedict XVI,  General Audience, Paul VI Audience Hall, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100217_en.html)

cfr. Luke 24: 13-35

What's the Topic Today?

Recently, we had some friends over for dinner and as we are like-minded and obsessed with the same topics, we readily got onto those.  Later, I heard from one person who was not pleased with the usual Catholic conservative cant. He found it was not an environment that would have made sense to a person who was not part of the in-crowd.

Now I'm not interested in dictating what is discussed at a party (in fact, it reminds me of the contrast between the political wrangling at the dinner table in Joyce's "The Dead" and the real issue for Gabriel), and while I felt defensive about our issues, I recall a similar experience during the time of the uproar over Obama being invited to speak at the Notre Dame commencement.  I was out to dinner with a crowd that was not Catholic and who could not comprehend the rancor.  In fact, a year later, no one knew or cared who the next year's commencement speaker at Notre Dame was. 

I was involved with Catholic electronic communications from before the time the internet was open, when we exchanged files and discussion over a BBS network via phone lines (1987-).  We typed and shared encyclicals and papal addresses before there was a vatican.va.  It was exciting, and I love the fact that everyone now waits for that next encyclical to get posted.  Before, people rarely talked about encyclicals.  If you wandered into a Catholic bookstore, you might pick one up, as one selection among hundreds of choices.  There is much to be said about all this instant and important information. And I respect causes and those who dedicate their lives to them.  Those of us who want to judge events can't avoid writing about health care reform, stem-cell research, a mega-mosque at Grand Zero.  If anything, we need more nuance, not less.  Still, it can seem truncated, these viral Catholic threads that spiral through cyberspace, which are incomprehensible to most people because they lack the context that would allow them to be heard. 

A few weeks ago, I read about a bishop of Lyons, France who went to the site of the destruction of gypsy camps, to advocate for his people.  It was a great story and of course some told it.  I think of Suzanne's striking piece about the sports events at the Meeting, which included the rigor of "a bicycle race that begins in Rimini and includes a pass through the Republic of San Marino, a triathlon (as well as a mini triathlon for kids), basketball and fencing (and even rugby) tournaments, and a 6 Km race", which shows a passion for life that anyone can appreciate.  

I hope not to discourage anyone, or myself, from engaging in the public square.  But maybe it just takes a wider, freer eye to recognize something new to express instead of just rolling into our own small circles.

A Popular Last Supper

Yesterday, I visited the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, "The Last Decade".  One of the pieces that intrigued me most was "The Last Supper" (the Big "C").  Warhol's irony always leaves space for a dialogue, and his late obsession with religious images invites a longer horizon than his glitzy commercial pop images.  The themes in this picture are so familiar, those bad boys, former Hell's Angels, now converted, clinging to the emblems of their former lives.  Salvation is not out of reach:  $6.99!  I was struck by a section of the painting which seems to underlie the kitschy presentation of Christ, a second image of the Savior, with the details of the eye crossed in death as for a cartoon figure but sketched as a dagger, and the circle at the gather of his cloak recalls a simplified sacred heart with emanating rays.  There is a dignity to this sketch resurrected from crude depictions of popular piety.

Glenn Beck to revive American Christianity?

HERE is a blog post a from a few days ago by a Baptist minister, Dr. Russell Moore. Dr. Moore articulates well the problem that surrounds Glenn Beck. Much of the following of Beck has me uncomfortable, not because Beck is a Mormon, but because the way the following manifests itself reflects poorly on American Christianity. Dr. Moore says this as well. As someone who, just a few years ago, might have been swept up by Beck's movement, I encourage you to read Dr. Moore's whole post. Here are a few excerpts:

"It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement."

"There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah."

"The answer to this scandal isn’t a retreat, as some would have it, to an allegedly apolitical isolation. Such attempts lead us right back here, in spades, to a hyper-political wasteland. If the churches are not forming consciences, consciences will be formed by the status quo, including whatever demagogues can yell the loudest or cry the hardest. The answer isn’t a narrowing sectarianism, retreating further and further into our enclaves. The answer includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim."

(Image: http://silentmajority09.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Glenn-Becks-Restoring-Honor-Attendance.jpg)

The Mystery of Stephen Hawking

My daughter’s boyfriend sent me a link to the Stephen Hawking piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why God Did Not Create the Universe.” Typical of me, I did not know about the article until it had gone viral.

What strikes me about the piece is not the title, which was probably written by a subaltern at the Journal’s copy desk. (In fact, the piece is an excerpt from a forthcoming book with the intriguingly ambiguous title The Grand Design.) Nor does the chilling message of the excerpt strike me particularly, as it seems to hinge on a single sentence: “As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.” This sentence raises a few questions—including how dead certain or merely suggestive these “advances” are, and where you can get laws without a Legislator like the One we encounter in Psalm 119.

Still, what strikes me, after several readings, is none of the above. What strikes me is Stephen Hawking’s face.

For as long as I have been an adult, or nearly 40 years, Stephen Hawking has been a cultural icon: a latter-day Einstein tragically confined to a wheelchair and a battery of electronic support systems because of a progressive neuromuscular disorder similar to ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Because he combines intellectual gymnastics with physical paralysis, and not because I have any wish to mock him, Hawking has always struck me as a disembodied brain in a chair. It takes only a short imaginative jump from this image to that of the Wizard of Oz, the disembodied head that terrorized Dorothy and company, until Toto pulled aside the curtain. Like the Great and Powerful Oz, Hawking has loomed over our culture, and when he speaks with a certain amount of electronic assistance, we feel obliged to listen. (Listen, tremble, but perhaps not judge carefully: I have never read a book by Hawking.)

Now comes this article with that face. It is the face of a man nine years older than I, a man who, since his birth in London under a V-2 barrage, has faced some terrifying challenges. But whatever his differences from me (does he have a daughter? does she have a boyfriend?), his face is a human one and that of a man who has made a career of confronting the Mystery.

The brief Journal piece begins with a snippet of Viking mythology, about two wolves who catch the sun and moon, thereby causing eclipses. The paragraph ends with amusement, to remind us that those silly old Norsemen did not have the benefit of our modern science: “After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.”

But no matter how old or silly, they were just like you and me and Stephen Hawking—clutching our slippery cosmology while contemplating the Mystery with a human face.

James Madison and Religious Liberty in America

Relative to men like Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington, our fourth president gets relatively little attention in schools and beyond. This was evinced when, just yesterday, a college student expressed to me that he had never heard of James Madison. I am currently wrapping up my summer research work, which centered on the persuasive method and thought of Madison. Having had Madison at the forefront of my thoughts for the past four months, I was more than shocked that someone anywhere in the United States had never heard of the Father of the Constitution. It’s understandable, though. Madison was short, sickly and incredibly soft-spoken. Those who admired him did so for his immense knowledge, practicality and ability to identify subtle nuances in complex issues facing republican government, which would be the topic of another (much longer) post. Sadly, the ability to identify nuance doesn't earn monuments.

One area of Madison’s life that should win him a particular amount of attention from Americans, especially men and women of faith, is the role he played in protecting religious liberty. Although the bulk of my work this summer did not focus directly on this aspect of Madison’s thought and work, I thought that the Cahiers Péguy readership might be particularly interested in seeing a bit about how Madison ingrained freedom of conscience in our culture and Constitution:

-Madison attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) which was known for its liberalism (in the more traditional sense) at the time. There, under the direction of John Witherspoon, Madison studied enlightenment thinkers who had an affection for, at least, tolerance of various religious positions.

-Though the details of exactly what he did are unclear, we know that Madison rose to the defense of what he called “persecuted Baptists” early in his career. Historians suspect that he was writing about a group of Baptist preachers in Virginia who were arrested for preaching without licenses. He did this although he was not particularly religious or influenced by revivalism. This experience, he wrote after age 80, gave him “very early and strong impressions in favor of liberty both Civil and Religious...”

-After the Virginia Declaration of Rights was drafted, Madison objected to the word “toleration” for the exercise of religion. He suggested that the word be struck from the draft, penned by George Mason. Ralph Ketcham writes: “The change was crucial, however, because it made liberty of conscience a substantive right, the inalienable privilege of all men equally, rather than a dispensation conferred as privilege by established authorities.” Many regard this to be Madison’s first important public act.

-Patrick Henry sponsored a bill in Virginia that would have required citizens to pay assessments in support of churches. Madison wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. This 15-point document argued for religious freedom from the state and made arguments focused on the nature of mankind, the nature of government, the nature of religion and the best interest of religion. He was successful and not only defeated the bill, but also set the stage for the passage of the Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia.

-Virginia, in large part due to Madison’s influence, ratified the Constitution and made recommendations for a bill or rights. Virginia’s recommendations included provisions for religious liberty.

-In drafting the Bill of Rights, Madison fought for clear and unequivocal protections of conscience. Here is a quote from the article linked to below: "Madison's original draft was among the most ambitious: ‘the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship...nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed....’ Though somewhat less expansive in its protections, the final version--’Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ --clearly bears the Madison stamp.”

Here is a LINK to an article that expounds upon most of what I said above... an article I wish I found a few months earlier than this morning because it pulls everything together very well. By posting this, I’m not necessarily endorsing the author’s conclusion at the end.

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