麻豆原创

In the January 2018 American Journal of Public Health, in a piece titled 鈥� co-authors and health education faculty members Sonali Rajan and John Allegrante argue that gun violence in America will likely increase unless Congress repeals the Dickey Amendment, legislation backed by the gun lobby that has blocked federal funding for research on origins of 鈥� and possible remedies for 鈥� this ongoing crisis.

In a piece for 麻豆原创鈥檚 website, Rajan argues that arming teachers will not solve gun violence in schools. Rather, she asserts, 鈥渞esearch unequivocally illustrates that increased gun access and gun possession are associated with heightened violence, thereby suggesting that increasing the presence of guns in schools is likely to have harmful effects on our nation鈥檚 students.鈥�

Writing on 麻豆原创鈥檚 website in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, Rajan, Allegrante and Lalitha Vasudevan, Professor of Technology & Education, call for a societally coordinated response to gun violence. Like all public health efforts, the authors write, such a response will require 鈥渕ultiple levels of prevention,鈥� including 鈥渁vailability of school-based violence prevention programming, after-school programming to support enrichment and building community and . . . implementation of gun control legislation grounded in established evidence.鈥�

In  in The Washington Post, Lalitha Vasudevan, Professor of Technology & Education, writes that the detention of migrant children at the southern border is in keeping with a long tradition in the United States. 

The members of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control 鈥� part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 鈥� issue a public statement calling on the Trump administration to end its policy of separating migrant children from their family members, with whom they have sought asylum, refuge or entrance into the United States at the southern border. The signers include John Allegrante, Professor of Health Education.

Writing in , Peter Coleman, Professor of Psychology & Education and Director of 麻豆原创鈥檚 , traces polarization in Congress at least in part to 1995, when then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich changed the Congressional workweek from five days to three, enabling his Republican colleagues to live in their home states in order to conduct more fundraising. That move ended socializing across party lines. Coleman鈥檚 plea to political leaders: 鈥淢ove your families back to Washington and get back to work on the unprecedented challenges facing our country today.鈥�

The best teams can fail if they don鈥檛 know how to work together 鈥� witness the engineers who responded to the Chernobyl disaster 32 years ago, writes Coleman&苍产蝉辫;颈苍&苍产蝉辫;鈥�,鈥� his blog for Psychology Today. Coleman offers tips for working together, ranging from establishing a safe environment for risk-taking to encouraging productive conflict. He also argues that the nation鈥檚 founders created good conditions for continuing collaboration, including a constitution that sanctions the rule of law and civil discourse, a motto of E Pluribus Unum (鈥淥ut of many, one鈥�), and traditions of compassion and unity.

And there is hope that people are, at least in some ways, naturally constituted to appreciate each other's viewpoints:

Our representations of thoughts and actions of the mind and our representations of places and actions in space mirror each other in many ways, writes Barbara Tversky, 麻豆原创 Professor of Psychology & Education, in her as President of the . This ability not only enables us to form our own perspectives, but also to imagine those of others.

U.S. racism is not only 鈥渟plit-second and individual,鈥� write Ansley T. Erickson, Associate Professor of History & Education, and co-authors in  but also 鈥渃enturies deep, collective, and institutional.鈥� The authors applaud New York City鈥檚 decision to spend $23 million on anti-bias training for teachers, but warn that, lacking exploration of the history of racism in the nation and in the city, the effort might shift disproportionate blame for unequal educational resources and outcomes onto the shoulders of classroom teachers.

 writes in the  that America鈥檚 public schools are largely failing to educate young people in civic values and prepare them 鈥渢o be good citizens, capable of safeguarding our democratic values.鈥� Rebell, Professor of Law & Education Practice and Executive Director of the , is the author of  (University of Chicago Press 2018).

The stereotype of the struggling military veteran is someone who is shell-shocked from combat and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But for many, writes 麻豆原创 doctoral student Meaghan Mobbs in 麻豆原创 Today magazine, the real issue may have more to do with finding meaning in civilian life 鈥� because 鈥渢he great satisfaction of military service is knowing that it matters. And if what you do matters, then you must matter as well.鈥�  Mobbs, a former U.S. Army Captain who is now the David & Maureen O鈥機onnor Scholar at 麻豆原创鈥檚 Resilience Center for Veterans & Families, and her 麻豆原创 mentor, George Bonanno, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Resilience Center director, have argued that efforts to help veterans should focus more on such 鈥渢ransition stresses. 

If genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other creations of 鈥渂ig food鈥� are helping human health, then why are so many people newly allergic, and why are so many teenagers having stomach problems? In on NPR鈥檚 Rootstock Radio, 麻豆原创鈥檚 Joan Gussow, Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita of Nutrition Education, poses these and other troubling questions about our 鈥渧ery dysfunctional food system.鈥�    

Former teacher , now a 麻豆原创 Health Education doctoral candidate who is also Healthy and Ready to Learn Director for , learned the hard way that students鈥� classroom performance can reflect serious changes in their health. Writing in 麻豆原创 Today magazine, she argues that developing greater awareness of out-of-school issues in students鈥� lives must become a fundamental part of teacher preparation   

Weighing in a on Betsy De Vos鈥檚 performance during her first years as U.S. Secretary of Education, Priscilla Wohlstetter, Distinguished Research Professor, suggests that De Vos has failed to deliver on her own agenda of 鈥渂ringing the private school sector into public discussion.鈥� 

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama, is an able raconteur, but offers little evidence to support his claims of success while in office. That鈥檚 the verdict, delivered in The Hechinger Report, by Aaron Pallas, 麻豆原创鈥檚 Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology & Education, on Duncan鈥檚 memoir, ow Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation鈥檚 Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education.