Dear Weekend Jolter,
Teachers were on the lookout. Noisy, disruptive communication devices were being smuggled into the classroom by students. For what possible purpose would they need to keep in contact with anyone outside school walls? Drug-dealing, probably. There couldn’t be any other explanation.
This blessedly quaint view of connectivity more or less informed how school administrators and policy-makers dealt with that pocket-sized menace of the late ’80s and ’90s: beepers. That is, mercilessly. Many schools and regions banned the devices, and even suspended students or referred them to the police for violations — only to face pushback from parents and others for reasons that, today, will look familiar. This Los Angeles Times lede from 1993 sums up the anxious debate we never quite recovered from: “It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? You would if they had beepers.”
Some version of that argument persists as states weigh what to do about smartphones and social media (especially the intersection of the two) and kids, in the modern age. But if the approach to beepers decades ago was at times paranoid and draconian, for too many districts, the approach to smartphones is inefficacious. It follows that if Mrs. Hickenbottom could assume for purposes of discipline that any time your pager went off, it was Pablo Escobar on the other end, her classroom successors should be able to crack down on devices that are much more of a problem.
Of course, this is proving difficult. Today, schools and states aren’t just grappling with how to constrain students’ contact with the outside world. It’s how to keep shut their portal to games, social media, movies, shows, music, news, etc. — a machine that poses a far greater distraction from learning, and threat to mental well-being, and that for reasons not unrelated is far more popular and cherished by students than any classroom distraction that preceded it, even slap bracelets. Say what you will about the beeper; nobody was worried that that device was addictive.
Providing a vivid picture of the enforcement challenge, the AP reports on educators who complain that their students watch Netflix during class, shop online, send each other messages, and even gamble. Per the report, 77 percent of American schools say they ban cellphones for nonacademic purposes, but that “does not mean students are following those bans or all those schools are enforcing them.” According to one study, virtually all kids (97 percent) are using their phones during school hours.
On a policy level, states are increasingly moving to restrict phones in schools. Florida’s Ron DeSantis last May signed a bill to ban the use of phones in class, Indiana will follow later this year, and Utah governor Spencer Cox is urging schools to prohibit the devices during class time. Following Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s call this week for warning labels on social-media platforms, Governor Gavin Newsom, too, just announced a push to restrict smartphone use in California schools (or, as Dan McLaughlin translates: “Ron DeSantis Wins Another Argument”).
Prohibitions on classroom use might be more feasible and incur less wrath from parents than all-day bans. But enforcement won’t be easy regardless, which underscores the importance of a broader culture change.
In his New York Times op-ed raising alarm about the tech-tied mental-health crisis among youth, Murthy called on schools to make classrooms and social time “phone-free experiences” and on parents to “create phone-free zones around bedtime, meals and social gatherings.” He recommended parents wait until after middle school to give their children social-media access.
Some, including Jonathan Haidt, have argued parents should wait longer, until their kids are 16. In her recent piece for National Review magazine, Jean M. Twenge drove home the combined effect on teens’ mental health of smartphones and social media. Her essay pitched school bans on smartphone use, as well as parental efforts to restrict them at home (no phones in the bedroom overnight, for instance). As for why:
Beginning around 2012, teens unwittingly became part of a giant natural experiment that moved much of their social lives from in-person to online and shortened their sleep. Nothing else can so thoroughly explain why teen depression rates doubled even before the pandemic and why teen loneliness increased around the world.
If that’s not convincing enough, Daniel Buck’s bleak description of the modern-day school cafeteria should reinforce how phones have changed everything; rooms once full of rowdy conversation, now “lined with students staring at their phone screens — perhaps only interacting when leaning over to share an amusing TikTok video.”
“Phone-free zones” are a smart idea. And if educators struggle to enforce them, they should deploy the most feared tactic of the beeper era short of arrests: Confiscate it.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
A recipe for American decline: America’s Deficit Disaster Gets Worse
Biden is a magician who can make Congress disappear: Biden’s Lawless Mass Amnesty
ARTICLES
James Lynch: Covid-Hearing Witness Lays Out Overwhelming Case for Lab-Leak Theory in Blockbuster Opening Statement
James Lynch: Wikipedia Is Biased against Conservatives — and the Slant Is Infecting AI Models
Christian Schneider: We Can No Longer Have Nice Things
Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Historic Scandal This Election Ignores
Patrick Hunter: America’s Medical Establishment Is in Denial on the Dangers of Gender Transition
Andrew Follett: Eco-vandals Came to Stonehenge. They Won’t Stop There
Audrey Fahlberg & Brittany Bernstein: Is the Biden Campaign Sleepwalking into a Black-Voter Catastrophe?
Dominic Pino: If Biden Wants Voters to Stop Believing We’re in a Recession, He Should Stop Acting Like We’re in One
Andrew McCarthy: Why Trump’s Sentencing Matters
Jay Nordlinger: Depicting North Korea
Zach Kessel: ‘I Need More Than Words’: Husband of American Journalist Detained in Russia Speaks Out on Biden Admin Inaction
Natan Ehrenreich: Israel Embodies the Tension at the Heart of the West
Becket Adams: The Media’s Coverage of the Gaza War Is Completely Backward
Haley Strack: Universities Failed to Protect Students from Antisemitic Harassment during Protests, Education Department Finds
Jeffrey Blehar: J. D. Vance Hasn’t Convinced Himself Yet. Can He Convince You?
Jeffrey Blehar: The Democrats Cannot Pretend Away Joe Biden’s Mental and Physical Decline
Mike Pence: The Constitution’s Safeguards Are Being Whittled Away
CAPITAL MATTERS
Alexander William Salter, on another aspect of the “defining geopolitical event of our time”: How America Can Win the New Space Race
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
It brings Brian Allen no joy to report that one of his fave museums has made a hash of things in its latest show: Peabody Essex Museum Bungles American Art
Armond White writes what’s wrong with too much shock, in the Poor Things director’s latest film: Kinds of Ugliness
Madeleine Kearns has a two-parter on Kevin Spacey’s new movie, and you can catch the second part on Sunday: The Return of Kevin Spacey
EXCERPTS: THE ONLY WAY TO GET AROUND THE PAYWALL THAT YOU WON’T BE JUDGED FOR
Patrick Hunter, a pediatrician and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, sounds an alarm for his field:
On this side of the Atlantic, the Cass Review has fallen on deaf ears.
Dr. Hilary Cass released her final report for England’s National Health Service two months ago, clearly demonstrating that puberty-blockers and hormonal treatments for trans-identified children and teens lack supporting evidence. NHS England has now banned puberty-blockers in clinical care and will be restricting their use to research settings. Yet U.S. medical leaders have responded with silence, inaction, or both, proving that the physical and emotional well-being of youth has taken a back seat to social and political agendas.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is a case in point. Since the Cass Review’s release, the AAP has refused to recognize the problematic nature of its policy that promotes hormonal and surgical treatments of trans-identified minors. This is critical because the AAP is arguably one of the most powerful institutions supporting this unproven and controversial treatment. The AAP uses its authority and trust to influence legislative debate, judicial proceedings, and parental decisions nationwide.
Initially, the AAP declined to comment on the Cass Review. A month after its release, Dr. Cass gave her first U.S. interview to NPR. It was only then that the AAP released a short statement that defended irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments, wrongly claiming they are “grounded in evidence and science.” The AAP claims its policy enjoys “strong consensus” and is “medically necessary and appropriate.”
The AAP is increasingly isolated in its claims. Health-care authorities, clinicians, and researchers in England, Scotland, Wales, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, and — as of last week — Germany and Switzerland have reviewed the evidence, recognized the harms, and come to the exact opposite conclusions of the AAP.
The AAP’s only other response to the Cass Review came in the New York Times. Reacting to another interview with Cass, in which she called the U.S. approach “out of date,” the AAP maintained that it was not misleading families. In a letter to the editor, the AAP’s president disputed that the evidence is weak and promised that “Dr. Cass’s conclusions will be considered” in the academy’s own review of evidence, which was announced last August. Why is the AAP waiting to consider the Cass Review when other countries are acting to protect children now?
Another week, another round of developments that bolster the case for the “lab-leak theory.” From reporting powerhouse James Lynch:
An independent scientist and accomplished businessman delivered testimony before the Senate Tuesday morning going into detail on why he believes the coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Dr. Steven Quay, a scientist who authored a widely viewed Bayesian analysis concluding that the virus originated from a lab, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and read a detailed opening statement dissecting the data backing up his belief that the virus came from the Wuhan lab.
Quay, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and was on the faculty at the Stanford University School of Medicine, described “six approaches” that inform his view that the virus emerged from a lab: the timing of the virus’s emergence around Wuhan, data from the wet market at the center of the natural-origin theory, research activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the lack of evidence consistent with a natural origin, the genomic sequence of the coronavirus, and specific features of the early genomes of the coronavirus.
After introducing each approach, Quay quickly rattled off significant details from his written testimony to substantiate his claim that the existing fact set is incompatible with the natural-origin theory.
“These fourteen observations provide evidence the virus was spreading in Wuhan and outside Wuhan in the early fall of 2019, two to four months before the first case in the Hunan Seafood Market. All market cases have onset in December 2019, and thus are well after the outbreak began. This establishes the market is not the origin,” Quay said upon describing the virus’s apparent spread before it was discovered at a wet market in Wuhan.
Quay proceeded to describe the extensive evidence that the virus could not have jumped from a bat to another animal before infecting humans at the wet market, pointing out that the virus has not yet been found in any animal in the wild despite extensive efforts to do so. He also emphasized Beijing’s efforts to conceal vital information from investigators — the Wuhan lab’s virus database was taken offline in September 2019 and government officials refused to make it available — in a way that suggests culpability.
“Fifth, the genome of SARS-CoV-2 has seven features that would be expected to be found in a virus constructed in a laboratory and which are not found in viruses from nature. The statistical probability of finding each feature in nature can be determined and the combined probability that SARS2 came from nature is less than one in a billion,” Quay emphasized, before explaining the genome characteristics. . . .
In contrast, Dr. Gregory Koblentz and Dr. Robert Garry testified about their inclination toward the natural-origin theory and the need to continue investigating coronavirus origins to settle the scientific debate. Koblentz tried to focus more on the future of pandemic preparedness than relitigating debates over coronavirus origins and the public-health establishment’s handling of the pandemic.
Jay Nordlinger has an expansion of his fascinating magazine piece on Song Byeok, once a North Korean propaganda artist, but no longer:
Song Byeok was once a North Korean propagandist, painting images that celebrated the regime. He would show, for example, happy laborers, working their hearts out for whichever Kim was in power. Now, however, he paints images that are ironic or satirical. For instance, we see a picture of Kim Jong-un with a dove of peace. . . .
At age 24, Song Byeok started working as a propaganda artist. He would do this for seven years. He took great pride in his work, performing it with enthusiasm. He was a true believer in the Kims — the Great Leader (Kim Il-sung) and the Dear Leader (Kim Jong-il). He painted slogans such as “Let us become a bullet for General Kim Jong-il!”
I ask him whether his work helped him survive. Did he gain privileges, because of the work he did? Extra food, for example? No (unfortunately). “There were no differences whatsoever.”
How did he learn to draw and paint, by the way? “I was self-taught,” he says. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to a university. He practiced at home, drawing members of his family.
A further question: How did he acquire the materials? The paper, pencils, brushes, and so on? His parents sacrificed for him (as parents do). They purchased these materials for him, with whatever savings they had.
When Song Byeok speaks, it is usually softly, and reflectively, and poignantly.
North Koreans have never had very much to eat. But in 1994, a horrific famine hit, lasting four years. Masses of people died of hunger. Reliable numbers are hard to come by. The dictatorship refers to this period as the “Arduous March” or “March of Suffering.”
Like other North Koreans, Song Byeok took bark from trees and boiled it, just to get something in his stomach. One of his artworks is a sculpture, resembling the branch of a tree — but a branch that has taken on the characteristics of an animal. It is titled “Hunger.”
Song Byeok’s father, desperate to feed the family, set out for China, looking for food. He took Song Byeok with him. They got to China and got some food. On their way back, however, they were caught by North Korean guards, who took their food. It is illegal to leave the country without permission. And to bring back food was especially audacious.
The guards beat Song Byeok’s father to a pulp. They knocked his teeth out. Song Byeok was shocked by this. “My father was always such a strong man,” he says. “He was the pillar of our house, the pillar of our family.” And to see him assaulted like this; to see him helpless . . .
Song Byeok says he can still see the faces of the men who beat his father.
The two of them, father and son, were in prison for three months. They did hard labor. When they were released, they set out for China again, naturally. What else could they do? They and their family needed food; there was almost none.
This time, Song Byeok’s father died at the border — in the Tumen River, which separates North Korea and China. He was swept away. Song Byeok could not save him. He went to a checkpoint and asked the guards — North Koreans — to help save his father. Not only did they refuse, they said, “Why did you survive? You should have died in the river too.” Then they beat him up and threw him in prison.
Decisively, Song Byeok broke with North Korea. He broke with it mentally and spiritually. He broke with it, he tells me, when he saw his father’s face, as his father drifted away in the river.
Shout-Outs
Rand Paul, at Reason: Anthony Fauci’s Inner Circle Initially Thought COVID Came From a Lab
Raja Abdulrahim & Iyad Abuheweila, at the New York Times: As War Drags On, Gazans More Willing to Speak Out Against Hamas
Isaac Schorr, at the New York Post: With his colossal border failure, Biden has engineered Trump’s amazing comeback
CODA
It’s been too long since this note ended with a Porcupine Tree song. (To sum up, the author of this newsletter is unhealthily absorbed in the band’s music and the related projects of its members and collaborators.) So, to reset the counter, we’re digging up one of the early songs that gave a real peek at greatness to come. Back in the early to mid 1990s, Porcupine Tree was putting out a lot of Floydy psychedelic material (some of it good), but in between the 20-minute meditations was the occasional tightly written prog song. “Dislocated Day” was one of them, and that live version says it best, IMO.
Enjoy, and thanks for reading.