Fathers are key to their children’s successful education

Tacoma, WA Thursday, March 5, 2009

BILL HARRINGTON Last updated: March 4th, 2009 11:50 PM (PST) President Barack Obama’s clarion call to reduce our nation’s tragic number of high school dropouts is both inspiring and compelling. We have waited for years to have a president really committed to improving educational outcomes in America. Success is desperately needed for us as individual citizens and as a society. But accomplishing this goal will require a major contribution from, and a more direct appeal to, our male population – the fathers of American children. For married fathers, the appeal must be to become more engaged in the day-to-day lives of their children. Dads must know the names of their children’s teachers, better understand the classes they children are attending, and be there for parent-teacher conferences, etc. You might wonder, why the big deal? The answer is that our national call to reduce dropouts is doomed to failure unless fathers are more involved in the lives of their children after divorce. This is the key factor in cutting the dropout rate. Social science research shows that between 70 percent and 80 percent of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. Fathers are 50 percent of the parents Obama called to action last week. But with a 50 percent divorce rate and so many children born to unwed, never-married parents (just under 30,000 per year in Washington), it is hard to reduce the dropout rate under our present conditions. Mothers and concerned citizens cannot reverse this trend alone. With legal and social services rule changes designed to allow increased participation by separated fathers in their children’s lives, real and meaningful progress toward educational improvement could be realized. The numbers below help make the case. A new report from Olympia – the Residential Time Summary Report from the administrator of the courts – shows that divorced fathers are fighting to stay involved with their children. Statewide, 46 percent of children of divorce are spending a minimum of 35 percent of parenting time with their fathers. The number is 50 percent in Pierce County. These numbers are 300 percent better than in 1987, when the state Parenting Act mandated more child-focused divorce outcomes. The act resulted in detailed plans that specified the rights of the parents’ rights and their schedules with their children. This is measurable progress any way you count the numbers. The superintendent of public instruction reports a startling 18,500 dropouts in grades 9-12 in the 2006-2007 school years. Our challenge to reduce dropouts is for everyone. A 2008 report from the National Center for Fathering shows a dramatic improvement in fathers’ participation over time with a resulting increase in improved child outcomes. The report studied fathers in October 1999 and May 2008. It looked at such things as visits to a child’s classroom, volunteering and reading to the child. All that is needed for more success is more attention and support for committed fathers. We need to give more separated fathers a green light and remove the roadblocks. Locally, we can take three big steps: • Urge the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 5342, sponsored by Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, which would encourage divorced parents to stay within the same community for the sake of shared parenting. • Urge superior court judges and court commissioners to grant fathers’ requests for more parental involvement in parenting plans. • Urge school board members to reach out to fathers and get them more involved in school events and activities. The 23 local Daffodill princesses described in The News Tribune last March give us the final punch to this story. Of these wonderful and successful ladies, 20 of 23 came from homes with both a father and a mother. It’s a demonstration that fathers contribute to the success of their daughters as well as their sons. Bill Harrington of Graham served on the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Welfare from 1994 to 1996. E-mail him at cagradyoes@aol.com Originally published: March 4th, 2009 11:50 PM (PST)

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Mike S. Adams ~ Feminists are People, Too

Mike S. Adams | Thursday, March 05, 2009

I used to have a friend named Ricky back when I attended G.H. Whitcomb Elementary School. Ricky liked to curse a lot even when we were in the 3rd grade. The only reason Ricky liked to curse was to draw attention to Ricky. But once he had your attention Ricky never had anything intelligent to say. Ricky is a lot like the feminists I work with at UNC-Wilmington.

If you walk over to Randall Library at UNC-Wilmington this month you can see a large display that is sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center (WRC). The display is meant to raise awareness of Women’s issues during Women’s History Month, which was previously known as “March.” It certainly reminds me that a number of our campus feminists really do have serious issues.

In large print on the display are the words “Whores are People, too.” Below that one can see pictures of prostitutes surrounded by derogatory names for prostitutes and for women in general. The c-word is one of the many words meant to draw attention to the WRC display. For those who don’t yet know it the c-word means “C.U. Next Tuesday.” You may finish the acronym yourself. Or just listen to any live interview with Jane Fonda.

One major point of the provocative WRC display is to get people to read some statistics on the plight of prostitutes in America. The feminists who run our Women’s Resource Center use the display to decry the fact that most of those arrested for prostitution in America are women. The feminists consider this a form of oppression. Since most prostitutes are female and most “Johns” are male, their remedy is simple: Arrest prostitutes and “Johns” in equal numbers in order to eliminate gender discrimination.

Their suggestion seems reasonable until you stop to give it some thought. Since the feminists rarely stop to give anything serious thought I wrote this explanation for them. As a public sociologist, it’s the least I can do.

Liberals have long had a moral problem with expanding the war on drugs. In fact, most liberals say that it makes sense to contract the war on drugs by focusing on the arrests of large scale drug dealers as opposed to small-time users. The general idea is, of course, a correct one. No one could legitimately argue that the occasional user of an illegal drug is as morally culpable as the regular supplier.

But few academic feminists have the intellectual energy to apply that logic to the policing of prostitution. If it is wrong to prosecute the occasional user of an illegal good with as much rigor as the regular supplier of an illegal good then, surely, the same leniency applies to the occasional user of an illegal service like prostitution.

It is obviously logically consistent to want to target prostitutes rather than “Johns” if you believe we should target drug dealers rather than drug users. Go after the suppliers. Remember?

But logical consistency has never been the goal of the academic feminists. Their goal has always been the special treatment of women. And that is why the WRC display also has several provocative pictures of topless women with very large breast implants.

These grotesque nude pictures are accompanied by captions that ask whether the very large and apparently botched boob-jobs are “attractive.” The message is simple: Women should not get breast implants.

But this WRC idea that women should not get breast implants because breast plants are degrading is not logically consistent with their previous decision to co-sponsor the film “Trans-Generation.” When the WRC sponsored that movie, which glorifies sex changes, they were, of course, approving of the idea that men should get breast implants. It’s tough to understand why new breasts are degrading to women and a cause of celebration for men. I thought feminists were against sexist double-standards. Confused yet?

And of course the WRC’s entire public display of profanity and nudity is a good example of how they promote double standards along the lines of gender. They actively support speech codes which are used to ban words far less offensive than the c-word. They also successfully kept the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders off campus despite the fact that they intended to keep their shirts on.

I’m afraid that the end result of Women’s History Month may be to promote the ideas that feminists are intellectually shallow, easily offended, and in favor of gender discrimination. Maybe it’s time to arrest these intellectual prostitutes. And cut the average John a little slack.

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