In a minute

Note: This post was written by guest blogger Sra. Bibliotecaria.

Almost exactly a year ago, Maj. Andy Olmsted died in Iraq.

I thought of Andy again when I heard that trauma surgeon John Pryor had been killed in Iraq on Christmas Day. Beyond the devastating loss to his loved ones, our world is poorer for having lost his passionate honesty. Indeed, the first I ever heard of him was through his 2007 op-ed about parallels between his work overseas and at home:

In Iraq, ironically, I found myself drawing on my experience as a civilian trauma surgeon each time [mass casualties] would overrun the combat hospital. As nine or 10 patients from a firefight rolled in, I sometimes caught myself saying “just like another Friday night in West Philadelphia.”

The wounds and nationalities of the patients are different, but the feelings of helplessness, despair and loss are the same. In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies. Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one.

More young men are killed each day on the streets of America than on the worst days of carnage and loss in Iraq. There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa. Unlike the Iraq conflict, this war is not on the front pages of The Post or on CNN.

Pryor was in a better position than most of us both to see this bloody misery firsthand and to bear witness to it. It would have been enough that he used his hands to heal; that he also used his voice to advocate was an act of profound generosity.

It takes titantic self-confidence to cut into human flesh, even to heal. I don’t know what it was like to live with Dr. Pryor or even have him as a colleague. I do know that the obituary was shocking to me, though as the song says we should know how fast the world can change:

Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody’s going to jail
If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

Back to Andy Olmsted, and his farewell message:

[F]or those who knew me and feel this pain, I think it’s a good thing to realize that this pain has been felt by thousands and thousands (probably millions, actually) of other people all over the world. That is part of the cost of war, any war, no matter how justified. If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision.

Don’t worry your pretty little head

Once upon a time, we fought a war over taxation without representation. The idea that a faraway king could just take our money, and not let us have a voice in how that money was spent, made a lot of people angry.

Today, we still have taxation without representation. If you’re 14, 15, 16, or 17 years old, you are legally allowed to work, but you’re not allowed to vote. You may earn money, and if so you will pay taxes, but you cannot vote for the representatives who will decide how that money is spent.

There is no good reason for this. Young people are no more likely to make dumb decisions than adults. (Yes, their brains are still maturing, but our brains are changing all the time. Does anyone seriously propose that we should bar people with traumatic brain injury, or mental illness, or Alzheimer’s from voting?)

No, the usual arguments are that young people’s political interests can be represented by their parents, that they aren’t responsible enough, that not very many of them will bother to vote, that they don’t understand how government works, that they will be swayed by politicians’ promises.

These are insulting and paternalistic arguments, ones that have been used in the past against women and racial minorities. They are no more (and no less) true of teenagers than of their parents. If a politician promises a special benefit to teens, is that different from a benefit for the AARP?

At some future day, people will look back on the voting age of 18 as flatly discriminatory, even quaintly incomprehensible. But to get to that day, a lot of us will have to stand up and say what should be clear: Everyone who contributes to a society should have a say in how that society is run.

(Inspired by this rather lame op-ed.)

Don’t tell me I’m stupid

“Girls can’t do science.” “Asians are better at math.” Yup, it’s stereotype time. Studies have long shown that people do worse on tests when they’re reminded that they’re not supposed to be smart. It’s called stereotype threat. Just having students mark a box for Male or Female is enough to trigger the effect, meaning that people do badly on tests even when they know the material.

Good news. New research suggests that a few small changes — like moving the “What is your gender?” checkbox to the end of the test, and announcing to students beforehand that the test is gender-neutral — can dramatically improve students’ scores. Read the full post, complete with practical suggestions for teachers.

(Via.)

Amen

It takes five minutes to show someone how to put on a condom, but it takes a lot more to teach kids how to get into the respectful situations necessary to make sure the condom is in fact used.

The article notes a study that suggests that American and Dutch parents’ attitudes towards teen sex seem to be linked with the teens’ likelihood of making responsible (not celibate, responsible) choices. Read it.

Shame does not make you healthier

Ten experts in teen sexual and reproductive health have signed a letter beseeching Congress not to fund abstinence-only education. It’s simple and clear, so I advise you to go read it.

Everybody agrees that it’s a bad thing for teenagers to have to deal with unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Some people think that the best way to avoid this is to tell teenagers that they shouldn’t have sex, ever, until they get married. Many of those people also think we should lie to teens about how well condoms protect against disease. Other people think that the best way to avoid this is to give students factual information about how pregnancy and disease occur, and how your chance of getting pregnant or getting a disease can be reduced (not eliminated).

On top of these two sets of core beliefs are a whole bunch of fears and assumptions — about whether talking about sex means we are giving teenagers “permission” to have sex, whether they will have better or worse adult (and/or married) sex lives as a result of this information, how accurate the information they are getting from other people is, and whether they are ever likely to be the victim of unwanted sexual contact. Most of all, this is a profound disagreement about respect: Whether teenagers should be obedient to their elders’ wishes, or whether they should be respected as (semi-)independent human beings.

But here’s the thing: long-term, careful reseach studies are showing that abstinence-only education does not prevent those bad results. In other words, teenagers who are told “Don’t have sex until you get married” aren’t behaving any differently, and often they are taking more dangerous risks because of that ignorance.

We’ve studied it. We’ve been fair. The time has come to say that we shouldn’t spend any more taxpayer money on abstinence-only education.

We should rename it, too. It’s really shame-based education. Because the only thing it’s doing is making young people too ashamed to properly prepare for, or get health treatment after, the beginning of their sexual lives.

Please go read the letter. And then send it to your Congressperson.

Increase the peace

Remember being 18? Hamid Floyd does, because he is 18. He made a film about the violence that saturates Philadelphia right now, and its impact on him and others.

Hamid’s film won second place in a contest, but that’s not why you should watch it. Watch it because it’s good. And because it’s a really gutsy, brave thing for a teenager to do, and because even if there were no more murders in Philadelphia this year, we would still already have had one for every single day of the year.

Stop the violence. Increase the peace.

Watch the film.