Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Nicholas Kristof has an article in the New York Times (The Boys Have Fallen Behind) about the growing alienation of boys from education and about the consequent decline in their academic achievement. This decline is disguised by the fact that the people at the top of most professions are still male; but under them the [...]

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In Baltimore, the city I grew up in, 30% of the remaining Catholics schools are being closed. Only a handful remains in the whole metropolitan area, and it was the Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852 that established the rule that every parish should have its parochial school.
Only 15% of the students in the [...]

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Patrick Welsh, who teaches in the Washington D.C, school system, has diagnosed the problem of poor academic achievement among black students: Making the Grade Isn’t about Race. It’s About Parents.

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”
In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class [...]

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The Gallup Poll, as Bill Cork pointed out, has revealed that Church-going Catholics are far more likely that Church-going non-Catholics (almost all Protestant) to accept immoral behavior.

I do not find this surprising. Other polls I have seen over the years reveal similar patterns.

This data helps explain Notre Dame’s invitation to Obama. Many Catholics accept Obama’s [...]

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Boys have a hard time in school. Teachers like the way girls sit still in school and don’t fool around. Boys are much too fidgety. My son Charles tried out school for one day; he complained for a week that his legs hurt him from sitting all day in class. When the principal asked [...]

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