Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Deborah L. Schussler, Professor of Education Policy and Leadership, University at Albany, State University of New York

Writing, reading, math and mindfulness? That last subject is increasingly joining the three classic courses, as more young students in the United States are practicing mindfulness, meaning focusing on paying attention to the present moment without judgment.

In the past 20 years in the U.S., mindfulness transitioned from being a new-age curiosity to becoming a more mainstream part of American culture, as people learned more about how mindfulness can reduce their stress and improve their well-being.

Researchers estimate that over 1 million children in the U.S. have been exposed to mindfulness in their schools, mostly at the elementary level, often taught by classroom teachers or school counselors.

I have been researching mindfulness in K-12 American schools for 15 years. I have investigated the impact of mindfulness on students, explored the experiences of teachers who teach mindfulness in K-12 schools, and examined the challenges and benefits of implementing mindfulness in these settings.

I have noticed that mindfulness programs vary in what particular mindfulness skills are taught and what lesson objectives are. This makes it difficult to compare across studies and draw conclusions about how mindfulness helps students in schools.

What is mindfulness?

Different definitions of mindfulness exist.

Some people might think mindfulness means simply practicing breathing, for example.

A common definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness expert who helped popularize mindfulness in Western countries, says mindfulness is about “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, nonjudgmentally, in the present moment.”

Essentially, mindfulness is a way of being. It is a person’s approach to each moment and their orientation to both inner and outer experience, the pleasant and the unpleasant. Fundamental to mindfulness is how a person chooses to direct their attention.

In practice, mindfulness can involve different practices, including guided meditations, mindful movement and breathing. Mindfulness programs can also help people develop a variety of skills, including openness to experiences and more focused attention.

Practicing mindfulness at schools

A few years ago, I decided to investigate school mindfulness programs themselves and consider what it means for children to learn mindfulness at schools. What do the programs actually teach?

I believe that understanding this information can help educators, parents and policymakers make more informed decisions about whether mindfulness belongs in their schools.

In 2023, my colleagues and I conducted a deep dive into 12 readily available mindfulness curricula for K-12 students to investigate what the programs contained. Across programs, we found no consistency of content, teaching practices or time commitment.

For example, some mindfulness programs in K-12 schools incorporate a lot of movement, with some specifically teaching yoga poses. Others emphasize interpersonal skills such as practicing acts of kindness, while others focus mostly on self-oriented skills such as focused attention, which may occur by focusing on one’s breath.

We also found that some programs have students do a lot of mindfulness practices, such as mindful movement or mindful listening, while others teach about mindfulness, such as learning how the brain functions.

Finally, the number of lessons in a curriculum ranged from five to 44, meaning some programs occurred over just a few weeks and some required an entire school year.

Despite indications that mindfulness has some positive impacts for school-age children, the evidence is also not consistent, as shown by other research.

One of the largest recent studies of mindfulness in schools found in 2022 no change in students who received mindfulness instruction.

Some experts believe, though, that the lack of results in this 2022 study on mindfulness was partially due to a curriculum that might have been too advanced for middle school-age children.

The connection between mindfulness and education

Since attention is critical for students’ success in school, it is not surprising that mindfulness appeals to many educators.

Research on student engagement and executive functioning supports the claim that any student’s ability to filter out distractions and prioritize the objects of their thoughts improves their academic success.

Mindfulness programs have been shown to improve students’ mental health and decrease students’ and teachers’ stress levels.

Mindfulness has also been shown to help children emotionally regulate.

Even before social media, teachers perennially struggled to get students to pay attention. Reviews of multiple studies have shown some positive effects of mindfulness on outcomes, including improvements in academic achievement and school adjustment.

A 2023 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites mindfulness as one of six evidence-based strategies K-12 schools should use to promote students’ mental health and well-being.

A relatively new trend

Knowing what is in the mindfulness curriculum, how it is taught and how long the student spends on mindfulness matters. Students may be learning very different skills with significantly different amounts of time to reinforce those skills.

Researchers suggest, for example, that mindfulness programs most likely to improve academic or mental health outcomes of children offer activities geared toward their developmental level, such as shorter mindfulness practices and more repetition.

In other words, mindfulness programs for children cannot just be watered down versions of adult programs.

Mindfulness research in school settings is still relatively new, though there is encouraging data that mindfulness can sharpen skills necessary for students’ academic success and promote their mental health.

In addition to the need for more research on the outcomes of mindfulness, it is important for educators, parents, policymakers and researchers to look closely at the curriculum to understand what the students are actually doing.

Deborah L. Schussler receives funding from Spencer Foundation.

– ref. Mindfulness is gaining traction in American schools – but it isn’t clear what students are learning – https://theconversation.com/mindfulness-is-gaining-traction-in-american-schools-but-it-isnt-clear-what-students-are-learning-261247

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jeffrey Sklansky, Professor of History, University of Illinois Chicago

Most of the world observes International Workers’ Day on May 1 or the first Monday in May each year, but not the United States and Canada. Instead, Americans and Canadians have celebrated Labor Day as a national holiday on the first Monday in September since 1894, 12 years after the first observance of Labor Day in New York City.

The celebrations aren’t the same.

In much of Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, the event commonly called May Day honors workers’ political and economic power, often with demonstrations by socialist or workers’ parties and tributes to national labor rights. America’s Labor Day features labor union parades in many places, but for most Americans, it’s less about organized labor and more about barbecues, beach days and back-to-school sales.

Both holidays, however, arose during the same period, in the U.S. nearly 150 years ago, in the midst of an explosive labor uprising in America’s industrial heartland. Their founding united native-born and immigrant workers in an extraordinary alliance to demand an eight-hour workday at a time when American workers toiled an average of 10 or more hours daily, six days a week.

The call for shorter hours was rooted in a big idea: that workers’ days belonged to them, even if employers owned their workplaces and paid for their work. That idea inspired the loftiest goals of a growing labor movement that spanned from Chicago and New York to Stockholm and Saint Petersburg. And the labor activism of the late 1800s still casts a distant light on Labor Day today, carrying a vital message about the struggle for control of workers’ daily lives.

I’m a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago, where I study the history of labor. The fight for shorter hours is no longer a top issue for organized labor in the U.S.. But it was a crusade for the eight-hour day that brought together the diverse coalition of labor groups that created Labor Day and May Day in the 1880s.

Labor Day’s radical roots

Led by socialist-leaning trade unions, Labor Day’s founders included skilled, native-born craft workers defending control over their trades, immigrant laborers seeking relief from daylong drudgery, and revolutionary anarchists who saw the quest for control of the workers’ day as a step toward seizing factories and smashing the state.

They originally chose Sept. 5, 1882, for the first Labor Day to coincide with a general assembly in New York City of what was then the largest and broadest association of American workers, the Knights of Labor. Two years later, labor leaders moved the annual event to the first Monday in September, giving the majority of workers a two-day weekend for the first time.

As Labor Day parades and picnics spread, many American cities and states soon made it an official holiday. But since few employers gave workers the day off in its early years, Labor Day likewise became “a virtual one-day general strike in many cities,” according to historians Michael Kazin and Steven Ross.

American roots of May Day

My students come from working-class, mostly immigrant families, and Chicago’s history of labor conflict is all around our downtown campus in the heart of what were once meatpacking plants, stockyards and crowded immigrant neighborhoods.

My office is about 12 blocks from the spot – surrounded today by upscale office buildings – where the eight-hour movement reached a bloody climax in the battle of Haymarket Square. May Day commemorates that battle.

On May 1, 1886, unions of skilled workers organized by their crafts or trades led a nationwide general strike for the eight-hour day. They were joined by radical socialists, militant anarchists and many members of the Knights of Labor. More than 100,000 workers took part across the country.

The most dramatic demonstrations happened in Chicago, which had become the second-largest city in the U.S. after years of swift growth. Nearly 40,000 striking Chicago workers shut down much of that burgeoning industrial, agricultural and commercial hub. Three days later, a bomb thrown at a rally in Haymarket Square killed seven police officers, sparking a sweeping nationwide crackdown on labor activism.

In 1889, socialist trade unions and workers’ parties, meeting in Paris for the first congress of a new Socialist International, proclaimed May 1 an international workers’ holiday. They were partly following the lead of the new American Federation of Labor, which had called for renewed strikes on the anniversary of the 1886 action.

And they were honoring the memory of the eight labor activists who had been tried and convicted for the Haymarket bombing solely on the basis of their speeches and radical politics, in what was widely viewed as a rigged trial. Four “Haymarket martyrs” had been hanged and a fifth died by suicide before he could be executed.

An earlier labor win

Though May 1 had long been associated with European celebrations of springtime, its modern meaning has deeper American roots that precede the Haymarket tragedy. It was on that date in 1867 that workers in Chicago celebrated an earlier victory.

At the end of the Civil War, campaigns for an eight-hour workday arose in cities across the country, championing a common interpretation of the abolition of slavery: for many workers, emancipation meant that employers purchased only their labor, not their lives.

Employers might monopolize workers’ means of making a living, but not their hours and days.

The movement led to laws declaring an eight-hour day in six states, including Illinois, where the new rule went into effect on May 1, 1867. But employers widely disobeyed or circumvented the laws, and states failed to enforce them while they lasted, so workers continued to struggle for a shorter workday.

Seizing the day

In the 19th century, American workers’ labor came to be measured by how long they worked and how much they were paid. While they were divided by their widely different wages, they were united by the generally uniform hours at each workplace.

The demand for a shorter workday without a pay cut was designed to appeal to all wage earners no matter who they were, where they were from, or what they did for a living.

Labor leaders said shorter hours meant employers would have to hire more people, creating jobs and boosting hourly pay. Spending less time on the job would enable workers to become bigger consumers, spurring economic growth.

Having “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” a popular labor movement refrain, would also leave more time for education, organization and political action.

Most broadly, the fight for shorter hours encapsulated workers’ struggle to control their own time, both on and off the job. That far-reaching struggle included efforts to limit the number of years people spent earning a living by ending child labor and creating pensions for retired workers – a topic I’m currently researching.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Time is money,” meaning that time off costs money that workers could be making on the job. But the message of the movement for a shorter workday was that the worth of workers’ lives could not be calculated in dollars and cents.

Diverging holidays

In the Haymarket battle’s aftermath, the alliance of radicals and reformers, factory operatives and skilled artisans, U.S.-born workers and immigrant laborers began to come apart. And as union leaders in the American Federation of Labor parted ways with socialists and anarchists, each side of the divided workers’ movement claimed one of the two labor days as its own, making the holidays appear increasingly opposed and losing sight of their shared foundation in the campaign for a shorter workday.

Conservative politicians and employers hostile to unions began to equate labor organizing with bomb throwing. In response, trade unions seeking acceptance as part of American industry and democracy displayed their allegiance on Labor Day by waving the American flag, singing patriotic songs and portraying themselves as proud, native-born Americans as opposed to foreign workers with subversive ideas.

Many political radicals and the immigrant workers among whom they found much of their following, meanwhile, came to identify more with the international workers’ movement associated with May Day than with American business and politics. They disavowed May Day’s origins among American trade unions, even as many trade unions distanced themselves from the radical roots of Labor Day. By the turn of the century, May Day moved further from the center of American culture, while Labor Day became more mainstream and less militant.

20th-century gains and losses

In the 20th century, labor unions won shorter hours for many of their members across the country. But they detached that demand from the broader agenda of workers’ autonomy and international solidarity.

They gained a landmark achievement with the federal enactment of the eight-hour day and 40-hour workweek for many industries during the 1930s. At that point, economist John Maynard Keynes projected that the rising productivity of labor would enable 21st-century wage earners to work just three hours a day.

Workers’ productivity did keep climbing as Keynes predicted, and their wages rose apace – until the 1970s. But their work hours did not decline, leaving the three-hour day a forgotten vision of what organized labor might achieve.

Jeffrey Sklansky is a member of UIC United Faculty, the labor union representing the bargaining units of Tenure/Tenure-Track and full-time Non-Tenure Track faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago.

– ref. Labor Day and May Day emerged from the movement for a shorter workday in industrial America – https://theconversation.com/labor-day-and-may-day-emerged-from-the-movement-for-a-shorter-workday-in-industrial-america-262379

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Naomi S. Baron, Professor Emerita of Linguistics, American University

A perfect storm is brewing for reading.

AI arrived as both kids and adults were already spending less time reading books than they did in the not-so-distant past.

As a linguist, I study how technology influences the ways people read, write and think.

This includes the impact of artificial intelligence, which is dramatically changing how people engage with books or other kinds of writing, whether it’s assigned, used for research or read for pleasure. I worry that AI is accelerating an ongoing shift in the value people place on reading as a human endeavor.

Everything but the book

AI’s writing skills have gotten plenty of attention. But researchers and teachers are only now starting to talk about AI’s ability to “read” massive datasets before churning out summaries, analyses or comparisons of books, essays and articles.

Need to read a novel for class? These days, you might get by with skimming through an AI-generated summary of the plot and key themes. This kind of possibility, which undermines people’s motivation to read on their own, prompted me to write a book about the pros and cons of letting AI do the reading for you.

Palming off the work of summarizing or analyzing texts is hardly new. CliffsNotes dates back to the late 1950s. Centuries earlier, the Royal Society of London began producing summaries of the scientific papers that appeared in its voluminous “Philosophical Transactions.” By the mid-20th century, abstracts had become ubiquitous in scholarly articles. Potential readers could now peruse the abstract before deciding whether to tackle the piece in its entirety.

The internet opened up an array of additional reading shortcuts. For instance, Blinkist is an app-based, subscription service that condenses mostly nonfiction books into roughly 15-minute summaries – called “Blinks” – that are available in both audio and text.

But generative AI elevates such workarounds to new heights. AI-driven apps like BooksAI provide the kinds of summaries and analyses that used to be crafted by humans. Meanwhile, BookAI.chat invites you to “chat” with books. In neither case do you need to read the books yourself.

If you’re a student asked to compare Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” with J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” as coming-of-age novels, CliffsNotes only gets you so far. Sure, you can read summaries of each book, but you still must do the comparison yourself. With general large language models or specialized tools such as Google NotebookLM, AI handles both the “reading” and the comparing, even generating smart questions to pose in class.

The downside is that you lose out on a critical benefit of reading a coming-of-age novel: the personal growth that comes from vicariously experiencing the protagonist’s struggles.

In the world of academic research, AI offerings like SciSpace, Elicit and Consensus combine the power of search engines and large language models. They locate relevant articles and then summarize and synthesize them, slashing the hours needed to conduct literature reviews. On its website, Elsevier’s ScienceDirect AI gloats: “Goodbye wasted reading time. Hello relevance.”

Maybe. Excluded from the process is judging for yourself what counts as relevant and making your own connections between ideas.

Reader unfriendly?

Even before generative AI went mainstream, fewer people were reading books, whether for pleasure or for class.

In the U.S., the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that the number of fourth graders who read for fun almost every day slipped from 53% in 1984 to 39% in 2022. For eighth graders? From 35% in 1984 to 14% in 2023. The U.K.’s 2024 National Literacy Trust survey revealed that only one in three 8- to 18-year-olds said they enjoyed reading in their spare time, a drop of almost 9 percentage points from just the previous year.

Similar trends exist among older students. In a 2018 survey of 600,000 15-year-olds across 79 countries, 49% reported reading only when they had to. That’s up from 36% about a decade earlier.

The picture for college students is no brighter. A spate of recent articles has chronicled how little reading is happening in American higher education. My work with literacy researcher Anne Mangen found that faculty are reducing the amount of reading they assign, often in response to students refusing to do it.

Emblematic of the problem is a troubling observation from cultural commentator David Brooks:

“I once asked a group of students on their final day at their prestigious university what book had changed their life over the previous four years. A long, awkward silence followed. Finally a student said: ‘You have to understand, we don’t read like that. We only sample enough of each book to get through the class.’”

Now adults … according to YouGov, just 54% of Americans read at least one book in 2023. The situation in South Korea is even bleaker, where only 43% of adults said they had read at least one book in 2023, down from almost 87% in 1994. In the U.K., The Reading Agency observed declines in adult reading and hinted at one reason why. In 2024, 35% of adults identified as lapsed readers – they once read regularly, but no longer do. Of those lapsed readers, 26% indicated they had stopped reading because of time spent on social media.

The phrase “lapsed reader” might now apply to anyone who deprioritizes reading, whether it’s due to lack of interest, devoting more time to social media or letting AI do the reading for you.

All that’s lost, missed and forgotten

Why read in the first place?

The justifications are endless, as are the streams of books and websites making the case. There’s reading for pleasure, stress reduction, learning and personal development.

You can find correlations between reading and brain growth in children, happiness, longevity and slowing cognitive decline.

This last issue is particularly relevant as people increasingly let AI do cognitive work on their behalf, a process known as cognitive offloading. Research has emerged showing the extent to which people are engaging in cognitive offloading when they use AI. The evidence reveals that the more users rely on AI to perform work for them, the less they see themselves as drawing upon their own thinking capacities. A study employing EEG measurements found different brain connectivity patterns when participants enlisted AI to help them write an essay than when writing it on their own.

It’s too soon to know what effects AI might have on our long-term ability to think for ourselves. What’s more, the research so far has largely focused on writing tasks or general use of AI tools, not on reading. But if we lose practice in reading and analyzing and formulating our own interpretations, those skills are at risk of weakening.

Cognitive skills aren’t the only thing at stake when we rely too heavily on AI to do our reading work for us. We also miss out on so much of what makes reading enjoyable – encountering a moving piece of dialogue, relishing a turn of phrase, connecting with a character.

AI’s lure of efficiency is tantalizing. But it risks undermining the benefits of literacy.

Naomi S. Baron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. AI is making reading books feel obsolete – and students have a lot to lose – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-making-reading-books-feel-obsolete-and-students-have-a-lot-to-lose-262680

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Liza Barros-Lane, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Houston-Downtown

The July 4 floods in Kerr County, Texas, sent shockwaves across the country. Now that most of the victims’ burials are over, the weight of grief is just beginning for loved ones left behind. It’s the daily devastation of an upended world where absence is glaringly present, nothing feels familiar, and life is paused in dizzying stillness.

I know this pain intimately. I’m a grief researcher, social work professor and widow. I lost my husband, Brent, in a drowning accident when I was 36. He went missing two days before his body was found.

Brent was a psychologist who specialized in grief, and we were trained to support others through suffering. Yet nothing could prepare me for my own loss.

Research and personal experience have shown me that profound loss disrupts the nervous system, sparking intense emotional swings and unleashing a cascade of physical symptoms. This kind of pain can make ordinary moments feel unbearable, so learning how to manage it is essential to surviving early grief. Thankfully, there are evidence-based tools to help people get through the rawest phases of loss.

Why early grief feels so disorienting

Losing someone central to your daily life unravels the routines that once anchored you.

Traumatic losses, the kind that arrive suddenly, violently or in ways that feel horrifying, carry a different kind of weight: the anguish of how the person died, the unanswered questions and the shock of having no time to prepare or say goodbye.

Everyday acts, like eating or going to bed, can highlight the absence and trigger both grief and dread. These moments reveal that grief is a whole-being experience. It affects not just our emotions, but also our bodies, thoughts, routines and sense of safety in the world.

Emotionally, grief can be chaotic. Emotions swing unpredictably, from sobs one moment to numbness the next. Mental health professionals call this emotional dysregulation, which includes feeling out of touch with emotions, reacting too little or too much, getting stuck in one emotional state or struggling to shift perspective.

Cognitively, focus feels impossible and memory lapses increase. Even knowing the loved one is gone, the brain scans for the person, expecting their voice or text, a natural attachment response that fuels disbelief, yearning and panic.

Physically, grief floods the body with stress hormones, leading to insomnia, fatigue, aches, heaviness and chest tightness. After losing someone close, studies suggest a brief increase in mortality risk, often from added strain on the heart, immune system and mental health.

Spiritually and existentially, loss can shake your beliefs to the core and make the world feel confusing, hollow and stripped of meaning.

Grief research confirms that these intense symptoms are typical for some time, exacerbated after traumatic loss.

Finding a new baseline

Eventually, most people begin to stabilize. But after traumatic loss, it’s not uncommon for that sense of chaos to linger for months or even years. In the beginning, treat yourself like someone recovering from major surgery: Rest often, move slowly and protect your energy.

Initially, you may only be able to manage small, familiar acts, such as brushing your teeth or making your bed, that remind you: I’m still here. That’s OK. Right now, your only job is survival, one manageable step at a time.

As you face everyday responsibilities again, allow space for rest. After Brent died, I brought a mat to work to lie down whenever fatigue or emotional weight became unbearable. I didn’t recognize this as pain management then, but that helped me survive the hardest days.

According to grief theorists, one of the most important tasks in early grief is learning to manage and bear emotional pain. Mourners must allow themselves to feel the weight of the loss.

But pain management isn’t just about sitting with the hurt. It also means knowing when to step away without slipping into avoidance, which can lead to panic, numbness and exhaustion. As Brent used to say, “The goal is to pick it up and put it down.” Taking intentional breaks through distraction or rest can make it possible to return to the grief without being consumed by it.

It also involves soothing yourself when the grief waves hit.

Five small but powerful ways to face painful moments

Here are five simple evidence-based tools designed to make painful moments more bearable for you or a grieving loved one. They won’t erase the pain, but they can quickly offer relief for the raw, jagged edges of early grief.

1. Gentle touch to ease loneliness

Place one hand on your chest, stomach or gently on your cheek – wherever you instinctively reach when you’re in pain. Inhale slowly. As you exhale, say softly aloud or in your mind: “This hurts.” Then, “I’m here” or “I’m not alone in this.” Stay for one to two minutes, or as long as feels comfortable.

Why it helps: Grief often leaves you touch-starved, aching for physical connection. Soothing self-touch, a self-compassion practice, activates the vagus nerve, which helps regulate heart rate, breathing and the body’s calming response after stress. This gesture offers warmth and grounding, reducing the isolation of heartache.

2. Riding the wave

When grief surges, set a timer for two to five minutes. Stay with the emotion. Breathe. Observe it without judgment. If it’s too much, distract yourself briefly, such as by counting backward, then return to the feeling and notice how it may have shifted.

Why it helps: Emotions rise like waves. This skill helps you stay present during emotional surges without panicking, and it helps you learn that emotional surges peak and pass without destroying you. It draws from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, an evidence-based treatment for people experiencing intense emotional dysregulation.

3. Soothing with soft textures

Wrap yourself in a soft blanket. Hold a stuffed animal. Or stroke your pet’s fur. Focus on the texture for two to five minutes. Breathe slowly.

Why it helps: Softness signals safety to your nervous system. It gives comfort when pain is too raw for words.

4. Cooling down overwhelm

Therapists often teach a set of DBT skills called TIPP to help people manage emotional overwhelm during crises like grief. TIPP stands for:

Temperature: Use cold, such as holding ice or applying cold water to the face, to trigger a calming response.

Intense exercise: Engage in short bursts of movement to release tension.

Paced breathing: Breathe in slow, controlled breaths to reduce arousal. Inhale slowly for two to four seconds, then exhale for four to six seconds.

Progressive muscle relaxation: Tense and release individual muscle groups to ease stress.

Why it helps: During grief, the nervous system can swing between high-arousal states, like panic and racing heart, to low-arousal states such as numbness and sadness.

Individual responses vary, but cold exposure can help calm a racing heart in moments of overwhelm, while pacing breathing or muscle relaxation soothes numbness and sadness.

5. Rating your pain

Rate your pain from 1 to 10. Then ask, “Why is it a 7, not a 10?” Or “When was it even slightly better?” Write down what helped.

Why it helps: Spotting even slight relief builds hope. It reminds you that the pain isn’t constant, and that small moments of relief are real and meaningful.

Even with these tools, there will still be moments that feel unbearable, when the future seems unreachable and dark.

In those moments, remind yourself that you don’t have to move forward now. This simple reminder helped me in the moments I felt completely panicked; when I couldn’t see how I’d survive the next hour, much less the future. Tell yourself: Just survive this moment. Then the next.

Lean on friends, counselors or hotlines like the Disaster Distress Hotline (1-800-985-5990) or the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (988). If deep emotional pain continues to overwhelm you, seek professional help.

With support and care, you’ll begin to adapt to this changed world. Over time, the pain can soften, even if it never fully leaves, and you may find yourself slowly rebuilding a life shaped by grief, love and the courage to keep going.

Liza Barros-Lane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Grief feels unbearable, disorienting and chaotic – a grief researcher and widow shares evidence-based ways to face the early days of loss – https://theconversation.com/grief-feels-unbearable-disorienting-and-chaotic-a-grief-researcher-and-widow-shares-evidence-based-ways-to-face-the-early-days-of-loss-262423

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By David Higgins, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

It’s August, and parents and caregivers are frantically preparing their kids for a new school year by buying supplies, filling out forms and meeting teachers. This year, many parents also face a question that’s more complicated than usual: Should my child get an updated COVID-19 vaccine, and will I even have that choice? For some, that decision may have already been made by chaotic federal policy, just as COVID-19 cases are rising nationwide.

As a pediatrician and researcher who studies vaccine delivery and health policy, I am hearing uncertainty from both parents and health care providers. If that describes you, you are not alone. A poll published Aug. 1, 2025, by the health policy organization KFF found half of parents are unsure whether federal health agencies are recommending COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children this fall.

The process that normally provides clear, consistent recommendations and ensures availability for vaccines before respiratory virus season has been upended, and this year’s COVID-19 vaccine guidance for children is a prime example.

How the process typically works

For over two decades, there was a predictable, well-coordinated process to ensure recommended seasonal vaccines, such as the flu shot, were available for anyone who wanted them by early fall. In recent years, COVID-19 vaccines have been incorporated into this same annual cycle.

Beginning in February, the Food and Drug Administration, including its independent committee of experts, reviewed data and approved the optimal formulation. After FDA approval, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an independent panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reviewed the evidence in public meetings and issued clear recommendations.

Manufacturers then scaled up production; insurers confirmed coverage, which is tied to the advisory committee’s recommendations; and doses were distributed nationwide so vaccines would be available in clinics and pharmacies before the leaves started turning. This usual series of steps ensured that guidance incorporated input from scientists, epidemiologists, public health experts, clinicians, manufacturers, insurers and consumers. It also fostered trust among health care providers and, in turn, provided parents with clarity and confidence when making decisions.

What’s different this year

Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over as secretary of Health and Human Services in February 2025, that usual, tightly choreographed dance has become a chaotic scramble marked by uncertainty and a lack of transparency. Decisions about vaccine guidance have been made through internal channels without the same level of public discussion, review of the evidence or broad stakeholder input.

In May 2025, Kennedy and FDA leadership bypassed the agency’s independent review committee and announced that some COVID-19 vaccines would be approved only for children with high-risk conditions. One formulation has yet to be FDA-approved for children at all. The secretary first announced updated recommendations for children on X, stating COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children. Shortly after, the CDC posted guidelines that differed from that announcement and said healthy children “may” receive them. Meanwhile, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was disbanded by Kennedy and replaced with a smaller, hand-picked panel that operates with less transparency and has yet to weigh in on COVID-19 vaccines for children.

Public messaging has added to the confusion. Statements from newly appointed federal health leaders have questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and the long-standing processes for ensuring their safety. Funding for mRNA technology, which supports several COVID-19 vaccines and is being explored for use against other diseases and even some cancers, has been cut. And many of the claims used to justify these actions have been challenged by experts as inaccurate or misleading.

What this means for parents

For parents, the result is uncertainty about whether their children should be vaccinated, when and where the vaccines will be available, whether insurance will cover them, or whether their choice has effectively been made for them by newly appointed health leaders operating outside the guardrails of the normal vetting process. This uncertainty comes at a time when the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in children is already lower than that of other routine vaccines.

Currently, CDC guidelines say healthy children six months and older “may” receive a COVID-19 vaccine based on shared decision-making with their health care provider. The CDC recommends that children who are moderately or severely immunocompromised receive it. These guidelines differ from FDA approvals and Kennedy’s guidelines announced on X, and they have not been reviewed or voted on in an advisory committee on immunization practices meeting.

Parents can start by talking with their child’s pediatrician about benefits and potential risks, confirming eligibility and checking on insurance coverage. Pediatricians welcome parents’ questions and work tirelessly to provide answers grounded in the best available evidence so families can make truly informed decisions about their child’s health.

In some cases, unfortunately, even if parents want the vaccine and their pediatrician agrees, they may not be able to get it due to any number of factors, including local supply shortages, lack of insurance coverage, policies that prevent administration by pharmacists and other health providers without clear federal guidance, or an unwillingness of providers to give it “off-label,” meaning in a way that differs from the FDA’s official approval. For those parents, their decision has been made for them.

Reducing risks in other ways

Whether or not a child receives an updated COVID-19 vaccine, parents can still take steps to reduce illness, including keeping children home when sick, teaching them cough-and-sneeze hygiene and encouraging frequent hand-washing. The CDC provides national and state data on seasonal respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19, while local public health websites often offer community-level information.

Parents should also remember that the COVID-19 vaccine is not the only thing to consider before school starts. Routine immunizations such as those for measles, mumps and rubella, known as the MMR vaccine; diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, called DTaP; and influenza are essential for keeping kids healthy and in school. These are widely available for now. This is particularly important, as this year the United States has experienced the highest number of measles cases in decades.

Uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, and potentially other vaccines, may worsen in the coming weeks and months. It is possible parents will continue to see shifting guidance, conflicting statements from federal agencies and reduced access to vaccines in their communities.

In this chaotic environment, parents can look to trusted sources such as their pediatrician or organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, which will continue to provide independent, evidence-based vaccine guidance.

David Higgins is affiliated with the American Academy of Pediatrics and Immunize Colorado

– ref. COVID-19 vaccines for kids are mired in uncertainty amid conflicting federal guidance – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-vaccines-for-kids-are-mired-in-uncertainty-amid-conflicting-federal-guidance-262685

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By H. Christopher Frey, Glenn E. Futrell Distinguished University Professor of Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University

The Trump administration’s plan to unravel many of the nation’s climate policies hinges on rescinding what’s known as the endangerment finding. But its strategy for doing that appears to run afoul of several federal laws.

The endangerment finding is a 2009 determination by the Environmental Protection Agency that six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, contribute to climate change and therefore pose a threat to public health and welfare.

The scientific evidence of these threats has gotten stronger in the years since the endangerment finding was made. That evidence is laid out in multiple national and international reports written by hundreds of scientists who reviewed the data and research.

In contrast, the EPA’s proposal to now rescind the endangerment finding is based in part on a new Department of Energy report written by five people, named as the “Climate Working Group.” All five have been outspoken critics of mainstream climate science. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he handpicked the group to write the report.

The group’s report cherry-picks information and misrepresents uncertainties. Some scientists whose studies it cites have complained that the authors misrepresented their research. Others are speaking out about factual problems with the report.

I have served in the federal government and on numerous scientific federal advisory committees, and I’ve seen firsthand the rigorous requirements that federal agencies are supposed to meet so that scientific information they disseminate can be trusted by the public.

The Energy Department and the EPA seem to have run afoul of four laws in particular that may be tricky for the administration to get around.

1. Has the Energy Department produced a credible report?

A casual reader might think the Energy Department climate report is credible.

Its inside cover affirms that it “is being disseminated … in compliance with” the Information Quality Act. The word “disseminated” means that this is a final report and not just a draft.

The Information Quality Act, passed by Congress in 2000, requires “ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.”

This law is the basis for federal guidance on scientific peer review for all agencies. It also requires agencies to provide the public with an opportunity to request corrections in final reports if they were not properly developed or lack balance, accuracy and objectivity. The agency decides whether to grant the request, but there is an appeals process.

Government scientific products considered final also must have previously undergone independent external peer review conducted in an “open and rigorous manner,” according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

One author of the Energy Department’s report stated that the report was reviewed by “eight scientists/administrators employed by the DOE.” However, this does not meet the government’s standards for implementing the law, which requires a public record of review by scientific experts not affiliated with the department that issued the report.

2. Agencies cannot cherry-pick groups to give answers they want

The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, or FACA, addressed concerns that “special interest groups” could “exercise undue influence” in promoting “their private concerns” on “matters in which they have vested interests.”

The law requires a public process for creating and appointing groups to advise the government and requires that the properly appointed group operates in public view and takes public comments along the way.

According to the DOE’s own guidance, “FACA applies when a group is asked to render advice or recommendations as a group and not a collection of individuals.”

Thus, the group chosen to write the department’s report falls within the scope of FACA. The law requires that a committee representing a fair balance of viewpoints be chartered under FACA and that members be appointed only after a public nomination process with public opportunity to comment on the list of candidates.

Once appointed, a balanced group is also required to deliberate in public and receive public comments in formulating their report. That didn’t happen.

3. Federal agencies cannot be arbitrary or inconsistent in rulemaking

The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 requires federal agencies to allow public participation in rulemaking processes and to follow consistent procedures and practices when developing regulations.

The law prohibits actions that are “arbitrary and capricious” – meaning decisions made without justification or regard for facts – or an “abuse of discretion.”

Agencies are expected to examine relevant data. They must not only follow applicable laws, such as FACA, but also must follow procedures established to implement those laws, such as balanced membership of the committee and opportunity for public comment when formulating the report.

4. Science Advisory Board review is also required

The EPA is also subject to the Environmental Research, Development and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978. The act mandated that the EPA must establish a Science Advisory Board. It also requires that agency make available to its Science Advisory Board relevant scientific and technical information on any “proposed criteria document, standard, limitation, or regulation.”

The board must be given time to review the scientific and technical basis of the proposed action – in this case, the disseminated Energy Department report – now that the EPA is using this report to inform its regulatory action.

Under the Information Quality Act, the EPA may not develop a regulation based on a draft report.

The EPA’s Science Advisory Board website lists zero members as of mid-August 2025. On Jan. 28, 2025, the EPA dismissed all of the board’s previous members. Nominations for new board members were due on June 2. At best, it will be months before the EPA can seat a new Science Advisory Board because of time needed to complete the selection, appointment and ethics review processes.

Either the EPA could follow the law and suspend any proposed actions until the Science Advisory Board is available, or accept legal risk for not following the Environmental Research, Development and Demonstration Authorization Act.

What’s next?

These laws exist to protect the public by preventing the federal government from being unduly influenced by narrow interests when disseminating evidence that informs policy decisions. Science-based agencies such as the Energy Department and the EPA have a legal requirement to follow the science.

The public has a chance to comment on the EPA’s proposal to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding and greenhouse gas vehicle standards until Sept. 15, 2025. And although the Energy Department disseminated its report as a final version, the department is accepting public comments on the report through Sept. 2.

For both, the most effective comments are evidence-based and not merely opinion.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, independent nonprofit institutions that advise the government, announced in early August that they will conduct a fast-track review of the science on whether greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare to submit as a public comment.

Because the Energy Department report is presented as final, it is also subject to the “request for correction” process under the Information Quality Act within 60 days of its initial release.

Given the Energy Department report’s legal vulnerabilities, the Trump administration could consider withdrawing the report and starting over with a legally and scientifically valid approach. If these vulnerabilities are not corrected and the EPA rescinds the endangerment finding based on the Energy Department report, years of litigation are likely to slow the administration’s efforts.

Dr. H. Christopher Frey is currently a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State University. He has served on numerous scientific advisory committees, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency FIFRA Scientific Advisory Panel (2004-2006), Science Advisory Board (2012-2018), and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (2008-2015). He was chair of CASAC from 2012 to 2015. He has served on study committees of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He served at EPA from 2021 to 2022 as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science Policy and from 2022 to 2024 as Assistant Administrator for Research and Development and Science Advisor. While in federal service he co-chaired the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Environment.

– ref. 4 laws that could stymie the Trump EPA’s plan to rescind the endangerment finding, central to US climate policies – https://theconversation.com/4-laws-that-could-stymie-the-trump-epas-plan-to-rescind-the-endangerment-finding-central-to-us-climate-policies-262952