The World and Everything in It - May 24, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Too many kids are missing too much school. And it’s having effects that could last a lifetime.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also more apprehensions at the southern border happened last month than at any time in American history. The former chief of U.S. Border Patrol says White House policy is to blame.

Plus taking the Law School Admission Test for fun.

And appreciating typefaces.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, May 24th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden launches Indo-Pacific trade deal » President Biden, addressing reporters in Japan, announced a new trade pact Monday with a dozen countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

BIDEN: The nations represented here today and those who will join the framework in the future are signing up to work toward an economic vision that will deliver for all our people.

The president heard there after meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Joining the United States in the pact are Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and several other nations. The group represents 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

Member countries have yet to work out the details. But the White House said the basic framework will help all members work more closely on big issues like supply chains, digital trade, and clean energy.

Biden administration walks back president’s Taiwan remark » But the Biden administration is walking back something else the president said in Japan on Monday.

At a press conference, Biden answered the following question about how far the United States would go to defend Taiwan against an invasion from mainland China.

REPORTER: Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?
BIDEN: Yes.
REPORTER: You are?
BIDEN: That’s the commitment we made.

He said the U.S. commitment to protect the island is “even stronger” after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. China expressed outrage over the comment. Beijing considers Taiwan to be a rogue Chinese province.

But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin later said:

AUSTIN: Our One China policy has not changed. He reiterated that policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

But he added that under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act the United States is committed to providing Taiwan with the means to defend itself. That agreement does not obligate the U.S. military to step in.

Russian soldier sentenced in war crimes trial » A court in Ukraine sentenced a Russian soldier to life in prison on Monday. That after the 21-year-old pleaded guilty to killing an unarmed civilian in the first war crimes trial since Russia’s invasion began.

The Kremlin has hinted that it may, in turn, put on trial some of the Ukrainian fighters who recently surrendered in Mariupol.

Ukraine says it is probing 13,000 alleged war crimes.

Russian diplomat resigns in protest of war in Ukraine » Meantime, a veteran Russian diplomat resigned Monday over the war.

BONDAREV: It is about my disagreement and disapproval of the current policy by the Russian government.

Boris Bondarev was a diplomat to the United Nations Office in Geneva.

It is a rare public expression of dissent over the war from the ranks of the Russian elite.

Bondarev penned a scathing letter of resignation, stating, “For 20 years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country.”

Pfizer says 3 COVID shots protect children under 5 » Pfizer says three doses of its COVID-19 vaccine offer strong protection for children younger than 5. The company announced the findings of the new data on Monday. It plans to pass along the information to regulators soon.

Dr. William Moss is a vaccine expert with Johns Hopkins. He said the data showed the vaccine to be safe …

MOSS: Induced high levels of antibodies and provided 80 percent protection against symptomatic illness.

But that 80 protection is based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants by the end of April. The study rules state that at least 21 cases are needed to formally determine effectiveness.

Pfizer aims to give tots a dose just one-tenth of the amount that adults receive in a series of three shots. The company said that approach worked well with test subjects from the ages of 6 months to 4 years old.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: skipping school.

Plus, the beauty of type.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 24th of May, 2022.

You’re listening to today’s edition of The World and Everything in It and we’re glad you are! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: chronic absenteeism.

Most students miss a few days of school now and then. But for some kids, skipping class is a regular habit. And pandemic restrictions that kept kids at home only multiplied the problem. One that a return to in-person education hasn’t solved.

WORLD’s Lauren Dunn reports.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Carrie Crow is a mentor coach for Youth Horizons, a Christian mentoring program in the Wichita, Kan., area.

Some of their mentoring partnerships are school-based. And Crow says sometimes mentors show up to school for a scheduled meeting, only to find out the student missed school that day.

CROW: One thing we've tried to do to avoid that is encourage the mentor to call the school just first thing in the morning and say, Hey, is my protege there today?

Crow says at least one-third of the youth her organization serves are at risk for missing school on a regular basis. And experts say the risk factors for absenteeism have only increased in the last two years.

Phyllis Jordan is the associate director of FutureEd, an education think tank at Georgetown University.

JORDAN: COVID has just made a mess of attendance. It was hard to define what attendance was. Was attendance just turning on your computer? Was it turning in your assignment? Was it talking to a teacher? You had chronic absenteeism rates doubling in some communities, tripling in others. And beyond just the number of kids who were missing too much school, they were missing a lot more school.

Federal statistics on chronic absenteeism generally lag by at least two years. But consulting firm McKinsey & Company reported that as many as 22 percent of students may be chronically absent this school year. Before the pandemic, that was only 8 percent.

Robert Balfanz is the founder and director of the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. He says chronic absences add up.

BALFANZ: That's essentially missing a month of school. And you can kind of see how missing a month of school can never really be okay.

Balfanz says it’s not surprising that low school attendance leads to academic struggles. In 2014, one study found that students with higher absentee rates scored 12-18 points lower on tests that make up the Nation’s Report Card.

And Balfanz says this doesn’t just affect high school students.

BALFANZ: And we were able to show that as early as sixth grade, that students that were not able to attend school regularly in sixth grade in high poverty environments, absent effective supports, had very low odds of graduating.

Balfanz says students typically miss school for three main reasons. One, something keeps them out of school. Maybe they have a job or help with younger siblings. Two, students avoid school for a specific reason. Some may struggle with academics, while others are bullied. Lastly, some students simply become disengaged. They don’t feel connected to their school.

Schools used to focus on truancy and often punished students who missed class. But Phyllis Jordan says teachers and administrators have moved toward focusing on the bigger picture of why a student misses school.

JORDAN: A lot of school districts are doing home visits, where they're going and talking to the families and getting a sense of what are the challenges. They’re not going to the families in a negative way, they're going and saying, Hey, what's going on. And they're finding out what is keeping kids from getting to school.

Once schools identify the problem, they can work with families to help find solutions. And sometimes, those solutions aren’t directly related to education. For example, some schools have installed a washing machine for students who need to do laundry. Some send buses out twice, so students who missed the first bus don’t have to miss the entire school day.

But more than anything, Robert Balfanz says students need personal connections.

BALFANZ: There's this body of research called ‘school connectedness,’ which basically says like, right, if you believe there's an adult that cares about you, you have a supportive peer group, you feel you're engaged in what's called a pro social activity, which means something bigger than yourself, you're actually helping others, and you feel welcome for who you are - when all those things are true, attendance is usually much higher and mental health is better and physical health is better.

And that creates a perfect opportunity for community groups, including churches, to partner with local schools.

BALFANZ: You know, in schools that have high chronic absenteeism rates, where lots of kids need those adult relationships, there's often not enough quite adults in the school to make all those relationships, right. I mean, teachers are teaching full loads. So if there's extra adults who can serve as mentors or tutors, that's important to give extra adults providing that supportive connected role to schooling. So I think that's a big role for communities.

In Wichita, Linn Bertog began mentoring through Youth Horizons several years ago, after retiring from teaching elementary grades at a public school. She started mentoring a second grader, who this year just finished her sophomore year of high school.

BERTOG: When I [would] pick her up from school and she would start her homework right in the car as we're driving somewhere, so I kept a pencil in my glove compartment for her while she's doing some kind of homework and we're talking about something. And it's still there. But we really don't do much homework, but I do encourage her because she doesn't always get it done and she knows as a teacher, my biggest pet thing that drove me crazy is kids not turning in homework.

These days, Bertog focuses less on monitoring her mentee’s homework and more on supporting and encouraging her through the challenges of growing up—and the occasional bigger school project.

Carrie Crow says that kind of investment can have a life-long payoff.

CROW: Even an hour a week can go a long ways, you know, for a child.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the record surge on the U.S. southern border.

In April, US border officials recorded more than 200-thousand apprehensions. That’s not happened in over two decades, and it’s the most recorded for a single month in U.S. history.

NICK EICHER, HOST: In that same month, authorities released into the country more than 100,000 border crossers.

That is drawing sharp criticism from many current and former border officials, including Mark Morgan, who is on the line now.

He is a former chief of the border patrol. And served as Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from July 2019, until the Biden administration came into office.

REICHARD: Mark, good morning!

MARK MORGAN, GUEST: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Mark, in your view, what policy changes by the Biden administration made the biggest difference last year as it pertains to the southern border?

MORGAN: Well, it’d actually be easier to say which ones haven't they touched. The only one, the vast network of tools, authorities, and policies we had to effectively secure the border and reduce the flow of illegal immigration, there was only one policy that remained and that was Title 42, of which they've been trying to even stop that. But one of the largest policies of that vast network was the Remain in Mexico program. It was the most single handedly effective tool authority that we have. By February of 2020, we had reduced the flow of illegal immigration by over 75%, which allowed us to more effectively secure the border. And I've said this many times, this administration inherited the most secure border in our lifetime, and they have virtually destroyed it and handed it over to the cartels.

REICHARD: We hear about Title 42, that has to do with communicable diseases, and the effect that Title 42 is having on border crossings. The Biden administration had planned to halt Title 42 this week, but a federal judge blocked that and ruled Title 42 must remain in place for now. The administration is appealing that decision. Mark, describe more specifically what Title 42 is and what difference it’s made.

MORGAN: Well, it’s just as you described. It’s a public health policy, it's not an immigration policy. And the design behind that was to further reduce the introduction of COVID-19 into the United States. And here's where some people get confused. Look, this country has been doing what we've asked, right? We've been tested, we've been vaccinated, we've been boosted, we've worn a mask, the list goes on and on. In the United States, we're almost there where we can get COVID-19 in the rearview mirror. You can't say the same for over 160 countries of which we have apprehended illegal aliens on our Southwest border. Many countries do not have adequate testing availability or vaccine availability. Haiti, for example, has less than 1% of its population that are fully vaccinated. So at a time the United States is just almost there with COVID-19 behind us, this administration wants to open up Title 42 and open up our borders to. When it goes away, a family of four or five can tell the agents “Hurry up and process me. Oh, by the way, give me a free plane ticket to anywhere I want to go. Wait, hold on, before we go, our entire family has COVID.” The agents will say, “No problem. Come on in.” What planet does that make sense?

REICHARD: We have seen efforts by the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona to curb illegal immigration. What are they doing and what can those states accomplish without cooperation from the White House?

MORGAN: Yeah, those are very good questions and I’ll give an example. So there's multiple states that can and have been through their attorney generals filing lawsuits pushing back against this administration that are doing well. As you just mentioned, Title 42 was one. It was led by Louisiana, Arizona, and Missouri—as well as 21 other states and they won. And what was really important about that, just like the Remain in Mexico, is you have interior states that are participating, because like we said, for a very long time, what happens at our Southwest border doesn't stay there. It makes its way to every town, city and state. It’s why we say every state is a border state. Drugs is just one example of many of the threats that do not stay on the southwest border, and they make their way to every state. But also look, they are limited. Now U.S. v. Arizona—an old Supreme Court, United States Supreme Court case—says that states cannot enforce federal law, federal immigration law. So even though the state of Texas, for example, through Operation Lonestar has put about 10,000 National Guard and Texas troopers down there, and they're filling a void left by this administration, it's still not enough because at the end of the day, there's only so much they can do because they cannot enforce federal immigration law.

REICHARD: Mark, I think one of the most heartbreaking elements of the border debate is the human cost. From your experience, talk a little bit about the dangers to migrants, the things that they endure, the risks they take to get to the border and to cross it and the victimization of migrants there. What have you seen?

MORGAN: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that because this is something we do not talk enough about. And specifically this administration won't, by design. The most inhumane thing that this country can do is have the current open border policies for the migrants themselves. When you say our borders are open, when you do not enforce immigration law, you are sending a calling card to every country in this world, “Now's the time to give your finances to the cartels, risk your life, because if you get to our border, you will be released into the country and you will never be deported even though you remain here illegally.” No wonder, as you said, last month 234,000. The highest on record. The reality is more dead migrants have been found along our Southwest border under this administration than ever before. More women are being sexually abused and raped on the journey up here. The cost of human trafficking has skyrocketed because of this administration's open border policies. I could go on and on forever, but you're never going to hear these stats or this discussion from this administration.

REICHARD: Mark Morgan is a Visiting Fellow with the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Mark, thanks so much!

MORGAN: You bet. Thank you for having me.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The name Jonathan Searle may not ring a bell, but chances are, you’ve seen him before.

Searle is the incoming police chief in the community of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

AUDIO: He made me do it! He told me to do it! There are two kids with a cardboard fin!

That’s him nearly 50 years ago, a bit part in the 1974 blockbuster film Jaws filmed right there in Oak Bluffs.

So this seems like a case of life imitating art, Searle now as chief of police, though it’s unlikely he’ll be hunting any killer sharks.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, May 24th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: law school.

I’ve heard it this way and I’ve got a confirmation from a kid who went through it: Year one: scare you to death. Year two: work you to death. Year three: bore you to death.

REICHARD: Ah, so it’s not changed much.

EICHER: So it seems fitting that right before year one—and all that sheer terror—is the even more terrible LSAT, the law school admissions test. 

REICHARD: Oh, yeah, lots of prep, lots of anxiety, but I guess it’s different for everybody. LSAT’s creators call it an integral part of law school admission to test the skills you need for success in that first year of law school.

EICHER: Success in handling the terror. 

Not something you do just for fun. Except for three guys who did. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has our story.

BEN: We did decide that we would do a reveal all together at the same time.

JOSH: Since we decided on doing the test the same time.

BEN: Yeah, in this room...

JOSH: Like we're gonna take the LSAT together. And at the time, I felt very smart.

BEN: We had fewer gray hairs.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: It’s a Thursday evening in upstate New York. These three guys have been friends since they were little kids: Ben Hull, Josh McGrath, and Jamie Sinclair. They all took the LSAT together a few weeks ago. This is the score reveal party held in Ben’s living room.

JOSH: Woo!

BEN: Don't turn it over. Alright, so we all have our scores.

JOSH: I’m so nervous!

JAMIE: I’m pretty nervous.

The thing about all three of these guys? None of them are lawyers and they don’t have any plans to go to law school. Not serious plans, anyway. They’re all in their 30s with their own careers. When they started this LSAT escapade, Ben Hull was overseeing the cancer wing at the regional hospital. Josh McGrath was running a nonprofit for parents facing unexpected pregnancies. And Jamie Sinclair was pastoring a church. So, why are they taking the LSAT?

BEN: Some people get those little like, you know, logic game apps on their phone just to kill time. We, for the same benefit, we are taking the LSAT.

The LSAT is graded on a scale of 120 to 180. If you want to get into Harvard, you better hope for at least a 170. A score in the 160s puts you in the 80th percentile, and is usually enough to get you into a solid mid-tier law school.

JOSH: I would like to say that Reese Witherspoon's experience with Legally Blonde is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.

The guys set up group practice tests and worked out individual study plans. Josh says he started with the best of intentions.

JOSH: In fact, the very first like, three-ish weeks I was studying, I don't know, seven hours a week. Wow. Yeah. And then life got busy. And I was like, I'll get to it. And then life got busy and I was like I’ll get to it…

The LSAT isn’t knowledge-based. It doesn’t ask you to quote case law, or define aggregatio menium. Instead, it’s all about reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and conditional logic. The LSAT tests how well you think. Or rather how quickly you think.

JAMIE: The pacing with the LSAT is unlike any other exam I have ever taken. You're working on a problem set that you are confident you could get 98% correct, if given several hours, but you have 35 minutes.

A chunk of the test is logic games. You have a set of variables and a set of rules and you have to arrange them in the right order. It's like a riddle.

BEN: L, F, G, K, M, J - the only thing that’s not placed is H.

JAMIE: And H has to be two or more from M.

BEN: H must be third.

JAMIE: It can be second.

BEN: Has to be third.

JAMIE: It could be second.

BEN: No.

JAMIE: Why not? How's it have to be third?

The test is also sneaky. The questions could be phrased in a straightforward way. But instead…

JOSH: It wants you to fail and they're like, Okay, how can we bury the question and the answer in all these other vocabulary variables, parallel reasoning things so that you're like, wait, what is that even asking?

JAMIE: And really is it's like mind bending, and it's frustrating.

Preparing for the LSAT is less about studying and more about practicing how to think. How to spot patterns, assess arguments, and pinpoint the crux of an issue - all useful skills, even if you’re not a lawyer. So the guys would get together every couple of weeks to take practice tests.

JAMIE: What was y’all's analytical?

BEN: Eight.

JOSH AND JAMIE: Oh! Bro!

JAMIE: Fortunately you did better than me on the reading comprehension.

After months of study and practice, test day finally rolls around. The three guys take it remotely because of COVID policies. They each log into an online portal and turn on their computer cameras so a proctor can monitor them and make sure they aren’t cheating.

Then, the moment of truth.

BEN: We decided to reveal our scores Academy Award style. Count us down.

JAMIE: I’ve never done something like this.

JOSH: Neither have I. I’m not prepared emotionally.

JAMIE: Do we say something?

BEN: Yahtzee. [laughter]

They count down: three, two, one.

JOSH: Wow. Oooh. That is interesting. I'm right where I predicted. 152.

BEN: Dude, way to go Josh.

Ben clocks in at 165, and Jamie nabs a 168.

BEN: You would be 25th percentile at top 10 law schools, easy.

They have cupcakes to celebrate.

They’re all a little relieved to be done with it.

JAMIE: It is a mentally exhausting process to even study for like half an hour, at least for me.

JOSH: I'm definitely not as smart as I thought I was.

JAMIE: It's a humbling test.

In the months since they took the LSAT, Josh and Ben have put away the books. Josh is doing pro-life consulting. Ben got into local politics and now is running for the county legislature.

Jamie is still a pastor…

JAMIE: I don't envision myself ever practicing law. It's a bit tedious and boring, actually.

…but that doesn’t mean he’s done studying.

JAMIE: But thinking about principles that undergird healthy society and thinking precisely and thinking well, these have always been interesting to me.

The LSAT re-sparked his desire to understand the legal world. He’s now in his third trimester at the Syracuse University College of Law.

JAMIE: So have you thought about taking the LSAT? Have we inspired you?

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown in Potsdam, New York.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s WORLD commentator Steve West to help hone our appreciation for the little things in life, like, the typeface.

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: After reading less than one paragraph of Simon Garfield's 2012 book, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, I can't stop noticing the shape and look of the typefaces all around me. The red, bold, all caps of the NO WAKE sign that I paddled wearily by today in a kayak, against the tide and wind. And the artistic flourish on the face of a Hobie paddle-board that a bearded, mature surfer shows us later. He’s explaining to us the difference between the boards.

I'm too old for this, I type, in Geriatric font.

At the law office where I used to work I was surrounded by a stodgy Courier New font. I assume someone believes it’s a dignified medium for legal documents, having gravity. A serious font for serious matters. In fact, the relatively serious Times New Roman font showed up in the waiver of liability I recently signed. The one in which I agreed I would not hold the sun-bleached surfer who called me “dude” liable if I killed myself as I am propelled through the waterway - on my kayak.

Just once, I'd like to file a legal document in something more playful, like Chalkduster or Felt Marker. But that would probably get me an invitation to the judge’s chambers for a tongue-lashing.

Fonts convey moods and are often selected to help sell us something, convey excitement, mark a brand, and include you in the tribe. Or as in the case of legal documents, invite sober consideration. But these messages are often subconscious. We’re not often aware of how they affect us. It's not devious. Not usually anyway. But it’s often purposeful.

And that word “Hobie” on the paddle-board? Well, the over-the-top excitement conveyed by that surfboard font made me want to think I could get 'amped' and 'ride the curl.' Do I have that right, surfers? But then, as I look over the surf shop employees, I think, probably not.

Being aware of type is just a part of being attentive to the world, of living life with eyes wide open. Simon Garfield’s previous books about letter-writing, cartography, and stamp collecting are just as fascinating and eye-opening, a mind-expanding experience. We can’t live in such a state of high alert that we are constantly aware of the richness of either natural, built, or cultural environment around us. Such manic attentiveness would literally drive us crazy. But we can cultivate a better love of Creation, of a rich and varied world. God’s world. Type is just one of those parts of life that can better enrich us if we notice and understand its effect on us.

Maybe, say the words on the surfboard, you could do it, with a little practice. Maybe on a steady longboard, just maybe, you too could surf.

If God so loved the world. Well, then so should we. Even as tiny a thing as type. A word on a page. A letter. The dot on an “i.” All of it.

I’m Steve West.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Washington Wednesday and World Tour.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

By now, you no doubt know that May is our new-donor drive. Every longtime listener who becomes a first-time donor is a major encouragement and so if you’ve given this month, thank you. If you’re still thinking it over, I do hope you’ll join the ranks. Please visit WNG.org/newdonor!

The Bible says: For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear [the Lord]. (Psalm 103:11-12 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.