The World and Everything in It: November 11, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Religious liberty disputes continue in our public schools, we have an update on that and other cases.

Also today, expanding biometric data collection. What’s being done to prevent abuse?

BROWN: Our privacy laws are first and foremost for protection of US citizens.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Later: an airport nuisance becomes a fruitful mission:

REPASKY: When we started the program we actually became, at one point, the largest apiary program entirely on an airport property.

And a reminder that the joy of learning may not always be so enjoyable. Commentary from Maria Baer.

REICHARD: It’s Veteran’s Day, November 11th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Government shutdown latest » Speaker Mike Johnson said the House will be ready to move quickly on a vote to reopen the government.

With the House in recess, he’s urging members to get a head start and begin returning to Washington now.

JOHNSON:  At the very moment that they do that final vote, I will call all house members to return to Washington as quickly as possible. We'll give a 36 hour formal and official notice so that we can vote as soon as possible.

That comes after the Senate took a massive step toward ending the government shutdown Sunday night. Up till then, nearly all Senate Democrats said they would not agree to reopen the government until Republicans agreed to extend Obamacare tax credits.

But eight senators crossed the aisle to break a filibuster and move forward with a stopgap funding package.

Angus King was among them technically not a Democrat, but the independent caucuses with the party. He explained:

KING:  The question was, does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits? Our judgment was that it, it will not, it would not produce that result.

Those eight senators settled for a guarantee that the Senate will take up the matter and vote on it next month.

Air traffic controllers » The record shutdown is nearly six weeks old now, and all the while, air traffic controllers have been among those asked to work without paychecks—for now.

And President Trump says he’s looking at possible $10,000 bonuses for those controllers who didn’t call out sick.

When asked where the money would come from, he responded:

TRUMP:  I don't know. I'll get it from someplace. I'll get it from, I always get the money from someplace regardless. It doesn't matter. We did a lot of, I do a lot of bonuses with people because it's really something that, it's like the American way when you think about it.

Thousands of flights have been cancelled each day for the last several days, with thousands more delayed.

That followed the FAA’s order to reduce the number of flights to ensure safety due to staffing shortages in air traffic control towers—tied to the government shutdown.

SCOTUS won't hear same-sex marriage case » The Supreme Court has rejected a new challenge to its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The justices on Monday declined to hear an appeal from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis without giving any explanation.

Davis made headlines in 20-15 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.

She was jailed for five days and later ordered to pay $100,000 in damages to one couple.

In her latest petition, Davis asked the court to overturn the judgment against her, refund roughly $260,000 in legal fees, and revisit the Obergefell decision itself.

While many conservatives have urged the justices to reconsider that precedent the high court’s refusal leaves the 2015 ruling firmly in place—for now.

For WORLD News, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Kushner Israel talks, former hostage speaks out » President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, serving as an unofficial special envoy, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel Monday.

Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said they discussed phase one of Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas.

BEDROSIAN: Which we are currently still in to bring our remaining hostages and the future of phase two of this plan, which includes the disarming of Hamas, demilitarising Gaza, and ensuring Hamas will have no role in the future of Gaza ever again.

Meantime, along the country’s northern border with Lebanon:

SOUND: [Israeli tanks]

Israeli tanks were once again on the move.

Israel is pushing Lebanon's army to be more aggressive in disarming the Hezbollah terror group inside its borders.

FDA menopause treatment » The Food and Drug Administration says it will remove a long-standing warning from hormone-based drugs used to treat menopause symptoms in women.

For more than 20 years, the drugs have carried the FDA’s most severe warning label.

But FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and some other doctors have long criticized the current warning as outdated and unnecessary. Makary said not only are such treatments generally not harmful:

MAKARY:  By a large body of evidence, there are now recognized to be profound long-term health benefits that few people, even physicians know about.

There are some experts, however, that maintain that the warning carries important information about actual risks.

Shots fired at federal agents in Chicago » A man is in custody after opening fire on Border Patrol agents in Chicago over the weekend.

Officials say the suspect—reportedly a Mexican national pulled up in a black Jeep in the city’s Little Village neighborhood and fired several shots before speeding away. No one was hurt.

Investigators recovered shell casings and surveillance video from the scene.

CBP Chief Patrol Agent Greg Bovino called out Illinois’ governor and Chicago’s mayor following the arrest.

BOVINO: This individual should have never been walking the streets of Chicago. This is what you get with a JB Pritzker or a Mayor Johnson. And that crazy rhetoric—this individual should not have been in this country.

He said the suspect is an illegal alien that had a prior felony conviction for firearms.

The Department of Homeland Security says four federal vehicles were also rammed during weekend operations and warns that attacks on ICE and Border Patrol agents are up more than 1,000 percent since January.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a conversation with WORLD’s Steve West about a handful of religious liberty cases. Plus, how the Pittsburgh airport took care of a recurring pesky flight delay.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 11th of November.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Up first, legal disputes over religious liberty, parental rights, and gender identity.

Joining us now is Steve West, an attorney who writes about religious liberty issues for WORLD.

REICHARD: Steve, good morning.

STEVE WEST: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: Let’s begin in Chicago…where the Moody Bible Institute is suing the Chicago Board of Education because the school district won’t let Moody students participate in its student-teacher program. It’s a big deal because that program gives future teachers classroom experience and Illinois requires completion of the program to get certified to teach. What’s going on there?

WEST: The Board excluded Moody and its nearly 2300 students because the school follows Biblical beliefs on human sexuality and marriage. And that’s at odds with Chicago Public School policy prohibiting what they call “discrimination” based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Moody says hiring people aligned with its religious beliefs is essential to forming its faith community and to advance its ministerial mission–-in other words, to be able to live out the community’s Christian faith. And it points out that the school system already struggles to fill hundreds of teaching positions each year.

REICHARD: Hasn’t the Supreme Court already addressed this? I’m thinking cases like Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, Carson, …decisions that said government cannot exclude faith-based organizations in things like tuition assistance and playground grants. Why isn’t this resolved by now?

WEST: It should be solved by now. But there are holdouts who can’t quite accommodate themselves to the fact that what they call nondiscrimination is really religious discrimination. The principle from those Supreme Court cases is common-sense and fair: If you are going to offer a governmental benefit, you can’t exclude some individuals or organizations simply because they have religious beliefs you don’t agree with. Because the Chicago public school system is one of the largest in the country, what happens here will impact smaller school districts around the country.

REICHARD: Moving now to California with another public school story…two Christian middle-school teachers sued over California’s secretive gender transition policies. It’s now a class action lawsuit. Remind us of the details?

WEST: It’s really about secrecy vs. transparency. And it’s not a new story but one that’s popped up all over the country. The lawsuit challenges a California school district policy that requires teachers to use new names or pronouns for students engaging in a "social transition." But teachers can’t tell parents about this transition unless the student permits it. Instead, they’re instructed to conceal the transition if parents ask, and to merely say that the “inquiry is outside of the scope of the intent of their interaction.” Who talks like that, anyway?

REICHARD: As I recall, the two teachers sought religious accommodation and the school did allow them to call students by name instead of chosen pronouns during the school day. But they still couldn’t tell parents the truth. So this is a fight over the authority of parents versus the autonomy of the school district. What’s next for this case?

WEST: There’s a hearing on the teachers’ motion for summary judgment on November 17. If the judge grants that motion—and there’s a good chance he will since he’s already ruled once in their favor—that could end the case. And that would impact over 5 million students and 300,000 California public school teachers. Nevertheless, it’s an issue that likely won’t go away until the Supreme Court takes a case involving the issue. In the last year it has twice declined to rule on cases that brought up the issue, with Justice Samuel Alito calling it an issue of “great and growing national importance.” But others are percolating.

REICHARD: One more story to touch on this morning…different from the other two. Jews and Christians in the San Diego area have sued an anti-Semitic group that’s disrupted worship services. Why has this story caught your attention?

WEST: One thing is the visceral reaction any of us would have to what occurred here. These weren’t just people protesting against the church and against the Jewish and Christian interfaith group filing the lawsuit. They entered worship services, shouted obscenities we can't repeat here, refused to leave, and blocked exits. One woman attempting to leave the scene in her car was accosted by a man who jumped on the hood of her car and beat on her windshield.

REICHARD: Sounds like a matter for the police.

WEST: It is. But what’s also interesting is that a claim is also brought under a federal law known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act—the FACE Act. As you might gather from the title, it’s historically been used to prosecute pro-life advocates accused of blocking abortion center entrances and intimidating women and employees who seek to enter. But it also bars the same kind of intimidation, harassment, or blocking of entrances at places of worship. I don’t think most people know that—in fact, before this case, I had not recalled that—so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

REICHARD: To learn more about each of these stories or to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Liberties visit W-N-G dot O-R-G. Steve, always good to have you on. Thank you!

WEST: Thank you, Mary.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Biometrics and borders.

Europe is launching a new security system that scans faces and fingerprints from non-citizens at all of its border crossings.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  The U.S. is close to completing a similar program. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it’s finalizing its biometric exit program, in the works for nearly 25 years.

Why are governments updating their systems now, and do travelers have a reason to worry about how their data is used? WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: On October 12th, the first EU airports started using their new biometric data collection kiosks.

EU COUNCIL: New rules are coming for non-EU citizens traveling to the EU.

The EU Council shared this informational video on Instagram.

EU COUNCIL: It replaces the old passport stamping with a fast and safe digital check-in. The new system will help police and border guards track who comes in and out of the Schengen area and spot overstays.

The Schengen area includes most European countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, and allows passport-free travel within the zone.

The kiosks collect a traveler’s photo and fingerprints and ask a few questions, border agents still stamp passports for now, but the government is planning on phasing that out by April.

The EU has been working towards implementing this system since 2017, when the bloc recorded the most terrorist attacks in the last 15 years. About half of those arrested on suspicion of planning an attack were non-citizens.

VAUGHAN: The governments of Europe very much want to bring their system into the 21st Century.

Jessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

VAUGHAN: There have been too many bad actors who have been able to exploit weak immigration controls and carry out terrorist attacks, organized crime, or even simply abuse immigration laws.

The EU is not the only one leveraging the technology. The U.S. started collecting biometric data upon entry after 9/11, and last month, the Department of Homeland Security issued an order to implement exit tracking at every crossing by December 26.

Now, as a traveler boards an airplane out of the U.S. or approaches a land border, they’ll find a camera or a border agent taking photos of every person leaving the country. Citizens’ data is supposed to be deleted within 12 hours.

Vaughan says the biometric data collection changes are happening now because the technology has progressed.

But critics say these systems don’t do enough to protect non-citizens' privacy.

NIOVI VAVOULA: This system essentially entails mass surveillance of huge numbers of travelers.

Niovi Vavoula is an associate professor of cybersecurity at the University of Luxembourg.

What governments do with the data varies. The EU says it will hold it in a central database for three years, five years if a traveler overstays their visa.

VAVOULA: Overall, there are reasons to believe that there are risks to data protection, because the data can be used for various purposes, not only for immigration purposes, but also for law enforcement and police authorities or even intelligence services may have access to the data.

Vavoula worries that law-abiding travelers or asylum seekers are being surveilled without due cause.

The system and rules are similar to the biometric border regulations that the U.S. and Australia have had in place for years, with one big exception: the U.S. keeps non-citizens' data for much longer, up to 75 years.

BROWN: We don't always know if somebody's a person of concern when they enter the United States, and we may find out information later.

Theresa Brown is a senior advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and was the Director of Immigration Policy at the US Chamber of Commerce from 2001 to 2005.

THERESA BROWN: Our privacy laws are first and foremost for protection of U.S. citizens' privacy data.

In contrast, Europe’s privacy protections extend to non-citizens, though they’re not as strong.

GIANCLAUDIO MALGIERI: Europe starts from forbidden unless justified, while the U.S. starts from allowed unless restricted.

Gianclaudio Malgieri is an associate professor of law and technology at Leiden University. He says the difference in values is especially apparent in the private sector.

MALGIERI: The protection in the U.S. is a bit of a patchwork. I would say that the most advanced protection is the Illinois BIPA, which is the toughest law, but applies just to Illinois.

The Biometric Information Privacy Act, requires companies to gain consent before collecting or storing biometric data. Some other states, like California and Texas, have similar laws, but as of March, only 13 states have proposed or implemented privacy protections.

And this leaves the door open for abuse.

For example, within the past five years, Meta has settled lawsuits in Texas and Illinois over their use of biometric data—costing the company more than $2 billion dollars combined. The lawsuits allege that Meta didn’t get consent to collect users’ data for a now-discontinued feature that used AI to find photos a user might be in.

The Texas suit claimed that Meta then sold that biometric data to third parties and didn’t destroy it within a “reasonable time.”

Malgieri says biometric data in the hands of an unconstrained government could be worse than data going to a third party company.

MALGIERI: The general problem with biometrics is that we don't we usually don't choose our biometrics. We cannot change them. They follow us everywhere.

If your data is connected to something the government deems a concern, it would be hard to correct the issue.

Malgieri says that this should add an extra layer of pressure on governments and companies to use that data properly and keep it secure.

Cybersecurity professor Niovi Vavoula says she’s going to be watching the EU rollout over the next few months. She wants to see exactly how the EU’s plans to balance privacy and security take shape in actuality.

NIOVI VAVOULA: We will have to wait and see how it plays out in terms of data, in terms of how individuals interact with the system, and what problems they may have in the future in entering and exiting.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next, the deal to end the government shutdown.

Eight Democrats joined Republicans to back a bipartisan plan to fund the government through the end of January. Sixty senators voted to move the deal forward, breaking a Democratic filibuster, and sending it to the House and ultimately the president for approval.

NICK EICHER, HOST: From WORLD’s Washington Bureau, Carolina Lumetta reports.

SPEHAR :They say ‘oh, it’s red versus blue.’ It’s not. It’s blue versus blue right now…

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Within hours of Senate Democrats agreeing to a deal to fund the government, media personalities like “Under the Desk News” took to social media to call them out.

SPEHAR: The Democrats who made a 40-day shutdown completely: Durbin, Rosen, Cortez Masto, King, Kaine, Fetterman, Shaheen, and Hassan…

The test vote on Sunday night was over a similar deal that Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered last month. It includes a new continuing resolution to fund the government through January, hold a future vote on enhanced healthcare subsidies, and guarantee back pay for furloughed federal employees. But no new concessions for Democrats.

Kate DeGruyter, a senior communications director with the centrist think tank Third Way, says the deal falls short of what Democrats have been demanding.

DEGRUYTER: The outcome that Democrats were seeking was: we need to have something tangible for the American people about how we are going to help address skyrocketing health care costs. And right now, this deal doesn't deliver anything on that priority.

Since the start of the shutdown, Senate Democrats said they would hold the line until they get an extension of the expiring subsidies. But now some within the party have backtracked. That’s not a winning play for others in the caucus, including Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin:

BALDWIN: I believe strongly that we need to both reopen the government and lower healthcare costs simultaneously. And my concern is even if we do get 60 votes in the Senate on a vote in December, that we have no guarantee that the House will take up such a freestanding measure.

Baldwin also opposes the CR extension. She says with open enrollment already in motion, many Americans could drop insurance coverage well before the issue is resolved in Congress.

Meanwhile, members of the House are rushing back to Washington.

JOHNSON: To all my colleagues uh Republicans and Democrats in the House. You you need to begin right now returning to the Hill. We have to do this as quickly as possible.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says the chamber could start considering the funding deal as early as Wednesday. Once the Rules Committee checks it out, the bill will need 218 votes to pass.

Even if Democrats delay, the deal is all but guaranteed to land on President Trump’s desk soon. Meaning the Democrats could leave the historically long government shutdown with nothing. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet reckoned with this on the Senate floor yesterday.

BENNET: Apparently, President Trump is going to get his way, and those tax credits are not going to be extended by the majority here.

Once the CR passes, Congress will have just over two months to pass nine more appropriations bills. Or else, another shutdown awaits in February.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in Washington.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Messages in a bottle from World War I have turned up on a beach in western Australia!

Inside were two notes written in pencil from 19-16 by Australian soldiers headed for Europe.

Deb Brown’s family found the bottle. Sound from ABC Australia:

BROWN: And this poor darling had gone off not knowing what he was about to face, and he seemed quite chipper in the letter.

Private Malcom Neville would die on the front a year later. Surviving the war was shipmate William Harley, who also added a note.

The finder of these messages in a bottle tracked down their descendants. Harley’s granddaughter Ann Turner:

BROWN: We just can’t believe it. It really does feel like a miracle…like our grandfather has reached out to us.

A simple message in a bottle, delivered more than a century later.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 11th.

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: a sweet solution to a sticky problem.

Flights at airports get delayed for a lot of reasons, weather, technical problems, and sometimes very small problems.

REICHARD: Turns out, honeybees can cause delays. It happens when a hive lands on a jet and won’t leave. That’s where pest control usually comes in.

But an airport in Pennsylvania came up with a clever way to prevent these bee swarms on planes in the first place. WORLD’s Emma Eicher reports.

AUDIO: [Sound of starting up the smoker, blast of flame from the blowtorch]

EMMA EICHER: Steve Repasky holds a metal can with smoke billowing out of it.

REPASKY: Starting up the smoker here …

The air smells like toasted pine shavings.

REPASKY: This is our safety harness when we go into the bees. So when you disturb bees, they can release an alarm pheromone, which can cause them to get a little aggravated. The smoke actually masks the alarm pheromone, so that when we do open up a colony, it just calms them down.

Repasky zips us both into thick jackets, with netting around the face. He’s been a beekeeper since he was 4 years old, helping his dad tend their own hives at home.

EICHER: How often have you been stung?

REPASKY: Not as often as I get asked that question.

At the Pittsburgh International Airport, there are airplanes and acres of tarmac.

There are also millions of honeybees buzzing around fields of goldenrod and butterfly weed.

The airport owns 8800 acres and Repasky is allowed to use 6000 of them for his apiaries. He also calls them “beeyards”—the more colloquial beekeeper term.

REPASKY: Every mile, mile and a half, there's a bee yard somewhere, and they're tucked back in like you wouldn't see them. All these other yards are kind of kept out of sight, out of mind, doing what they do best, which is producing nectar and honey.

It all began in 2012, when a swarm of honeybees landed on a Delta jet, causing a flight delay.

A “swarm” begins when a queen bee leaves the hive to start a new colony and about half the bees follow her. Sometimes, the bees land when they’re tired. Then they cluster around the queen until scout bees find a new place to build a hive.

The Pittsburgh airport used to get about a dozen swarms a year. And that’s where Repasky comes in.

REPASKY: I was called in to remove the bees and relocate them. And over the next several years, we were catching swarms here and there, and I started inquiring about keeping bees on the property, and here we are.

According to him, the solution to the bee swarm problem was simply to lean into it.

REPASKY: We have fewer swarms on the airfield now than we did prior to bees getting here. And you think it would be the opposite, where there's more bees on the outside, so you can get more swarms, but because we manage these colonies better, you're not getting those swarms on the airfield.

Nowadays, the airport only gets one or two swarms a year.

In 2015, Pittsburgh was the first city to start keeping bees on airport property to prevent swarms. At least four other major cities have followed suit: Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and St. Louis.

REPASKY: When we started the program, at one point, we were the largest apiary program entirely on an airport property.

But it’s a tricky undertaking. The job is mostly about just trying to keep the bees alive and that’s pretty difficult.

REPASKY: I mean, you know, typically, we lose anywhere from 10 to 40% of our colonies. We're dealing with mother nature, and you could only, you can only predict or do so much.

Every day is a challenge—mostly with what Repasky calls the four Ps: pesticides, poor nutrition, pathogens, and pests. Honeybees are vulnerable to all of them.

Fortunately, the airport property is a safe haven with limited pesticide use and plenty of pollen from wildflowers.

But even the best environment doesn’t guarantee success.

REPASKY: Biggest challenge is just Mother Nature. You know, we're fortunate out here. We have the space. The biggest thing is, year to year, what Mother Nature is going to bring.

When he’s not tending the hives, Repasky works at his own pest control company for stinging insects.

REPASKY: Part of the agreement was, if you allow me to keep bees here on the property, my services are available to the airport, that when they do get swarms, I just come out and take care of them.

For a part-time job, it keeps him busy with 150 colonies to look after. In this particular beeyard overlooking the runway, there are at least 40 hives in wooden boxes.

Repasky opens a box to peer inside. The bees seem curious, buzzing around us to get a good look.

REPASKY: Okay, let me smoke ‘em and see if that gets in. [Bees buzzing]

The sticky combs in the middle of the hive are packed with honey. But the outer cells are bare. The weather has a lot to do with how much honey a hive makes. And honey production is also a foreshadowing for winter food stores.

A dry hive is a dead hive.

REPASKY: In a good year, we might harvest anywhere between two and three tons of honey out here. This year, not so much because it's been a dry year.

That’s the hard part about working in agriculture. It’s unpredictable.

EICHER: Why do you like beekeeping so much?

REPASKY: Who said I like it? [laughing] Keeping honey bees is kind of like playing a game that you'll never win, right? So there's so many different levels, and every time you think you beat a level or find a shortcut, the bees kind of put you in your place and say, Yeah, nope, try again.

And the advice he gives to amateur beekeepers applies to his job too.

REPASKY: What we tell people is, your bees are going to die. They're gonna die the first year. They're gonna die the second year, they might even die the third, fourth and fifth year. But that's part of it, right?

But Repasky says God sustains his work. For him, he’s just glad to do his share, caring for a small part of creation.

REPASKY: We're just happy to provide a place for the bees to live, and we're happy that the airport allows us to have that place. I think it was Aristotle that said that in all things of nature, there's something of the marvelous.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Pittsburgh.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 11th. 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. Finally today, WORLD Opinions contributor Maria Baer says Harvard’s undergraduate grade inflation defeats the purpose of education.

MARIA BAER: A couple years ago, my second-grade daughter left me a note. She’d drawn two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, with angry eyebrows—a reverse smiley face—and these words, with no punctuation:

“I do not like what is happening”

As many parents often must, I had to stifle a burst of laughter. It was such an earnest, understated description of a universal human experience. I wasn’t even sure what it was referring to. But I eventually traced it back in time to violin practice.

Both my daughters have been studying the violin since they were five years old, respectively. It takes a long time to see progress, which makes motivating very young ones to practice even more difficult.

But that is one of the primary reasons I want my girls to learn it. I’m starting to think that even more than playing the violin itself, this skill—building a will to master an unforgiving challenge—is going to distinguish them from their peers more and more as they grow.

Consider, for example, a new report out of Harvard University. Grade inflation there has reached an absurd fever pitch: a full 60% of marks given to Harvard undergraduates are now A’s. Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education writes: “Our grading no longer performs its primary functions and is undermining our academic mission.” Harvard, in other words, has officially entered its Participation Trophy era.

In response, students at the Harvard Crimson published what can only be comprehended as unintentional self-parody. A freshman named Sophie reported her very soul was “crushed”—not by the implication that her grades, and by extension her entire education, are completely meaningless, but by the foreboding that professors might raise their standards in response. Another student named Katya said: “I was looking forward to being fulfilled by my studies … rather than being killed by them,”.

Their classmate Zahra felt similarly worried that she won’t be able to “reach [her] maximum level of enjoyment” if her schoolwork starts to be, like, hard. “If that standard is raised even more, it’s unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes,” Zahra said.

Zahra, Katya, and Sophie Do Not Like What Is Happening.

When my daughters don’t want to practice the violin, I don’t plead with them to try to “enjoy” it more. Especially when the weight of what they have yet to learn is so much greater than what they’ve learned already. Instead, I tell them the truth: that learning is good by itself, that it is good despite and because of how hard it is.

I don’t know why or how young people are somehow achieving acceptance into Harvard University with the impression that the central purpose is to enjoy themselves. It shocks me that these students—supposedly the brightest minds in the country—literally cannot imagine that obtaining a degree in a subject ought to correspond to actually learning that subject.

Proverbs 9 says that Wisdom is as a woman who builds her house and then invites “all who are simple” to enter and learn. It’s a brilliantly surgical metaphor: the only price for wisdom is: 1) wanting it, and 2) admitting you don’t have it yet. If young people are heading to Harvard with no appetite for wisdom but rather to play lacrosse, join clubs, and hunger-strike from 9 to 5 for Gaza ahead of bikini season, of course they’ll bemoan whoever threatens to deflate that balloon.

As much as any of us can influence the culture around us, we should do our best to inoculate ourselves and our own kids from such a truly soul-crushing worldview. We should remind ourselves that knowledge is valuable by itself, that difficult undertakings build character, and that comfort is a temptress who will make us dumber if we worship her.

I’m Maria Baer.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: A full Washington Wednesday. We’ll talk about government shutdown winners and losers, the constitutionality of the filibuster, and presidential pardons. Hunter Baker joins us. And, helping moms to teach confidently the basics of the faith to their children. 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.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.” —II Corinthians 4:13, 14

Go now in grace and peace.

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