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The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday signaled support for the religious rights of parents in Maryland who want to remove their children from elementary school classes using storybooks with LGBTQ characters. The court seemed likely to find that the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, could not require elementary school children to sit through lessons involving the books if parents expressed religious objections to the material. The case is the latest dispute involving religion to come before the court. The justices have repeatedly endorsed claims of religious discrimination in recent years. I’m surprised this is the hill to die on in terms of not respecting religious liberty, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, citing the county’s diverse population and Maryland’s history as a haven for Catholics. The county school board introduced the storybooks as part of an effort to better reflect the district’s diversity. Parents sued after the school system stopped allowing them to pull their kids from lessons that included the books. The parents argue that public schools cannot force kids to participate in instruction that violates their faith, and they pointed to the opt-out provisions in sex education classes. The schools said allowing children to opt out of the lessons had become disruptive. Lower courts backed the schools, prompting the parents’ appeal to the Supreme Court. Five books are at issue in the high court case, touching on the same themes found in classic stories that include Snow White, Cinderella and Peter Pan, the school system’s lawyers wrote. In Prince and Knight, two men fall in love after they rescue the kingdom, and each other. In Uncle Bobbys Wedding, a niece worries that her uncle will not have as much time for her after he gets married. His partner is a man. Love, Violet deals with a girls anxiety about giving a valentine to another girl. Born Ready is the story of a transgender boys decision to share his gender identity with his family and the world. Intersection Allies describes nine characters of varying backgrounds, including one who is gender-fluid. Billy Moges, a board member of the Kids First parents’ group that sued over the books, said the content is sexual, confusing and inappropriate for young schoolchildren. The writers’ group Pen America said in a court filing what the parents want is a constitutionally suspect book ban by another name. Pen America reported more than 10,000 books were banned in the last school year. A decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor is expected by early summer. Mark Sherman, Associated Press
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Few moments in Pope Francis‘ papacy better exemplify his understanding of climate change and the need to address it than the rain-soaked Mass he celebrated in Tacloban, Philippines, in 2015. Wearing one of the cheap plastic yellow ponchos that were handed out to the faithful, Francis experienced first-hand the type of freak, extreme storms that scientists blame on global warming and are increasingly striking vulnerable, low-lying islands. He had traveled to Tacloban, on the island of Leyte, to comfort survivors of one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan. The 2013 storm killed more than 7,300 people, flattened villages and displaced about 5 million residents. But with another storm approaching Tacloban two years later, Francis had to cut short his visit to get off the island. So many of you have lost everything. I dont know what to tell you, Francis told the crowd in Taclobans muddy airport field as the wind nearly toppled candlesticks on the altar. Francis, who died Monday at 88, was moved to silence that day by the survivors pain and the devastation he saw. But he would channel it a few months later when he published his landmark encyclical, Praised Be, which cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern. The first ecological encyclical The document, written to inspire global negotiators at the 2015 Paris climate talks, accused the structurally perverse, profit-driven economy of the global north of ravaging Earth and turning it into a pile of filth. The poor, Indigenous peoples and islanders like those in Tacloban suffered the most, he argued, bearing the brunt of increasing droughts, extreme storms, deforestation and pollution. It was the first ecological encyclical, and it affirmed the Argentine Jesuit, who in his youth studied to be a chemist, as an authoritative voice in the environmental movement. Later cited by presidents and scientists, the document inspired a global faith-based coalition to try to save Gods creation before it was too late. I think he understood from the beginning that there are three relationships that had to be regenerated: Our relationship with God, our relationship with the created world and our relationship with our fellow creatures, said papal biographer Austen Ivereigh. It wasnt always so. A conversion in 2007 in Brazil Francis had a steep learning curve on the environment, just as he did with clergy sexual abuse, which he initially dismissed as overblown. He himself pointed to a 2007 meeting of Latin American and Caribbean bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, as the moment of his ecological awakening. There, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected to draft the conferences final document, and was under pressure to include calls from Brazilian bishops to highlight the plight of the Amazon. Bergoglio, the dour-faced archbishop of urbane Buenos Aires, didnt get what all the fuss was about. At first I was a bit annoyed, Francis wrote in the 2020 book Let Us Dream. It struck me as excessive. By the end of the meeting, Bergoglio was converted and convinced. The final Aparecida document devoted several sections to the environment: It denounced multinational extraction companies that plundered the regions resources at the expense of the poor. It warned of melting glaciers and the effects of lost biodiversity. It cast the ravaging of the planet as an assault on Gods divine plan that violated the biblical imperative to cultivate and care for creation. Those same issues would later find prominence in Praised Be, which took its name from the repeated first line of the Canticle of the Creatures, one of the best-known poetic songs of the pontiffs nature-loving namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. They also would be highlighted in the Amazon Synod that Francis called at the Vatican in 2019, a meeting of bishops and Indigenous peoples specifically to address how the Catholic Church could and should respond to the plight of the Amazon and its impoverished people. I think the popes most important contribution was to insist on the ethical aspect of the debate about climate justice, said Giuseppe Onofrio, head of Greenpeace Italy, that the poor were those who contributed the least to pollution and the climate crisis, but were paying the highest price. How the environment affects all other ills In many ways, those same issues would also come to define much of Francis papacy. He came to view the environmental cause as encapsulating nearly all the other ills afflicting humanity in the 21st century: poverty, social and economic injustice, migration and what he called the throwaway culture a melting pot of problems that he was convinced could only be addressed holistically. Some of Francis’ strongest calls to protect the environment would come on or around Earth Day, celebrated April 22. For some time now, we have been becoming more aware that nature deserves to be protected, even if only because human interaction with Gods biodiversity must take care with utmost care and respect, Francis said in a video message released on Earth Day in 2021. Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Canadian Jesuit whom Francis would later entrust with the ecological dossier, said the 2007 meeting in Brazil had a big impact on Francis. In Aparecida, listening to so many different bishops talking about what was deteriorating, but also what the people were suffering, I think really impressed him, said Czerny. Czernys mandate encapsulated Francis vision of integral ecology, covering the environment, the Vaticans response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its charitable Caritas federation, migration advocacy, economic development and its antinuclear campaign. The multifaceted approach was intentional, Czerny said, to establish new thinking about ecology that went beyond the politicized concept of green advocacy to something bigger and nonnegotiable: humanitys relationship with God and creation. Everything is connected, Francis liked to say. A legacy from Pope Paul VI He was by no means the first pope to embrace the ecological cause. According to the book The Popes and Ecology, Pope Paul VI was the first pontiff to refer to an ecological catastrophe in a 1970 speech to a U.N. food agency. St. John Paul II largely ignored the environment, though he did write the first truly ecological manifesto: his 1990 World Day of Peace message, which linked consumer lifestylewith environmental decay. Pope Benedict XVI was known as the green pope, primarily for having installed solar panels on the Vatican auditorium and starting a tree-planting campaign to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of Vatican City. Francis issued an update to Praised Be in 2023, just before the U.N. climate conference in Dubai. While consistent with the original text, the update was even more dire and showed Francis had grown more urgent in his alarm. He became even more willing to point fingers at the worlds biggest emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, especially the U.S. And he called out those, including in the church, who denied the human causes of global warming. He showed that he had an understanding of what was happening in the world, and he saw the world from the point of view, as he was like to say, of the peripheries, of the margins, said Ivereigh, the papal biographer. He brought the margins into the center. Nicole Winfield, Associated Press
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The Trump administration might be in the process of dismantling the Department of Education, but it still wants a say in what students learn in school. The Washington Post reports that Trump has drafted (but not yet signed) an executive order that would make artificial intelligence part of the school process for children as young as five years old. The EO, titled Advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth” and reportedly seen by the paper, instructs federal agencies to help train K-12 students in the use of AI and make it part of teaching-related tasks. Private sector AI companies, which are not named but could include Elon Musk’s xAI as well as OpenAI, would also be asked to be part of the program, helping to develop programs to run in schools. Trump could decide to change or simply not sign the EO but in his three months in office, he has shown a strong backing for the technology. The White House did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment about the report. Since the start of his administration, Trump has done away with regulations put in place during the Biden administration to create guardrails for AI companies. He also has championed a private sector investment to build AI data centers, worth as much as $500 billion. The order, as it stands now, reportedly calls for several actions that would benefit AI companies and adjust the educational process for children in all grades of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school. Here’s a look at some of the changes mentioned. Grant adjustments The task force overseeing the AI integration plans would reportedly be instructed to look at existing federal funding, including grants for AI, which can be prioritized for AI educational spending. Across all areas of the government, federal investment in research and development to support advances in AI has increased by $2.8 billion since 2021, with a budget of $11.2 billion this year (excluding classified programs). AI partnerships Public-private partnerships with AI companies are a critical part of the drafted EO. Federal agencies would be told to seek these out in order to teach students foundational AI literacy and critical-thinking skills, the Post reports. Many AI companies already have government contracts with the Department of Defense testing use cases for AI models from Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral, among others. The Treasury Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the National Science Foundation also all have contracts with AI companies. Teacher training While the DOE is being eliminated, the draft of the EO reportedly calls for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to adjust federal grant funding, with a new emphasis on training teachers to use AI for everything from teacher training to evaluations. Professional development classes with AI integration are also part of the order, for teachers in all subject areas. Apprenticeships Also reportedly in the draft of the order, Trump instructs Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to put together a collection of registered apprenticeships in occupations in the AI field, presumably for students in higher grades. “Presidential AI Challenge” To motivate students, the order reportedly calls for the formation of a “Presidential AI Challenge,” which will be a competition for both students and educators to showcase their AI skills. Whether the executive order is signed or not, AI is increasingly becoming a part of the educational process. California recently passed a law requiring AI literacy to be incorporated into K-12 curricula starting in the fall of 2025. The European Unions AI Act, meanwhile, went into effect on February 5, requiring organizations that use AI in their products to implement AI literacy programs and train applicable staff to have the skills, knowledge, and understanding that allow providers, deployers, and affected persons . . . to make an informed deployment of AI systems, as well as to gain awareness about the opportunities and risks of AI and possible harm it can cause.
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