THE RISE OF THE ‘GRANNY STATE’ IN AMERICA’S NURSING HOMES
The growing number of older people entering assisted living facilities is spawning an accompanying fear of elder abuse:
More and more states are passing laws and introducing regulations requiring nursing homes to let relatives set up webcams in the private rooms of elderly family members. Until 2014, only three states — Texas, New Mexico and Washington — had laws on such cameras in assisted living facilities. But over the past five years, five more states — Illinois, Louisiana, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia — have introduced statutes.
But the use of such cameras raise a whole menu of privacy concerns:
- Who has the right to request such a camera, the patient or the patient’s family?
- Is the patient mentally competent to either request or refuse placement of a camera?
- Do caregivers in rooms with cameras have their own right to privacy?
- Do roommates or significant others who live in the same space also have to consent?
These are significant questions that will have to be addressed in efforts to balance safety concerns with privacy issues.
The Decline and Evolution of the School Librarian
School budget cuts inevitably lead to reductions in support staff such as school librarians:
Between 2009 and 2016, more than 9,000 full-time equivalent school library positions were eliminated in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s about a 15 percent reduction in the country’s total number of school librarian positions. What’s at risk, advocates say, is not just children’s access to books, but also the development of their research skills, digital literacy, and critical thinking.
DASH HAPPY: 6 DASHING EM DASH EXAMPLES IN LITERATURE
This article about the em dash—“possibly the most adaptable and intuitive punctuation mark there is”—just warms this former college composition teacher’s heart.
Engineers Sprint Ahead, but Don’t Underestimate the Poets
David Deming, director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, argues in The New York Times that, over time, liberal arts majors earn salaries comparable to their peers with scientific degrees.
Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction
Most humans find intense pleasure in stories about universal themes of love, death, adventure, family conflict, justice, and triumph over adversity.
That may help explain why, when stories are done well, we love them so much. Just as artificial sweeteners fool our minds into thinking we’re eating sugar, stories—even weird ones like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—take advantage of our natural tendency to want to learn about real people, and how to treat them.
© 2019 by Mary Daniels Brown
Retreading for Retirement 