Positive Possibilities for Child and Family Welfare: Options for Expanding the Anglo-American Child Protection Paradigm

The creation of the ‘problem of child maltreatment’ and how we deal with it are best understood as particular discourses which grow out of specific histories and social configurations. The Anglo-American child protection paradigm can be viewed as a particular configuration rooted in our vision for children, families, community, and society. However, other settings have constructed quite different responses reflecting their own priorities and desired outcomes. This paper is an effort to understand the choices made in Ontario’s child protection system by examining its history and the underlying beliefs and values which have fostered its development. In addition, the paper is an attempt to counteract the sense of inevitability of this child protection approach. By discussing the many different ways in which other countries and settings work with, and think about, families and children, we will uncover a spectrum of positive possibilities which exist outside our current conceptions of child and family welfare systems

Tell Me a Story: Metaphysics and the Literary Criticism of Robert Penn Warren and Wendell Berry

Robert Penn Warren and Wendell Berry share more than a home state. Both have produced prodigious and varied literary oeuvres that include accomplished fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and both have written extensively on literature’s indispensable function within a healthy culture. This latter shared vision is not unanimously held in academic literary scholarship. In fact, many contemporary critics, who often see literature as a mere material participant in potentially oppressive power structures, oppose the idea that literature serves a valid and definable social function, or at least regard it with skepticism. For this reason, Warren’s and Berry’s views of literature’s proper function provide a productive counterpoint to much contemporary literary criticism. Indeed, Warren’s and Berry’s visions of the function of literature make their respective approaches to literary criticism both highly coherent and eminently practical not only to scholars but also to unspecialized readers of literature. Their work achieves such usefulness because each writer forthrightly deals with the teleological and, ultimately, metaphysical questions that necessarily follow from the question of literature’s cultural function. That both of them connect metaphysics, which is to say a rigorous and convincing account of truth, to literary criticism is what ultimately sets them off from many contemporary strands of literary theory and makes their work so useful. Furthermore, that Warren, an agnostic, and Berry, a Christian, can produce metaphysically-informed philosophies of literature that agree to a large extent demonstrates the possibility and desirability of productive conversations that do not shy away from metaphysical questions, even in a time when there is no unanimous view as to the truth. An examination of each writer’s work, then, demonstrates the value of metaphysics in writing on literature, both for the critic and for the reader

The Psychological Consequences of Judically Imposed Closets in Child Custody and Visitation Disputes Involving Gay or Lesbian Parents

This article examines child custody and visitation cases in which courts operate under the assumption that parents who live openly as sexual minorities will harm their children. Based on this assumption, courts frequently impose restrictions on parents, requiring them to live closeted lives in order to have access to their children. Part I of this article introduces the concept of the judicially imposed closet as courts have applied it through several custody and visitation cases. Part II examines social science research concerning the psychological impact of family secrets on parents and children as well as research on sexual minority parenting. This research does not support the assumption of custody and visitation courts that it is harmful to children when their parents live openly as sexual minorities. Part III analyzes how, in cases involving sexual minority parenting, such as same-gender marriage, foster care, and adoption, the underlying assumption is that sexual minority parents who are open about their sexual orientation are raising happy, healthy, and well-adjusted children. Part IV then compares adoption cases with child custody and visitation cases examining how the same set of facts in an adoption case would be used against a sexual minority parent in a custody or visitation case. Finally, Part V argues that if courts were to treat sexual orientation as a neutral factor, as they do in most of the adoption cases involving sexual minority parents, then the courts could properly focus on assessing each parent\u27s child-raising abilities, investigating the nature of the parent-child relationship, and preserving the emotional attachment of the children to their parents. It is these factors, not a parent\u27s sexual orientation, that are relevant to determining the true best interests of the children in custody and visitation disputes

From Exclusion to Leadership

Israel comprises diverse groups (mostly Jewish), between whom the differences are sometimes greater than the similarities. This frequently leads to social exclusion and discrimination that damages the very basic sense of human security. Scholars agree that cultural misrecognition or exclusion has a deeply negative impact on a person’s mental well-being and sense of security. In this paper, we show how the case of the Ethiopian community in Israel reinforces the understanding that a cultural group’s experiences of exclusion and non-belonging undermine its members’ sense of personal security and has detrimental effects on their well-being. Groups however can sometimes change the course of development. We show that 40 years after the first wave of immigration (Operation Moshe), the Ethiopian community in Israel has chosen a track of change, in which it slowly moves from exclusion to leadership. This idea calls for further study

Land, freedom and the making of the medieval West

In the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, barbarian warbands acquired property rights in the former provinces of the Roman west, in a process that established the broad structural characteristics of early medieval society in western Europe: that is the central contention of this essay. Focusing on the western Mediterranean heartlands of the Imperial government and senatorial aristocracy, it argues that these property transfers were fundamental to the emergence of ethnic identity as the crucial political marker in the post-Roman west. Latent conflict over the respective rights and obligations of barbarian ‘guests’ and their provincial ‘hosts’ structured the first attempts at post-Roman state-formation in the west, for the nature of the ‘hospitality’ offered to barbarian warbands accommodated within the Empire became a matter of contention as second and third generation ‘guests’ continued to enjoy the fruits of the property of their ‘hosts’. Interpreting these new social relationships in the light of established legal forms, barbarian kings identified agreed mechanisms for the legitimate transfer of Roman property to their followers: this process allowed Roman landowners to seek remedies for illegitimate or violent seizure, but at the price of acknowledging a significant redistribution of land to a new class of barbarian soldiers whose liberty was rooted in their military service. The result was the emergence, by the seventh century, of regionalised and militarised elites who appropriated the language of ethnicity to legitimate their position

The High Cost of The Nation\u27s Current Framework for Education Federalism

This Article will show the consistent ways that the current understanding of education federalism within the United States has hindered three of the major reform efforts to promote a more equitable distribution of educational opportunity: school desegregation, school finance litigation, and, most recently, NCLB. In exploring how education federalism has undermined these efforts, this Article adds to the understanding of other scholars who have critiqued these reforms and examined why the nation has failed to guarantee equal educational opportunity. For example, scholars have argued that the failure to undertake earnest efforts to achieve equal educational opportunity is caused by a variety of factors, including the lack of political will to accomplish this goal, the domination of suburban influences over education politics, and the failure of the United States to create a social welfare system that addresses the social and economic barriers that impede the achievement of many poor and minority students.1s In a past work, I also explored some of the reasons that these efforts have failed to ensure equal educational opportunity. In light of this literature, education federalism undoubtedly is not the only factor that has influenced the nation\u27s inability to ensure equal educational opportunity. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the consistent ways in which education federalism has contributed to the ineffectiveness of efforts to ensure equal educational opportunity as scholars propose new avenues to achieve this paramount goal. In addition, in both past and future work, I argue that the nation should consider embracing a new framework for education federalism that would enable the nation to more effectively achieve its goals for public schools. Understanding how education federalism has hindered past reforms is an essential part of exploring how education federalism should be reshaped. In addition, this Article also briefly highlights that when the Supreme Court and Congress limited reforms to advance equal educational opportunity, they harkened back to an extinct model of dual federalism and failed to acknowledge that, since the New Deal, the nation has moved to the increasing jurisdictional partnerships that are oftentimes labeled cooperative federalism.21 In this way, this Article engages some of the federalism scholarship. Furthermore, this Article notes that one possible explanation for some of the Court\u27s decisions is that the Court may be claiming that federalism prevents it from acting when the Court lacks the will or an interest in ensuring that equal educational opportunity becomes a reality for all schoolchildren. Although it would be impossible to confirm if this explanation is accurate, this Article identifies the evidence that suggests that this behavior by the Court may be occurring. After noting this possibility, this Article then takes the Court at its word that education federalism is driving its decisions while exploring the ramifications of the Court\u27s decisions for equal educational opportunity. This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I examines how education federalism functioned as one of the critical impediments to school desegregation. Part II analyzes how education federalism has handcuffed the reach of school finance litigation. Part III critiques how education federalism has undermined the effectiveness of NCLB. This analysis reveals how the interrelated interests in maintaining the current balance of power between the federal and state governments and in preserving local control of education have limited the effectiveness of these reforms. By examining how education federalism has served as one of the central obstructions to reforms that sought to ensure equal educational opportunity, this Article concludes that future efforts to advance equal educational opportunity must undertake an analysis of how education federalism can be restructured to support all children receiving an equal opportunity to obtain an excellent education

Nebraska Vine Lines, Volume VIII, Issue 3. August/September 2006.

• Novemer 11th Workshop: Focuses on New Cultivars • WOW! It’s Been a Hot One. • Faculty Development Leave — Part II • A NEW TASTING ROOM IN RAVENNA • SUMMER FIELD DAY OPPORTUNITIES • NWGGA Grant-Funded Field Days • REAMS SPRINKLER SUPPLY • Three New Wine Grapes from Cornell • Wine Doggie Bag—LB 388 (Supported