This booklet discusses what 1,038 U.S. cities are doing for the health of school children. The first part discusses medical inspection, including the history of medical inspection, administration, and kinds of medical inspection. The second part covers hygiene of the school room, including outdoor recesses, individual drinking cups and sanitary fountains, modern methods of dusting and sweeping, and instruction in alcohol, tobacco, tuberculosis, and first aid.

This booklet presents the report of the Committee on Lock-ups, Municipal and County Jails, of the American Prison Association on United States prisoners boarded out by the federal government. It discusses the origins of the boarding-out system, congressional action, three U.S. penitentiaries, federal reformatories, U.S. prisoners boarded out, the difficulties of reforming the county jail system, jail from the prisoner’s point of view, and suggestions for grand jury surveys of conditions under which federal prisoners are kept in county jails.

HASTINGS L. HART was the chairman of the committee of the American Prison Association and consultant in delinquency and penology at the Russell Sage Foundation.  

This booklet presents a critique of two approaches to community center administration. In the first approach, a community center is run exclusively by the government. In the second approach, a community center is run exclusively by a private association. The author concludes that before cities can determine the best administrative method, more reliable data must be gathered.

CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY was associate director of the Department of Recreation at the Russell Sage Foundation.  

This booklet presents the result of a study of play for children in institutions presented in a series of five conferences at the invitation of the State Board of Charities of New York. It discusses the function and value of play as well as requisites for play and the adaptation of play for various age groups.

ROBERT K. ATKINSON was a researcher who studied children’s institutions in the United States.

This article from The Psychological Clinic, reprinted in the same year as a booklet by the Russell Sage Foundation, discusses school overcrowding in the lower grades. It examines whether the schools are overcrowded with children who should have passed on to the upper grades and how much money is expended on these students each year.

LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.

This booklet discusses schools in the North and Lowland South known as “mountain mission schools” as distinguished from public schools and from well-endowed private schools. After describing the character of these schools, it describes how these schools can have a positive impact on generations of people in the region.

JOHN C. CAMPBELL was the secretary of the Southern Highland Division of the Russell Sage Foundation.

This article from The Journal of Education, also published as a longer RSF pamphlet, reports on the request for funds from Congress to enlarge and increase the efficiency of the Bureau of Education. The article discusses the intended use of the funds and presents the main arguments from those opposed to granting the funds.

GLEN EDWARDS worked for the Russell Sage Foundation.

For the past three decades, U.S. immigration policy has become increasingly restrictive, focused on enforcement both at the southern border and across the country. A shift in emphasis from status regularization to criminalization has had rippling effects for families and communities. While we know much about how immigration enforcement impacts the undocumented, we know less about longstanding effects on U.S. citizens. In Surviving the ICE Age, sociologist Joanna Dreby draws on interviews with young adults with foreign-born parents to better understand what it was like to grow up during a time of heightened U.S. migratory control.

Dreby shows that a restrictive approach to immigration creates problems over time and across generations. These issues occur regardless of one’s citizenship status and go beyond deportations. Despite having pride in their heritage, her interviewees did not talk much about immigration. She refers to this unwillingness—and at times, inability—to speak about immigration as silencing. Silencing in a community or family is often intended to protect children, but this can leave them with little information about their backgrounds and status, leading to fear and anxiety instead. Self-silencing often resulted from traumatic experiences tied to enforcement episodes, which sometimes took the form of memory loss or emotional withholding. Dreby finds that experiences with the immigration system that disrupted relationships in a child’s household arising from family separations, moves, or changing roles in the family had especially long-term effects, causing, at times, ongoing mental health issues. Even the risk of immigration involvement left some young adults feeling vulnerable and undermined their sense of safety and security as U.S. citizens.

Dreby also highlights stories that offer hope. Young adults developed strategies to persevere, and children who grew up in communities and families that openly talked about migration felt empowered and fared much better, especially when they had access to resources, such as adequate food and shelter, mental health services, and community support. Dreby calls for policies and practices to mitigate the harms of restrictive migratory control on children’s wellbeing, such avoiding the arrest of parents in front of children and ensuring that U.S. citizen children’s interests are considered in immigration court without their direct involvement.

Surviving the ICE Age details the generational harms caused by U.S. immigration policy and offers suggestions for a better way forward.

JOANNA DREBY is professor of sociology at the University of Albany, State University of New York

Energy serves as the lifeblood of our daily experiences. It permeates virtually every aspect of our existence, facilitating nourishment, safety, and productivity. When affordability threatens energy’s availability, a family’s living situation can become untenable—too cold, too hot, too dark, and too often, unhealthy and unsafe. In Powerless, sociologists Diana Hernández and Jennifer Laird reveal the hidden hardship of “energy insecurity” – the inability to adequately meet household energy needs.

Approximately one in ten households in the U.S. are energy insecure and four in ten are at risk for energy insecurity. These statistics alone do not convey the acute pain of utility shutoffs, or the relentless toll of chronic energy hardships marked by difficult choices and harsh living conditions. Drawing on survey data and interviews with one hundred energy-insecure individuals and families, Hernández and Laird detail the experience of energy insecurity. Individuals and families suffering from energy insecurity endure economic hardships, such as difficulty paying utility bills, utility debt, and disconnection from utility services. They also struggle with physical challenges, such as poor housing conditions and poor or dysfunctional heating and cooling systems. They are often forced to make difficult choices about what bills to pay. These decisions are sometimes referred to as “heat or eat?” choices, as families cannot afford to pay for heating and food at the same time. Energy insecure individuals and families employ a variety of strategies to keep energy costs down to avoid having to make these hard choices. This includes deliberate underconsumption of energy, enduring physical discomfort, and using dangerous alternatives such as open flames, ovens, or space heaters to try to maintain a comfortable temperature in their home. To be energy insecure is to suffer. Despite the heavy toll of energy insecurity, most people confront these difficulties behind closed doors, believing it is a private matter. Thus, the enormous social crisis of energy insecurity goes unnoticed.

Hernández and Laird argue that household energy is a basic human right and detail policies and practices that would expand access to consistent, safe, clean, and affordable energy. Their proposals include improving the current energy safety net, which is limited and often does not serve the most energy insecure due to stringent program requirements and administrative burdens. They also suggest redesigning rates to accommodate income, promoting enrollment and expansion of discount programs, reforming utility disconnection policies, improving energy literacy, and ensuring an equitable shift to renewable energy resources.

Powerless creates a comprehensive picture of the complex social and environmental issue of energy insecurity and shows how energy equity is not just an aspiration but an achievable reality.

DIANA HERNÁNDEZ is an associate professor of sociomedical sciences, Columbia University

JENNIFER LAIRD is an assistant professor in the department of sociology, Lehman College

Social movements—organized efforts by relatively powerless people to change society—can result in legal and policy changes, such as laws protecting same-sex marriage and tax rebates for solar energy. However, movements also change people’s beliefs, values, and everyday behavior. Such changes may help bring about new policies or take place in the absence of new policy, yet we still know little about when and why they occur. In Changing Minds, sociologists Francesca Polletta and Edwin Amenta ask why movements have sometimes had fast and far-reaching cultural influence.

Polletta and Amenta examine the trajectories of U.S. social movements, including the old-age pension movements of the 1930s and 1940s, the Black rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the women’s movement of the 1970s, right-wing movements in the 1980s and 1990s, and the environmental movement up to the present, to determine when, why, and how social movements change culture. They find that influential movements are featured in the news, but not only in the news. Movement perspectives may appear also in opinion and commentary outlets, on television talk shows and dramas, in movies, stand-up comedy, and viral memes. Popular culture producers remake movement messages as they transmit them, sometimes in ways that make those messages compelling. For example, while the news largely ignored feminists’ challenge to inequality in the home, popular cultural outlets turned “liberation” into a resonant demand for women’s right to self-fulfillment outside the home and within it.  Widespread attention to the movement may lead people to change their minds individually. But more substantial change is likely when companies, schools, and other organizations outside government strive to get out in front of a newly legitimate issue, whether environmental sustainability or racial equity, by adopting movement-supportive norms and practices. Eventually, ideas associated with a movement may become a new common sense—though not always the ideas that the movement intended.

Throughout Changing Minds, Polletta and Amenta provide activists with strategies for getting their message heard and acted on. They suggest how movement actors can get into the news as political players or experts rather than lawbreakers or zealots. They show when it makes sense for activists to work with popular cultural producers and when they should create their own cultural outlets. They explain why the routes to cultural influence have changed and why urging people to take one easy step to save the planet can do more harm than good.

Changing Minds is a fascinating exploration of why and how some social movements have caused profound shifts in society.

FRANCESCA POLLETTA is Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

EDWIN AMENTA is Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine