Field Trips

While many young people embraced sports or arts and crafts this summer, one group spent its days in math and science classes or on field trips to such places as a helicopter museum and a highway research center. For four weeks, 20 youths ages 12 to 14 participated in the Summer Transportation Institute at Lincoln University, a program designed to interest minority students in careers in transportation. "The goal is to make sure to expose them to all modes of transportation - land, water, or air," said Robert Allen, a Lincoln professor who has run the courses there for six years.

Every morning after the Phillies play, Brig. Gen. Glenn Watson checks The Inquirer, "to see if the sportswriters saw the same game I did. " The retired Army officer was reading the paper on May 25, 2009, from his home in Milford, Del., when a column I wrote caught his eye - about Bill Giambrone of Norristown, who every Memorial Day plants 75 tiny American flags around his apartment building to honor his lost crewmates from World War II. ...

By Clarence Page A new poll finds atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers do. Maybe the pollsters weren't asking the right questions. The study, by the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, asked 3,412 Americans 32 questions about the Bible and other world religions, historical figures, and constitutional principles. Americans are deeply religious, the study confirms, but also deeply ignorant about religion. The survey found, for example, that at least two-thirds knew public school teachers are not allowed to lead a class in prayer, but fewer than a third knew teachers can read from the Bible as an example of literature.

Oh, the glory! This weekend marks the music recital at Camphill School in Chester County, a remarkable holistic school for children with pronounced cognitive and developmental disabilities. The recital, under the supervision of cotton-haired Elsbeth Sunstein, is so popular and vast that it lasts two days, involving almost half the students. There's "Chopsticks," and also Kathleen Rahling's accomplished take on Mozart's "Rondo. " Located on 80 verdant acres with custom-built cottages, Camphill resembles a retreat or utopian community more than a boarding school for special-needs children.

During a break in the Bonusgate corruption trial that wrapped up last month, several jurors toured the state Capitol to get a sense of where some of the alleged crimes were committed. That represents "jury misconduct" and is grounds for a mistrial, according to an attorney for one of the defendants convicted in the cash-for-campaigning case. Dauphin County Court Judge Richard A. Lewis has set a hearing for Friday on the motion filed by Michael Palermo, a lawyer for Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink, the former district office manager for State Rep. Mike Veon.

Christine Russell and Susan Bechtold live on opposite sides of the state, but they have something important in common - something that every Pennsylvanian with a preschooler should have. Christine, a nursing student in Pottstown, and Susan, who manages the family household in Verona in the southwest, are busy mothers on tight budgets. Each has two children who are thriving in the statewide network of high-quality preschool education programs known as Pre-K Counts. That network, created by the Heinz Endowments in Pittsburgh and the state Office of Child Development and Early Learning, and supported by foundation partners William Penn in Philadelphia and the Grable Foundation in Pittsburgh, has, according to the two women, profoundly improved their children's learning ability, and put them on track for school success.

Merely farm-to-city concepts having achieved the status of what-else-is-new?, perhaps the time is ripe for MidAtlantic, which at 37th and Market (on the ground floor of a sterile ice cube of a Science Center, no less) is taking a slightly different bite of that chestnut. It's milking the soul foods of the Pennsylvania Dutch for inspiration for a menu that includes, as a side, a cocktail called Rumspringa, named for the freewheeling teenhood of Amish youth before the hammer comes down.

Anyone living in or around a city has likely encountered someone asking for spare change. A reasonable person knows such help is temporary and insubstantial, yet some of us hand it over regardless. It assuages some guilt, makes us feel better about ourselves, and is, after all, better than nothing. Or is it? This is a good analogy for the state of medical volunteering by American citizens overseas. The ultimate goal of global health workers should be to establish permanent, local systems to deliver care in poorer countries - not to import care providers and resources sporadically and temporarily.

The Camden School District has agreed to settle a lawsuit with 14 parents who said they were swindled by a former elementary school principal who charged their children for field trips the district had paid for. The ex-principal, Michael Hailey, faces trial in November on charges related to the field trips and another alleged scheme. The district agreed to pay $25,000 to settle the parents' lawsuit, filed in 2006. The settlement includes attorney fees and court costs. The school board did not disclose how much would go to the parents, whose children attended Hailey's school, H.B. Wilson Elementary.

Parent Debbie Johns had her own wage issues as the teachers' strike at Downingtown Area School District threatened to drag through a second week. "The longer it goes on, the more it cuts into my income," she said hours before a tentative agreement was reached yesterday. Usually, Johns works in accounting while her twin second graders attend Lionville Elementary School. After the strike began Jan. 29, the Exton mother had to shell out $60 each weekday for child care - an unexpected expense - while husband Mark worked full time in information technology and she went to her job. If teachers had stayed out through Feb. 13 - the last day before state law would have mandated they return to classrooms - the Johnses would have been out more than $700.