Today is Friday, August 26th, 2022, and this is the Daily Article Podcast.

I'm Chris Elkins with the Denison Forum narrating today's article written by Dr. Jim Denison.

A driver and monitor on a school bus in Dallas, Texas helped save two children who were caught up and nearly swept away in the recent flooding in our area.

The driver said later,

it had to be God to send me that way because I don't normally go that way.

As our schools open across the country, so does concern for our schools and students.

After gun violence in schools

tripled over the previous year, wearable panic buttons are being mandated or encouraged

by multiple states across the country. Bulletproof backpack sales are on the rise as well. School

violence is not the only risk to our youth. Self-harm claims among U.S. teenagers increased by 99% during the pandemic.

Claims related to overdoses jumped 119% and claim reports for anxiety and major depressive disorders rose 94% and 84% respectively.

Unsurprisingly, a record 58% of Americans say our best days are behind us, and three-quarters of voters say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

United States Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky claims life, the way it really is is is not a battle between good and bad,

but between bad and worse.

And yet, as theologian Yard de Chardon observed,

the future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

How can you and I offer hope most effectively? Harvard professor Arthur

C. Brooks writes in the Atlantic that changing people's minds is extremely difficult, especially

through argumentation that attacks the beliefs of others. He notes, when people fail to live up to

your moral values or your expression of them, it is easy to conclude that they are immoral people.

Further, if you are deeply attached to your values, this difference can feel like a threat to your identity, leading you to lash out, which won't convince anyone who disagrees with you.

By contrast, Brooks observes,

...