As Atlantic storms continue to increase in power and impact, Americans have not yet blinked about setting down roots in their path.

Hurricane Ian lumbered onto land at 3:05 p.m. Wednesday near Cape Coral and Fort Myers, an area of Florida that has seen a stunning 623% population increase since 1970. Two-thirds of those people live in a flood zone, like the winding canal-oriented neighborhoods at the core of Cape Coral’s unique appeal.

As those neighborhoods took a battering Wednesday, Hurricane Ian underscores the challenges that define coastal living and communal responses to storms that are only growing more powerful and expensive.

As it moves into the Atlantic on a northward path into another possible landfall in South Carolina, the hurricane is testing, head-on, efforts in Florida and beyond to shore up preparedness, including emergency operations, electric grid improvements, humanitarian relief, and building codes.

The extent to which those preparations are offset by massive development along the 1,300-mile-long Florida coast may yield insights into the impacts of changing storm patterns and intensity on how and where Americans live – and at what cost.

Wilfredo Lee/AP

This aerial photo shows damaged homes and debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Sept. 29, 2022, in Fort Myers, Florida. The storm looks likely to be among the costliest in Florida history. President Joe Biden pledged federal aid to cover the cost of rescue and cleanup. He also offered financial assistance to residents with inadequate homeowner’s insurance.

What are Ian’s current and projected effects?

After wiping out power across Cuba, Hurricane Ian came ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast, bringing up to 150-mph gusts and a storm surge that inundated neighborhoods, picking some homes off their foundations. Part of the causeway linking Sanibel and Captiva to the mainland collapsed, making the islands unreachable by ground.

Some 2.5 million people were under evacuation orders, and many heeded them as highways crammed with fleeing vehicles days before the storm.

By estimates that are merely preliminary, the storm may cause some $70 billion in property damage, placing it among the top tier of Florida’s history of costly hurricanes. Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Michael in 2018 were also massive storms. Irma alone caused $77 billion in damages.

As of Thursday morning, more than 2.5 million Florida customers were without power. Some of the state’s most battered localities, like Naples in Collier County, have issued boil-water notices. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s monitoring system recorded more than 6 feet of storm surge in the area near Naples at Ian’s peak on Wednesday. Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose administration is undergoing its first test of natural disaster preparedness, stated that more than 30,000 electrical linemen were already helping to restore power.

Governor DeSantis described Ian’s impact as “historic” during a press conference. 

“Today is about identifying the people who need help and may still be in harm’s way,” he said. Some deaths caused by the storm had been confirmed Thursday, while some people in Ian’s path lack cellphone service to call for rescue.

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster on Thursday and pledged federal aid, saying the hurricane caused “substantial loss of life” and could rank among the worst to hit the state. He promised that the federal government will cover the full costs of search and rescue efforts and cleaning up debris and will help rebuild schools and infrastructure. He also offered financial assistance to residents with inadequate homeowner’s insurance.

Were Floridians ready?

By dint of its jutting geography, Florida bears more of the nation’s hurricane hits than any other state. Ian became the 121st hurricane to hit the state since 1851.

That frequency means that Floridians tend to be ready for the worst. County emergency centers are well-oiled machines. 

The state has also made huge strides in building codes since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, mandating that new homes in high-velocity zones withstand 120-mph winds. (Though Ian is proof that the worst storms can be stronger than that.) The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems found that Florida homes built since the early 2000s experience significantly lower losses than homes built in the previous decade.  

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Local residents fill sandbags at Ben T. Davis Beach in Tampa, Florida, Sept. 26, 2022, as Hurricane Ian spun toward the state carrying high winds, torrential rains, and a powerful storm surge. In recent years the state has strengthened building codes and mandated local flood readiness plans.

Increased flooding threats have also sparked action. In 2015, the state Legislature passed a “flood in peril” law that mandated all municipalities update their storm readiness plans.

After the 2004-05 storm season, when 10 named storms caused $28 billion in property damages, the Florida Public Service Commission held a series of workshops with officials and industry representatives to brainstorm strategies for how to mitigate power outages and restore power more quickly.

In 2019, the Florida Legislature hardened that process by creating a new way for utilities to recover costs associated with upgrading the grid, instead of using base rates to recover those costs.

Dozens of major cities and regions have climate change preparedness councils, some of which have run major-hurricane simulations. Lessons learned are widely shared among officials. And with Hurricanes Michael and Irma fresh in residents’ minds, a sense of caution prevailed in preparations for Hurricane Ian that likely saved lives.

“Once these emergency operations centers pull the trigger ... they are on top of stuff,” says Mark Hafen, an expert on coastal resiliency, now in Toronto after a career in Florida. “And they need to be, because they have allowed rampant development in the coastal zone, and there is no way of undoing that right now.”

Is climate change affecting the severity of storms like Ian?

The frequency of hurricanes has not dramatically changed, but climate shifts are playing a role in the impact of named storms. 

Climate researchers have taken note in recent years of how the rapid intensification of storms like Ian is occurring closer to the coastal areas. Jill Trepanier, an environmental scientist at Louisiana State University who studies climatic and erratic weather phenomena, says that this type of acceleration is due to an increase in heat energy, which is drawn from Gulf coastal waters that are “so hot, it’s almost bath water.”

Slowly warming seas provide extra fuel, increasing the frequency of Category 4 storms. 

Rising air temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more moisture, forming larger, slower, and wetter rotations.

An April 2022 study in the journal Nature Communications found that climate change raised hourly rainfall rates in hurricanes by 8% to 11% during the unusually active 2020 hurricane season.

Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times/AP

From left: Hilton employees Louie Fonseca, Frankie Monica, Bryan Kinbacher, and Jaime Miranda use rope to secure the front door at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fort Myers, Florida, on Sept. 27 ahead of Hurricane Ian. The storm made landfall in southwest Florida the next day.

Hurricane Ian appears to embody the trend. Its most dramatic impact was its massive storm surge and tree-felling winds. But only about 7% of storm-related deaths occur in storm surge events. Most people killed in hurricanes are victims of inland flooding.

In Ian’s case, the slow-moving storm is forecast to drop as much as 20 inches of rain on Florida before it moves through Georgia up into the Carolinas, with between 2 and 5 inches forecast for Georgia and up to 12 in the Carolinas. 

Ian is currently moving at 9 mph. Dr. Trepanier expects the storm to gradually break apart over the next two days. 

How are those dynamics changing the conversation around regional natural disaster preparedness?

Florida has long relied on development as a main piston of its economy, one that creates an ever-widening tax base that funds government services, including schools, parks, and recreation.

The pandemic only fueled the state’s in-migration patterns, led primarily by transplants from the East Coast and the Midwest. Today, some 15 million Floridians, or 76%, live in a coastal zone.

“Even though cities are supposed to be trying to curb development, they aren’t,” says Mr. Hafen, retired director of the Master of Urban & Regional Planning program at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “I see it in Tampa: development in areas that in 20 years are going to be underwater. They do things like, ‘Well, we’re going to elevate the building.’ But what happens when the water stops receding? Are you going to kayak to work?”

The tension is evident in policy and politics. Even as the Legislature has hardened some storm protections, pressure to relax building codes is ever-present from builders anxious about their profit margins.

“Despite the increasing severity of natural disasters, [many states, including Florida] have relaxed their approach to codes – or have yet to impose any whatsoever,” according to a 2018 report from the Insurance Institute for Building & Home Safety.

But those opposing forces – stronger storms and pressure to relax regulations – may come to a head in Ian’s wake.

The state’s insurance industry is in shambles after several years of expensive storms and fraud problems involving roof contractors. The Legislature has created an “insurer of last resort” whose policy book has grown quickly as other insurance companies have either left the state, stopped writing policies, or gone bankrupt.

But if damages from Ian go too high, experts warn that insurer, called Citizens, may run out of cash. That could put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for paying for the consequences of Florida’s growth and development patterns. Taxpayer-subsidized federal flood insurance has also served as an incentive for Americans to live in beautiful but flood-prone areas.

Florida political leaders paint the state as a beacon of personal liberty, a bulwark against progressive causes. That is not necessarily a barrier to preparedness, but it can complicate readiness. One example: The Republican-led Legislature passed the climate change-related “flood in peril” bill at a time when state officials were barred from using the phrase “climate change.”

But sentiments may be changing among Florida residents. As of last year, 48% of Floridians believe that climate change will affect them directly, up from 42% in 2018, according to polling by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Mykolai Zlatov and his son Fedor pose by piles of wheat in one of their family farm's grain storehouses in Mykhailivka, Ukraine, Aug. 27, 2022. “We are farmers, so this is not just about money for us,” Mr. Zlatov says. “We know we have a special responsibility, because everybody needs bread.”

Farmer Fedor Zlatov has to shout to make himself heard above the front-loader dumping load after load of his family’s wheat into a truck for transport to the recently reopened Ukrainian Black Sea port of Yuzhnyi.

“In the situation of this war, it would be the death of Ukraine’s grain business without this agreement,” he says, referring to the deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July to allow safe passage of Ukrainian (and Russian) grains and other agricultural products through the Black Sea to a hungry world.

“But even in this crisis we don’t think only of our own benefit,” he adds. “This war is causing new problems for people in Africa and Arab countries, and we won’t forget that.

“In those countries like everywhere else,” he says, “you can live without the very expensive foods, but you cannot live without bread.”

Mr. Zlatov helps his father, Mykolai Zlatov, run the family farm, encompassing 18,000 hectares (44,000 acres) of their own and rented farmland across the Odesa region of southern Ukraine.

With three grain silos, five metal single-story grain storehouses, and an equipment yard brimming with iconic green John Deere tractors and harvesters – not to mention a facility for making the area’s trademark brinza goat cheese – the Zlatovs were doing well, while also playing their part in making Ukraine one of the world’s indispensable breadbaskets.

Then came the war.

“Russia paralyzed us, but I will not give up,” says the elder Mr. Zlatov, as he directs several farm employees to sweep the wheat in one storehouse into higher piles for easier loading.

Yes, Russian bombs took out a nearby highway bridge critical for getting grain to ports. The war scattered some of Mr. Zlatov’s five children and 13 grandchildren to Romania and Bulgaria – the latter being where his ancestors migrated from 200 years ago to farm along the Black Sea.

And for five months Russian threats idled the ports Ukraine’s farms depend on to export their produce.

But none of that has stopped the Zlatovs.

“We are farmers, so this is not just about money for us,” the elder Mr. Zlatov says. “We know we have a special responsibility,” he adds, now echoing his son, “because everybody needs bread.”

Buzz of activity

In no small measure because of the U.N.-brokered grain export deal signed July 22 in Istanbul, many of Ukraine’s farms are buzzing with activity once again. Moreover, the related activities and infrastructure required for getting grains, sunflowers, and other products to world markets – the trains and trucks for overland transport and the ports and cargo ships making use of the sea – are all in high gear.

With Black Sea ports reopened, trucks loaded with grains are lined up at port gates, recently snaking along the shoulders of highways for miles.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Trucker Oleksii Maystrink waits in a 6-mile-long line of trucks to deliver a load of wheat to the Black Sea port of Yushnyi in southeastern Ukraine, Aug. 26, 2022.

Since the deal’s signing, Ukraine has exported about 4 million tons of wheat and other agricultural products to ports in Egypt, Libya, India, Iran, China, South Korea, and Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia – the latter four especially important because food insecurity there is threatening to deteriorate further into famine, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.

U.N. officials assert that the grain deal has already contributed to declines in global food prices, and that the risk of famine in some African countries in particular has eased somewhat because of the arrival of Ukrainian grains. Falling food prices also mean the World Food Program is able to buy more food for humanitarian distribution with the budget it has, officials say.

“Reintegrating [grains] and fertilizers into global markets [and] lowering global food prices so that vulnerable people everywhere could access affordable food was our main objective,” U.N. trade chief Rebeca Grynspan said at a Geneva press conference this month.

By returning Ukrainian grains to the global market and fueling decreases in global food prices, she said, the grain deal is “easing the pain ... for 1.6 billion people in the world that have been facing a cost-of-living rise, especially because of the increase in food prices.”

But no one is ready to declare victory in the effort to restore Ukraine to its position among the world’s top food suppliers.

Deal will expire

The 8 million tons of wheat exported so far this fiscal year is only about half the previous year’s exports. Moreover, the grain deal will expire 120 days after its signing, or sometime around Nov. 22. Without a renewal, grain shipments would likely cease, experts say, since ship owners and insurers would not run the risk of operating in a war zone without the deal’s guarantee of safe passage.

Then there is the war’s impact on Ukraine’s agricultural sector. A recent U.S.-sponsored study concluded that almost 15% of Ukraine’s crop storage capacity has either been destroyed, damaged, or seized by Russia since February.

Some farmers have had to abandon croplands sown with mines, while many farmworkers have either left to fight in the war or to relocate their families to safer areas.

And even as many world leaders are lauding the deal’s results, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his criticism, claiming it has not benefited Russian grain and fertilizer exports and that most of Ukraine’s exports have gone to the European Union and other wealthy markets instead of to poor, hungry countries.

Mr. Putin accused the West this month of “colonial behavior” by hoarding food supplies. What’s actually happening, some European trade experts say, is that Ukraine is benefiting from a European Union program to step up overland exports by train and truck.

Still, the comments heightened speculation that the besieged Russian leader might refuse to renew the grain deal. That prompted a spike in global wheat prices that had been trending downward.

At a food insecurity meeting at the U.N. last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken blasted as “misinformation” Moscow’s claims about the grain deal benefiting the West. “Grain and other food products are getting where they need to go,” he said, “to the countries most in need, predominately in the Global South.”

He also deemed as “urgent” the deal’s prompt renewal.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Farmer Serhii Kharoschiak and his wife, Tetiana, in a sunflower field ready for harvest, in the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine, Aug. 26 2022. He says the need to make a living plus the farmer’s calling to feed people combine to keep him going.

“Just doing our jobs”

In Ukraine, many of the truck drivers waiting for days to deliver loads of grain to the port of Yushnyi say they know little of the international grain deal or the rising global hunger the wheat they are delivering could help ease. But they are happy to be back at work.

“When the ports were not open, I was just sitting in the house, so this is much better, even if it does take me three or four days to get inside,” says Oleksii Maystrink, a self-employed trucker slowly nearing the Yushnyi port entrance with a load of barley.

Sporting a Puma t-shirt and flip-flops, Mr. Maystrink says he knows little about the international deal that reopened the ports. “All of us along here,” he says, motioning to the miles of idled trucks behind him, “we’re all just doing our jobs.”

Farther east along the same highway into the Mykolaiv region, farmer Serhii Kharoschiak sounds a very different note, revealing deep awareness of the grain deal that reopened the ports – and of the critical role Ukraine’s farmers like him play in feeding the world.

“Of course it’s important to have the ports open again,” he says, “but we also see how this agreement has become another part of the international game going on here,” referring to how he says Mr. Putin is using the deal to disparage Ukraine and its allies while advancing his own purposes.

“The truth is that farming was already difficult in this region, but the war has put many more farmers out of business,” says Mr. Kharoschiak, who with his wife and son continues to produce wheat, barley, rapeseed, and sunflowers – along with a new side venture into geese and farmed fish.

Noting that the war caused a number of farmers around him to abandon their fields, Mr. Kharoschiak says a need to make a living plus the farmer’s calling to feed people combine to keep him going.

“We feed our own country, and now we feel this new responsibility to help our army in this war however we can,” he says, noting his family has donated some of their farm’s produce to soldiers in the area.

Then he acknowledges with what sounds like pride the critical role Ukraine farmers continue to play in feeding the world.

Standing with his wife, Tetiana, in a soon-to-be-harvested sunflower field, he says, “For us there is no difference between children in Ukraine and children in Africa. We feed them as our children as well.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

The first rays of light, descending over Kashmir’s misty mountain peaks, reveal a massive steel arch that seems to float over gold-tinted clouds. Standing nearly 1,200 feet over the Chenab River, the recently completed structure is the world’s tallest railway bridge and will connect the remote region with mainland India’s massive rail network.

It took nearly two decades, and hundreds of workers and engineers toiling day and night, to build the steel and concrete bridge. Work on the final joint was finished in August.

“It was a daunting task,” says Rashmi Ranjan Mallick, deputy chief engineer of the project. “Building something in other parts of the world is tough, but building something in the Himalayas is altogether a different task.”

But it’s more than an engineering marvel. 

The Chenab Bridge, which is expected to start operating in the coming months after the connecting rail lines are finished, is cause for both hope and concern to many stakeholders in the region. For some, it promises prosperity in the form of new economic markets and freedom of mobility, as well as added security, with Indian troops being able to efficiently access contentious borders with Pakistan and China. But for many Kashmiris, whose region has been systematically stripped of its autonomy in recent years, the railway signals greater mainland control and unwanted transformation.

Junaid Ahmad, a Kashmiri student, worries that the railway will bring more instability than benefits to Kashmir, an already volatile region struggling with demographic transformation and a heightened military presence. 

“India has a huge population of over 1.2 billion people,” he says, “and railways will certainly make it easy for outsiders to come to Kashmir and maybe settle here.”

Karen Norris/Staff

Breaking through to a troubled region

Kashmir is one of the most militarized places in the world, with Pakistan and India fighting over the Muslim-majority territory since 1947. Polls have shown many in the Indian-controlled Kashmir want to merge with Pakistan or become an independent state, and in recent decades, authorities have struggled to contain separatist rebellions as well as tamp down violence by Indian security forces, who have been accused of grave human rights violations, including rape and extrajudicial killings. 

The Chenab Bridge was announced in 2002 by then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpaye, as part of a broader railway project geared toward accelerating the region’s “socio-economic development, promoting national integration, and strengthening India’s security infrastructure.”

Aakash Hassan

Amrish Kumar, an engineer who has been working on the Chenab Bridge for the last eight years, inspects the site in Kashmir's Reasi district, Aug. 30, 2022.

Communication with the region has always been tough due to its mighty mountain ranges. Even today, Kashmir has only one highway connecting it with India – and, by extension, the rest of the world – which regularly gets blocked due to landslides. 

The railway line, however, is going to change that. 

Two sections are already operational, but the most challenging part lies in a 69-mile stretch between Katra and Banihal, which will ultimately connect Kashmir with the mainland. This section snakes through the rugged Pir Panjal mountain range of the Himalayas, with the Chenab Bridge being the most ambitious of the 16 bridges and 15 tunnels involved in this line. 

“This is an outstanding project with hardly any parallels around,” says Mr. Mallick, the engineer. “We have been able to create the first all-weather link to Kashmir. It is not only a great engineering work, but something which has huge significance for our country.”

He adds that it should only take a few more months to get the rest of the line finished, and the trains will start running shortly after that.

“The train is going to open up unimaginable possibilities; it will bring fortunes with it,” says Sagar Singh, who came from a nearby town with his friends to see the completed Chenab Bridge, and were excitingly taking pictures on his smartphone, just as they were on theirs. 

But while the railway has prospects to boost the economy of the region and ease connectivity for native Kashmiris, experts say the main benefactor will undoubtedly be the Indian military.

Boosting military capacity

Authorities say the railway line is going to be a “game changer” for military supply chains in a region that faces hostile borders with both Pakistan and China.

“It will be a 10-time multiplier for our logistics system both in peace and definitely during war,” says a former Indian army officer, Maj. Gen. Amrit Pal Singh, who used to head operational logistics for the area.

New Delhi is hopeful that the train to Kashmir will give it a firmer grip on the region, both in terms of fighting the internal discontent and facing hostile neighbors.

Mukhtar Khan/AP

Soldiers keep vigil as Kashmiri Hindus take part in a procession to celebrate the birth of Hindu god Krishna in Srinagar, India, on Aug. 19, 2022. There has been an increase in violence against minority Hindus and nonlocals since India unilaterally revoked Kashmir's autonomous status in 2019.

“Military capability is measured not only in terms of soldiers and equipment but the ability to apply military force at selected areas,” says D.S. Hooda, former northern commander of the Indian army. “This requires infrastructure to move large forces. The railway line is a significant step in this direction.”

Yet for local Kashmiris, the situation is more complex. 

Are the opportunities worth the risks?

“The rail will give easy access to faraway markets for Kashmiri produce like apples, the main produce from the region. But it will increase the flow of outsiders,” says Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political observer from the region. And due to new policies, they may feel empowered to stay, he adds.

Since 2019, when India’s Bharatiya Janata Party government unilaterally revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy and imposed a regionwide communication blackout to quell dissent, New Delhi has persistently pushed policies that would give nonlocals the same rights that native residents enjoy.

The Election Commission of India recently announced plans to give voting rights to people who are temporarily living in the region, a move that has stirred outrage among native Kashmiris and local political leaders. The move is expected to add about 2.5 million voters to the region, including Indian military personnel, marking a 30% increase in the electoral rolls. 

There has been an increase in violence against minority Hindus and nonlocals since 2019. At least two dozen have been killed by rebels fighting New Delhi’s rule, with one group releasing a statement warning that “anyone involved in the demographic change of Kashmir will meet the same fate.”

Hundreds of local Hindus have fled from the region following the targeted killings and others have been protesting, demanding their safety and relocation. Some say the chaos isn’t worth the trade opportunity – especially considering the narrow nature of that opportunity. 

“The traditional routes to west Punjab [in Pakistan] and to China remain cut,” says Dr. Sheikh Showkat, referring to Kashmir’s historical position at the crossroads of the Silk Road. “India says it is bringing connectivity to the region, but its [India’s] presence that has led to erection of walls.”

Courtesy of Ken J. Makin

The author (far left) pictured with his family, including (from left) his father, Kenneth; his grandmother, Vivian; and his brothers, Denzel and James.

Discussion of student loan forgiveness is starting to heat up again. Next month, the Department of Education is expected to provide guidelines for implementing the debt relief President Joe Biden announced on Aug. 24. Legal challenges are all but guaranteed, with the first one filed on Tuesday and another today by six Republican-led states.

But, for me, the discussion isn’t about logistics or legalities. Instead, it reminds me of my late brother, James. I’ve been a writer for almost 20 years, but fun fact – my younger brother was the one with the communications degree. He had the type of full-grinned, contagious belly laugh that endeared him to people. Whether in college or the workforce, he had the personality and “people skills” that turned the most minuscule of moments into unforgettable memories.

My brother’s laugh and good nature belied an incredible burden, though – student loan debt. He followed my dad’s path to and through the workforce. My father, who earned his bachelor’s degree in education, never became a teacher. Dad worked in manufacturing before he settled on a career with the U.S. Postal Service.

Likewise, James never took a job in communications, save for modest work he did with a political campaign back in 2020. He became a second-generation postal worker, and then ended up between manufacturing jobs. While he took pride in the friends he’d made during college, and many of them became like family to us, he didn’t have the same type of joy when it came to his degree.

“If I could get my money back for this piece of paper, I would,” James would often say. I understood his lament, and that his angst derived from how the value of education doesn’t always match with the realities of the workforce.

The term “compounding interest” is often associated with student debt, but that idea comes with more than a financial burden. Student debt often takes a physical and mental toll on indebted people. Furthermore, the money spent to pay back loans has forced some people into tough decisions where personal health becomes secondary to the pursuit of money.

My brother dealt with various ailments, and a relatively curable setback turned into a long sickness. Then, my younger brother was gone. Thirty-three years old. There is no price tag one can place on such a loss. Still, I often wonder what my brother’s life might have looked like if, among other burdens, he hadn’t felt the weight of student loan debt.

When I think of that burden being lifted off of – or at least made lighter for – so many Americans, I am happy. One of those Americans is my paternal cousin, who will have tens of thousands of dollars forgiven. I can’t imagine being angry or sorrowful about her benefiting just because such a blessing didn’t happen in time for my brother. And while I think the Biden administration’s plan doesn’t do enough to reduce student debt, interest rates, and the sheer amount of average debt per student, I certainly acknowledge these important first steps taken by this administration.

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” says a line in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgiveness. It should be the operative term in the midst of our discussion about student loan debt. It is a restorative term, not just regarding financial freedom, but quality of life. 

The reality of student debt discussions breaking down into generational and political anger and angst speaks of a more insidious debt – a lack of empathy in our society. 

More than 20 governors signed a letter dated Sept. 12 opposing Mr. Biden’s plan and essentially scolding indebted people for taking out loans to get an education.

“College may not be the right decision for every American, but for the students who took out loans, it was their decision,” the letter stated. “A high-cost degree is not the key to unlocking the American Dream – hard work and personal responsibility is.”

Such a statement trivializes the essence of why people attend college – economic advancement. For generations, students have literally bought into the idea of college to make a better life for their families. 

But the cost of that dream keeps increasing. 

Many of the governors making that statement are from states that cut funding – dramatically in some cases – to public colleges and universities between 2008 and 2019. The steepest cut was 55% per student in Arizona, one of the states whose governors signed the letter to Mr. Biden. Eighteen other states cut between 21% and 38% per student. Only nine states increased funding.

But funding cuts go back further than that. In 1988, students’ tuition “provided about a quarter of public colleges and universities’ revenue, while state and local governments provided the remaining three-quarters. Today, that split is much closer to 50-50,” according to a 2019 study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.

If we need to reassess anything as a society, we need to review the level of empathy that we incorporate into the everyday decisions that Americans must make. Some people are having to make tough decisions between health care and education, and it’s affecting our collective way of life.

Empathy will help us appreciate the individual lives that make up our collective. And this individual really misses having his brother around.

On a Monday morning in mid-June, Curtis Toler receives intel about an assassination plot. It’s a tip that a street gang plans to shoot an eighth grader at his graduation ceremony in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. 

Mr. Toler, the director of outreach at Chicago CRED, a nonprofit whose mission is to reduce gun violence, immediately calls several colleagues. Mondays are usually a day off for his crew. It’s the weekends that they’re busiest – especially in summertime. That’s when gang-related shootings undergo a seasonal spike. 

Sitting in a Chicago CRED office space, Mr. Toler holds up his phone to show what his email inbox looks like.

“You see this?” he says. “This is throughout the city. Person shot. Person shot. Person shot. Person shot. Person shot. Deceased. This is daily.”  

As of late September, 2,652 people have been shot in Chicago this year – 457 fatally, according to the city’s official count.

Mr. Toler oversees young men and women who have relationships with the gangs that Chicago CRED is trying to wean from violence. Its ambitious goal is to reduce gun violence by 20% each year. They endeavor to identify not only who’s most at risk of getting shot, but also who is most likely to pull the trigger. Mr. Toler used to be in the latter category. He was once a leader of one of Chicago’s most feared street gangs. Now he risks his own life to persuade others to come over to the side of peace. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Curtis Toler, a former gang leader, talks about his work with Chicago CRED, on June 13, in Chicago.

“This is part of his atonement, if you will, for his past,” says the Rev. Michael Pfleger, founder of Chicago’s basketball peace league in which rival gang members play each other on courts. “To be able to identify with them and to care about them, you can’t come in [with] a dictating-like way, or a condemning way, or a judgment way. You got to come in meeting them where they’re at and help to move them to another place of peace.”

“You have to work on the shooters.”

Mr. Toler keeps an eye on his phone for updates from the graduation ceremony. His resting expression is serious and studious. Yet he’s quick to laugh and crack jokes. Today, Mr. Toler is wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “pray” in rainbow letters. A devout Muslim, he wholeheartedly believes that prayer works. But, he adds, prayer without work is dead. 

When Chicago CRED launched in 2016, Mr. Toler was one of its first employees. (The acronym stands for Create Real Economic Destiny.) Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan co-founded the nonprofit following an epiphany: “If you want to stop shooting, you have to work on the shooters.”

How? Provide them with other alternatives to crime. It starts with one-on-one recruitment. 

Once individuals sign onto the CRED program, they receive a stipend. The support system also includes trauma therapists, life coaches, and job coaches. Chicago CRED participants spend at least a year in the program before they’re connected with potential employers in construction, culinary services, manufacturing, and law firms. 

When Wesley Addison enrolled in CRED, it helped him get his high school diploma. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Wesley Addison, a participant in the CRED program, chats about his life. Like most participants in the program, he had a difficult childhood and has had run-ins with the police. He is a father to three children.

“I want to influence my kids to get their high school diploma,” says Mr. Addison, who’s in his mid-20s and had been incarcerated until fairly recently. “I want my children to own businesses. And not make the same mistakes I made or take the same road I took.”

As Mr. Addison attests, CRED’s life coaches will pick up the phone whether it’s 11 in the morning or 11 at night. 

“I’m not used to someone really caring,” says Mr. Addison, who describes a 180 degree change since enrolling in CRED. “Crazy as it sounds, I was breathing better.”

The other major component of CRED’s work is peacekeeping. Like trying to prevent a massacre at a graduation ceremony.

Learning to love

The first time Mr. Toler got shot, he was 12 years old. He’s been shot on four other occasions. 

Asked what it’s like to be shot, Mr. Toler responds, “Other than it hurts?” He erupts in a belly-deep laugh that rolls for several seconds. “That’s how I think that I’m able to relate to some of the young men and women who go through it.”

He also knows firsthand the reasons why so many youths join gangs. (CRED prefers to call them “street organizations.”) As the oldest sibling born to a single mother, Mr. Toler yearned for connection. When Mr. Toler was 17, his abusive stepfather murdered his mother. Rage consumed Mr. Toler. His propensity for unpredictable outbursts of violence propelled him to a top leadership position in his gang. 

But Mr. Toler, who’d served two stints in prison, realized that if he continued with gang life, he would either be killed or be incarcerated at length. He wanted to be a role model for his young son. So he extricated himself and resisted alluring temptations to return. 

“Once you feel love, then you have the ability to love others,” he says. “Once being a father and a husband took the place of, and felt a lot better than, being a gang leader, it was an easy transition, right? You know, because you have to replace something with something else.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The tattoos on Mr. Addison’s hands say “Honour” and “Respect.”

Mr. Toler says that his gang persona was his “imposter,” not his true self. That’s helped him develop a technique for dealing with formidable gang members on the streets. He imagines what they might have been like when they were 5 years old – the age of his own grandson. 

“If we could see the child in everyone, then it becomes a lot easier to work with them,” says Mr. Toler. “Because I’m not seeing this hard guy with tattoos all over his face, even though I’m working from a nonjudgmental zone. But I’m seeing this young, fragile human being. ... Whatever circumstances or conditions cause them to be the way that they are now, they weren’t always like that. And if they weren’t always like that, then there’s a great possibility of them changing.”

Mr. Duncan, CRED’s co-founder, says that one of Mr. Toler’s best qualities is that he’s very humble; he’s able to build relationships on the street by truly listening to people.

Welcoming every win – however small

At midday, Mr. Toler’s phone rings with an update from the graduation ceremony. The outreach team, stationed at the school, had been in communication with four different groups in a bid to avert violence. The ceremony had been completely peaceful.

“We got to get the wins where we can take them,” Mr. Toler cheerfully tells his associate.

Within seconds of hanging up, Mr. Toler’s phone rings again. His expression sags. A few minutes ago, there’d been a shooting at a different school graduation in another neighborhood. The victim is in critical condition.

Later, when asked about the overall trend in the city’s homicides, Mr. Toler responds, “I’m very optimistic because as bad as it is, it is not as bad as it was in the last two years.”

Gun violence in Chicago, while still very high, is down in 2022. In mid-June, Chicago CRED celebrated a peace treaty between two deadly gangs. 

“I really believe we’re going in the right direction,” says Mr. Toler. “I’m also a praying man, right? So, yeah, I just really stay hopeful. Because if we don’t have any hope, then what’s the use of doing the work?”

Jefferee Woo/Tampa Bay Times via AP

Eighth-grade students use a sphere and foam roller in a middle school in Pinellas Park, Fla., trying out exercise techniques from Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady.

It’s a common complaint in the United States. For decades, critics of public education have claimed that school standards and achievements are in steady decline, jeopardizing society, security, and the economy. 

Not so, according to a new Harvard University study based on 7 million national academic test results between 1971 and 2017 (the last year data were available). It found students are learning mathematics four grade levels higher than they were 50 years ago. In reading, the gain is a full year.

The study undercuts negative narratives in some significant ways. It shows that any economic advantage by a child’s community (often short-handed as “ZIP codes”) does not predetermine academic success. More importantly, it provides fresh evidence that intelligence is innate regardless of genetic background. Both findings support efforts to make teaching of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) more inclusive.

“When we examine differences by student race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, longstanding assumptions about education inequality start to falter,” noted the authors, M. Danish Shakeel and Paul E. Peterson, in the publication Education Next.

“Black, Hispanic, and Asian students are improving far more quickly than their white classmates in elementary, middle, and high school. ... Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds also are progressing more quickly than their more advantaged peers in elementary and middle school.”

Those trends, the authors note, may reflect progress in areas outside education, such as better nutrition and cleaner air and water. Yet the study’s more significant contribution reaches beyond material development. It adds evidence to work showing that intelligence is not a fixed endowment.

“Not long ago, intelligence quotient, or IQ, was considered a genetically determined constant that shifted only over the course of eons, as more intellectually and physically fit homo sapiens survived and procreated at higher rates,” the authors observed. The growth rates they found in math and reading skills, however, confirm similar growth rates in fluid reasoning and critical thinking measured by other studies in recent years.

The debate about whether intelligence is a fixed or growth mindset has found its way into the classroom. A 2018 paper published in CBE – Life Sciences Education noted that “mounting evidence of the efficacy of active learning” – which rejects the notion that some students are more able to learn than others – “has prompted educators to consider adoption of these practices in college-level classrooms.”

Public education in the U.S. has many problems to solve, especially the educational setbacks from two years of forced remote learning and lately a teacher shortage. Yet educators can take heart for the progress already made and new evidence that a child’s mental abilities are innate and unlimited.