These days, if kids learn all they really need to know in kindergarten, it means they’re a year behind their preschool-educated peers. Fortunately for children in NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio managed to secure $300 million in state funding to provide free prekindergarten citywide. Although the mayor’s pre-K proposal carried the day, the public education debates in New York echo nationwide controversy over which policies promise the best long-term outcomes. Sociologists wonder, who benefits most from programs like Head Start?

Though policy debates continue, the positive impacts of preschool have been known for a long time. These programs prevent learning difficulties, promote healthy development, and decrease the likelihood of incarceration for urban and low-income kids.
One caveat to this trend, though: a rapid expansion in pre-K access might also mean increased misdiagnoses of ADHD in young children.

For more on how children’s mental health labels change when institutions change, check out this recent TSP Reading List post on autism.

Despite being struck down in Kansas and vetoed in Arizona, proposed legislation granting businesses the right to refuse service to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation has been spreading across a number of states this week. As victories for gay rights leave conservative citizens looking for novel ways to fight back, the meaning of religious freedom is called into question. While the line between religious freedom and civil rights often seems like a matter of public opinion, both the enforcement of these laws—if any pass—and the fight against them face a number of institutional hurdles.

Religious and political factors have historically influenced attitudes towards gay marriage. Here’s how:
Public opinion may not be enough to change this kind of legislation, but controversy helps. State governments rely more on public conflict and issue salience as motives to act, and may be bad at protecting the LGBT population from job and housing discrimination “even when the public supports the pro-minority position.”
Moreover, how good is the “gaydar” at these religiously inclined businesses? Sexuality is learned and performed in a wide variety of social situations, and identifying patrons’ sexual orientation might pose more of a challenge than lawmakers think.

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Security breaches can be slippery slopes. Fortunately, Friday’s failed planejacking ended with the containment of a Ukranian passenger who, claiming there was a bomb on board, attempted to reroute a Pegasus Airlines flight to land in Sochi during the Olympic Opening Ceremony. This success corroborates the findings of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism:  given that there have been no consistent changes in number of terror attacks during the past five Games, efforts to reinforce Olympic security have generally been effective. However, with the number of terrorist attacks striking Russia skyrocketing from 50 in 2003 to 250 in 2010, public safety at the Sochi Olympics continues to be a top priority. Safety and surveillance measures taken by Olympic officials have been largely successful at mitigating increased risks, but we’re left wondering why sport mega events are targeted in the first place.

Does the “spectacularization” of the Olympics make the games an ideal arena for terror? A historical look at terrorist attacks on the Olympics sheds some light on potential risks facing host cities.
Social forces—such as  global economic conditions and professional network structures—shape the security and surveillance strategies at sport mega events. How do these strategies change as both security concerns and expenditure rise?

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The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic torch will boldly go where no torch has gone before: to the moon. Travelling by plane, train, car, reindeer sleigh, and spacecraft as part of the 39,000 mile relay involving 14,000 torch bearers, the Sochi flame relay will be the longest in the history of the Olympics. The torch will go to the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest, to the peak of the Mt. Elbrus, the highest in Europe and Russia, and to the International Space Station, for the first spacewalk in flame relay history. This makes us wonder: is this “faster, higher, stronger” performance inspired by the Olympic spirit or the Olympic sports industry?

Changes in the flame relay show the influence of the managerial revolution on Olympic affairs and provide new insights into globalization. For more on the controversial history of this transnational ritual, read:

A recent CNN article reports that relationships between EU officials and the US have been “severely shaken” on account of information leaked by Edward Snowden that the NSA monitored the personal cell phones of 35 world leaders, possibly including Germany’s Angela Merkel. The statement made by Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco raises the important question: Are we collecting information because we need it or just because we can?

While privacy and publicity are often portrayed as a tradeoff, the editors at Cyborgology demonstrate that in many cases, one is a necessary condition for the other.
Although we typically think privacy is “freedom from” government intrusion, some scholars say society makes it a “freedom to” choose whether or not to disclose personal information. From this perspective,  both social and technological solutions are needed to solve privacy issues.
Leading scholars show how many government practices are invented and learned to manage their populations.

Sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for protesting the exclusion of girls from school in Pakistan, recently met with Queen Elizabeth II and other international leaders to promote girls’ education. Her advocacy reminds us that gender inequality in education is not limited to developing countries, but one that affects women worldwide.

In industrialized countries, female students have gained in some aspects of schooling, but the gender divide limits women’s educational opportunities as well as their roles in the home, the workforce, politics, and religion.

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was recently sentenced to 28 years in prison after being convicted of two dozen federal charges including racketeering, extortion, and the filing of false tax returns. Judge Nancy G. Edmunds recently told CNN that although she wasn’t holding Kilpatrick responsible for Detroit’s bankruptcy, “a long prison sentence is necessary to insulate the public from his behavior.” Whether conviction alone is enough to restore public trust and put an end to white collar crime is still an open question.

Who commits white-collar crime and why? Classical criminology shows how the answers have changed over time.
Current work suggests that political and economic corruption often happens through collaboration, and that we shouldn’t treat the two as separate issues.