God Gave the Orphans to his Church
By John Cragg, Executive Director

When I was in first grade, we had three reading groups. Group one used a yellow book;  group two a red book. The third group (the slow readers) read out of the green book.  In second grade, where there once had been a third group, there now were, instead, the blue jays.  I do not know if it felt better to go up when the blue jays were called.  Everyone still knew they were the lowest group by seeing who was in the group and by hearing them read out loud. They could not read any better, but they were no longer in the third group. They were now blue Jays.

Then janitors became custodians, and custodians gave way to sanitation engineers. I think they are back to custodians. Teacher’s aids became teacher’s assistants and secretaries lost their jobs to become administrative assistants. We figured out that the title Miss might seem demeaning because it told the world that she was not married, while Mr. gave no such information about a man. So, we substituted Ms. for all women, but it somehow did not catch on for married woman. So, Miss is now in some circles Ms. It seems to me that all we lost were two letters (is) and the determination of whether this is significant depends on what your definition of is is.