Will we one day look back at the current education reform movements and say, “Why didn’t we see the obvious?” While stressing the standards and the high school exit examination, will we loose a generation that could have been saved through vocational education? Are we running a train on one rail when we need two?

Statistically we know that only about 35 percent of the students go to college or university and only about 22 percent finish. What are we doing to prepare the other 65 percent to become productive citizens in a democratic society?

Our nation has a seemingly unquenchable thirst for oil. Oil is the life blood of our economy and the car is an essential part of American life. Even as manufacturing jobs stampede to lands with cheaper labor, one in six jobs still revolve around the automobile. Americans have more cars per capita and drive more miles per capita than anyone else. More cars, more driving means more oil. The rising price of gasoline has increased grumbling but not lessened consumption. No oil would mean our economy and our lifestyle would sputter then grind to a halt. America needs oil!

Evaluating those who will interpret the Constitution

Churches should mix best of old, new

One of my cherished childhood memories is arriving late to church one hot August Sunday. The windows were open wide and I was enthralled with the glorious sound of 400 people singing in four-part harmony without accompaniment. It was the grandest sound I had ever heard. The music was engrained in the culture and people learned to read music practically by osmosis.

When I taught English in China in 1987 my students told me that China would catch up economically to the United States in 20 years. I, and the other foreign teachers, laughed to ourselves—we saw the poor living conditions, the dominance of bicycles over cars, the poor roads, the outdated technology and shoddy infrastructure. Surely China could never challenge the United States economy.

Students, families may choose not to be contacted by military recruiters through schools

We are a nation at war. Afghanistan. Iraq. More than 2,000 service personnel have died and thousands more have been wounded. Combat leads to a need for new recruits. Yet, this need for new recruits did not catch the Bush administration by surprise. Instead, as part of the administration’s preparations for war in 2001, the government gave military recruiters more access to high school students through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

Americans pride themselves on living in a democracy—and almost alone in the world see themselves as having a special responsibility to spread democracy. Iraq is the latest in a long list of countries the United States has sought to help become democratic, and it will not be the last. Indeed, doing so has become a primary justification for our current engagement in Iraq.

Some issues seem so contemporary, but turn out to have a pedigree dating centuries. The “evolution or intelligent design” argument is one such topic. Close to half of American adults reject evolution in any form. This summer, President Bush weighed in on the matter as well, advocating that a theory of intelligent design (ID) should be included in public school science curricula. It is worth considering a bit of history in this matter.

Is Iraq another Vietnam? The question is being asked more often as the numbers of fallen U.S. soldiers steadily increases, and it appears to some that a quagmire is in the making. There are important differences, however, in Vietnamese and Iraqi history and society, which make these conflicts unique and their outcomes likely to be quite different.

In June Marcus Wesson was convicted of murdering nine of his own children, children he fathered with his daughters and nieces, and at the end of summer Fresno city and county police, prosecutors, public defenders, jailers and judges are still counting the financial cost.

The money—well over $1 million and including everything from the $31 per hour for a jail guard to more than $595,000 for attorneys and their staffs—will come from discretionary funds usually used to hire police, repair parks, build sidewalks and other constructive purposes.