Experience This!

            Internships are one of the many ways that students can learn a craft or a work effectively. However, what sets an internship apart from any other method is the level of experience that one acquires when completing an internship. A hands on learning experience is a strong introduction when learning how to do something new. It gives one the opportunity to understand a concept by trial and error versus gathering information that someone else put in a book or an instruction manual.  This creates a realistic perspective and it also gives a student the opportunity to really see if they are truly interested in the field or not.

Can't We Just Get Along

Classifying people by race, color, ethnicity or national origin does not benefit anyone.  It promotes bigotry and racism.  Looking back through history, the monstrous people who have sought to create a master race have caused such tragedy.  Hitler, who was a short, little man, sought to exterminate the Jews and create a master race of tall, blond people.  His stature did not meet his own requirements.  More recently, warring factions in such places as Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Iraq, have attempted to exterminate people of different tribes and religions. 

            If the human race is to ever overcome the bonds of hate, the policies that cause the sorting of people should never exist.  Everyone should just get over it but that is much too easy to say.  After centuries of class distinctions, religious differences and pernicious racism, changing the way people think will not happen overnight.  The government should stop asking the questions that pigeonhole people and that will be a step in getting peoples of all races, religions, colors, ethnicities and national origins to look at each other differently.  Actually, to look at each as the same instead of differently is the ultimate goal.  Our future depends on it.

--by Jane Adamson-Merrill


Celebrating Our Differences

     It would be lovely to live in an utopian society where everyone was created equal. However, we do not. In every part of the world people are being classified by race, color, ethnicity, and national origin. To be totally honest, I do not see the problem with this.
     First of all, while it is true that we are all human, we are very different. We should not be all clumped together in one category. The classifying of people is not wrong. Pretending that we are all the same is wrong. By pretending that everyone is the same, you are essentially ignoring the histories as well as the struggles and accomplishments of different groups of people. It is my belief that all people regardless of race, color, ethnicity, or national origin have contributed to society.
     Secondly, whether we use government policies to classify people or not, classification starts in the mind. We as humans tend to look for things that make us uniquely different. It is my belief that if we were all the same, we would find senseless, idiotic, trivial traits to seperate ourselves. That's who we are as a people.
     I'm not sure that I would be happy in a world where everyone was the same. I prefer to live in a society where the goverment recognizes all classes of people and chooses to celebrate our differences. I feel that this is how we will grow as a nation.
By: Tamika R. Huff    

Censorship of Middle School Literature

According to "Literature For Today's Young Adults" by Alleen Pace Nilsen and Kenneth L. Donelson, adolescent literature covers literature for ages ten to eighteen years old. This age span covers many different psychological stages. A ten year old should not be expected to be as mentally stable as an eighteen year old. This is to say that a ten year old in all probability will not be able to fully comprehend a book that was written with an eighteen year old in mind.
     Censorship can be defined as the practice of officially examining books and suppressing unacceptable parts. In the world in which we live, it is only appropriate to want to protect that age bracket in which children are most impressionable. Between the ages of ten and fourteen, chilren are still trying to find their own identities. The sex, drugs, and violence on television and in the media are already causing desensitization in our youth. The school should not only be a place of learning, but it should also be a safe haven from the grittiness of news, television, and even some of the music that they listen to.
     Now this is not to say that all literature books in middle school should be banned. I enjoyed reading classics such as  The Outsiders, Of Mice and Men, and Hamlet. However, I read these books when I was in high school, not middle school. There is a new core curriculum program being adopted in the school system. This program is designed to better prepare our students for college. One way of doing this is by introducing these aforementioned classics along with others just like them to middle school students. As I have mentioned earlier, this is the most impressionable age group that there is. The question that we have to ask ourselves is: Are we, as responsible adults, ready to put books with adult content in the hands of children who just left elementary school?    Tamika R. Huff





      The influence of a child does not solely come from a book that he or she reads regardless their age. Censorship of middle school books does not hinder a child from learning about controversial subjects. School is the perfect venue for students of all ages to be able to learn and discuss important and controversial topics. Children are exposed to many different things at early ages. Sometimes they are exposed to more than we know of. It should be every adults duty to advocate for quality education. Censoring content in the textbooks of middle school student limits that quality of education by limiting that the full level of  honesty within complex subjects.
     Limiting ideas and stopping the flow of information is so very foreign to me.  Every educated person understands the slippery slope that censorship creates, and the harm that it does to both individualism, and society as a whole.  The fact that some churches, such as Christ Community Church of Alamogordo, New Mexico, had an actual book burning in 2002 as a reaction to the release of a Harry Potter book may seem just weird to most people.  But for me the fact that anyone would even suggest such a thing in the 21st century in America is frightening and most alarming.  To know that people actually attended is numbing.


Ryan Gates