Maryland Fails to Protect Students’ Privacy from Military

PAT ELDER: Maryland has failed to enact legislation to protect the privacy of students who take Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) in Maryland’s public schools.The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, (ASVAB) is the military’s entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is also used as a recruiting tool in 182 high schools throughout Maryland and in11, 900 schools across the country. The four-hour test is used by military recruiting services to gain valuable information on more than 600,000 high school students every year. In most cases, students take the test without parental knowledge or consent.

There is a Field

CHARLES BUSCH: Fields of Peace is a response to what is happening in today’s Global Village: the awareness of people throughout the world that they are part of an immense, intimate whole; and that to injure a neighbor is to injure oneself. Governments can’t respond to this; their understanding is subject to borders. It is our religions that know about oneness and the power of love; and it is out of the smallness of local congregations that this world change will happen.

Peace Teaching Tool Now Available

MICHAEL TROKAN: Rethinking Schools Press has announced the publication of a new book by nationally renowned teacher and writer Linda Christensen — Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom. It combines concrete, hands-on advice with inspiration, hope and joy. As Christensen writes in her introduction, the book begins “with the non-negotiable belief that all students are capable of brilliance.”

Text of U.S.-Russia Nuclear Understanding

Here is the actual text of the understanding between the U.S. and Russia. As you can see, there is a lot to be worked out, which I hear is supposed to be done by December. There may be a temporary understanding between the time START expires and when the Senate ratifies in the first quarter of next year. — Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action.