The Public Interest articles from June 1998

The Public Interest archives from June 1998

Enforcing "statutory rape"?
June 22, 1998... When I was growing up, there was a saying, 'Sixteen will get you 20,'" remembers Eloise Anderson, director of California's Department of Social Services. "Sixteen" is a girl's age; "20" is the number of years an adult male would spend in prison...

The case against teacher certification.
June 22, 1998... The system by which the nation trains and licenses its public school teachers recently came under sharp attack from an organization called the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF). In its 1996 report, What Matters Most:...

The college and the city: then and now. (City College of New York)
June 22, 1998... The City College of New York celebrated its 150th anniversary during the current academic year. It also celebrated progress in the $85 million restoration of the grand collegiate Gothic structures that the city erected for its free college 90...

Sports stadium boondoggle.(Building Hopes in the City, part 1)
June 22, 1998... HE Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association think that their home stadium is obsolete. Their claim is rather presumptuous, given that the $53 million Miami Arena was built to the Heat's specifications and is only eight years old. No...

Convention center follies.(Building Hopes in the City, part 2)
June 22, 1998... From San Francisco to Boston, from Chicago to New Orleans, our nation's major cities have sustained a boom in the development of convention centers over the last two decades which is nothing less than remarkable. Amidst the continuing debate over...

Are the children of today's immigrants making it?
June 22, 1998... Thirty years after the Hart-Celler Act brought a wave of new immigrants to the United States, their children are reaching adulthood. These children of immigrants have only recently become a sizable presence in American schools and are just now...

Telling the poor what to do.
June 22, 1998... Paternalism is coming to American social policy. The trend is most visible in welfare policy, where adults are increasingly required to work or stay in school if they want to receive government assistance. In fact, today "welfare reform" largely...

The Therapeutic State.
June 22, 1998... While the sentiment behind bumper stickers reading "Kill All Lawyers" is fairly widespread among Americans, the feeling "Kill All Psychologists" is much less common, as are jokes about inane or greedy mental-health professionals. After reading...

For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health.
June 22, 1998... Reasons to smoke The indifference of smokers, though rarely noted these days, can seem infinite. A chain smoker I know once said, "I smoke so I have something to look forward to every fifteen minutes." Along with suggesting a lot of cigarettes...

Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination.
June 22, 1998... The Oklahoma Dust Bowl, a sad Midwest farmers' depression within the Great Depression of the 1930s, has been forgotten by most Americans. But it was a troubling episode in the most troubling decade of the century. Pictures of Oklahoma, stricken...