Wise Monkey News is here to provide young people an opportunity to discuss the issues that affect their lives. We hope that, through your participation, this website serves as a forum for the development, exchange, and expression of ideas that will prepare us to assume our positions as the leaders of tomorrow's world. Have something to say?
Finding Spain: No stone is without a story
by: Hank Smith - printed on 02-28-2001
España . . . España . . . ESPAÑA! It hit me when I heard these words from Carmela, the lead character in a Spanish play set during its civil war of 1936-1939. España…Spain, for some reason, took on a greater amount of significance. Carmela, in fact, was saying these words to foreigners, members of the International Brigade, those soldiers that came from around the world to defend Spain’s republic from a fascist threat.
Los jornaleros: Day labor on the San Francisco peninsula
by: Jessica Jenkins - printed on 03-27-2002
They cluster together on street corners in the early morning hours, intently watching the passing cars, looking for any sign of a potential employer. They are as young as 17 and as old as 52. Nearly all are from Mexico or Central America, and the vast majority of them have no legal immigration documents. They wait each morning, sometimes for hours, for the lucky job in gardening, construction, carpentry - basically anything they can get.
The need for change in America's high schools
by: Ryan O'Connor - printed on 01-23-2002
A bull's eye has been strapped to the back of the public education system. Republicans, Democrats, the Christian-Right, Libertarians, rich, poor, black, red, white, brown, everyone has discovered to root of societies ills-today's high schools.
Most public schools today are in fact a microcosm of society: numerous factions competing for limited resources, with those with the loudest, strongest, most visible, supporters commandeering the spoils.
Golden Rice Biotechnology: A controversial approach to improving nutrition in the developing world
by: Annie Senner - printed on 02-06-2002
The Golden Rice project recently celebrated its one-year anniversary at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Philippines. Scientists, who received the seeds in January 2001, continue to spend countless hours in the lab working to advance the project through the required testing for widespread production. At the same time, critics are working equally as hard to discourage the public acceptance of this technology.
Snap-shot goes unnoticed
by: Megan Molenda - printed on 11-28-2001
While talking with an aspiring middle-aged photographer, I learned the secret to becoming successful within that field -- if one is indeed aspiring towards the kind of success in which he or she would receive genuine recognition from others.
If you are among the many who simply see something beautiful and capture it on film, then you may be complimented with a brief expresion of admiration from others, but chances are that the feeling will quickly pass and the work will soon be forgotten.
It's a Shame About Boz
Chapter three of five: setting the stage--workers fall ill and questions arise.
by: Jim McCandlish, J.D. - printed on 01-31-2001
Boz, as he’s known, was a man among men in the trades, a strapping 6' 4" millwright who loved his work. He’d joined the Local out of Pasco for the specific purpose of hiring on at the poison gas incinerator construction project near Umatilla. The cost projected at almost $600 million made it the largest employer that corner of northeastern Oregon had ever seen. The government was under an international treaty obligation to destroy its entire stockpile of war gases, 12% of which were stored at Umatilla.