The issue at hand.

In our previous issue, Michael Fitzgerald's lead article, "Goodbye, Mr. Fitz," showed some of the difficulties encountered by creative high school teachers in the United States who try to get past the fear and censorship that is endemic in the culture. This issue we go deeper.

Robert Rubinstein in "To Teach or Not To Teach?" expresses concern that his adult children, who are now enthusiastically taking up teaching careers, may find today's environment so stifling that they end up among the "50 percent of those entering the teaching profession" in the United States who "quit by the fifth year" due to such problems as overcrowding, student misbehavior, lack of parental support, and low teacher salaries. Etta Kralovec and John Buell in "High-Stakes Testing, Homework, and Gaming the System" show how some school administrators, "confronted with the pressures of high-stakes 'Leave No Child Behind' testing" and "school accountability" have "cooked the books" by encouraging low-performance students to drop out and disappear, thereby artificially raising the school's statistical performance.

But all the news isn't bad. Colman McCarthy reports in "Can Peace Be Taught--and Learned?" that, despite the current educational climate, "peace education is gaining ground" in high schools and colleges across the United States. And Mark Wagner tells his success story of "Teaching Humanities in New Ways--and Teaching New Humanities," revealing why his college classes, contrary to current trends, continue to experience "near perfect attendance and eagerness on the part of the students not only to learn the requirements of sound research but to complete their research on time."

Beyond this, we will report next issue on the talented student winners of the 2005 Humanist Essay Contest, publishing examples of their work. The 2006 contest is already receiving entries--so we encourage readers to share the news (see the back cover) among local teachers and students.

In sum, while much is wrong and needs to change in American education, there are educators in the United States with fresh ideas and contagious enthusiasm for knowledge.

Also in this issue we revisit the war in Iraq. Michael I. Niman, in "Truth, Death, and Journalism," takes former CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan at his word (the word he later denied) that U.S. forces in Iraq have targeted unembedded journalists--and makes the case. And in our lead article, "Iraq Withdrawal and MoveOn.org," Norman Solomon places on the table what most politicians and pundits insist is off the table: an Iraq exit plan. He then takes the progressive organization MoveOn to task for deciding "against opposing the American occupation of Iraq." Clearly, beginning a bad war is easier than ending one.