By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

The little boy dribbled the basketball on the gravel driveway and dreamed of playing in the NBA.  He imagined the announcer saying, “Paul Shirley shoots…it’s good!” Many small town Kansas kids have dreams of playing in the NBA, but today we’ll meet a young man who actually made it to the big leagues. Through his writings, he shared that experience with others.

Paul Shirley is a former basketball player and writer, the author of the book, “Can I Keep My Jersey? 11 teams, 5 countries and 4 years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond.”  He grew up in rural Kansas. In fact, he described the location of the family home as being “at the intersection of two unnamed gravel roads” outside of the town of Meriden, population 701 people. Now, that’s rural.

Paul Shirley loved basketball. He and his brothers would watch games on television and, at halftime, go outside to re-enact those games with themselves as their favourite star players. He grew tall and went on to a successful career at Jefferson West High School, both academically and in basketball.

Unfortunately, he was not recruited to play for the biggest colleges. He was considering some of the mid-major colleges or Ivy League schools when he had a contact with Iowa State.

Iowa State had used up all its basketball scholarships, but Paul’s mother pointed out that Paul was a National Merit Scholar. Coach Tim Floyd was then able to put Paul on an academic scholarship and he joined the basketball team at Iowa State.

Paul proved he could play at a high level and went on to start. By his junior and senior years, Iowa State was in the NCAA top ten and contending for championships. After college, he did well at an NBA invitational camp and hired an agent with hopes of playing in the pros.

What followed was an emotional roller coaster of a career, where he would repeatedly catch on with an NBA team for a time and then get demoted and go play for teams in Europe. As the title of his book stated, he played for eleven teams in five countries during a span of approximately four years. As the book title also suggests, it was not always fun.

For example, he was invited by the then-world champion Los Angeles Lakers to Lakers training camp. After a few weeks, he was released. Paul said to the equipment manager, “Can I keep my jersey?” His request was turned down, illogically enough, even though Paul’s name and number was stitched on it. When Paul wrote his book a few years later, he gave it the title Can I Keep My Jersey?

Through the years, Paul Shirley played with the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls, and Phoenix Suns of the NBA, while enduring several injuries and limited playing time. He also played for minor league teams in Kansas City and Yakima, Washington and for pro teams in Greece, Spain, and Russia.
Of course, there is a big gap between the salaries and creature comforts of an NBA star versus a minor leaguer. This makes for entertaining reading in Paul’s sardonic style. The book is like a window into the everyday life of an NBA bench player.

Paul’s professional writing career began when he chronicled one of his NBA road trips in an on-line journal. He has gone on to write for Esquire, Slate, ESPN.com, and the Wall Street Journal.

Today, Paul lives in southern California where he writes and teaches. He maintains a website called flipcollective.com and a writers workshop called Writers Blok. He also writes for a Spanish-language newspaper, teaches English at a preparatory program for Los Angeles policemen, and co-hosts a podcast about the NBA.

The little boy dribbles the ball on his parent’s driveway and then makes a layup. Little did he know that, one day, he would make a layup like that in the NBA as a member of the Chicago Bulls. We commend Paul Shirley for making a difference by sharing his experience inside pro basketball. When it comes to his writing about his experience, it’s good!

This year, Kansas has green fields, kissed by the sun. There are blue skies with white clouds high above. There are even valleys where rivers run. Heck, there’s even water standing in terrace channels.

It’s been at least five years since the pastures have been this green in the eastern half of the state and even in some of the drier areas of western Kansas the grass is showing signs of life.

If you’ve traveled anywhere in the state this summer, you can see what a little moisture can do, especially with the nurturing hands of our Kansas farmers.

Corn crops tower above the ground. Ten-feet tall is not unusual. Some farmers say some of their crops are 11 and 12-foot tall.

In Decatur County, far northwestern Kansas, farmers are hoping to harvest 90 to 100 bushel dry-land corn.

Grain sorghum fields sport huge heads nine, 10 and even 12 inches long. These heads are heavy filled with plump red and green berries.

Soybean leaves are the size of footballs. Pods weigh down the plants.

Calves graze in grass that nearly tickles their bellies. Even in the short-grass country of western Kansas, the buffalo grass is green and full of protein. Low spots and  buffalo wallows are filled with life sustaining water. It’s a stark contrast to so many years when the grass has already turned brown, parched by the sun.

The Sunflower State has been truly blessed with moisture during the summer of 2014. Rainfall has been plentiful in many areas of our state.

Timely rains keep falling. In some areas of Kansas, farmers have stopped irrigating and are anxious for their fall crops to dry down. They’re ready to harvest.

The May family has farmed and ranched in Decatur County since 1887. Roger and Susan May are fourth-generation producers and they’re thankful for the moisture in 2014.

“It’s been a great year,” Roger says. “The cattle are looking good and in great shape. It’s been several years since our grass has been this green this late in the (growing) season.”

Plenty of showers, moisture from 35 to 60 hundreds of an inch, have been sure and steady throughout the summer, the Decatur County farmer/rancher says. They’ve also enjoyed a couple of more abundant rainfall events that totaled a couple inches. So far this year, nearly nine inches of rain has fallen on their land.

On this early September morning, temperatures hovered in the low 70s. Barn swallows bobbed and weaved in the sky searching for insects. Many of the insects are pesky black flies that pester the cattle and calves.

These insects don’t like to fly on such cool, early mornings. As the cattle kick them up from the ground, the swallows snatch them from the sky, eat them or carry them home to feed their hungry offspring.

Looking out the pickup window at his herd, Roger says he’d rank them at near the top on a scale of one to five. The plentiful moisture, good grass and plenty of milk for the calves has been a real asset this summer.

“They’re in top condition – they’re fleshy and their coats are sleek and shiny,” Roger says. “With these cows in such fine shape, they’ll raise a better, healthier calf this coming winter.”

The Mays manage a 350 head cow/calf operation as part of their farm and ranch operaton. Most years they feed the calves out to finish.

The cornerstone of his livestock operation has always involved making sure they have good feed, good nutrition and the proper health care. He likened his cattle to his family.

Each and every day the Decatur County stockman drives out to look at their herd. Once in the pasture, he meanders slowly through his stock, checking carefully for any sick cows or calves. Roger also checks to see if the cattle have water, mineral and salt.

Another important part of this daily routine is to count the stock and make sure they’re all inside the fence. The Decatur County stockman likes to keep his stock in his pastures.

“If you can keep livestock in, off your neighbor’s property and off the road, that’s a real accomplishment,” May says. “Every cattleman must keep track of his fences – make sure they’re in top repair.”

Like the poem by Frost says, “good fences make good neighbors.”

Yes sir, out here on the May place cattle have always been a major part of their operation. The better they take care of their livestock, the better the cattle will take care of them.

That’s the way it was with his dad and his grandfather before him. As a matter of fact, that’s the way Roger believes it will always be.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.

Where does Kansas rank when it comes to the quality of schools, teachers, and the education provided? It all depends on who does the survey, what they measure, and how they interpret the results.

If you follow US News and World Report, Kansas ranks #47 (fourth from the bottom with Washington DC as a 51st “state”) based on a mix of reading and math scores, advancing the performance of poor kids, and levels of AP/IB students.

But based on parents, students and teachers submitting 1-5 scales to the national online “School Digger” site, Kansas ranks #4 from the top!

Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst uses a report card that finds many states, including Kansas, essentially failing. Her group assigns scores for states allowing private school vouchers, charter schools, and a “parent trigger” that permits parents to take charge of failing schools. Kansas requires charter schools to be recommended by the local USD and that dooms Kansas on any ranking system sponsored by political groups that favor charter schools. A.F.T.’s Randi Weingarten points out that Rhee’s group gave “…the top-ranked state of Maryland a D-plus for failing to embrace the StudentsFirst agenda of testing, sanctioning teachers and divesting from public schools.”

WalletHub, a financial social media company, recently came out ranking Kansas as fifth highest in the nation as a “top-performing state in terms of education.” This is apparently the ranking that Gov. Brownback touts in his campaign for re-election. WalletHub’s 12 “key metrics” include: student-teacher ratios, dropout rates, bullying incidents, etc. Their criteria of “lowest percentage of children who repeated one or more grades” failed to realize that some states such as Utah automatically promote all students and therefore would have no repeats by law, not educational quality.

Education Week, the K-12 newspaper of record, issues many annual rankings on criteria that vary year-by-year and involve ever-changing fads. Because the nature of Kansas educational governance does not allow for rapid turnover in leadership, and with our relatively unconsolidated rural school autonomy, Kansas does not see the rapid adoption of educational cure-alls that whipsaw teachers in other states. As a result, Education Week surveys often rank Kansas in the middle of the pack, often as low as #37.

The January 2014 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ ) has its own agenda, giving Kansas various D’s for not expanding the teacher pool or identifying effective teachers, and an F for not “exiting” (firing) ineffective teachers. In a separate earlier report, NCTQ did praise Kansas for depth of training science teachers along with ten other states, while 39 states and Washington DC received low scores for training shallow science teachers.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) gave Kansas a B+ and A- for academic standards in Language Arts and Mathematics, respectively. But ALEC has the same agenda as NCTQ on school choice and “expanding the teaching pool” (letting more folks teach without training), and gave very similar grades as NCTQ for teacher training and firing. On cost per student, Kansas was ranked 26th and on students scoring “proficient” or higher, Kansas ranked 19th.

What about a reliable long-term national “standard”? The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was first administered in 1969. Managed by more test-savvy experts at the U.S. Department of Education, the NAEP for 2013 has Kansas with 9 states significantly higher, 20 significantly lower, and 22 in the same range with insignificant differences. Thus Kansas is somewhat average.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” wrote Mark Twain (attributing the phrase to Disraeli). The above cases select criteria that are at best arbitrary and incomplete. At worst, they are irrelevant, political, and used to assign meaningless scores to make unjustified policy.
Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz has written a simple book Measuring Up to describe “what educational testing really tells us” that will help a parent understand why test scores and other numbers are not adequate criteria for deciding where to move to provide your child with a good education.

We should focus on having good teachers in our classrooms just as we should be concerned with having good surgeons in our hospitals—period. “State report card” rankings give voice to non-professionals who usually have political agendas.

N.E.A. data show Kansas is #1 among all 50 states in having the most males in classrooms (33.1%). Whether that is good or bad, I do not know. But it is about the only bit of education data that I trust.

I am sitting at my home office in my nine-county legislative district and pondering the recent controversy about forced school consolidation and who might or might not be in favor of such a policy.  That is an issue of utmost concern to me and my constituents.

My legislative district contains all of eleven school districts and parts of nine more. The three smallest of them each have current enrollments of less than 100 students in grades K-12. So it will come as no surprise that we care a great deal about this subject here in the 118th District. In fact, advocating for and protecting the future of rural school districts has been my number one priority throughout my legislative career.

But I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Forced consolidation of Kansas public schools is not going to happen any time soon. We tried that back in the 1960s when nearly 2800 school districts were consolidated into just 311. That thrust many Kansas communities into turmoil and numerous legislators were booted from office.

And now, 50 years later, many rural Kansas towns bear the scars of the forced consolidation that closed their schools and doomed those communities to a future of decline and decay.  I doubt that we do that again. And I know of no one who is openly advocating for another round of forced school consolidation.  Not John Vratil, not Dave Trabert, and not Mike O’Neal. It is simply too politically unpopular, and all three of those individuals and essentially all current legislators understand that.

But rural Kansas school districts and the students they serve face a very real and immediate threat from a different form of consolidation. Let’s call it consolidation by starvation. It is one of the consequences of tight state budgets, and it can happen when overall funding for schools is reduced or when the school funding formula is changed in ways which produce fewer dollars for small rural districts.

As state funding declines small rural districts scramble to save money any way they can. Eventually that isn’t enough and they have to reduce course offerings and curtail programs. And finally the inevitable day arrives: the school board finds it is out of options and votes to merge with a neighbor or disband entirely. Since the start of the great recession in 2008, ten Kansas school districts have ceased to exist, and it is highly likely that more will face the same fate very soon.

Several of my legislative colleagues are claiming that retired Senator John Vratil favors forced consolidation. And they charge that he is not fit to be a member of the K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission, based on a statement he made in 2011. Senator Vratil now resides in Johnson County but he was raised in Pawnee County, and I know he understands very well the plight of rural Kansas schools. When he made his remarks in 2011, he wasn’t talking about forced consolidation. Rather, he was pointing out that austere budgets make it hard for all school districts to continue to provide services, and the most vulnerable and least able to survive are small rural school districts. In other words, he was talking about consolidation by starvation, brought on by budget cuts at the state level.

But don’t think for a moment that this is always an unintended consequence of tight budgets. Those who perennially advocate for less funding for public education must surely understand that some rural school districts will be squeezed out of existence.  So while they publicly voice their opposition to forced consolidation, their actions reveal that the disappearance of small rural Kansas school districts is not a concern to them and in fact they are hoping for that outcome. But of course they prefer the subtle consolidation by starvation over the more open and obvious forced consolidation.

And when that happens, students in my district and rural districts throughout the state are the losers.

Rep. Don Hineman, R-Dighton, represents the 118th District in the Kansas House.

It’s tough being a Republican candidate in Kansas these days.

There once was a time, if you entertained thoughts of going to Washington, D.C., or spending a couple months out of the year in Topeka, the hardest thing you had to do was make sure your name appeared on the ballot with a big, bold “R” behind it.

If you had to debate a Democratic opponent, all you had to do was smile a lot and avoid saying anything stupid . . . but mostly just smile a lot. You’d get your 70 percent of the vote in the general election and be guaranteed job security for as long as you wanted.

Being an incumbent was even easier. Just show up on your annual “listening tour,” remember what town you were in and, of course, keep smiling. You never had a Republican challenger and, most of the time, no one appeared on the Democratic ticket. When one did surface it was often a candidate whose name was unknown outside of his immediate family.

But Barack Obama and Harry Reid have ruined it.

It’s because of them that we have a Tea Party, we have uberconservatives in Congress and in statehouses around the country, and we have ubergridlock. They’re to blame for voter fraud, illegal immigration, taxes, Putin flexing his muscle in the Ukraine and anything that can possibly go wrong in the Middle East.

Worst of all, they’re making it very difficult for Republicans in Kansas to get re-elected.

Sen. Pat Roberts, who has to look at a map to be certain where Kansas is located, mentioned Harry Reid’s name 20 times during the Kansas State Fair debate with Independent challenger Greg Orman. Orman had to be looking over his shoulder to be sure the Nevada senator hadn’t slipped onto the stage without his knowledge.

Gov. Sam Brownback has used a similar strategy by referring to Democratic challenger Paul Davis as “the Nancy Pelosi of Kansas” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) and by claiming the only reason people voted against him in the Republican primary was because “ . . . people are so angry . . . they’re just trying to express it somehow.”

Isn’t that just like Kansas voters?

One minute they elect Brownback governor and the next minute they can’t wait to throw him out of office because they hate President Obama.

Of course, it has nothing to do with anti-education policies, a disastrous tax policy and a state budget that’s going into the toilet.

Curse you President Obama. You’re spoiling a good thing for Kansas Republicans.

One can’t fault Brownback and Roberts for their political strategy. It makes sense when you haven’t done anything that you can . . . or want to . . . be remembered for. When that happens the only alternative is to dangle some red meat like Barack, Harry, Hillary, Benghazi, EPA or IRS in front of Tea Party hyenas and after that nothing else matters.

“Sen. Roberts, what would you do to improve the economy and create more jobs?”

“I’d put Harry Reid out to pasture.”

“How will that help the economy?”

“Did I mention that Nancy Pelosi fights like a girl?”

“Senator, we’re talking about the economy.”

“Harry Reid.”

“What about Harry Reid, Senator Roberts?”

“What more can I say? Once you’ve said Harry Reid you’ve said it all.”

It’s obvious that Gov. Brownback has been looking through the same Republican playbook. The sluggish Kansas economy, the downgrading of our state’s bond rating and state revenues that are on track to bring in $600 million less than projected for the current budget year can only be blamed on one thing . . . or person.

“What we are seeing today is the effect of tax increases implemented by the Obama administration that resulted in lower income tax payments and a depressed business environment,” according to Brownback.

Brownback and his Republican legislature passed massive tax cuts with the promise that it would be a boost to businesses and that higher state tax revenues would follow. Other than being named Barack Obama, exactly what did the President do to throw a wrench into Brownback’s budget?

Unless, of course, Obama really doesn’t like Kansas. Perhaps his unique Muslim abilities made it possible to implement policies that have an impact on Kansas alone.

For example, In 11 of 12 economic measuring sticks, Kansas trails the neighboring states of Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Colorado.

Private business establishments in Kansas grew by 0.7% between 2012 and 2013, compared to 2.6% in the region and 2.2 percent nationwide. Personal income growth from 2011 to 2012 was 2.2 percent in Kansas, which lagged behind the six-state region (3.6%) and the nation (3.4%).

It’s obvious that Barack’s tax policies and Michelle’s push for healthier eating are creating an economic disaster in Kansas.

How else do you explain the net loss of 10,197 people from Kansas between 2010 and 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau?

Simple. It’s because those people realize that Kansas is in President Obama’s crosshairs and the only way to avoid becoming a victim of his obsessive dislike for Kansas is to escape to places like Oklahoma or Missouri where people are enjoying the benefit of exuberant support for the President and his policies.

The truth is that being Republican isn’t enough to guarantee an easy election as Roberts, Brownback, Kris Kobach and Tim Huelskamp are discovering. Obama, Reid or any other Democrat bogeyman aren’t to blame because Roberts hasn’t had an original idea in 40 years and Brownback’s tax experiment is a disaster.

Republican incumbents are finding very little to smile about this election season and they have no one but themselves to blame.

Rod Haxton is editor/owner of the Scott County Record.

Frustration with political candidates is nothing new. For decades political science’s truism about Congress held: people hated the institution but loved their Congressman. Things are different in 2014. In June, a Rasmussen poll reported only 25% of respondents indicated they believed their member of Congress deserved re-election, the lowest rate in years.

Every now and again voters decide to make good on their regular threats to “throw the bums out,” and they appear ready to do so in Kansas this year. Anti-incumbency is challenging: on the rare occasion when voters decide to remove a sitting officeholder, we assume that the opponent was a superior choice. But that is not always the case, and it may not be so this year.

Take the U.S. Senate race. On issues, Pat Roberts is likely as close to a match for the typical Kansan as possible. But Roberts is in the fight of his life, narrowly defeating Milton Wolf in the primary and now looking up at independent Greg Orman. Did Roberts vote against the interests of his constituents? If so, you’d expect opposing campaigns to make more of his voting record. Where is their focus? That Roberts spends most of his time in D.C. and has been in office for nearly five decades. Orman’s campaign has been smart and talks the right anti-incumbent message, but questions remain about his ability to govern if elected.

Unlike Roberts, Governor Brownback has a policy problem. A controversial tax plan has given his opponent an easy platform from which to attack. Paul Davis leads Brownback in most polls, but voters know precious little about him other than he is not the governor. The strategy of not defining one’s self and relying on attacks rarely works, but may actually be enough for Davis in an environment combining uncertainty over Brownback’s vision with a strong strain of anti-incumbency.

Are voters choosing Orman and Davis, or “Not Roberts” and “Not Brownback”? Are Orman and Davis superior, or just well-timed? We will likely never know the true answer, but if Kansas were to follow the lead of two other states, we might. Nevada has a law, and a bill enrolled in the New Hampshire legislature earlier this year would have amended state ballots, to include an option to vote for nobody.

For feisty voters in an anti-incumbent mood, the “zero option” provides an intriguing direction for their ire. In the U.S.’ two-party system, it is easy to confuse a vote for one candidate as a mandate, when in fact voters simply dislike them less than the other option. The “nobody” vote would allow voters to directly tell the candidates whether they are doing enough to earn their vote. The option would also reduce the frequency of write-in protest votes, like Mickey Mouse who receives thousands of votes for President each election.

The option would be difficult to accept for candidates, whose egos are often closely tied to their vote totals. There is also no guarantee voters would embrace the option, since third-party candidates are rarely successful. Even if “nobody” could actually win an election, there would have to be a mechanism whereby the office in question would be filled, but the idea has merit. Enough merit that a challenge to Nevada’s law was rejected by the Supreme Court.

The voters are angry, and the choices on our ballots are limiting. Voters often cast strategic ballots for the least of evils rather than their true preference. A vote for nobody might be a missile without a guidance system, but as a means of encouraging clear protest votes it could provide more faith in a democratic system voters see as failing them.

Chapman Rackaway is a Professor of Political Science at Fort Hays State University.

Sitting together at the family dinner table may seem hard to manage with the busy lives people lead these days. However, a family meal helps cultivate an environment where parents can have a conversation with their children. And that family interaction is an important factor to protect children from the dangers of smoking, drinking and drugs.

This month, the Ellis County Extension Office is teaming up with Papa Murphy’s and the Hays Kiwanis Club to offer a make-and-take pizza activity to encourage families to cook and eat together. Families will have the opportunity to assemble a pizza from provided ingredients and take home a low-cost meal to enjoy together.

Family Make and Take Pizza Night will be held on Monday, September 29 from 4:15 to 6:15 p.m. at the Ellis County Extension Office meeting room, 601 Main Street in Hays. (Enter the rear door from the north parking lot.) The cost is only $2.50 per pizza, with a limit of two pizzas per family. Quantities are limited, so registration is accepted on a first-come, first-served basis with priority given to families with young children. Register and pay fees at the Ellis County Extension Office, 601 Main Street in Hays, (785) 628-9430.

Papa Murphy’s will donate about 70 crusts for the make-and-take event and toppings are supported by funding from the Hays Kiwanis Club and Ellis County Extension. We’ll also provide a bag of baby carrots and a few pieces of fruit to balance your healthy family meal.

Volunteers are needed to assist with this event. Call the Extension Office if you can help during one or both shifts: 4:00-5:15 p.m. and 5:15-6:30 p.m.

The goal of Family Pizza Night is to create awareness that regular conversations between parents and children are an important prevention tool to help safeguard Kansas youth and that family meals are an important way to regularly engage in those conversations.

Parental influence is known to be one of the most crucial factors in determining the likelihood of substance abuse by teenagers. Research done by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse consistently finds that the more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs. The statistics reveal that teens who almost always eat dinner with their families are 31 percent LESS likely than the average teenager to smoke, drink or use drugs, while teens who virtually never eat dinner with their families are 72 percent MORE likely than the average teenager to use illegal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

Kids like to eat dinner with their families, too. When a recent survey asked teens about family meals, 84 percent said they prefer to have dinner with their families than to eat alone.

Additionally, research shows that children who eat dinner often with their families are more likely to be emotionally content, do well in school, have positive peer relationships, have lower levels of stress and be bored less often. What amazing benefits from something as simple as a family meal!

This month, plan to make and take a pizza with your kids on September 29 and think of ways you can schedule more family time to talk about what’s going on in your child’s world. After all, what your kids really want at the dinner table is YOU!

Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.

“ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State — or whatever you want to call it.”

That’s how one NPR reporter referred to the new face of terror this week as the United States prepares for another long, hard struggle against a brutal enemy of humanity.

What’s in name? After all, evil by any other name remains evil.

When it comes to terrorism, however, branding matters. ISIS leaders may read “Islam for Dummies” to fake the world into thinking they know something about Islam (according to news reports), but they are no dummies when it comes to waging a war for the hearts and minds of young Muslims.

After a murderous sweep across Iraq in June, ISIS declared an Islamic “caliphate” — and renamed themselves the “Islamic State.” At first most media outlets stuck with ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) — both acronyms that obscure the “Islamic” part.

But “ISIS” and “ISIL” have been gradually supplanted by “Islamic State” in a growing number of news stories and commentaries about the conflict.

The media drumbeat that our enemy is an “Islamic State” is a significant propaganda victory for ISIS, an extremist group that seeks to recruit young Muslims to help “restore” what ISIS misleadingly describes as an Islamic order that will unite all Muslims.

The power of the term “Islamic State” is clearly not lost on governments organizing to fight ISIS. The Obama administration, for example, uses “ISIL” and avoids uttering the words “Islamic State.”

Not surprisingly, Muslim leaders in the U.S. and around the world are especially disturbed and outraged by the appropriation of “Islamic State” by militant thugs. As Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, explained last week in a column for Time.com:

“Every time we refer to ISIS as the ‘Islamic State,’ call its members ‘jihadists’ or in any way grant it the religious legitimacy that it so desperately seeks, we simultaneously boost its brand, tarnish the image of Islam and further marginalize the vast majority of Muslims who are disgusted by the group’s un-Islamic actions.”

American media outlets, of course, are free to print the self-description used by militants in Iraq and Syria — even when that description offends and disturbs people of faith. Consider how many Christians are repelled by news accounts of the “Christian Identity” movement, a hate-filled, white supremacy group that is antithetical to the teachings of the Gospels. Or how many Baptists cringe every time they read “Westboro Baptist Church” in the headlines.

But media outlets are also free to make judgment calls about what best serves the public interest. Nine years ago, for example, many newspapers declined to publish the Danish cartoons that denigrated the Muslim faith. And today, a growing number of newspapers are opting to stop using the term “Redskins” when reporting on the Washington, D.C. football team.

Given the high stakes in the fight against ISIS, I can only hope that news organizations will consider following the lead of The New York Times, which has stuck with “ISIS” even as many other news outlets have switched to “Islamic State.”

Call ISIS what you will, there is no “Islamic State.”

Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Washington-based Newseum Institute. [email protected]

Dear Dave,
In an attempt to improve my bad credit I recently bought a new car, which I financed at 17.9 percent for 72 months. If I make the minimum payment of $468 a month, I’ll end up paying about $13,000 in interest alone.

Is there a formula I can use to avoid paying all this interest?
Marcus

Dear Marcus,
There sure is. Sell the stinking car!

Your credit rating and interest rate are lousy because you haven’t paid your bills. And you haven’t paid your bills because you’ve been buying a bunch of crap you couldn’t afford — like this new car at $468 a month.

Listen, you could have more than $5,500 in just 12 months if you just saved up all those car payments. That would get you a good little used vehicle that wouldn’t be an anchor around your neck for the next six years.

Stop believing the lie, Marcus. Going into debt doesn’t improve your life.
—Dave

Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business. He has authored five New York Times best-selling books: Financial Peace, More Than Enough, The Total Money Makeover, EntreLeadership and Smart Money Smart Kids. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 8 million listeners each week on more than 500 radio stations. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com.

Across the United States, public universities are focusing on providing resident students with the “college experience.” With the movement to present lectures online as a strictly audio-visual experience, there is a natural feeling that something is missing from the post-high school experience. This has led administrators to contrive to restore the social interactions that occur on campuses and proclaim this is the missing 50 percent of a university education. Unfortunately, just as the online “course” is barely a shadow of face-to-face teaching, the fun-and-games socializing that passes for the out-of-class “college experience” also fails to provide the real college experience.

In 1987, a Distinguished Professor at my university spoke to assembled faculty and students. He advised students to not only attend every class, but to also get a full education outside of class.

He meant that students should stop in at professors’ offices. At a good university, faculty doors are open. They are there to help, not just when a student is struggling in coursework, but also to listen to where you are in life. To share the difficulties of being an intellectual. To help advise in career decisions from an experienced position. To help a student see a bigger world of ideas.

In this last year, research by Pascarella and Gillig at the University of Iowa confirmed this advice and found that “meaningful interactions with faculty members outside class, along with clear and organized teaching, had the strongest positive effects on students’ motivation during their first year of college, which otherwise tends to drop significantly.”

The Distinguished Professor went on to stress the importance of extending that classroom learning into student interactions. In academic campus clubs, senior students can share advice with entering freshmen in the same major, helping the youngsters decide on careers and demonstrating that they can survive. These contacts with older classmates and professors also help students mature.  If they just study hard, in a few years they too can enter medical school, etc.

Many elite schools, such as Harvard, house the majority of their students in thematic residence halls to maximize this out-of-class educational experience.

And the philosophy and literature and music addressed in class discussions can continue late into the night, from top bunk to bottom bunk, as classmates carry the lesson further as they share their own life experiences.  The study of academics is not just for a grade. Academics are for moving each student’s understanding of life to a higher level.

And the Professor recommended travel. Students view the world as their hometown viewed the world. Travel helps students gain a wider view. Even if they cannot travel, there are foreign students on campus, sitting next to them in class and in the cafeteria. Deep engagement with foreign students helps students realize that on the one hand, they have the same human needs and desires. And yet the foreign students often view the world much differently than we do.  Students learn that there are many other ways to view world problems, and perhaps our provincial view is not the correct view.

Sadly, in today’s national discussion of “the college experience,” nothing academic is included. Social clubs, pep sessions, fun and games, recreational facilities—yes.  But more faculty doors are closed. Advising is done by an impersonal computer. Each student feels like a number because they are treated as a number.

This problem has been caused by confining academics to classroom “teaching” and considering it just an audio-visual experience. Just as this was a failure in the 1960s as televised instruction, it remains a poor excuse for teaching today when delivered over the Internet.

A new breed of American university administrator thinks that the teaching task is completed in the classroom or on-screen. The rest of the college experience is considered “time-to-party.”

But when you remove academics, you have taken “college” out of “the college experience.”