Access Utah

Last week, in part one of our three-part series on K-12 education, we talked about State Senator Aaron Osmond’s proposal to end compulsory education in Utah. Today, in part two of the series, we talk to Senator Osmond himself. He says that parents, not schools, are ultimately responsible for their children’s education.

Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, Clinton’s COPS program, the post–9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties.

On August 28, 1963, thousands marched on Washington in support of civil rights. The assembled crowd of more than 250,000 heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Access Utah (on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom) we ask: has the dream articulated by Dr. King been realized? What progress has been made? What remains to be done? What is your dream? How are we progressing towards it? What does this anniversary mean to you?

State Senator Aaron Osmond recently argued that teachers are being forced to become surrogate parents, expected to do everything from behavioral counseling to providing adequate nutrition, to teaching sex education and that some parents act as if the responsibility to educate, and even care for their child, is primarily the responsibility of the public school system. He is proposing that we end compulsory education in Utah. We’ll get reaction from Lily Eskelsen Garcia, former Utah teacher and current National Education Association Vice President.

Terry Tempest Williams’ mother told her, “I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.”

Enchanted by electricity as a boy, William Kamkwamba wanted to study science in Malawi's top boarding schools. But in 2002, his country was stricken with a famine that devastated his family's farm and left his parents destitute. Unable to pay the eighty-dollar-a-year tuition for his education, William was forced to drop out and help his family forage for food as thousands across the country starved and died. But William refused to let go of his dreams. He embarked on a daring plan to bring his family a set of luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford--electricity and running water.

When it was published in 1997, The Wall Street Journal called Terryl Givens' “The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy” "one of the five best books on Mormonism." Now, in the wake of a tidal wave of Mormon-inspired artistic, literary, and political activity--ranging from the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, to the HBO series Big Love, to the political campaign of Mitt Romney--Givens has updated the book to address the continuing presence and reception of the Mormon image in contemporary culture. “The Viper on the Hearth” shows how nineteenth- and twentieth-century American writers frequently cast the Mormon as a stock villain in such fictional genres as mysteries, westerns, and popular romances.

According to a study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 28 percent of Americans have no confidence they will have enough money to retire comfortably -- the highest figure in the study's 23-year history. 41 percent do say they are at least somewhat confident. How confident are you? Until recently most of our attention has focused on accumulating assets for retirement; now as baby boomers retire, there is a lot more emphasis on managing money IN retirement to make it last. How much do you need for your retirement? Can you rely on the stock market to safely leverage your savings? How will recent changes in health care and other laws affect your retirement? What if you are self-employed or relying on a pension?

Moab resident Steph Davis is a superstar in the climbing community. But when her husband made a controversial climb of Delicate Arch, the media fallout and the toll on her marriage left her without a partner or an income. Accompanied by her beloved dog, Fletch, she set off in search of a new identity and discovered sky diving. Though falling out of an airplane is antithetical to a climber’s control, she discovered new hope and joy in letting go.

For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Millions across the nation welcomed him into their homes, first as a print reporter for the United Press on the front lines of World War II, and later, in the emerging medium of television, as a host of numerous documentary programs and as anchor of the CBS Evening News, from 1962 until his retirement in 1981.