Recently by Scott Barzilla

Forgive me if I have done this before, but I am going to present to you an assignment that I assigned when I was an English and Philosophy teacher. I will present to you three prominent works and let the listening (or reading) audience decide for themselves. I'll provide my own answer at the bottom. It may surprise some of you coming from the political wing I come from, but it something I truly believe....

Rockheadedmama and I got into a debate during my last education post about when the right to an education began. I think what we agreed (if we did agree) is that the forefathers had it on the mind, but public education did not exist as we know it (nationwide) until the late 1800s. Naturally, some states got it right earlier than others. Thomas Jefferson's Virginia (he was an educational enthusiast) and Massachusets (home of MIT...

About a week ago, Eljefebob wrote a piece about conservatives wanting to "starve the beast." The notion was that if government could no longer afford entitlement programs then entitlement programs would have to die. It was a brilliant plan because no one would argue for killing social security, medicare, or medicaid on their own. Thus, they could cut programs without directly opposing them. Brilliant. When Ronald Reagan (architect of starving the beast) entered office, he...

I realize I often times come off as sounding uncaring. Maybe it is a bit of the old-school in terms of education coming out. You can't help but listen to dinner conversation about work growing up without being affected. So, sometimes I come off as callous and maybe even a bit conservative. It's funny, I catch it from both ends. That's life in the middle I guess. However, today I wanted to talk about something...

This was a huge topic in my book, but it's become a bigger topic of late. I will tell a story I know of from the past (that is in my book). Even though I am dealing with a similar situation now, I want to make it perfectly clear that any stories I tell are from the fairly distant past and are only related to current events in topic and not any general or specific...

On this president's day I thought I would just do a short blurb on where we have gone as Americans. George Washington was a very tall man, but a man with wooden teeth. He also may not have been the best orator in the world. Abraham Lincoln was a good speaker, but perhaps pound for pound our ugliest (physically) president. Yet, most historians and casual observers put them in our top five. Now, I present...

I was driving along minding my own business when I heard a radio ad that almost made me pull over and lose my breakfast. Unfortunately, I don't know how to capture such ads here, but if anyone has heard this ad and wants to throw it in here they can go ahead. Kay Bailey Hutchinson released this as and it might be the most brilliant one I've heard at the state level in years. It...

I have spent much of the last year or so writing either on the Chronicle or here about this and that. Most of the time the topic has trended to education, but I hate to dominate the conversation with shop talk. Recently, our conversations have trended towards poverty, welfare, and NASA. Now, those are three you normally don't see in the same sentence. It's high time we take stock in where we are and where...

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense back in the 18th century. It made a brilliant case for revolution and if for a brief moment, personified common sense. As time has gone on, common sense has been fading like the gene pool in the Bush family. Today's tale brings us to the lonestar state where our state legislature has become educational experts in much the same way as that new vibrating ab cruncher gets us in shape:...

As I write this, I want to establish that I am only talking about other people's opinions and not my own. As a Clear Lake resident, I am around people in the space industry on a daily basis. Some people stand in awe at astronauts while those of us in Clear Lake kind of yawn. However, we are acutely aware of important the space industry is to our immediately community. I would harbor the guess...