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- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 13
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- Attention, class. It's the year 2000, and you have two days
- to put out an issue of TIME.
-
- That was the assignment handed to 300 seventh- through
- tenth-graders in the Northern Valley schools of Bergen County,
- N.J., last week by their teachers as part of a six-year-old
- campaign to show talented youngsters how to solve complex
- problems. The sources for the students' stories were 14
- speakers from local universities, government agencies, a law
- firm and the press, who talked about everything from the latest
- developments in medicine and genetics to demographic trends
- and family issues. After a day of listening and note-taking,
- the students had six hours to turn the information into issues
- of TIME, complete with cover stories and new sections. Their
- entries would be judged on content, quality of writing,
- plausibility and creativity.
-
- The students, who came from nine schools in the region, were
- divided into groups to produce 21 different magazines. Once
- senior editor Thomas Sancton explained how the TIME staff puts
- the magazine together each week, the students took over,
- assigning themselves to writing, editing and hand printing
- their magazines on poster boards, as well as creating
- advertisements, graphs and pictures. Says Sancton: "They were
- a bright, eager bunch of kids -- the ideal TIME journalists of
- the future."
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- What did TIME of the year 2000 report? Smokers will be
- discouraged to learn that "as of May 1, 2000, cigarettes have
- been declared illegal." Dan Quayle will be pleased to discover
- that he has become President. The last homeless person in the
- U.S. will have found a permanent place to live, somewhere in
- Chicago, and the cure for AIDS will have come from a wildflower
- found in the jungles of Africa. A top item in Milestones:
- Elizabeth Taylor's marriage to Johnny Carson. The covers of the
- two winning magazines announced the arrival of aliens on earth
- and superbabies created through genetic engineering. "The kids
- did a tremendous job," says Patricia Raupers, district
- coordinator of gifted programs. "They developed some creative
- ideas under a tight deadline."
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- -- Louis A. Weil III
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