I consider myself to have been the bridge between the shotgun and the binoculars in bird watching. Before I came along the primary way to observe birds was to shoot them and stuff them.
It is absolutely imperative that we protect preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it.
Every time I have some moment on a seashore or in the mountains or sometimes in a quiet forest I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
Unfortunately the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.
In our post-9/11 world our Nation's military deserves at least the same access to institutions of higher education that any other major employer might enjoy.
A person like myself born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta Georgia to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education to go and earn a commission in the United States Army to serve for 22 years to lead men and women in combat.
Our youth deserve the opportunity to complete their high school and college education free of early parenthood. Their future children deserve the opportunity to grow up in financially and emotionally stable homes. Our communities benefit from healthy productive well-prepared young people.
Growing up I was encouraged to get a good education get a real job doing something I enjoyed and should the opportunity present itself consider public service as just that: a chance to serve not an end in itself.
We cannot create observers by saying 'observe ' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.
I went to a football school which meant that I went to a university that served up education and was simultaneously operating a sports franchise.