Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Strained Military Resources in Iraq Lead to Fears of a National Draft, 10/13/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec04/draft_10-13.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is a draft?
2. Do you think the U.S. will have to instigate a draft?
3. What criteria should the government use before instigating a draft?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. When can the U.S. government require its citizens to sign up for military service?

Military service in the United States is strictly voluntary-- men and women serving in the armed forces do so by choice. But, during times of war, that can change. Mandatory service, called conscription but known popularly as the "draft," allows governments to require men, and sometimes women, of a certain age to serve in a military crisis.

2. When did the peacetime draft end?

Though controversial, the peacetime draft remained in place until America pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. Today, Congress can give the military the right to draft troops during wartime.

3. Why are some people worried that a draft may be re-instituted?

Recently, many Americans have begun to worry that the shortage of troops caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may lead President Bush or his successor to reinstate the draft.

The fears have been compounded by the numbers. Of the country's 1.4 million active duty troops, according to a New York Times report, 655,000 are Army and Marine personnel, the pool from which troops in Iraq are drawn. Because the 191,000 troops currently stationed in Iraq and elsewhere in the world must be rotated often, military resources could deteriorate fast.

In addition, both President Bush and his opponent Senator John Kerry have called for more troops to help secure peace leading up to Iraq's first Democratic election in January. The problem is no one seems to know where those troops would come from.

4. What is President Bush's proposal for finding the troops to fill the gap in Iraq?

The president has proposed pulling troops out of places like Europe and South Korea. However the current nuclear crisis with North Korea could require troops to remain in the region.

5. What is Senator Kerry's proposal for getting more troops to Iraq?

Sen. Kerry has said if he's elected he would expand the Army by 40,000 members but, according to Army National Guard reports, recruiting levels are already low.

6. How would the draft work?

Once it gets the green light from Congress, the Selective Service would begin a lottery system, choosing young men whose 20th birthday falls in the year of the draft. The military would then draft men starting with 21-year-olds and ending with 25-year olds. So far, women are exempt from being drafted.

7. Are non-U.S. citizens exempt from the draft?

Incarcerated men, hospitalized men and men who claim "conscientious objection," an objection to military duty based on religious or moral beliefs, could claim exemption. Dual citizens and non-U.S. Citizens are not exempt from the draft.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you think a draft should be used only when another country invades the United States or should it be used when the U.S. takes preemptive action?

2. Should women continue to be exempt from the draft?

3. If there were a draft, would you fight or would you be a conscientious objector? Why?

4. Do you think conscientious objectors are unpatriotic? Why or why not?

Write a 500-800 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.