大家一起来挑战《时代》吧！

我们的目标就是，专业的水平翻译《时代》杂志，现在先从它的Cover Story开始吧！

大家可以自己组队，每队一到三人，完成一段翻译，然后大家共同来校对全文。欢迎大家报名参加哦！

下面是07年1月15日的Cover Story

What a Surge Really Means?

(Part 1 - 463 Words)

For years now, George W. Bush has told Americans that he would increase the number of troops in Iraq only if the commanders on the ground asked him to do so. It was not a throwaway line: Bush said it from the very first days of the war, when he and Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld were criticized for going to war with too few troops. He said it right up until last summer, stressing at a news conference in Chicago that Iraq commander General George Casey "will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there." Seasoned military people suspected that the line was a dodge--that the civilians who ran the Pentagon were testing their personal theory that war can be fought on the cheap and the brass simply knew better than to ask for more. In any case, the President repeated the mantra to dismiss any suggestion that the war was going badly. Who, after all, knew better than the generals on the ground?

Now, as the war nears the end of its fourth year and the number of Americans killed has surpassed 3,000, Bush has dropped the generals-know-best line. Sometime next week the President is expected to propose a surge in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq for a period of up to two years. A senior official said reinforcements numbering "about 20,000 troops," and maybe more, could be in place within months. The surge would be achieved by extending the stay of some forces already in Iraq and accelerating the deployment of others.

The irony is that while the generals would have liked more troops in the past, they are cool to the idea of sending more now. That's in part because the politicians and commanders have had trouble agreeing on what the goal of a surge would be. But it is also because they are worried that a surge would further erode the readiness of the U.S.'s already stressed ground forces. And even those who back a surge are under no illusions about what it would mean to the casualty rate. "If you put more American troops on the front line," said a White House official, "you're going to have more casualties."

Coming from Bush, a man known for bold strokes, the surge is a strange half-measure--too large for the political climate at home, too small to crush the insurgency in Iraq and surely three years too late. Bush has waved off a bipartisan rescue mission out of pride, stubbornness or ideology, or some combination of the three. Rather than reversing course, as all the wise elders of the Iraq Study Group advised, the Commander in Chief is betting that more troops will lead the way to what one White House official calls "victory."

[ 本帖最后由 babypbc 于 2007-1-30 20:41 编辑 ]

(Part 2 - 353 Words)

WHOSE IDEA IS THIS?

ALL KINDS OF MILITARY EXPERTS, BOTH active duty and retired, have been calling for more troops since before the war began--former Army chief Eric Shinseki, former Centcom boss Anthony Zinni and, perhaps loudest of all, Senator John McCain. But seen in another light, the surge is the latest salvo in the 30-year tong war between the two big foreign policy factions in the Republican Party: the internationalists and the neoconservatives. The surge belongs to the neocons and in particular to Frederick Kagan, who taught military history at West Point for a decade and today works out of the American Enterprise Institute as a military analyst. Kagan argued for a surge last fall in the pages of the Weekly Standard, the neocons' house organ, after the military's previous surge, Operation Forward Together, failed in late October. Kagan turned to former Army Vice Chief of Staff Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who still has street cred at the Pentagon, to help flesh out the plan and then sell it to the White House. The neocons don't have the same juice they had at the start of the war, in part because so many of them have fled the government in shame. But they are a long way from dead.

It was no accident that the surge idea began gathering steam among the war's most ardent supporters at exactly the same moment the Baker-Hamilton group proposed, in early December, that the White House start executing a slow but steady withdrawal from Iraq. To the neocons, former Secretary of State James Baker is the archenemy, the epitome of those internationalists who have always been too willing to cut deals with shady players overseas. His commission's 79 recommendations struck the neocons as defeatist--and a condemnation of a war they had thought up in the first place. And so, re-energized by the return of Baker to prominence, they went on the offensive. "We were hearing all this talk of pulling back and pulling out and how not to lose," said a retired senior officer. "But we're looking for a way to win."

(Part 3 - 374 Words)

Although the Baker group allowed for a surge to stabilize Baghdad or speed up training of Iraqis, it conditioned that O.K. with the phrase "if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective." When it became clear to the internationalists that the Kagan-Keane surge was winning White House attention without any calls for more troops from generals on the ground, they counter-counterattacked. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former four-star, said a surge had been tried in Baghdad--and had failed last fall--and would only further delay Iraqis in taking control of their own security. Powell added, a little pointedly, that he had not heard any generals ask for more troops--an oblique way of hinting that the President was saying one thing about who was deciding troop levels but doing another.

Bush greeted the Baker-Hamilton proposals with the gratitude of someone who had just received a box of rotting cod. He never much liked the internationalists (although--or perhaps because--his father is a charter member). By Christmas, it was clear that he had not only rejected a staged withdrawal in the mold of Baker-Hamilton but was ready to up his bet and throw even more troops at the problem. He began executing his pivot quietly. First, after reassuring Americans that he would ask for more troops only when the generals requested them, Bush amended that promise and hinted that he would merely listen to what the generals were saying. Bush next sent his new Pentagon boss, Robert Gates, to Baghdad to see whether the Iraqi commanders needed more troops. Bush then turned to his National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, to hack this new way out of the Iraqi jungle.

So far, the Hadley-run hunt for a new military and diplomatic approach has earned mediocre marks from inside and outside the White House. Wider-ranging alternatives were not explored in any depth, said several foreign policy experts who met with Hadley in December, and talks with Iran and Syria were ruled out of the question. A dismayed Administration official who has generally been an optimist about Iraq described the process as chaotic. "None of this," he predicted of the surge and its coming rollout, "is going to work."

[ 本帖最后由 babypbc 于 2007-1-30 20:41 编辑 ]

坐沙发 继续发，我会认真参加的

(Part 4 - 224 Words)

WHAT IS THE MISSION?

NOT LONG AGO, THE GOAL OF U.S. FORCES IN Iraq sounded straightforward: liberate the country and turn it over to the Iraqi people. Now U.S. strategy is a vast, many-headed monster: disarm or kill the insurgents, hunt down al-Qaeda, rebuild the electrical and energy grids, establish civilian order, work with political parties to speed a stand-alone government, keep an eye out for Iranian influence--and try not to get killed in the process. According to Kagan, the newly enlarged forces would reorder those priorities and make protecting the Iraqi people Job One. How? With what retired Lieut. General David Barno, who helped Kagan and Keane write the plan, calls "classic counterinsurgency tactics: soldiers going house to house in every block, finding out who lives there, what they do, how many weapons they have, whom they are connected to and how they can help or hurt." Only by winning the trust of the people, the thinking goes, can the U.S. overcome the insurgents. There is a big debate about how many troops would be needed to execute that mission successfully. Some experts think 100,000 might be the right number; Keane and Kagan say it can be done with 35,000, which is about the limit that would be available. It does not appear that the White House will be sending that many.

(Part 5 - 366 Words)

HOW DO THE GENERALS VIEW THE IDEA OF A SURGE?

FOR MONTHS THE GENERALS OPPOSED increasing troop strength, chiefly because they calculated that as long as the American footprint was growing, Iraqis would never take responsibility for their own security. This continues to concern them: a former military official told TIME that Defense Secretary Gates has spent a lot of time in his first three weeks on the job trying to wrest from his military planners clear benchmarks for putting the Iraqis in charge. The chiefs hinted they would back a surge only if the goals--and the goalposts--are explicit. "We would not surge without a purpose," said Army chief Peter Schoomaker. "And that purpose should be measurable."

The chiefs also complain that the surge seems to involve only guys with guns. There is a widespread feeling that the Pentagon has shouldered the entire load in Iraq while U.S. government agencies better suited for reorganizing political and economic systems have dropped the ball. Other agencies, most notably the State, Justice and Energy departments, lag in sending experts and advisers to help the Iraqis pull themselves together. Uniformed officers say they can pull off a surge, but it won't make any difference if there isn't a larger, government-wide strategy to mend the broken country.

But if the brass isn't keen on a surge, they also know a bargaining chip when they see one. While Rumsfeld was in charge, the Joint Chiefs were muffled, too scared to say boo in public if it meant crossing the civilian boss. But in early December, once Rumsfeld had resigned, the Army and Marine Corps chiefs increasingly went public with their long-standing gripes that Iraq has stretched their forces to the breaking point, damaging recruiting and diminishing readiness. Bush moved quickly to quell this startling revolt: within days he hinted that he might ask Congress to enlarge the overall size of the armed forces in the future. It will be years before the expanded forces are recruited, trained, equipped and in the field, so that change won't solve the problems a surge creates. But the generals seem to have prevailed on a demand that went nowhere while Rumsfeld was in charge.

(Part 6 - 381 Words)

HOW LONG COULD A SURGE BE SUSTAINED?

TO CREATE "THE SURGE," KAGAN AND KEANE proposed extending combat tours in Iraq to produce an additional 30,000 troops in Iraq over the next 18 months. Army tours would be lengthened from 12 to 15 months, and Marine deployments would stretch from seven to 12 months. A few additional combat brigades would be shipped over early to round out the reinforcements. There is no question that some units could pick up the pace. The Marines, after all, still station almost 20,000 troops in Okinawa.

Outgoing Centcom boss John Abizaid told a Senate panel in November that the U.S. "can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect." But he added that "the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps." Surge proponents quietly cheered the recent announcement that Abizaid is retiring. They believe that Abizaid and many of the Army's other top generals are locked in a post-Vietnam mentality that has them worrying more about the recruitment and retention required for an all-volunteer force than about fighting and winning wars.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SURGE ENDS?

THAT DEPENDS ON WHETHER YOU ARE AN optimist or a pessimist on the subject of Iraq. Kagan told TIME that U.S. troop force "should be down significantly" from what it is now--"enough to permit economic development, the recruiting and training of the Iraqi army, political development and reconciliation." Under this scenario, U.S. forces can turn to eradicating the insurgents full time once Baghdad is "stabilized." Not everyone buys this happy talk. "Are we assuming the insurgents don't get to vote on this?" asks a veteran of both the Iraqi and Vietnam wars. "I see more arrogance than ever, assuming once again that Western genius counts for more than Eastern resolve." Already the sectarian militias so eager to kill civilians across Baghdad have been careful not to confront U.S. forces. When U.S. troops appear, the Mahdi Army simply melts away and waits for another moment. Unless they are killed off, jailed or somehow turned into allies--unlikely outcomes all--Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militia fighters will still be around because they have more patience than the U.S. has staying power.

[ 本帖最后由 babypbc 于 2007-1-30 20:44 编辑 ]

(Part 7 - 267 Words)

SO, IS THE SURGE BUSH'S LAST STAND?

PROBABLY YES, WHETHER BUSH INTENDS IT that way or not. There is always a chance that a surge might reduce the violence, if only for a while. But given that nothing in Iraq has gone according to plan, it seems more likely that it won't. That's why many in the military assume privately that a muscular-sounding surge now is chiefly designed to give Bush the political cover to execute a partial withdrawal on his terms later. "We think that by bringing the level of violence down and bringing the level of Iraqi support up, we will be able to begin to hand over the country," Kagan told TIME.

Asked what happens if the surge fails, he added, "If the situation collapses for some other reason--loss of will in the U.S., say, or an unexpected Iraqi political meltdown, then the reduced violence will permit a more orderly withdrawal, if that becomes necessary, mitigating the effect of defeat on the U.S. military and potentially on the region." A retired colonel who served in Baghdad put it more bluntly: "We don't know whether this is a plan for victory or just to signal to Americans that we did our damnedest before pulling out."

There is one other scenario to consider: it may be that Bush won't pull out of Iraq as long as he is President. Whether it works or not, a surge of 18 to 24 months would carry Bush to the virtual end of his term. After that, Iraq becomes someone else's problem. Bush's real exit strategy in Iraq may just be to exit the presidency first.

(Part 8 - 331 Words)

WHEN HE UNVEILS HIS PLAN, BUSH IS likely to wrap the surge inside a handful of other proposals. There is a new Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative in the works for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's team and the outlines of an upgraded Iraqi jobs and infrastructure proposal on the table. Plus, Bush has indicated that he favors the expansion in the armed forces that both the Army and Marine Corps chiefs want. Most of those ideas will meet with broad support in Congress and at the Pentagon, and that's part of the design here: it will be harder to pick the surge apart, the thinking goes, if it's paired with other projects. Besides, Bush and lawmakers know there isn't much Congress can do to stop a surge, short of cutting off funds for military operations. And neither party has any appetite for that.

But that fact hides one other big political change since the November elections. Skepticism among Republicans about the President's thinking on Iraq has become reflexive. Over the past week, two Republican Senators, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, indicated they were far from sold on the surge, and Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran from Nebraska, called a surge "folly." A senior aide to a G.O.P. Senator told TIME that "requiring more troops without providing the goals or the message is a killer. It's a political killer."

And this is where the problem of the President's direction on Iraq only damages his cause in the long run. The White House imagines it is girding for battle against the Democrats and the naysayers who opposed the war in the first place. In fact, its fastest-growing problem is with Republicans who carried Bush's water on "stay the course" last fall. That gambit cost the party 36 seats in the House and Senate in November. One can only imagine what that number would have been--45? 55?--had Bush campaigned last fall for sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq instead.

With reporting by Mike Allen, SALLY B. DONNELLY, Massimo Calabresi/ Washington, Mark Kukis/Baghdad

[ 本帖最后由 babypbc 于 2007-1-30 20:46 编辑 ]

大家都来参加哟，加油加油！

(Part 4 - 224 Words)

WHAT IS THE MISSION?

NOT LONG AGO, THE GOAL OF U.S. FORCES IN Iraq sounded straightforward: liberate the country and turn it over to the Iraqi people. Now U.S. strategy is a vast, many-headed monster: disarm or kill the insurgents, hunt down al-Qaeda, rebuild the electrical and energy grids, establish civilian order, work with political parties to speed a stand-alone government, keep an eye out for Iranian influence--and try not to get killed in the process. According to Kagan, the newly enlarged forces would reorder those priorities and make protecting the Iraqi people Job One. How? With what retired Lieut. General David Barno, who helped Kagan and Keane write the plan, calls "classic counterinsurgency tactics: soldiers going house to house in every block, finding out who lives there, what they do, how many weapons they have, whom they are connected to and how they can help or hurt." Only by winning the trust of the people, the thinking goes, can the U.S. overcome the insurgents. There is a big debate about how many troops would be needed to execute that mission successfully. Some experts think 100,000 might be the right number; Keane and Kagan say it can be done with 35,000, which is about the limit that would be available. It does not appear that the White House will be sending that many.

我和累累来Part 1好了

我也想做第一段

不变不思不由爬4呀,占层楼,偶译好了,一会再讨论下.

lulu和不在的 Part 1

For years now, George W. Bush has told Americans that he would increase the number of troops in Iraq only if the commanders on the ground asked him to do so. It was not a throwaway line: Bush said it from the very first days of the war, when he and Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld were criticized for going to war with too few troops. He said it right up until last summer, stressing at a news conference in Chicago that Iraq commander General George Casey "will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there." Seasoned military people suspected that the line was a dodge--that the civilians who ran the Pentagon were testing their personal theory that war can be fought on the cheap and the brass simply knew better than to ask for more. In any case, the President repeated the mantra to dismiss any suggestion that the war was going badly. Who, after all, knew better than the generals on the ground?

多年以来，乔治·布什一直声称，他只会在作战指挥官要求的情况下，增加驻伊拉克美军的人数。从布什总统一贯的言行看来，这绝不是暂时的承诺。在战争的一开始，当他和国防部长唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德被批评指派兵太少时，他就这样承诺。一直到去年夏天，在芝加哥的一次新闻发布会上，他又再次强调要由驻伊美军总指挥乔治·凯西来决定驻伊美军的规模。然而，资深军士人士怀疑这一总统承诺的底线只不过是个幌子——五角大楼的文官们不过是在测试他们新的人事理论而已：战争并不总意味着高昂的代价，军事高层人员也不只会索要。无论如何，总统不断的重复着他的颂歌，以消除人们对战争越来越糟糕的疑虑。毕竟，谁又能比驻伊美军的将军们更加了解这场战争呢？

Now, as the war nears the end of its fourth year and the number of Americans killed has surpassed 3,000, Bush has dropped the generals-know-best line. Sometime next week the President is expected to propose a surge in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq for a period of up to two years. A senior official said reinforcements numbering "about 20,000 troops," and maybe more, could be in place within months. The surge would be achieved by extending the stay of some forces already in Iraq and accelerating the deployment of others.

然而现在，战争已近四年，美军死亡总人数已逾三千，布什终于抛弃了他的这一承诺。下周的某个时候，美国总统有望提议一个为期两年的增兵计划。一位高级官员称，增兵人数将达到两万人，甚至更多，而且全部会在数月内部署完成。增兵计划可能通过延长在伊美军的服役时间和加速新部队的部署来完成。

The irony is that while the generals would have liked more troops in the past, they are cool to the idea of sending more now. That's in part because the politicians and commanders have had trouble agreeing on what the goal of a surge would be. But it is also because they are worried that a surge would further erode the readiness of the U.S.'s already stressed ground forces. And even those who back a surge are under no illusions about what it would mean to the casualty rate. "If you put more American troops on the front line," said a White House official, "you're going to have more casualties."

具有讽刺意味的是，美军的将军们过去对增兵乐此不疲，然而这次确显得异常的冷静。这部分是因为军队与政府官员在增兵的目的上不能达成一致。更重要的是，将军们担心增兵会进一步影响已经过度紧张的驻伊美军的敏捷性。即使是支持增兵的人也对降低伤亡率不抱幻想。一位白宫官员就曾说：“如果你把更多的美军送上前线，你就必须面对更大的伤亡。”

Coming from Bush, a man known for bold strokes, the surge is a strange half-measure--too large for the political climate at home, too small to crush the insurgency in Iraq and surely three years too late. Bush has waved off a bipartisan rescue mission out of pride, stubbornness or ideology, or some combination of the three. Rather than reversing course, as all the wise elders of the Iraq Study Group advised, the Commander in Chief is betting that more troops will lead the way to what one White House official calls "victory."

对于以果敢的政策闻名的布什来说，增兵是个奇怪的折衷方案：对于国内政治气候来说动作太大，对于平定伊拉克局势来说动作又太小，而且明显为时过晚。布什所抛出的这个折中方案也许完全是出自他自己的骄傲、顽固和其特定的意识形态，也许这三者皆有吧。并没有像伊拉克研究会中的一些明智的长者建议的那样撤军，总统反而将赌注压在增兵这一方案上，因为他认为只有增兵才能把美军引向所谓的“胜利”。

不思、不由、不变的翻译正在讨论中，马上揭晓

WHAT IS THE MISSION?

NOT LONG AGO, THE GOAL OF U.S. FORCES IN Iraq sounded straightforward: liberate the country and turn it over to the Iraqi people. Now U.S. strategy is a vast, many-headed monster: disarm or kill the insurgents, hunt down al-Qaeda, rebuild the electrical and energy grids, establish civilian order, work with political parties to speed a stand-alone government, keep an eye out for Iranian influence--and try not to get killed in the process.

任务是什么？

就在不久前，美国军方还宣称，他们的目标是：解放伊拉克，把主权交还给伊拉克人。然而现在美国的政策却是非常庞大，多头多绪，诸如：解除造反者的武装，抑或处死他们？追剿基地组织；重建电力和能源网络；恢复社会秩序；和其它政党合作来加速组建一个独立政府；关注伊朗的影响，尽量不致政策在执行中被扼杀。

According to Kagan, the newly enlarged forces would reorder those priorities and make protecting the Iraqi people Job One. How? With what retired Lieut. General David Barno, who helped Kagan and Keane write the plan, calls "classic counterinsurgency tactics: soldiers going house to house in every block, finding out who lives there, what they do, how many weapons they have, whom they are connected to and how they can help or hurt."

如Kagan所言，最近的增兵将重新调整工作重点，并把保护伊拉克人民放到第一位。怎样实施呢？曾经帮助过Kagan and Keane的退休陆军上尉General David Barno呼吁，执行所谓“经典的镇压叛乱策略”：士兵到各家各户，搜查出到底有哪些居民，他们是做什么的，他们有多少武器，他们在和谁联系，他们怎样得到帮助或者被（恐怖分子？？）伤害．



Only by winning the trust of the people, the thinking goes, can the U.S. overcome the insurgents. There is a big debate about how many troops would be needed to execute that mission successfully. Some experts think 100,000 might be the right number; Keane and Kagan say it can be done with 35,000, which is about the limit that would be available. It does not appear that the White House will be sending that many.

只有赢得了人民的信任，美国政府征服造反者的这些策略才能够得以进行。到底应该派出多少军队才能够园满完成这一任务呢？围绕这一问题，存在着很大的分歧和争论。有些专家认为（增加）一万军队比较合适，而Keane and Kagan说应该可以达到三万五千（这也是能派出军队的极限）。但没有任何迹象表明，白宫就真的会派出那么多军队。

（好多地方是蒙的，希望大家帮助指正，谢谢）

[ 本帖最后由 念念不悟 于 2007-2-6 13:37 编辑 ]

太长了 ,,看的没毅力了

大家辛苦，这个活动很好，要坚持下去啊，我会常来看的！！！

What a good idea!

I will try!

But can we try some new topics?

I have got headache on the voa news everyday,alway America,always Bush,always democratic,alway terrorism.

Oh!!

[ Last edited bydudu811900 at 2007-3-6 10:17 ]

Monday, Nov. 24, 2003

Relationships 101

Is a classroom the place to learn about love? Some college and high school students are finding out

By REBECCA WINTERS/MADISON

O.K. now I'm going to show you how to complain," says Marline Pearson to a class of 15 unusually attentive college students. Pearson, a sociologist, is teaching a course called Couples Relationships at Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wis. When one of her students mentions that her boyfriend is always, like, falling asleep when they're supposed to do stuff, Pearson seizes what feels like a teachable moment. She suggests the student zero in on a specific time when her boyfriend dozed off and tell him how it made her feel. "Stay away from 'You always' and 'You never,'" she advises. "Even if you think the person does it always."

This new breed of romantic counseling — equal parts sex ed, social science and Dear Abby — is now being offered as formal courses at colleges and high schools across the country. Over two weekends, Pearson's students learn methods developed by researchers at the University of Denver and used for marital counseling in churches and in the military. They watch videos of fighting couples and discuss how conflicts can spiral out of control. They learn tidy formulas for success and failure in love: the three characteristics of successful couples (one is a man who can accept influence from a woman), the four behaviors that spell doom (constant criticism is a biggie). Each time Pearson rattles off a list of rules, her students start furiously taking notes, not because they'll be tested — they won't — but because they're truly dying to know.

"There's a great hunger for understanding relationships, not just body parts," says Sarah Brown, president of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "Young people tell us they're almost drowning in information about AIDS, condoms, pregnancy. But they want to know, 'How do I break up with my boyfriend without hurting his feelings?'" One recent study of college students' use of counseling services at Kansas State University showed that the percentage of students seeking help for relationship problems rose from 34% in 1989 to 60% in 2001. School counselors say courses like Pearson's — as well as more than half a dozen national relationship-curriculum programs in high schools — are filling a void. They offer healthy models of love for children of divorce and a middle ground in the wake of the culture wars that polarized sex education in the 1980s, with emotionless biology classes at one end and preachy abstinence lectures at the other.

Young love has always been traumatic. But the anxious, euphoric stage these programs address used to be a lot shorter. In 1960 the average age of first marriage was 20 for women, 23 for men; today, it's 25 for women, 27 for men. With dating starting at around 15, says David Popenoe of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, "now you have 10 or 15 years of figuring out what to do with the opposite sex when marriage isn't uppermost in your mind." It may take them longer to get there, but most high school seniors--65% of girls and 58% of boys, according to a University of Michigan study — still say it's "very likely" they will stay married to the same person for life, numbers that are up slightly from 15 years ago.

Of course there's no guarantee that taking a course will help teens and young adults achieve the kind of relationships they say they ultimately want. The last time the U.S. threw itself into teaching young people about love was in the 1950s, when social scientists at colleges offered marriage education. By the '60s, many of those classes were being laughed off campuses as rigid and sexist, or as faulty attempts to stamp the mysteries of emotion with the imprimatur of science. "There's always going to be this sense of the imponderables," says Beth Bailey, author of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in 20th Century America. "People fall in love. It's not something where you can go down a checklist and match people up by scientific formulas."

There are reasons to expect that this movement may be different, however. It's more flexible about the roles of men and women and, at least in some secular classes, it makes room for homosexual relationships. Each course is unique, but the emphasis today is more on developing communication skills and less on establishing moral absolutes. "If we have the right tools, then maybe we'll have a better shot of making our relationships work," says Rebecca Olson, 22, who took Pearson's course last winter with her boyfriend, Aaron Edge, 23, to help her avoid repeating the mistakes her divorced parents had made. Last month Olson and Edge got engaged.

Pearson has decided that teenagers need to get the message before they hit college. So she's publishing a curriculum for high school students. "All their experience tells these young people to be cynical," she says. "And yet part of their spirit says, 'I want it to be different for me.'" You don't have to be an incurable romantic to hope they succeed.

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