SAX XML reader

[jonboy_us]

I just got out of class where I had my final for Java2. I wasn't able to complete the assignment and it's bugging the heck out of me. Could you all help me figure out what I was doing wrong? The final product should have printed out all the "Students" in the console. I know why I only got the student names, but I could not figure out how to get all of the xml fields to print out. I.E. firstname, lastname, age. I thought it should be...

public void startElement(String namespaceURI, String localName, String var, Attributes atts){
		if (var.equalsIgnoreCase("student")){
			write = true;
		}else{
			write = false;
		}

...in the reader, but then I get nothing under the header. Where did I go wrong?

Thanks,
Jonboy

package Final;

import org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser;

public class FinalTester {
	public static void main(String[] args){
	    
	    //System.out.println("Before FinalReader");
	    
		FinalReader xmlReader = new FinalReader();
		//SaxReader xmlReader = new SaxReader();
		SAXParser parser = new SAXParser();
		
		parser.setContentHandler(xmlReader);
		
		System.out.println("First Name   Last Name   Age");
		try{
			parser.parse("final.xml");
		}catch(Exception ex){
			ex.printStackTrace();
		}
	}
}

package Final;

import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler;

public class FinalReader extends DefaultHandler{
	boolean write = false;
	public void startElement(String namespaceURI, String localName, String var, Attributes atts){
		if (var.equalsIgnoreCase("firstname")){
			write = true;
		}else{
			write = false;
		}
	}
	final public void characters( final char[] ch, final int start, final int len) {
		final String text = new String(ch, start, len);
		final String text1 = text.trim();
		if(text1.length()>0 && write)
			System.out.println(text1);
	}
}

Here is the XML we were to read...

<class>
<student><firstname>Joe</firstname><lastname>Josh</lastname><age>19</age>
</student>
<student><firstname>Mary</firstname><lastname>Lamb</lastname><age>24</age>
</student>
<student><firstname>Jack</firstname><lastname>BeNimble</lastname><age>22</age>
</student>
<student><firstname>Martha</firstname><lastname>Stewart</lastname><age>67</age>
</student>
<student><firstname>Fat</firstname><lastname>Albert</lastname><age>18</age>
</student>
</class>