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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Jan. 4, 1962
The New Year
The opening of a new year always seems to cause some people to either look back on the accomplishments and failures of the old year or to look forward at the prospects of the next 12 months. Since the Kansan has already presented its review of 1961 this editorial shall take the latter view.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to predict the individual big events of a coming year but some trends can be noted and certain decisions seem inevitable. The campus, state, national, international and space scenes all promise interesting developments in the coming year.
The civil rights issue will continue in the news during 1962 both on the campus and national levels. The Civil Rights Council is expected to begin a drive for elimination of discriminatory clauses from the charters of fraternities and sororities. Freedom riders will continue to make national news.
POSSIBLY THE BIGGEST story of campus and state importance in the next few weeks will be the decision of the Legislature on state spending for the next fiscal year. If cuts made initially in the KU budget are not restored by the governor and his decision approved by the Legislature the KU expansion program will be greatly impaired. If enrollment figures continue to climb in the state educational system more funds for enlarged physical facilities must be provided.
President Kennedy will again ask Congress to approve his medical aid for the aged plan and will push for at least a vote on his proposal. Congress will also be asked to consider lower tariff walls to put the United States in a better position to compete with the European Common Market.
Tax legislation, the farm program, a 93 billion dollar budget and federal aid to education are other problems that will come before Congress.
THE SPACE RACE will continue and the United States will send Lt. Col. John Glenn into orbit for three circuits of the earth. But the Russians may climb back into the lead by sending a three-man space vehicle into orbit.
The political situation in many South American countries will remain shaky and the President's Alliance for Progress program will receive its first test. It is the task of the United States to educate the restless poor of South America to the advantages of democracy versus communism.
AS IN THE PAST few years many headlines of 1962 will concern the crisis making Russians. The Berlin story of 1961 proved Nikita Khrushchev's ability to control the temperature of the cold war. The increase of communist pressure in Southeast Asia could be the top story of international crisis in 1962.
Political news will also fill the news columns in this election year. The results of gubernatorial races in two widely separated states will be noted by party leaders and the political courses of Republicans Nixon and Rockefeller plotted accordingly. Political strategists will watch the results of congressional elections for hints of public approval or disapproval of the Kennedy administration.
Several other international and domestic issues will doubtlessly crop up and demand our consideration in the next calendar year. It will be a year of mental challenges and possibly even nuclear threats to our existence.
—Ron Gallagher
Encouraging of Excellence
But why should a college or any educational institution be all things to all students, or, what is worse, be like every other institution? Harvard encourages a certain type of excellence. Let other colleges encourage other types. It means, of course, that not all the best brains in the country should go to Harvard, however good it may be academically. Society needs brainy romantics as well as brainy critics. The most serious weakness in the argument that the best students should go to the best schools is the naive assumption that the best schools academically can be the "best," too, in the effects they have on character and personality, in shaping other types of human excellence. But let this not be an excuse for easy local pride. No college or university can lay a serious claim to the best students in its area if it is all things to all men and has developed no distinctive excellence of its own.
Varieties of excellence in individuals, therefore, can be encouraged by varieties of excellence in the educational institutions they attend; but one more step is necessary for such a system to work. The institutions must avoid admitting students solely in terms of one type of excellence, namely, academic promise or performance. That is, if our new model provides for a variety of types of excellence encouraged in a variety of excellent ways, then one type of excellence must be prevented from becoming a monopoly and placing a strong restraint on "trade". Academic excellence has very nearly reached a monopoly position, despite the protests of admissions officers that they are still operating in terms of "other criteria." They are fighting a losing battle. The logic is inexorable. Students with the highest predicted grade-point averages are increasingly the ones admitted to any school or college. The last bastion in the Ivy League colleges of the East is about to crumble: alumni can no longer receive preference.
NOW I HOLD no particular brief for the sons of alumni or Harvard professors; but I strongly object to the stranglehold that academic performance is getting on the admissions process. So long as there were other means of getting into our better colleges, at
least there was a chance of admitting some students who were not marching in tune to the academic lock-step. A Franklin D. Roosevelt or a Chief Justice Harlan Stone might slip in through the side door as a son of an alumnus or graduate of a distinguished private school — though on the basis of academic performance neither could get in the front door today. Yet they represent for me a type of excellence that deserves an education in one of the "preferred" colleges. Yet even if they got in today, they would not stay long, if a practice tried out at Amherst College (where Justice Stone was an undergraduate) spreads. There for a time a student had to live up to his predicted grade-point average or he was expelled, even though he was earning passing grades.
It is difficult not to be misunderstood on this point. Academic excellence is a wonderful thing. As a teacher I much prefer to have conscientious people in my classes who do what they are told, read their assignments, and turn in interesting papers on time. I am annoyed by that boy in the back of the room who comes late to class, never participates in the discussion, and appears to be listening only half-heartedly to the pearls of wisdom I am dropping before him, and I certainly will give him a low grade — but is that all there is to education? Am I or his college having no influence on him except in terms of what is represented in that grade? Does it mean nothing for the future of the country that the scion of one of our great fortunes received such a ribbling from a sociology professor at Yale that it is alleged to have changed his whole outlook on life? He did not graduate, and, probably, with the greater efficiency of our academic predictors today, he would not have been admitted; but is that all there is to the story?
most colleges. Only those boys who on the basis of the usual academic tests had a predicted average of "C" would be further considered for admission. Then, within that group, quotas should be set up for various types of excellence. For example, the one hundred boys with the highest academic prediction should be admitted, then the one hundred with the most curiosity, another hundred with the highest need for Achievement, one hundred with the greatest imaginativeness or the most political ability, and so on down the list. The professors would be sure to protest, and perhaps they should get the quota of the academically talented up to fifty percent, but at least the principle would be established that other types of excellence deserve the kind of education that college is giving. For the professors should not have the exclusive say as to who should be educated. Quite naturally they like people who are like themselves, but they do not represent the only type of excellence in the country that is important or needs encouragement. What a revolution in values it would bring if only a few National Merit Scholarships were given for the highest scores on tests of curiosity, creativity, or imaginative-ness!
WHAT CAN BE DONE, practically speaking? I have a dream about a new type of admissions procedure that I would like to see tried out at one of our better colleges. First, the admissions office would set a floor for predicted academic performance. It should not be set too high. For the sake of argument, let us say that it is set at "C," a passing grade at
Our national problem is that we have tended to focus increasingly on encouraging one type of excellence, and a practical, measurable, action-oriented type of excellence at that. Other types of human excellence exist, particularly those involving character and the inner life, and the world of imagination and human sensitivity. They can be measured, if necessary, to combat the stress on academic performance. They, too, need encouragement, and they can be encouraged by less stress on the purely academic side of life and more stress on the unique styles of educational institutions that most influence such other human qualities.
(Editor's Note: This is the fifth in a series of articles taken from the article "Encouraging Excellence, the Stranglehold of Academic Performance on the Admissions Process" which appeared in the fall 1951 issue of Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.)
By Carol Berry
Yates Center graduate student
HORSES, by George Gaylord Simpson. Doubleday Anchor Book,
Natural History Library Edition. 1961. $1.45.
In his Introduction George Gaylord Simpson quotes a learned Arab who said, "Paradise on earth is to be found on the back of a horse, in the pages of a book, and in the arms of a woman." He goes on to say that a book about horses should thus rate one and a half terrestrial paradises.
PERHAPS IT SHOULD. But such may not be the case for readers of this book whose interest in horses may be limited to pleasant afternoons on some sedate mount or at the racetrack, and may not extend to a detailed description of the evolution of the horse.
Such readers would find their attention drawn to the attractive plates showing different breeds of horses, different colors found in horses, and different parts of horses, and to chapters dealing with living breeds, European strains in American stock, and color heredity in horses. These occupy only about one-fourth of the book, however. The rest deals with the evolution of the horse.
PROFESSOR SIMPSON DISCLOSES the lineage of the horse with commendable clarity, probably because he takes the trouble to explain all technical terms (he analyzes "Equus caballus" from Kingdom to Species as an example for the reader at the beginning of the book). The author obviously aims at a wide audience, but the promise of general interest that he holds out at the beginning is not realized toward the end, where the subject matter becomes more technical.
However impeccable the book may be from the standpoint of scholarship, it remains an archaeological document, and will be of greater interest to those with an interest in both archaeology and horses than to those interested in horses alone.
By S. F. Rude (a pen name)
1961 PRO FOOTBALL, edited by Don Schiffer; Giant Cardinal Original: 50 cents.
Maybe this is dirty pool, but why not look at a book of forecasts six months after its publication? Actually, Mr. Schiffer has written more than predictions. He tells us what the referee's hand signals mean and gives us an interminable section on records, including punts, passes and "most points after touchdown." But it's on his forecasts for the recently-ended pro football season by which we must judge our "prize-winning news writer."
In the NFL, eastern conference, he put the Cleveland Browns first, the New York Giants third. The Giants won. In the NFL, western conference, he had the 49ers first, the Packers second. The Packers won. Our astute prognosticator finds fault with the Packers' defensive secondary and Bart Starr's imagination.
Why a book like this anyway? I suppose because it's worse than we expected. So we know that millions of active Americans get their workouts in stadiums shouting the Crimson and Blue onward. But do we realize that for an evening's reading, when they can be torn from TV, our first line of defense against the Russian brain is busily devouring books on sports, magazines on sports, and newspaper sports sections?
WELL, THE TEAM, as everyone who follows the pigskin knows, had enough defensive power to throttle the Giants, allowing them no points in the title game. And Bart Starr engineered the offense which, as the sports boys say, garnered 37 points.
Onward and upward with the jocks.
Worth Repeating
The academic profession would do well to give up its guerilla warfare against change. (Academicians present the paradox of being liberals politically but die-hard conservatives professionally.) David Boroff
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