Friday. Dec. 8. 1961
University Daily Kansan
Page 3
President's Remarks
(Editor's note: A letter from Petra Moore, Lawrence junior and former secretary of the International Club, criticized the executives of the club for a "general disorganization" and charged that "the quality of the activities has declined." The letter was published in Wednesday's Kansan.)
May I ask the indulgence of the Daily Kansan to insert a few remarks about the International Club whose activities have become a topic of discussion.
Editor:
Let me at the outset mention two very significant developments in the Club's life during the current semester:
For the first time the membership of the club has risen to its record figure of 400.
The participation by the American students in the club's activities has reached new heights as evidenced by the fact that they now constitute more than 50 per cent of the organization's total membership. The latter event assumes even greater importance when we consider that till last year the International Club was never a cultural bridge between the American and foreign students — a function which the club could justifiably claim to be performing this semester.
THE FRIDAY MEETINGS of the club have been better attended than before and have proved to be equally popular among the social dancers and the intellectual conversationalists.
Dean Francis Heller's inaugural address was attended by more than 400 persons even while a famous expert on American Foreign Policy was giving a public lecture in the same building.
The speech given by His Excellency Gunnar Jarring, Swedish Ambassador to U.S., and the reception arranged in his honor by the International Club were attended by Chancellor Wescoe, a large number of Lawrence dignitaries, faculty members and the students. This function, certainly, was a milestone in the history of the club.
LAST FRIDAY OVER THREE HUNDRED persons attended the "German-Austrian evening" arranged by the club even though the Allen Field House was serving a very attractive fare—the KU- Arkansas basketball game-at the same time.
I hope these few instances will provide ample proof of the great popularity and the high quality of our programs.
Regarding the working of the Executive Committee I would like to say that at the beginning of the semester the distribution of functions among the officers was made in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. The principle of delegation of authority has been scrupulously followed since then. Meetings of the Executive Committee are held regularly and all of its members are in constant contact with each other. There is no sanctity in calling the meetings of the Committee each week. Even the President of the United States does not convene weekly meetings of his cabinet. The important thing is that each officer should know what his functions are and that he should discharge his duties efficiently in the light of the decisions of the Executive Committee.
As far as the efficiency of this semester's Executive Committee is concerned I may add this: Last year at least on two Fridays the club did not organize any program while this semester not a single Friday evening has gone without the club arranging some kind of an activity.
THE FINANCES OF THE CLUB are under the charge of the treasurer and an auditor checks the books. The expenses of the club exceed the dues collected from the members—the balance being contributed by the University. I am glad to point out that this semester the club's funds have been equally allocated for both the fall and spring semesters. This unfortunately was not the case last year as almost all the money collected from the members in Fall 1960 and earmarked for the whole year was spent during the first semester. There is nothing to hide about the financial aspects of the organization this semester and should anyone so desire he can inspect the books of the club.
I am, therefore, proud to say that the International Club has increased its strength and popularity, attracted a very large number of American students, presented useful colorful and well attended programs and has furthered the cause of International understanding and friendship this semester.
Shafik H. Hashmi President, International Club
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield, Assistant Editorial Editors.
Measures of Excellence
(This is the fourth in a series of articles taken from the articles "Encouraging Excellence. The Stranglehold of Academic Performance on the Admissions Process" which appeared in the Fall, 1961, issue of Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.)
Careful studies have repeatedly shown that, despite the fact that most human judges insist on taking other factors into account in making selections of any kind, their final decisions are almost perfectly correlated with the single quantitative score that they have, namely, some form of academic achievement or aptitude test score. They like to think that they are taking other factors into account, but in actuality they do not, and the reason is simple: the other factors are not expressed in quantitative terms, but come in the form of vague verbal descriptions or recommendations that are very hard to compare in making final choices. So the choices are made in terms of the one available quantitative measure: for academic promise. If we want to encourage a concern for other types of excellence in this merit-oriented society of ours, we may have to develop measures of other types of excellence.
BUT SUPPOSE they can be identified. How are they to be encouraged? Does it mean the schools should teach and grade curiosity, the need for Achievement, imaginativeness, and sensitivity? That way lies certain disaster. It is caricatured by those educators who have argued that everyone must be good at something and that therefore the schools must discover and teach that something, whether it be cooperativeness in play or preparation for happiness in marriage. Cultivating other types of excellence need bring no changes in the curriculum of the schools, though it may require a change in the attitude of some teachers. Teachers still have to teach content — geology, English, mathematics, or social science — but they can encourage human beings. They can teach in ways that show a genuine respect for curiosity or the entrepreneurial spirit. The schools have always feared that concern for other types of excellence than academic performance would lower standards. Why should it? Suppose a student of algebra is curious and spends so much time picking up odd bits of information about mathematics that he does not learn his algebra. Should he be given an "A" for his curiosity? Certainly not, because he has not learned his algebra. However, it does not follow that the teacher should not encourage curiosity, admire the student's willingness to go off on his own, or perhaps even change the way he teaches mathematics so as to engage the student's curiosity more. The teacher-student relation should not be limited strictly to the grade-giving function, nor should the grade come to summarize all that a student has learned in college or high school.
involved. Can he be taught that he is supposed to learn what he is not supposed to learn? Certain "progressive" schools have come to grief precisely by trying to give instruction in such matters as creativity and curiosity, which almost by definition defy formal instruction, because they involve a student's doing things on his own that are different from what he is expected to do. Or consider the need for Achievement, the desire to do a good job in a situation involving personal challenge. At the present time we do not know how to increase it by formal instruction, nor are we sure that we would want to even if we could. Would it not make the intense competitiveness of the country even worse? Furthermore, research has shown that external rewards, such as grades, are not only meaningless for such people, they may actually be disconcerting...
As a matter of fact, the human qualities we are speaking of do not develop by formal teaching nor do they require the external rewards of grades. How can a student be taught to be curious in the usual way? A contradiction is
IF THE USUAL methods of encouraging excellence — by teaching and grading — do not work for such qualities, what does? Unfortunately, psychologists have only just begun to work on such problems. Their efforts to date have been almost wholly directed to identifying various types of academic talent and measuring the effects of various methods of teaching and grading it. Only a few mavericks have strayed into studying the nonacademic effects of education. However, one conclusion is already fairly well established, even at this early stage in the research. Schools and colleges tend to develop distinctive "personalities," distinctive and persistent climates of opinion that have rather marked effects on students attending them. R. H. Knapp and H. B. Goodrich have noted this in demonstrating that certain undergraduate colleges excelled in the production of scientists, whereas others produced more humanists, or lawyers. P. E. Jacobs has surveyed studies of value attitudes in various colleges and come up with some similar findings. Certain values are more common on some campuses than others. At Haverford the students are more community-minded, at Wesleyan they express a stronger ethical-religious concern, at state universities they are more often interested in promoting their careers than in a general liberal-arts education.
More recent research has pinpointed some of the influences more precisely. For example, academically talented boys were brought together from high schools all over New Hampshire for a six-week summer session at one of the state's oldest and most distinguished private schools for boys. The summer program almost certainly enriched their education in the formal sense, but it also had important effects on their values and outlook on life. For example, before they arrived they had viewed authority as bad, arbitrary, and ineffective. After the summer school experience, they viewed authority as good, strong, and impersonal. They also were more concerned about problems of impulse control or discipline and had developed a sophisticated suspiciousness of the world not characteristic of their fellow classmates who had remained behind in the high schools. Now none of these attitudes or personal qualities was consciously taught by the masters at the private school or consciously learned by the bright students attending it. Yet the effects were very marked, and in the long run they may be more important in the future lives of the boys than the extra amount of mathematics and biology they picked up during the summer.
The Poetry Corner
Iwo Jima
The second war, gone off the seas and air,
Down time, down memory's fluorescent screen,
Leaves hardly shadows of what happened there
To memorialize that scene.
Anonymous, humanitarian,
Events and men fade forward to a past
Less nameless and still new.
Each living and each dead American
Knew even then his war could no more last
Than other wars he knew.
Iwo slid inward from the far skyline Gray, dusty, through the lofty afternoon For fighter planes converging a flat sign Pale as a daylight moon. Seen from the landing pattern, the flame throwers Showed palely casting their too lively streams Erratically at will, Blooming disinterestedly as wild flowers, But only flowering in a warfare's schemes When the landed ships were still.
Life quickened rarely: When the tower fell In the thundering dusk outside the plexiglass Perspective of tailboom and blunt nacelle, The island too was gone. To north somewhere the bogey drifted, seen As intermittent light by ground control, To the fighter still unknown. In the steady roar and clamor the machine Fled northward toward a goal That slipped about like one In dreams of danger, and the long pass Continued toward the fleet invisible.
Now in that past we move like rumors among
The ghosts of tired soldiers in dungarees,
Uncertain what significance once clung
To the unknown Japanese
In their imitative planes and daring caves.
Like airstrip dust their meanings drift away
On ocean wastes of time,
The halcyon dullness of a far-off day
Remembered in a half-forgotten song.
Arvid Shulenberger associate professor of English