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University Daily Kansan Thursday. November 30.1951
The Restless Generation
An interesting pattern of campus political activity is beginning to form. It has become increasingly evident in the last two years.
A conservative movement is developing steadily. This spring the Young Republicans issued a statement in support of Goldwater conservatism. Charles McIlwaine, Wichita senior and president of the Young Republicans last year, strengthened his position by gaining the chairmanships of the Young Republicans of Kansas and of a region consisting of Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa.
McILWAINE ALSO EXPRESSED SUPPORT for the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization that also supports the Goldwater philosophy.
This fall the Young Americans for Freedom came to KU. A chapter of the organization formed on the KU campus and is planning its development.
But liberal elements are active at KU also. Liberal elements supporting the retention of the National Student Association at KU fought hard to keep it here and are presently fighting to bring it back following KU's disaffiliation this fall. In the area of civil rights, a group of liberals represented mainly by the Civil Rights Council is working to rid the campus and Lawrence of discrimination involving students.
A quickly shattered attempt was even made to establish a conservative group patterned after the John Birch Society this spring.
THE NEGRO STUDENTS HAVE BEGUN to take strong action on their own against discrimination. One example of this is the march they staged this fall calling for a refusal by the administration to list discriminatory renters on the university housing list.
Other elements are involved in the campus political picture. A new discussion program called the Presidential Forum was formed to discuss problems similar to those the U.S. presidency involves, such as civil defense and nuclear testing.
At present plans are being made for a university sponsored "World Crisis Day." This special program will consist of a convocation and
smaller seminars dealing with the international tensions caused by such things as the arms race and nuclear testing.
These developments have all taken place in the last two years. They represent a definite increase in student activity and interest.
The Presidential Forum and the Crisis Day program reflect recognition by both administration and faculty members of this increased interest about social and political problems among students.
MUCH OF THE INTEREST HAS BEEN channeled into the new conservatism that is appearing on the college campuses of the United States. The establishment of the Young Americans for Freedom and the support it and the Young Republicans have given the Goldwater brand of conservatism inject a new element into campus political life.
The increasing activity by the Civil Rights Council and the Negro students themselves against discrimination is also a recent development. The determination of these people shows that they will continue their efforts.
THIS PATTERN IS NOT MERELY a fluctuation in KU's political atmosphere. It is part of a movement all over the United States. The American Negro is fighting against discrimination throughout the United States, and Negro students are playing a large role in this fight. The conservative movement is spreading to universities in all parts of the United States. There is general recognition that U.S. students are becoming increasingly interested in and vocal on national and international issues.
This is a marked change from the old label attached to the present college population of "the silent generation." The change is still going on. As the present generation students leave the colleges and universities and enter their various occupations, these changes in their attitudes and beliefs will be felt in the national life.
How wide their effect will be and how deep it will go is yet unanswered. But there is no doubt that their influence will be felt.
"The silent generation" is gone.
Letters to the Editor
George School Not Right Wing Editor;
—William H. Mullins
I should like to call your attention to what I believe is a misreading of history. In your editorial on the Henry George School, you describe the speaker at the Minority Opinion Forum and the school as spokesman of "the right wing variety." I do not believe this is justified. Nor is your linking of the George school with the John Birch Society a legitimate conclusion. As for the George school and its followers being members of the "lunatic fringe" well now this is uncalled for.
The School is a respected if antiquated, approach to a basic problem which we still have not solved: an equitable, fair and foolproof tax system.
The probable truth is that the Henry George school of thought is much closer to the left than to the right. Perhaps some digging into history will reveal this.
May I also take issue with your call to the forum to invite other rightists? I for one think we ought to invite some leftists. Does anyone agree?
Joan Gentle
Daily Hansan
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner ... Managing Editor
Linda Swander, Fred Zimmerman, Assistant Managing Editors; Kelly Smith, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Barbara Howell, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield. Assistant Editorial Editors.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Brown Business Manager Don Gergick, Advertising Manager; Bonnie McCullough, Circulation Manager; David Weins, National Advertising Manager; Charles Martinache, Classified Advertising Manager; Hal Smith, Promotion Manager.
The Rough Edge By Bill Mullins
It just occurred to us that chemists are liable to learn how to make a reasonably good human being, which would make sex obsolete and throw the advertising agencies into a panic.
--sons to go out of the state to school -- but such events may be viewed as unfortunate imperfections in the idealized, rational model in terms of which most thinking people are planning the future of the nation.
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A Russian journalist visiting the United States mentioned that they still set type by hand in his country. This is not as much of a handicap as you might think, since they plan the news long before it happens.
A friend was incensed at my asking him what he believed in recently. He does not care for these subjects he is not informed about.
It is a tough job going over political speeches for meaningful statements. When you cross out all the vague rhetoric, the whole speech has disappeared.
By David C. McClelland
These characters who like to reminisce about the "good old days" had better find some way to censor history.
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A new dance called the twist has arrived at KU. Personally, we are not too enthusiastic about it. It reminds us of the movements we saw a fellow go through on an ice street just before he broke his leg.
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The biggest contributing factor to the delinquency of children is their parents.
Encouraging Excellence
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After counting up the "serious warnings" issued to the United States by Red China, we begin to wonder if this is some kind of game the boys in Peking play in their lighter moments.
Americans have already discovered, and are pursuing with alarming vigor, a system for encouraging excellence. It may be summed up briefly in the following formula: "the best boys should go to the best schools and then on to the best jobs." The implications of the formula are eminently practical: the nation engages in a country-wide talent search to discover by means of objective psychological tests who the ablest youngsters are. The tests identify the ablest students regardless of race, creed, color, economic condition, or teacher's opinion. Once discovered, these students ideally go to the best schools. In order to facilitate the process, the schools, in their turn, participate in the talent search and encourage the best students to apply. Since many of the colleges currently defined as best are in the expensive Ivy League, National Merit Scholarships are provided so that the ablest young people can attend them. Once they are in the best colleges, the students, if they continue to do their academic best, can look forward to being recruited by professional schools or business for the most important positions in developing and serving the nation.
THE AMERICAN FORMULA for encouraging excellence involves a single upward mobility ladder based on academic performance and running from West Redwing, Minnesota, to Harvard, to President of the United States or General Dynamics. The formula is an attractive one and has always appealed to important American values — like belief in achievement and in giving everyone a fair chance to get ahead according to his merit. Only recently, however, we have been in a position to put it into effect with any real efficiency. We have developed objective psychological tests that can be and have been administered to tens of thousands, if not millions, of students, so that we can discover the ablest ones quickly and within small margins of error. We have begun to get better organized in providing nation-wide scholarship competitions administered by some of the better universities or independently. Mass communication networks — the radio, the press, TV — have knit the country together so that the talented boy in West Redwing has a better chance of knowing than he did a generation ago that Ivy League colleges exist and that in the rankings of institutions for academic merit, they stand at the top. Shouldn't he, as the ablest boy in his town, go to the place where he can get the best education and have the greatest chance to realize his own potential and be of most use to his country? Isn't this the model of success most Americans have in mind when they think about "encouraging excellence" today? To be sure, local considerations still apply — alumni bring pressure to admit a quarterback, or Alabamans may not want their
IN FACT, TO RAISE any questions about the rational model is a little like being against virtue. It is so obviously practical, efficient, democratic, and non-authoritarian. For, after all, no one is forcing anybody to do anything. In fact, the model calls only for creating a climate of persuasion in which excellence is defined, identified, and encouraged to go to the top. Why, then, does it make us slightly uneasy? Why does it positively give John Hersey the shivers in "The Child Buyer?" His Orwellian nightmare revolves precisely around what happens when the ablest boy in a small town is offered the "best" kind of education (though it is considerably different from Harvard's) in order to maximize his own potentialities and his contribution to his country. Why does Jerome S. Bruner state with some concern that "the danger signs of meritocracy and a new form of competitiveness are already in evidence"? What has led Dael Wolfle of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to insist on the diversity of talent?
Let us look at the balance sheet for a moment: what do we gain by such a system and what do we lose? On the credit side, it has certainly helped to set uniformly high academic standards everywhere and to provide an upward channel of mobility for talented youngsters no matter what their social class or racial background may be. Not even Texans can argue for the superiority of their academic institutions if their students regularly score lower on scholastic achievement tests. And no one can deny that a high test score and a National Merit Scholarship have given many an underprivileged boy or girl a break they would never otherwise have had. These are important matters; we believe in an open society with rewards given for uniformly high standards of achievement and, to a very considerable extent, we have created one. Access to high-level positions in our society probably depends less on social class background and more on individual merit than in any other country today. Why complain? We do indeed have a great deal to be proud of, and a long way to go in introducing the academic merit system everywhere in the country, yet we must also look ahead lest such a system lead us into a kind of overspecialized excellence that would be as fatal in the long run as the overspecialization of the dinosaur.
(This is the first in a series of (Articles taken from an article published in The Journal of Academic Performance on the Admissions Process" which appeared in the Faith and Freedom of Daedelus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.)
Worth Repeating
On the goals of education: The Founding Fathers could not have understood the mass education of today any more than they could our mass production in Detroit. Still less could they have grasped the modern failure to distinguish between the process of making a machine and the process of making a man—Robert I. Gannon
... Each college or university has a personality. Anybody who has spent time at a college knows it, feels it, but can't always define it.—David Boroff
In making the rounds, I was struck by the fact that schools divide into two kinds: those which we might call adolescent reservations, fenced off from serious adult concerns, and those which represent a transition to adulthood.-David Boroff
It is important to remember that a university's reputation is usually based on its graduate schools, not on the quality of undergraduate instruction. Few people know this—except disgruntled undergraduates—for the great universities keep their reputations golden through research breakthroughs, Big Names, and books, books, books. What takes place in freshman composition or World Civilization is of less moment.-David Boroff