Friday, November 10, 1961 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Editorial Criticized
Editor:
I presume Mr. Mullins had a bad day in class last Tuesday; at least that's the only explanation I can find for his irresponsible editorial, "The Teaching Profession," published in Wednesday's edition of the UDK. I'm only a sophomore, and so shorter on experience with the KU teaching staff than he, but, including my present enrollment, I've only come across one lecturer who fits his description. With that one exception, I've found the professors here at the University to be stimulating, interesting and concerned about "getting across" to the students.
It seems, indeed, a wonder to me that any of our lecturers are stimulating; facing a roomful of determinedly bored students two to five times a week must get to be an old, old story. And all the more so when the lecturer realizes that his students almost invariably equate an education with a respectable grade-point average and an academic union card passed out after four years of "study."
THERE UNDOUBTEDLY IS sufficient cause to warrant a complaint about certain professors who try not to let their teaching responsibilities get in the way of their research interests, but I think Mr. Mullins' editorial was too generalized in its criticism. It seems, really, that he has expressed a common misconception indirectly taught in American high schools, that is, that it's the teacher's job alone to see that Johnny gets "ejected." If Johnny fails, it's not because of his own lack of interest and application, but because his teacher didn't spoon-feed him the requisite amount of information.
MORE IMPORTANT, then, than
turing our professors to stage inten-
lectual side-shows, is the need for us students to recognize our responsibility to achieve an education even if old Stugglemsmuggel is an absolute bore. We can't just sit off on the side lines and say,
"All right, teach", get me 'all shook up!"
All the Dr. Ises in the world can't
... Letters ...
make education exciting if we treat it as an onerous task we have to perform to get that meal ticket. And all the Stuggelsmuggel in the world can't drone the life out of education if we really think it's important enough to get personally involved in.
Rodney B. Kaufman
Augusta sophomore
* * *
Kansan Praised
Editor:
Three cheers for the Kansas. Full steam ahead on the next big area of discrimination on the campus, sororities and fraternities - Ed Abels, reluctant administrators and students notwithstanding.
Ralph Marten Johnstone Wichita freshman student
Editorial Supported Editor
I agree completely with Wednesday's editorial by William H. Mullins in which he castigated the lecture system of teaching. Supposedly the advantage of lecturing to students is that they get knowledge in a form which they cannot get from reading a book, or several books. In most introductory courses, at least, this is not the case.
THEERE ARE SOME justifications for lecturing. For example, if a teacher is in the process of writing a book, then he would be giving the students information which they would otherwise be unable to get. But for a teacher to give identical lectures for five or ten years is ridiculous. If the teacher
Short Ones
A married philosopher belongs to comedy.-Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable—H. L. Mencken
Bore; a person who talks when you wish him to listen—Ambrose Bierce
Labor: one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.—Ambrose Bierce
thinks he has something important to say, why then does he not have it published, or at least mimeographed? The answer, of course, is that no one would listen to his lectures.
Another justification for a teacher giving lectures is that he may argue with what the students have been assigned to read, and/or he may supplement or rearrange it for them. But I doubt it is necessary to spend three hours a week for 15 weeks doing this.
THE LECTURE SYSTEM at its most mundane is a travesty on the teaching profession. I know of at least one course in which the lecturer has delivered identical, almost verbatim lectures for the past 10 years. And his tests are almost identical from year to year, which means, of course, that every organized house has copies of them. Now for the student who doesn't want to learn anything and merely wants to satisfy a division requirement and get three hours of credit in the easiest way possible, this is great. But for the student who wants to learn something, this is teaching—and learning—reduced to a sham.
In another course, the lecturer has written the text which the class uses. As it may be reasonably assumed that the most important information in the course is in the text, what then is left for class lectures? Only one of two answers (or a combination of both) seems possible: either the less important information, or a boring recapitulation of what is in the text.
I REALIZE THAT the above criticisms apply mainly to lecture courses in the humanities and social studies. I think that the way in which mathematics, the natural sciences and foreign languages are taught is very good. But I think the lecture method should be done away with, or at least modified, in many courses. It could be replaced by more independent study and research, and or by more class discussion type courses.
Steve Long Prairie Village sophomore
By Charles E. Staley Assistant Professor of Economics
A EUROPEAN EDUCATION, by Romain Gary. Giant Cardinal Edition. 50 cents.
This is a novel about the Polish freedom fighters in the Second World War. The theme is that "Europe has always had the best and oldest universities. It has produced the world's greatest books and ideas: liberty, human dignity, fraternity. European universities are supposed to be the cradle of civilization. And yet the true European education we receive is gas chambers, rape, slavery and firing squads at dawn. But it's only a moment of darkness. It will pass." (p. 83).
THE STORY IS THAT OF A fourteen-year-old Polish boy who joins the partisans early in the war to receive his European education. It details the German atrocities, the courage, loves, and battle techniques of the partisans, their sufferings as contrasted to the sufferings of the conquered people who remained in the villages. It ends with the conquering of the Germans, the feeling of the achievement of freedom—an ironic note for a country about to go behind the Iron Curtain.
Romain Gary, a French writer of international reputation, infuses a powerful and fascinating novel with his usual writing skill.
Worth Repeating
On students: Educators in general do not realize the potentiality for work that exists in every pleasure-loving American boy with brains enough to deserve a college education. He may groan and weep and exercise ingenuity worthy of a better cause to avoid exerting himself. But if from the start he knows that the faculty means business . . . he ends up by "taking" twice as much education (nobody can "give" him an education) as one would expect.—Robert I. Gannon
On the enrollment problem: It has been a normal condition of American colleges for years that one-third of the so-called students were in the way, cluttering up the place and interfering with other people's progress. If more room is needed to take care of the expected population boom from postwar babies, it can be created in good part by clearing out the useless lumber that is already on the campuses.-Robert I. Gannon
HELPING TO BUILD A GREATER KU
This women's residence hall will room 444 students when completed. It includes 220 student rooms plus lounges, study areas dining room, and kitchen. The total construction cost will be $1,535,000. The eight story concrete frame is completed and only the roof needs to be poured.
B. A. GREEN CONSTRUCTION CO. INC.
Cecil B. Green
Patrick D. Green
Ernest P. Haas
Robert J. Green Basil A. Green
1207 IOWA, LAWRENCE, KANSAS - P. O. BOX 25 - TELEPHONE VI 3-5277