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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, November 8, 1961
The Teaching Profession
One of the most effective tranquilizers yet invented by man is the freshman-sophomore lecture class. It is easily comparable to a large shot of Novocain directly in the cerebrum and on a warm day it has no rival.
Let us paint a composite picture of one of these classes.
THE LECTURER ENTERS THE room, rears up on its hind legs and delivers itself of any emotions that recent events have excited. This is the only part of the lecture that is remotely stimulating to the students.
Once the lecturer has relieved its emotional congestion, it begins a steady droning similar to what is heard in a sleepy country beehive. In the larger classes, this results in a number of students quietly dropping off to sleep.
This definitely results in their missing information the lecturer presents during the lecture hour. But since it is duplicated in the student's textbook, this is not really very important.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
The standard excuse for this situation is that classes are too large to give individual instruction. This excuse is partially valid when applied to the large classes in many basic courses. But the same problem exists in smaller classes and even in many upper-class courses which have reasonably small enrollments. In these classes there is no excuse for this type of instruction.
The result of this approach to the lecture period is that it bores the student (who is supposed to be stimulated mentally so that he learns something) and drastically lowers the effectiveness of the lecturer's efforts.
and make them feel they are learning something interesting and worthwhile.
THE LECTURERS THE STUDENTS RESpect and really learn from are those who can draw the students into the discussion of the topic
The student is often in a course only because he needs a certain amount of credit in some field. He does not have the lecturer's professional interest in most of the subjects he is taking. Unless the lecturer can create interest in his students, he is wasting his time. The students will forget everything they learned in class four months after they are out of the course.
THE COUNTER ARGUMENT to criticism of the prevailing methods of classroom lecture is that students are apathetic. They will not take part in class discussion and are too lazy to read the text and digest the material in it. So it all has to be done for them. Unfortunately for this argument, it does not explain why the instructors who do make the continuing effort to interest their students and have them participate in discussions on the course material are so often successful.
Part of the trouble may lie in the lack of sufficient programs to instruct lecturers in classroom methods. This is a need that should be met.
BUT THE BASIC PROBLEM REMAINS THE lack of effort by teachers to interest their students and draw them into active classroom participation. This may seem like too much to ask. But the definition of the teaching profession includes the assumption that, like the medical profession, it is more than just a job. It certainly demands that the teacher act as something more than a tape recorder. If that is his sole purpose, there are excellent machines that can do the job much better.
—William H. Mullins
A Good Autumn After All
Well, it might be a good Autumn after all. Football fortunes are ever becoming better; and what plays a larger part in the success of the season than the record of the football team?
The prospects of an exciting autumn were immediately darkened with KU's defeat in the initial game of the season. The picture became even blacker when the Jayhawks had failed to record a victory by their third game.
BUT SPIRITS HAVE CLIMBED WITH THE victories amassed in the last month and it looks like the prospect for an exciting autumn may be fulfilled. The Jayhawkers have come to life and the campus has revived with them.
Now the campus is involved in the activities of the supposed high point of the season—homecoming. Most of the 70 or 80 living groups on
Mount Oread are in the midst of plans for decorations, parties or receptions for alums.
All of the hundreds of man-hours that will go into the preparation of the pageant of homecoming are invested with the idea that they will produce dividends on the gridiron next Saturday afternoon.
EACH HOUSE DECORATION IS ERECTED with the hope it will somehow influence the outcome of the battle between the two Kansas teams.
Almost 40,000 people will jam Memorial Stadium hoping to see Coach Jack Mitchell spur his team to another conference victory. Again referring to the predictions of the sports experts, it should be a fine Autumn weekend.
—Ron Gallagher
The Theatre Scene
A Look at Auntie Mame
By Mark Dull
Last night's University Theatre version of "Auntie Mame"—if you will permit the appropriation—had its "upson downs."
After a rather slow start the audience warmed to Mame's bungling burlesque of a two-line bit in a scene of a stuffy play within-the play. The ice is broken in the next scene when Mame does a familiar comedy sketch as an harassed inexperienced operator at a very busy switchboard is bobbling the firm name of Widder-cembe, Gutterman, Applewhite, Elbberman, and Black.
THE PLAY IS BASED on the ribald novel "Auntie Mame, An Irreverent Escapade in Biography" by Patrick Dennis (psuedonym for Edward Tanner III) and was adapted for the stage by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The action is centered around the escapades of a Bohemian dowager with a streak of gentleness that endears her to an off-beat set of friends and accomplices who illustrate Mame's own multi-personality through their wide diversity.
Most of the action takes place in Auntie Mame's Beekman Place apartment and various other locales in which she becomes involved in a period of years from 1928 to 1946.
SHIRLEY REA, Lawrence graduate student, working a little hard at times, cannot quite loosen herself up enough to capture the full flamboyant nature of the unprovincial society dame, Auntie Mame. At times she reaches pinnacles that reflect her obvious acting ability and certainly captivates the audience with a stirring closing scene that is complemented by an enchanting East Indian costume and clever staging.
Agnes Gooch—"my puberty was bleak"—is interpreted by Sylvia Anderson. Wilmette, Ill., sophomore, with a good feeling for timing, exaggerated expression, duminess and uncompliness that makes ludicrous Agnes the most consistently humorous stimulation in the production.
Vicki Loebsack, Topeka sophomore, portrays Vera Charles, svelte, statutesque British actress from Pittsburgh, with a delivery so natural and subtle that she very
nearly steals several scenes.
Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, that charmin' gentleman from the old south, is played with calm demeanor by that able Phil Harris, Columbus senior.
"AUNTIE MAME," with a cast of 36 characters several of whom play two parts, is an unconventional drama. It is a series of 23 scenes spliced together with blackout intervals. It is the kind of vehicle that can easily become mired down if it does not move rapidly, and such was the case last night.
It is a bit too much to expect that college students produce the aura of sophistication that is written in "Auntie Mame." Many of the quips that crowd each other closely in the script were never received by the audience and there were times when limited response indicated limited reception of a choice comment.
In spite of these detractions "Auntie Mame" is entertaining most of the time, especially to the individual who is becoming acquainted with Mame for the first time.
"PHOTOGRAPHY MAGAZINES? SOME STUDENT IN HERE HAS THEM ALL CHECKED OUT."
From the Magazine Rack
The Control of War
The conversion over some relatively short period of a tenth of the national economy to other forms of production would, it seems reasonable to infer, have to be managed by the development of more rational and perhaps more authoritarian agencies for the allocation of capital investment, material supplies, and manpower than we now possess. This would in turn raise presumably difficult problems of conflicts of interest and political power. One may well doubt the adequacy of our existing democratic political institutions and processes to deal with them; one must therefore contemplate the possibility of institutional changes in both the economic and the political field in directions which to many today would seem highly undesirable.
About 10 per cent of American production and employment is generated directly by the requirements of the war system. The generation of this substantial fraction of total goods and services is an internal function of war which, in a warless world, would have to be fulfilled in some way...
By Walter Millis
Rv Harrison Brown and James Real
** **
It is difficult to visualize techniques of truly stabilizing limited wars in which nuclear weapons are used. Any limitation on-size of explosive would be quite arbitrary and difficult to monitor...
We should recognize the likelihood that any future war that is of appreciable size will involve the use of nuclear weapons at some stage, no matter what disarmament controls have been in existence prior to the outbreak of war. Even were the nations of the world to carry out successfully a program of total nuclear disarmament, including the elimination of long-range missiles, the knowledge needed to manufacture such weapons would remain. Once a "conventional" war broke out, there would almost certainly be a frantic race upon the part of the participants to manufacture the weapons once again. Each of the antagonists would realize that the first nation to produce megaton nuclear weapons in quantity, together with the means of delivering them, would have the opposing side at its mercy.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
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