Fridav. Anril 28.1972
9
Grading Game Endures
Editor's Note: This is Part Two of the education system in America. This story deals with the relevance of grades to performance in later years.
By FRANK SLOVER Kansan Staff Writer
Dale Scannell, dean of the School of Education, meets the charge of dogmatism in the high school classroom by noting, "Our students get less than one-fifth of their university training with
Scannell, in a recent interview,
said "They get their ideas in
social studies from the people
who teach them social studies.
"If they are dogmatic and
don't allow questioning, they may
get it somewhere in the
versatility but it's not all from
it."
He does have a theory on why many instructors tend to dogmatism and insist on "right" answers.
"One can't allow freedom of thought in a subject unless he feels confident in that subject," he said.
"A person who feels somewhat intimidated when he goes before the class will tend to go by the book."
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in their book "Teaching As a Subversive," complain that "most of our schooling" inflicts irrelevant curricula upon students.
THEY ADD, "It is insane for a teacher to teach" 'teach' unless his students require it for some identifiable and important purpose, which is to say, for some learner, it is related to the life of the learner."
This cry for relevance has been heard more often from university students than from those in high school.
In their more cynical moments, professors are often prone to identify "relationships" and productive relationships" at a campus bar, or practically any other activity that excludes studying and research.
Scannell dismissed relevance from prime importance in a college education.
"Interest in immediate problems means you ignore some of the basics.
"Too much emphasis on the relevant," he said, "guarantees early obsolescence.
Campus Bulletin
Anthropology: 11:30 a.m., Cottonwood
Cedarwood, Yukon
Anthropology: 11:30 a.m. Cottonwood
Cafeteria, Kansas Union.
Above B
Lebanese Brazilian: 11:30 a.m. Acesso B C School of Education: noon, English Room.
n. noon, Meadowlark C.
MPA Studies: noon, Alcove D Calefer
Harmony Comm.: noon, Alcove A Cafetera
Table: 12:30 p.m., Meadowlark
Cafetera.
Oread Room.
Sculpture Conference: 2:30 p.m., Council
Sculpture Conference: 1:30 p.m. Woodruff
Auditorium.
Room. Sculpture Conference: 2:30 p.m., Forum
School of Education: noon, English Room.
Physio-Ecologists: noon, Alcove Cafeteria.
Room 305
Sculpture Conference: 1:30 p.m. Woodcraft
Muslim Students: 12:45 p.m. Room 299
Human Relations-African Studies: 1 p.m.
Room.
CAI Interest Group: 3 p.m., Governors
Room.
Class Conference: 2:30 p.m. Jajawah
Room.
CAI Interest Group: 3 p.m. Governors
Sculpture Dinner: 6:30 p.m., Ballroom.
Panellenie: 7 o.p., Kansas Room.
Auditorium.
Social Welfare Practice Comm.: 2 p.m.
Office.
Sculpture Conference: 2:30 p.m., Council Room.
Auditorium.
VFCF: 7 p.m., International Room.
KU Folk Dance Club-Instruction: 7 p.m.
Sculpture Conference: 2:30 p.m., Jayhawk Room.
Law School: 3:30 p.m. Regionalist Room.
French Department: 3:45 p.m., International Room.
Room.
Sculpture Conference: 2:30 p.m., Jayhawk
SUA Popular Film: 7 p.m., Woodruff Auditorium.
IVCF: 7 p.m., International Room.
Room:
Sculpture Conference: 3:30 p.m. Pine
Tree
PARTNERSHIP p.m. Kansas Room.
SUA Popular Film: 7 p.m., Woodruff
Auditorium.
IVFC: 7 p.m., International Room.
Club Instruction: 7 p.m.
Potter Pavilion.
Tau Sigma Dance Concert: 8:20 p.m.
University Theatre.
Square Conference 9 p.m. NYC
Room
Square Conference 9 p.m. Forum
Rooom
Sculpture Conference: 9 p.m., Council n.
BSU Careers Day: All day, Kansas Union.
Panhellenic Meeting: 8:30 a.m., Kansas
Room.
Museum Associates Snake Hunt: 10 a.m.
Dyche Hall.
Museum Associates "What Is H" program for kindergartens: 10:30 a.m. Dyce Hall, Chemistry Honors Luncheon: noon, Big 8 Room.
Western Civilization Exams: 1 p.m.
assigned locations.
Tau Sigma Dance Concert: 2:30 p.m.
University Theatre.
University Theatre.
KU Band Dinner: 5 p.m., Big 8 Room.
KU Band Dinner: 5 p.m., Big 8 Room.
BSU Meeting: 7 p.m., Forum Room.
Spring Football Game: 7:30 p.m., Haskell
Stadium.
Tau Sigma Dance Concert: 8:20 p.m.
University Theatre
University Theaters
SUNDAY
Tal Streeter Kie Exhibit: 2:30 p.m.
"University education doesn't involve immediate changes in the social environment."
Tal Streeater Kite Exhibit: 2:30 p.m.
Museum of Art.
AN EXAMPLE of what can happen when students view the use of learning environments than an institution of learning is currently taking place at the university.
Basement Lecture Hall, Spooner.
3:30 a.m. Dock Auditorium.
2:00 p.m.
apart, according to a recent Associated Press report.
Background Report
Carlton Reedal 3 p.m., Campanile.
Art Museum Film Series 3 p.m.
There, radical students, the most active of whom are freshmen and sophomores, are threatening to tear the school
German Film: 7 p.m., Forum Room.
International Film: 7:30 p.m., Woodruff.
One resident American professor described the students as "lost . . wild . . mean . . important."
which he claimed that "college grades bear little or no relationship to any measures of adult accomplishment."
Two other studies were criticised for their methodology. O'Neill found a correlation between grades and success. The critics maintained, that the difference was found was due to other differences between the low-grading students.
According to another teacher at the university, the students are inadvertised by Marxist cadres in high school.
"They come to us loaded," he said, "For them, the period of discussion is past.
"They want action and that's all."
A political science professor said, "German youth want to remake all societies as we know them" and exactly what will come after.
ONE OF THE insurgents' demands was "no examinations."
The same sort of question is currently being debated in the House, where focus is more on "no grades" than the examinations that
The debate over the value and function of grades is a continuing battle which ranges between the use of teacher instructors in education journals.
Ironically, the writers of the articles tend to be those who have undergone grades as students. In a 1969 article in Today's Education, Brian P. McGueira identified three grade-pointers with "the highest grade-point leverage in the College of Letters and Science." After thus accruing a credential, went on to attack the 'grade-point game' for encouraging an attitude that sought "the best possible amount of work."
THE GRade controversy surfaced in the "letters" page of Science magazine in the latter 1970 in two letters to the editor.
The first, from Henry Lindgren, supported a relation between grades and performance later in life.
"The idea," he wrote, "that college grades are unrelated to anything in 'real life' seems to be a permanent fixture in the mythology of academia, despite overwhelming evidence to the
He went on to claim that people tend to be consistent in behavior because of the logical that someone who was successful in college would have been.
One study, completed in the early 1980s and cited in the letter, showed that students high grades especially in science medicine, and law, tested to earr
Later that year, the magazine published another letter rebutting the notion of the relevance of grades.
THE SECOND letter cited a
1965 study by Donald Hout in
Jerome H. Sore, region seven and Environmental  Protections Agency and former U.S. assistant geogenator. He presents the honors presentation of the department of chemistry at 1:30 p.m. Saturday in the Kansas
EPA Executive To Speak Here
The high-success groups had higher socio-economic backgrounds, a higher level of education and emotional adjustment as indicated by such things as divorce rate and consumption of alcohol.
Currently, many American campuses offer their students a certain number of courses on a pass-fail or credit-no-credit basis. The pass-fail course gives the student a receive D or an F on his transcript without the grad being assigned to him. A student receives a D or F under a credit-no-credit system, the low grade is not recorded on his transcript.
His talk, open to the public, is entitled "Progress in Protecting the Environment,' and will be delivered on Tuesday at awards presentation, ceremony.
SCANNELL SAID that in theory the pass-fail option was offered to encourage a liberal education by encouraging a student to sample academic work and expertise, were lacking.
"The research with which I'm familiar," he said, "suggests that that hasn't happened.
It suggests that the students just use the option as another way to beat the system and raise their grade point."
He added that the same research, when applied to schools where the professors were not told who was on pass-fail or pass-take, he said the pass-fail students achieved "markedly lower" grades.
"We feel it to be desirable because the type of things that are evaluated are different from thins in regular courses."
A University of Michigan experimental program reported that its pass-fail students had not suffered adversely upon entering the program, and that they had benefited from reduced academic pressures.
"In the School of Education we use a credit-no-credit system for student teaching, but it isn't optional.
ONE OF THE pitfalls of the pass-fail system is that graduate schools tend to prefer precise, explicit grades.
At B. Brown University, Providence, R. I., however, where 50 per cent of the course was taken for a majority of their courses in 1869, the figure fell to 29.4 per cent in 1972. One assistant dean attributed the change to the requirements for schools of law
Tau Sigma Dance Concert April 28 8:00 p.m. April 29 2:30 & 8 p.m.
University Theatre
Adult $1.50 Child .50
According to the article there has been a rise in the average grade point at the University of Wisconsin from 2.5 in 1968-6 to 2.8 in 1970-7. There was also a rise from 2.67 in 1970 to 3.0 last year at Northwestern.
A recent New York Times
issue in college grades in the past
years gave the discriminating
use of the pass-fail option "as a
solution."
STUDENT-FREE
At Harvard, just over one-half of the class of 1961 was graduated with honors. Last spring the number was more than two-thirds.
PERHAPS ONE of the causes of this "grade inflation" is that "today's students are more sophisticated than they used to be, as Alan Pifer, president of the Carnegie Corporation, maintained when he presented a $344,000 grant to the State University of New York to prepare three-year degree program.
The Times article quoted a Mary McLean who never go to school any more, and I still get wonderful grades. There are consensus here that it is worth going to school.
Two facts seem to mitigate this contention.
The second is the phenomenon that while grades have gone up, the seniors in the college entrance class have gone up. In 1962 college freshmen scored average 471 of 800 on the verbal test; last year's freshmen got an average of 503.
The first is the attitude of the students.
SOME OF THE reasons suggested for the rising grade-points:
—More independent study courses.
—The trend away from large, impersonal lectures, where exams are graded by anonymous teacheh assistants, to more formal ones.
Younger teachers, who either lack faith in the grading system or confidence in themselves.
Health Column
—An anti-autitarian sentiment which is felt as a bond between young faculty members and their students.
—Pass-fail.
—Entry of underprivileged and undereducated minor students (which tends to push up the need for extra students with richer background.)
Rubella Cases Increasing at KU
During the past few weeks, an increasing number of students have been forced to take leave from their classes and friends to remain in the hospital or in their apartments because of illness, or, as it is sometimes called, German or three-day meals.
Editor's note: This is the first column of a regular health feature which will appear in the Kausa. The articles will be published on Mondays and Tuesdays.
This mild viral infection has an incubation period from 14 to 21 days. Minor "cold-like" symptoms with a low grade fever may precede the development of a pink rash, which appears first on the face, then becomes generalized. The lymph glands, especially those located behind the ears, are often inflamed and occasionally joint pains or arthritis symptoms may be present.
The importance of this illness in women is not in its symptomatology but in its established relationship to the pregnancy. For example, the months of pregnancy. Every attempt must be made to protect any woman in her first three months of pregnancy from exposure to the Rubella virus. This is the rationale for three weeks of rubella cash, which persists for about three five days, has faded.
The last Rubella epidemic occurred in 1964 and resulted in more than 20,000 children born with congenital malformations as a result of maternal infection. In 1969, Rubella vaccine was first licensed for use in this country. Virus transmission is primarily among young school age children. The rubella vaccine being made to immune all children between the age of 6 months and adolescence in an attempt to eliminate the reservoir of infection from which maternal Rubella infections arise.
Since it is now possible to determine the susceptibility of a woman to Rubella by specific laboratory tests, it may eventually be feasible to extend the immunization program to include women and adolescent girls in certain selected cases.
—Mary Hatfield, M.D.
Guidelines for political campaign displays in front of Strong Hall were established last week. The University Events Committee
Political Display Policies Established by Committee
Terry Edwards, assistant to the dean of women, said these political campaigns were key year to year, but the committee established guidelines because of political campaigning for the governor and the presidential election.
Groups wishing to set up displays must contact Edwards at least one day in advance. Groups wishing to set up one-day basis, and must be reckened with Edwards each group wishes to campaign
Groups must provide their own tables and chairs. They may not use more than four tables for each group, and then up the area when they leave.
The events committee must give approval to selling microphone stickers, and no public address systems or microphones will be used.
These guidelines apply only to political campaigning, but all other group requests to set up a committee have been brought to the events committee.
Any major objections to displays will be brought to the events committee for consideration.
Groups wanting to set up displays in front of the Kansas Union must contact Union authorities. Those wishing literature, without use of tables, need not obtain approval.
Psychologist Advocates Silence
He said the right hand was characterized by doing, and the left hand was characterized by not doing the tuition. The left hand is
Heider said the United States was characterized by a goal-oriented, technological achievements are made by American lack a cultural identity.
The value of silence isn't taught in the Western educational tradition. John Heider, clinical psychologist, said day at a faculty forum laughter.
Kansas GOPs To Select Slate For Convention
Heider has been studying the transcendental meditation, yoga and similar movements on the human body. He also taught Harvard College and Duke University (P.D.). Heider taught students at East Institute. He Bur. Sur.
Lynn Knox, St. Louis freshman and head of the KU students for McGovern, said the new guidelines has not been in effect because he judge whether they would tamper campaigning on campus.
our culture doesn't teach how to be passive, quiet, or to contact the quiet places in each of us Heider said.
The final group of Kansas delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention will be selected Saturday at the Republican state convention at the Municipal Auditorium in Topeka.
Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at 11 a.m., according to J.D. King, chairman of the Board in Douglas County. The constitution will begin at 10 a.m. 45.
The morning session of the convention would be devoted to the organization of committees, King said. The afternoon session will involve the election of at-tenors and nominees to the national convention.
Several Kansas delegates to the national convention were elected at district conventions in mid-April.
represented in the Oriental cultures. Young Americans are turning inward, that is, they are meditating, he said.
Yoga, transcendental meditation and other forms of silence consciously belong to the school of silence, which seeks to calm the mind by turning the turning world, he said. The goal is to create inner harmony
Heider said a person had to beware of the temptation to understand too quickly.
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JACOELINE SUSAN'S
Psychologists say that the conscious mind is bound by considerations of what others think of that person, he said. In contrast, the mind transcends from a state of conscious to a quiet state.
In order to understand what people express, one should be quiet, listen and set aside any what has been said, he said.
The Love Machine
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Crowd Opposes . . .
One member of the crowd quoted facts that showed an in-depth investigation in the number of bombs dropped per month and civilian killed per month in Iraq, according to figures. Dole was asked whether he still thought the war was being de-excalibated now that he had advanced on the ground.
ANOTHER YOUNG man attempted to get a more clear answer from Dole on the question of escalation.
a song by Phil Ochs, entitled "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land." Another banner reminded the crowd that more than 70 per cent of Americans oppose the war.
The young man was recognized at the same time as another
Those who use drugs and meditate will not be capable of seeing what is said, but in the early stages of drug addiction the appearance of creative material appears.
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person was asking a question
Dole asked the young man with
the question on escalation to wait
for his question to be answered.
"According to Pentagon figures, 90,000 tons of bombs per month during the Nixon administration; 60,000 tons of bombs per month being dropped during the Nixon administration; and 85,000 civilians are being killed per month during the Nixon administration, and 85,000 civilians are being killed per month during the Johnson administration. Senator Dole, given these figures, do you still think we should deescalate," the man asked.
Bill Palaskas, Kansas City
Kan, junior and member of the
Haiphong Project Coordinating
Committee, said, "I was
well prepared to depart. It was evident that many questions were left unasked and many of those asked were left unanswered by Dole." Palaskas said the Coordinating Committee had a demonstration in Topeka.
The question was put off for twenty minutes before Dole attempted to answer it. Again the
answer was unclear
The question-answer period ended almost as quickly as it began. Many people were left unhappy because they did not get answers, but many were with many and many unsatisfied with the answers they were given.
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