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University Daily Kansan Thursday. Nov. 29, 1962
English Pro
Nearly two months ago, Prof. James E. Seaver, director of the English proficiency examination, predicted that one student of every five who took the examination this fall would fail.
The results of the English proficiency exam were released last Tuesday, and Seaver's prediction was correct.
The student must take this examination (unless he is smart enough to be an engineer) in order to receive his sheepskin from the University of Kansas. However, a student may also escape the snakes of the exam if he is wily enough to get some good grades in English as a freshman and sophomore.
For instance, if the struggling freshman can squeeze out an A in English 1 and English 2, he is exempt and if he receives an A or B in honors English 1 and English 2, he is also safe.
But these scholastic qualifications for exemption from the English proficiency examination seem a trifle arbitrary, considering the inconsistent level of instruction by qualified teachers.
A TOTAL OF 1045 STUDENTS took the examination this fall, and only 80.4 per cent (835) passed. Roughly four out of five students cut another piece of the University's long red tape—and 205 were strangled by it.
FOR INSTANCE, THE FACULTY of the
English department is composed of teachers ranging from assistant instructors to full professors—and the freshman and sophomore English students are likely to draw any one of these in first and second semester English.
Generally, the quality of the freshman and sophomore instruction in English will vary as to the qualifications of the individual instructors.
In this light, the system of picking exemptions for the English proficiency examination on a scholastic basis is inconsistent and inaccurate.
Since the test proves only that the student can write on a certain topic, during one two-hour period, on a certain night, why let it stand in the way of a college diploma?
No, the system is too arbitrary. The test can make the difference between graduation and taking another snip at the University's red tape.
In addition to this minor point, what does this test prove?
IT HARDLY PROVES that the student who passes the English proficiency exam the first time he takes it is a better writer than the student who must have a second try.
The test is useless as long as the student passes the required 10 hours of English. It is just another of the students pitfalls.
—Ben Marshall
Go To It, ASC
It's over now: the votes have been counted, the posters are down, the booster tours are no more.
An apathetic campus electorate has whispered the campus politicos are safely installed in office.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
ONE WONDERS WHAT they'll do now that they've made it there. It's an interesting question, because throughout the election campaign, the aspiring candidates kept telling us that we really mustn't be apathetic, that the All Student Council really does play a very vital and important role at this University.
It's an interesting argument, but perhaps not quite accurate. It would be more to the point to say that the ASC has the potential of becoming a vital force in University affairs—if it has the guts to try.
To rise to this potential, the ASC is going to have to devote more time to meaningful campus affairs, less to the endless partisan wrangling over petty issues and less to meaningless debates over the problems of other, far-off universities.
FOR ASC DEBATES LIKE the recent one over whether or not to adopt a resolution supporting the integration of Mississippi University just won't cut it.
Interesting as such debates may be, they have little direct relationship to the problems of students at this University and therefore can do fittle to establish the ASC as a vitally important student body on this campus.
It's so easy—and such a temptation—for ASC members to sit in the Kansas Union and pass resolutions concerning issues a thousand miles removed from Lawrence. The farther away you get from a problem, the easier it is to view it in black and white terms.
IT'S SO EASY TO TAKE a firm stand on someone else's problem. It's taking no risk to sit in Lawrence and condemn racial discrimination in Mississippi. It's a nice safe stand.
But to be a power on this campus, the ASC is going to have to debate issues close to home, issues more gray than either black or white.
It is going to have to scorn safe stands for difficult and sometimes controversial stands on local issues. Here are a few of them:
- Reports by the Civil Rights Council of discrimination against Negroes in some Lawrence barber shops.
- Discriminatory clauses in KU Greek houses.
- The alleged "necessity" for the University Theatre to alter last year's seating and ticket pricing plans.
- The need, or lack of need, for later closing hours in Watson Library, the Kansas Union and the women's dormitories.
- The desirability of continuing the present football reserved seating plan without modification, in view of fairly persistent reports of seat "pirating" and gametime confusion.
On Other Campuses
PALO ALTO, Calif.-Scoring present teaching of "introductory" psychology courses, Professor Joseph Katz of Stanford University's Institute for the study of Human Problems recently said "most of the students who elect an introductory course in psychology come to it with the desire to find out both about their own selves and those of other people."
Go to it. ASC. —Dennis Farney
He emphasized that his remarks applied only to "students who are not going on to major in psychology and are likely to take only one course in the field. Much of the disappointment and criticism that undergraduates often express about their psychology courses seems due to their disappointment at not getting out of these courses what they had come for.
"On the whole, teachers tend to disregard students' attitudes and rest content with some sort of conceptual grasp of the subject matter. The result, of course, often is that what is actually taught is either superficial or is removed from psychological reality. Very little attention is being given, at least in the curriculum, to the education of the emotions."
Dailu Hansan
Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
University of Kansas student newspaper
1904, January 16, 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily, Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St, New York, NY 10022. United Press International. Mail subscription rates; $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sunday mornings. Subscription amination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas
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Scott Payne ... Managing Editor
Richard Bonnett, Dennis Farney, Zeke Wigglesworth, and Bill Mullins, Assistant Managing Editors: Mike Miller, City Editor; Ben Marshall, Sports Editor; Margaret Burger, Video Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Classic Books and Co-Editorial Editors
Sheldon
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martiniche  Business Manager
Joshua Koehler  Marketing Manager;
Doug Farmer  Circulation Manager;
Gene Spalding, National Advertising Manager;
Woodburn, Classified Advertising Manager; Dan Meck, Promotion Manager.
"IN ALL MY YEARS IN THE BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT, ONLY ONE OTHER TIME DID A STUDENT EVER HAVE AN ACCUMULATED GRADE AVERAGE AS LOW AS YOURS."
THE RACE WEST: BOOM TOWN TO GHOST TOWN, by Robert West Howard (Signet, 50 cents). FORTH TO THE WILDERNESS, by Dale Van Every (Mentor, 75 cents).
History and literature about the West continue to grow, and these two paperback volumes—which actually have little relation to each other—are welcome additions to the shelves. They deal with (1) the creation and collapse of vigorous and important communities in the old West and (2) the development of the first American frontier, which author Van Every defines as being in existence in 1754-1774.
Robert West Howard, in "The Race West," presents an entertaining picture of a constantly changing frontier. There were the early forts of the fur traders, the mining communities, the towns that were "Hell-on-Wheels" for the railroad builders, the communities built by the homesteaders who came along after these others had done their task.
HE TELLS US ABOUT THOSE FRAGMENTS that remain, and then provides a tourist guide on vanished towns. Without being a definitive piece of writing, this little book has definite interest.
Dale Van Every is more ambitious, and since the appearance of this paperback a new hardback volume by Van Every has succeeded it. The story is exciting and important—the Appalachian barrier that restrained the colonists but still represented a challenge, one that was met by many great names.
His heroes are not always the well-known Boones and Seviens, though they do figure in this history. There are George Croghan and the military commander Henry Bouquet, Sir William Johnson of the Mohawk country, John Stuart and the Indian leader, Pontiac, who tried to unite the Indians to drive out the encroaching British, and failed.—CMP
* *
AMERICAN BALLADS, edited by Charles O'Brien Kennedy (Crest. 50 cents).
This little volume is worth your money. It has some atrocious stuff in it but some delightful items, too. Kennedy has selected verses and songs and doggerel he likes: poems of dying hoboes, the man on the flying trapeze, piddling pups, the Erie canal, the little brown jug, the old outhouse, Yukon folks, Johnny Appleseed, railroaders, wendering boys, chaps named "Billy Boy" and "Abdullah Bulbul Amir," forgotten mothers, taverns in towns, orphans, the Panama canal, the lone prairie, oystermen, a ball player named Casey, letters edged in black, Frankie and Johnnie and McGinty and Barbara Allen and the Mademoiselle from Armentiers, sweet chariots, the Oregon trail, drunkards and rolling stones, the old oaken bucket, Clementine, Jesse James, the Alamo. And this is just a sample.—CMP
***
COUNTERATTACK, text by Abraham Rothberg (Bantam Gallery).
This paperback is worth almost anyone's time and money. It has a good text by Abraham Rothberg, pictures assembled by Pierce Fredericks and Michael O'Keefe, and design (striking, too) by Anthony LaRotonda. The period covered in this third volume of "Eyewitness History of World War II" is that of the first Axis reversals and the beginning of the road back to victory. There are texts and photographs of such things as Stalingrad, the Battle of Midway and El Alamein.
EACH MAN KILLS, by Sanford Bayer (Ballantine, 75 cents) an original paperback edition, dealing with group therapy. Cast in the form of fiction, it is clinical in approach.