OPINION
University Daily Kansan, March 1, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPK) 6046040 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kansas 60493, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, and final periods of second postpaid class at Lawrence. Kamu 60494 Subscriptions by mail are $13 for six months or $4 for twelve months and $18 for six months or $4 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $4 and $8 per month, except addresses address changes to the University Daily Kansas (USPK) 6046040 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kansas 60493, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, and final periods of second postpaid class at Lawrence. Kamu 60494 Subscriptions by mail are $13 for six months or $4 for十二
MATT DEGALAN Editor
DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
LYNNE STARK Business Manager
ROB KARWATH Campus Editor
DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager Manager
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
DAVID NIXON Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Time to teach
If college students aren't learning, it could be because some teachers aren't teaching.
According to a report issued by the Association of American Colleges, the four-year college degree has lost much of its strength. One of the causes the report cited is the attention that teachers give to research at the expense of classroom teaching.
The concerns raised in the report are valid ones. Around every university, people are aware of the emphasis placed on research, citing the "publish or perish" axiom that professors face.
The value of research and published articles is not to be overlooked, but neither is the value of teachers whose greatest strength is teaching.
Many professors hoping for tenure feel forced to change their focus from teaching to research — if only for a semester or two — to enhance their professional portfolio.
Rather than spending their time preparing class lectures and developing strengths that will directly improve the quality of their teaching, professors find themselves facing hours in the library and long weekends writing articles or books.
After that comes the editing and rewriting.
What students see during a semester when their professor is spending a significant amount of time on research, at the expense of teaching, are not the benefits of a professor being published in a leading journal. They see a closed office door when they stop by to talk with the professor.
The professor's apologies for being behind in returning papers or disorganized for that day's lecture do not take the place of the learning that is lost somewhere between the classroom and the stack of professional journals on the library shelf.
Universities and other educational institutions need to review their primary goals of educating students. Then they need to look at the pressure that is placed on professors to do research and be published.
All of the scholarly research in the world does not take the place of the able teachers who are forced to do less than their best in the classroom in the name of research.
Bruising dollar
President Reagan, being the eternal optimist, sees the good side — people can buy more imported items for less.
And there is the other side, the one that most businessmen and congressmen see. Their view isn't as nice.
There are two sides to every issue.
The issue is the strength of the dollar on foreign exchange markets. Since the last quarter of 1984, the dollar has been doing well. And since last week, it has been doing even better, setting records against the English pound, German mark, Dutch gilder and other European currencies. The trade-weighted value of the dollar is up 65 percent from its value in 1980.
Why is the dollar strong? Some say that the deficit has pushed up interest rates and attracted investors. Some say that new government policies make investment in the United States attractive.
Whatever the reason, inflation is down because excess demand is being abgorbed. Competition for dollars has forced U.S. companies to trim their prices and improve technology.
But these trends can hurt too. Farmers are having problems selling their crops because they are too expensive. Auto makers are complaining. Even International Business Machines officials are complaining that the strength of the almighty dollar is bruising their business.
Some manufacturers are buying their parts or moving factories abroad, depriving the U.S. economy of dollars and jobs.
In 1890, 16.2 percent of the goods on the U.S. market were imported. Last year, 25.9 percent were imported. Not only is the strong dollar sapping business from our economy, it is also making us dependent on foreign trade.
Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said Tuesday that the government was working on the problem. The board is talking about making reserves more inaccessible. Reducing the deficit might help too. Also there has been talk about depreciating the dollar, but that might push inflation up 1 or 2 percent.
An up-beat economy is great. A beat-up economy is not.
That is where this might lead, businessmen fear. Companies can do little except raise prices to offset conversion losses.
If it takes devaluating the dollar, it should be done now before this goes any further. Nursing a bruised dollar now would be easier than nursing another sick economy.
The University Daily Kansan invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns.
GUEST COLUMNS
the student always loses
Pointed caps and pointing fingers
German school varies time
When I left home to spend my junior year abroad, I knew there would be a time difference between Lawrence and Erlangen, West Germany. But I thought it would be a matter of hours, not months or years.
The difference is technically only seven hours (6 p.m. Monday in Erlangen), but academically it can range from two months to two years.
Right now, as Jayhawkers are settling into spring semester, German students still are writing term papers for the winter semester. But they are beginning to call the "state" of Bavaria. The summer semester runs from May 1 to July 31.
Calendars among German schools vary from state to state to stagger vacations and decrease congestion on the heavily traveled autobahn. Bavarian schools start last among the 10 German states.
In October, when KU friends were suffering through midterms, I had not even started my first semester at UW. Instead, I joined the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg.
In November, however, the gap seemed to become an entire semester. I was choosing classes for my freshmen and I noticed that these were pre-enrolling for the spring.
Erlangen has one answer to KU's chronic problem of drop-ada. The university simply does not require students to enroll officially in most daassen.
This system allows students to decide about a class after hearing the first few lectures and seeing what is required.
The students register, pay 25 marks, or $8.30, then attend what ever classes they want the first week. They get a different instructor or seminar, they find a different one.
sites became clear when I discovered that, with two years of college behind me, was on the same level as a secondary college student in Germany.
Overcoming my initial disbelief, I learned that the reason for me
The real differences in the univer-
"demotion" lay in the concepts of education in the two countries.
In Germany, fifth graders are put in different schools, depending on their abilities and career goals. Those who plan to study at the university attend a gymnasium for sports and physical activity, more basic, vocational education in their five or six years at a Hauptschule or Realschule.
At the gymnasium, the students receive a broad, liberal arts education, including courses in English and one other foreign language. In the last two years, they have more specialize to specialize in certain areas.
Students of the gymnasiums thus prepare for the university with 13 years of intensive schooling and the preparation of projects that KU requires for its
irrenmen and sophomores. English — or rather German — 101 does not exist here.
Liberal arts students in Erlangen also do not have finals in each class at the end of every semester. Instead, they take a Zwischen-semester, which lasts 10 years. Completing it is similar to graduating with a bachelor's degree.
After two or three more years, they take another cumulative test and write a thesis to complete the requirements for a master's degree.
Students at Erlangen prepare for the two big tests by taking seminars in their one major and two minor disciplines. Some seminars require oral art classes require a term paper and a detailed oral presentation.
Thus the system in Germany gives the students much more freedom but also more responsibility. No one checks their attendance, so they must choose reading, attend lectures and study on their own.
Because the setup is much more cumulative here than at KU, German students often study or prepare for the next semester during their vacations, then review intensively the semester before the last exam.
Those of us who are here for only one year, however, find that the long vacations — all of March and April — provide excellent opportunities to travel. We don't have any cumulative tests for which to study.
Now, if only I could persuade KU that pre-enrollment and semester exams were unnecessary.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Karen Sameen, Manhattan junior, is a journalism and German major studying at the University in Erlangen, West Germany.
February gives way to spring
Another February has ended. For me, that's a good deal. Februaries bring out some of my less appealing qualities.
I alternate wanting to curl up and sleep until April with wanting to rip the clouds from the sky. Every year, winter's short days starve my brain for more humor. In spite of myself, I slide into surinness in one form or another.
This isn't just romantic spring fever. My friends know I'm infected the whole year in that regard. Of course, that gets stronger too.
But this spring fever changes life from a chore to a pleasure. It's convivial, curious and affirmative.
Almost as though an expiration date passes, the start of March changes things. Something deep within me begins a slow accumulation of spring-fever hormones. They're barely detectable now, but when they do get ridden out, exercise exercised than Bobby Knight at a free-throw shooting contest.
Some people say men have monthly cycles more or less as
women do. The seasons affect me more. Here are some of the changes that come with March:
- I stop shoveling snow and bring the shovel into my bedroom in the renewed hope that it can be rescued.
- At about the same time, I loosen my coat, my step and my personality.
- start thinking about days more than a week away with a hesitant belief that they will come to pass.
- I realize that due dates for term papers will come to pass.
- I begin to bore my friends with stories of my softball prowess. They, nevertheless appreciate the relief from my suriliness, which has lasted unbroken for a month except for the strange stories of my basketball prowess.
- The tomcat in me starts wanting to walk around in the late evening.
- I want to sing more. Also I talk faster. I can't tell whether that's unusual because most of my friends talk pretty fast already.
- I get tired of baseball's spring training before it begins. Let's get on with it.
- **I remember why spring break is supposed to come in the spring, not the last week of winter.**
- I sense enough energy to begin my income tax return.
i *I finally get into basketball season enough to remember why some people make so much of it.*
*I go eager to have some windows open.
I realize there may be a choice about wearing a heavy coat. I get tired of wearing a hat.
- I want to travel to new places,
and I want to have company on the
trip.
- I begin to believe that the annual cycle of life has a wisdom that I can trust. In winter, I go right through my schedule in a kind of waking hibernation. Eventually everything seems gray and a bit unreal.
Spring sharpens my senses and with them my enthusiasm. Winter is always going to be winter, at least in Kansas. But that's all right, because I know spring will be spring when it comes.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
College aid helps
To the editor:
Mr. President
I am writing this letter out of concern about your plans to take serious cuts from financial aid for college students. For the sake of the future of the United States of America, I beg you, please do not take away this opportunity from the nation's young people.
I realize that there is the issue of a trillion dollar deficit that is constantly growing. Bid I feel that is no reason to cripple the assurance of a successful future. Many students rely on some form of financial aid to help lighten the burden of high college expenses. Several of us, without aid for further education, may be unable to assume maybe even for the rest of our lives. This would be the tragic result of a less educated America.
A 25 percent decrease would lower the $7.9 billion budget to $5.5 billion. Financial aid is hard to receive at the bottom, but if you could make it would only make the situation worse.
Is our military in such desperate need of help that it is required to
jeopardize the future of our country?
What good would it do to defend a country that does not even support the education of its citizens?
Once again, Mr. President, I ask you to please reconsider your decision, and don't cripple our nation's tomorrow.
Rex Johnson
Wichita sophomore
Second showing
To the editor
I would like to express my appreciation to DeNeen Brown for a job well done. Coverage of "Silent Scream," a 28-minute movie showing an abortion, was a good example of unbiased journalism
I regret, however, that there was no Kansas coverage of the film's showing the following night (Tuesday) in the lobby of McCullum Hall. The film, which started at 8 p.m., attracted about 159 people. David Graham, the state chairman of Young American Film Center in charge of the film series, said he was pleasantly surprised by the large turnout.
"Last night Neil Jouvenat said that
this place would be packed, but I didn't think anything about it then," Graham said.
Gordon Blake Clark Overland Park senior
Jouvenait, an Overland Park ob-
stetrician and gynecologist, had been the pro-life speaker on Monday night.
Unmerited image
To the editor:
In response to Tim Ericson's guest column on Feb. 13, I would like to say that I am infuriated with the way that he chose to portray his views of pro-abortionists in print. I am a pro-candidate advocate who firmly opposes abortion and light with the moral consequences lying with the man and woman involved
But my position on abortion is not what I choose to express here, but rather to defend myself against Erickson's harsh accusations against my personal integrity. To portrait abortion within the same picture as the gassings of Jews during Hitler's Germany is, in my opinion, a gross analogy of the ideals that Erickson chooses to express.
I have a certain amount of respect for the points and feelings of those people who believe that abortion should be outlawed, but at this time I do not happen to agree with their views. By Erickson's using the terms pro-abortion and Hitler in the same sense, it can be argued that once again been termed murderers and tyrants by, in my opinion, an irresponsible journalist.
I do not consider myself a killer, or a Nazi, or even a slave keeper, but rather a man who believes that a woman has the right to do whatever she believes right for herself and is in her best interests, without anyone dictating their moral preferences to her.
So please, Erickson, when you climb aboard your soap box and pass, judgment upon me and many others, have a little respect for opinions other than your own. For we are not pro-death fiends but rather people who believe that we are within our bodies and destinies over our bodies. Freedom, of choice is what I fight for and not freedom of death.
Jeff Klein
Roosevelt, N.J., freshman
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