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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Oct. 9, 1963
Keep the English Pro
The English proficiency examination will be given tomorrow night, an event which invariably occasions much wailing about and railing against the cursed exam.
It's ridiculous, people say. It shouldn't be required.
Why shouldn't it? Because a two-hour examination probably won't prove, positively, that a student is or is not proficient in English? Granted.
Because a student must take 10 hours of English before enrolling for the exam, and a student who has passed 10 hours of English is proficient in English? Nonsense.
A GREAT MANY people on this campus have passed 10 hours of English and can't use English coherently, let alone well. For that reason, the idea behind the examination is sensible — and completely defensible.
People who are not proficient in English and cannot express themselves in a grammatically correct, rational manner should not be graduated from this or any other university.
Some method must be devised to weed out the semi-literate, to deny them the honor of a university diploma.
The present system, however, is not satisfactory. Persons who, because of high grades in freshman English courses, were exempt from the examination in the first place have been known to fail. Persons who could be called proficient only in gutter idiom have passed.
An essay examination, for all the theories about "using the language will prove proficiency," is not necessarily the best way to test a person's real knowledge of English. There are, moreover, innumerable ways to cheat. Cutting a previously-written essay into pieces and pasting the pieces throughout a dictionary is a favorite, and effective, way to cheat.
TO IMPROVE THE TEST, a section on spelling, grammar and basic usage should be incorporated into the exam. A person who believes that "between you and I" is correct use of case following a preposition probably is not proficient in English, but might not be trapped by the examination.
Cries about pettiness are undoubtedly forthcoming about such a recommendation, but such
a section would help graders determine if a student was proficient or just smart enough to avoid constructions about which he was not sure.
Such a test should be devised and administered by the Department of English, since those people are, supposedly, most qualified to determine proficiency in English.
The test should be given after the first six hours of English, not after the required ten.
In the first place, every student in the University would have to take the test; every student should.
In the second place, it would give both the student and the English department a chance to correct deficiencies.
PERSONS WHO PASSED the exam the first time would be allowed to finish their English requirement by taking courses in literature and creative writing. This is possible now for students who make a grade of "B" or above in English 1 and 2.
Persons who failed the test would be required to take four more hours of basic composition and grammar drill, after which they would be required to take the test again. Those who passed would be through. Those who failed should be required to take more courses—for no credit—in remedial English.
This should be tied to a general policy statement regarding remedial English courses at KU. Such courses, after a four-year warning period to give high schools a chance to up-grade their English instruction, should not even be offered at the University level. There just isn't enough time.
The University of Illinois announced such a policy in 1956, effective in 1960. Students who could not keep up in regular English courses would be flunked, not only in English courses, but out of the university.
That may sound hard-hearted, but it doesn't sound unreasonable, particularly if the present farce of determining proficiency by essay examinations alone is continued.
It makes even more sense if the University continues to require the English proficiency examination after students are no longer required to take remedial courses.
— Blaine King
The World-Wise KU Student
The deadline for applying for consideration in the Fulbright scholarship and Foreign Study programs will soon arrive. Graduate students and seniors graduating in June or August of 1964 have until Oct. 19 to make their interest known.
The Fulbright advisor at the University of Kansas, Prof. J. A. Burzle, has been urging students to look into these and other opportunities to study in foreign lands. He has explained that the purpose of such studies is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills.
Naturally, there's a great deal of excitement, prestice, and responsibility involved too.
BURZLE ADDS THAT in the past 14 years grantees from KU have consistently been a credit to our school and to the nation.
Fifteen KU students are abroad in 1963-64 on Fulbright grants.
In addition, the University's complex relation with Costa Rica has been increased recently by a University-administered program for the Peace Corps, and 29 graduates who were trained here last fall have been at work in Costa Rica for several months. Our Summer Language Institutes in Europe will be three years old next summer, and about 150 students will be learning Spanish, French, German, and Russian in communities where those languages are the mother tongues.
The Ford Foundation has awarded the school a grant of $177,000 for three years of experiments in undergraduate courses increasing international understanding.
THERE IS THE school's long-standing international program in the orientation of foreign students, our own international student enrollment from more than 65 foreign lands, the exchange between our School of Medicine and that of the University of the Philippines, the direct exchange we have with some 16 European universities, faculty members from foreign countries coming to the University to teach, and KU
students and faculty going abroad to study and some of them — such as the student ambassadors for the People-to-People program — as purvevers of international understanding.
We have students in Africa and have sent several members of our staff there as consultants.
IN ADDITION TO the broad participation in student exchange activities, KU also has contributed to the cultural aspects of the program. In the summer of 1960 the University's production of "Brigadoon" toured Armed Forces camps in the Pacific and Far East. The KU version of the musical "The Boy Friend" recently returned from an almost identical tour for the U.S.O.
By the end of 1962 some 21,500 Americans and 53,000 nationals from other countries and territories had fulfilled grants under the program conducted under authority of the Mutual Educational Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, better known as the Fulbright-Hays Act.
Under programs such as these, thousands of foreigners each year are given a personal experience with American society. Americans going abroad to study, carry on research, lecture, or perform bring back with them increased knowledge and understanding of other peoples.
THESE YOUNG Americans add each day to the competence of the U.S. in meeting the challenging problems we face around the globe.
Now, in a world where tension seems to be easing while the chances for peace expand, we hope more opportunities will become available for the students of the world to interact.
And, this coming spring, the University's brass choir is scheduled to follow a similar route for the State Department.
Those we send to represent the University of Kansas must be the best we have to offer. You may be such a person.
If so, or if your curiosity is tempted, go to room 306 in Fraser Hall now as your first step toward becoming a Fulbright or other foreign scholarship student . . . and a better, wiser citizen.
—Larry Schmidt
"Don't Think I Stand Idly By——I Keep Asking Them Not To Do This"
The People Say...
Reverse Discrimination Editor:
In the lobby of Snow Hall there is an offer for Medical School Scholarships for Negro men.
What do you believe would be the repercussions from local integrationist groups, the Civil Rights Council, and the NAACP if this offer were to have been made for "white" men only?
Since we are to be proud of the record of the University of Kansas as a fully integrated university, should we, the broadminded students, tolerate such a discriminatory offer?
Gene George
Salina senior
Gerald Woods
Larned senior
Bill Murdock
St. Louis senior
Leave It Blank
Editor:
It is sometimes more thought-
provoking to leave a blank space
in contrast to the article on the
KU grounds and Mr. Blitch.
A blank space leaves some question in the students' minds—your article, headlined on page three of Monday's Kansan, "Fall Just Isn't Fall Without Leaves and the KU Building and Grounds," answers it with another. Is the UDK worth the trouble?
I am looking forward to December and an article on snow shoveling.
Kate Cameron
Mill Valley, Calif., senior
No News Is Bad News Editor:
Just what kind of a newspaper are you?
You claim to serve the community. You claim to objectively inform her members of news, activities and opinions in accordance with the highest standards of journalistic reporting; in the name of Truth and the Free Press. You claim this is our right, both as members of the KU community, and as members of a greater free
society. You proclaim it is our right to know and to be informed, that we may freely judge all sides, and choose for ourselves.
Yet you are hypocrites as well as distorters of truth—proclaiming these ideals while blatantly practicing irresponsible journalism; while misrepresenting and censoring the news.
Why is it, for example, that for the past three weeks no coverage of the International Club and its activities has appeared in your paper? Why is it that you grant several front page columns to the picture and story of a pretty girl poised on the steps of her sorority, but will allot nothing to the International Club meeting which includes several hundred, even after news items were submitted to your office? How can the community expect to be well-informed if you won't even list this club in your "Daily Bulletin" nor give coverage to its discussion last Saturday night on "The Future of Man," attended by some two hunderd persons and a panel of four distinguished professors? Your reporters were invited.
It happens that the International Club is a going concern, despite your efforts to censor the news. Its membership numbers four hundred, and it meets almost every week for movies, dancing, discussion, or socializing-without any announcement in your press. But the right of this organization to be represented in your paper should not be justified by its size or influence. The principle of representation alone should suffice. It is part of this community, and thus has the right to enjoy a listing in the "Daily Bulletin," and coverage in your news.
The community has the right to be informed; you have the obligation to protect this right, and to uphold your standards of truth and excellence.
Just what kind of a newspaper are you?
Alison Mckelvey
San Reno, Calif., graduate
Dailiīi Hāhsan
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