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University Daily Kansan
Wednesday. Oct. 2. 1963
Wheat to Whom
The problem of surplus wheat in the U.S. has long been a thorn in the nation's side. For nearly 15 years government officials have tried everything reasonable to lessen the grain overflow. They have even tried the unreasonable, such as giving it away.
Now, in the last few days, the U.S. has been presented with the possibility of selling great quantities of surplus wheat besides that which goes to the regular customers, the under-developed countries. Russia, one of the world's largest producing powers, has been beset by crop failures in recent years and the rumor is out that the Soviets may be willing to buy American wheat.
This presents a new problem for U.S. wheat traders and government officials. Whether it is a problem of policy, ethics or loyalty, both interested groups know that a large consumer country like Russia could relieve the U.S. of much of its surplus grain.
AT THE PRESENT the U.S. has a little more than one billion bushels of surplus wheat, which is costing the taxpayers $300 million a year. To aggravate the situation, wheat production in this country averages more than a billion bushels each year. It is estimated that only 600 million bushels are needed for the national security. Then, there is the fact that total domestic and export sales of U.S. wheat in a year equal the same magic number—one billion bushels. In other words, it's similar to shoveling wheat against the wind. No matter what we try, we end up with a billion-bushel surplus.
The men with the shovels, the farmers, also
have been plagued by the surplus problem since around 1949. The trouble is, they don't seem to want to do anything about it—except plant more wheat. Many of the nation's wheat producers who voted in last May's wheat referendum went blindly about the task with only one thought in mind. They saw a chance to rid themselves of the government's shackles on wheat planting.
When the President's program was defeated, the administration said the farmers would be sorry. Remembering that their vote gave them the right of unlimited planting, but also lower prices for the wheat, many producers already have said they are sorry. They are still shoveling against the wind.
NATURALLY, unlimited wheat planting in the U.S. is a strong indication that possible sales to Russia or anyone else must be considered. In fact, the negotiations as such would have to be considered if they were to be with the Soviets.
If the U.S. would sell wheat to Russia on the same cut-rate terms that it does with other countries, then it would cost the taxpayers about $60 million for every 100 million bushels sold. This possibility seems ironic since the cut-rate price of U.S. surplus wheat was intended for countries supposedly on America's side.
In all probability, the U.S. would not make money by selling wheat to the Soviets, but this has not been the object in years of exporting surplus grain anyway. At least the government would be getting rid of quite a load of wheat. Of course, we can always hope that the wind will blow the surplus away.
—Terry Ostmeyer
Keep Teacher Around
It was announced this week that a study is in progress here, the ultimate aim of which is freshman English by correspondence.
English, granted, is an area in which tremendous improvement is needed. A flexible language. English is often the subject of long, drawn-out debates over such things as proper somma placement.
Besides, a working knowledge of English is a prerequisite for all classes, because most use the printed text extensively.
FOR THAT REASON, any attempt or endeavor to upgrade the English standards of college students is welcome.
However, it seems ironic that the promoters of such a program would direct it by taking the teacher out of the classroom.
The proposed system, dubbed the tutor-professor correspondence system, is comparable to graduate study. The tutor-professor would undoubtedly be assigned more than the present number of students. The program would feature correspondence English study during the regular school semester. The obvious advantage is that the professor is on campus for conference.
This is not to imply that a better system of teaching does not exist, and it is a credit to the University that the U.S. Office of Education chose KU in which to invest $32,000 for the experiment.
IN FACT, OTHER methods of teaching have been tried. One such method is educational television and another is called the teaching machine. But educational television and teaching machines have been highly criticized for one primary reason: the close relationship between student and teacher is lost. Such a relationship is essential to a learning atmosphere.
The extreme of the tutor-professor method might be pictured. During any one evening (which is when most students study), the tutor might receive an unanswerable number of phone calls. Then the phone-answering staff would have to be increased—an expensive addition.
The tutor system would, in effect, become comparable to dialing the KU operator and asking advice. Over a period of years, an automatic brain might be built to replace the tutor-professor and his entire staff.
ITWOULD SEEM better, then, to improve the English program by reducing the size of classes and adding more qualified teachers to the staff. A maximum of 10 students should be assigned to freshman English teachers, although that would require much more money for salaries.
The Office of Education may even go beyond the University. Why not begin at the high school level? Upgrade high school standards.
It might be beneficial to separate composition from literature at the high school level. Pressure the schools. Tell them their students must have full command of the language or be flunked out.
It will hurt freshmen badly to have to take a class by correspondence in his first semester here. He is actually trying to adjust to a new way of living. Imagine coming to the University, paying fees, and then doing a semester of research to find the tutor-professor.
Give the freshman a helping, not a hurting hand. Keep the teacher in the classroom.
Willis Henson
"You Mean Help Americans Twice In One Year?"
Liberal Editor's Views Dedicated to Papa
By Tom Coffman
Out of the blackness covering me . . . for the unconquerable soul—yours, college editorialist give thanks.
Frankly, mine is not so unconquerable. I more or less go along with the Kansas crowd, those unkempt farmers and the sons of farmers who have donned neckties.
Those Kansans, they send nothing but Republicans to Congress and nothing but hayseeds to the state legislature. You can find cow manure on the curbstones of Topeka and Methodist churches on every highway and byway.
THOSE KANSANS, they grub for money and each ask God to bless their greed.
It takes courage to be a heretic. No doubt. Papa probably lives in Smathers Junction and reads every line you get into the paper. He will pressure you. My Joe, he went to college and got too big for his pants. Last week he wrote an editorial favoring re-apportionment.
But from the wilderness a voice cries out—the liberal editorialists of the college campus.
The editorial material of the college heretic is without limit. You can slam the John Birch Society, tag the Midwest as a cultural desert, and smear the DAR.
Well, to hell with papa. He symbolizes the ignorant past.
NOW TRY SOMETHING really original. Write that we should allow Russians to speak on campus and protest that Kansas Indians are not treated as equals. Your courage is overwhelming. The justice you preach is without flaw.
As I see it, the catch to the enlightened campus editorial writer—the heretic—is that his main audience, his fellow students, are clustered around, nodding assent and trying to forget that they too are from Valley Brook or Smathers Junction. It is easy for him to rap Papa back home with bookish sureness, especially when he probably does not plan on returning to cope with the much talked-about provincial ills, to pick the hayseeds off his boyhood pals.
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BOOK REVIEWS
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Business Manager
SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION, by Gustave Flaubert (Everyman's Library).
In the eyes of many readers, "Sentimental Education" is a work even more important than the focal novel, "Madame Bovary." Without question it is a basically unflawed tale that merits an important literary position.
Flaubert's hero can be compared with either his heroine, Emma Bovary, or with Stendhal's youth from the provinces in "The Red and the Black." For Flaubert depicts here, in a satire of dilettantes, intellectuals and revolutionists in 1848, a young man and his romantic, and grasping at times, adventures. The title refers to the youth's essential unequipment for life, a failure based on the overromantic reading which had conditioned him.
THE POLITICOS, by Matthew Josephson (Harvest, $2.95).
Though historical sentiment seems to have shifted away from the kind of attack Matthew Josephson characteristically makes on men and morals of the Gilded Age, his books—this one and "The Robber Barons"—remain valid. This is an excellent history, one which will anger some readers, but chiefly just the uninformed and prejudiced.
There is a set of knaves depicted here as soundrelly as the buccaneers who were Josephson's hero-villians in the other work. These are the politicians, and Josephson hopes his book will instruct us in examining the politicians of our own day.
It is quite a set displayed here—Grant and the spoilsmen, the Republican radicals, Blaine, Cleveland, the bosses, the Populists and Bryan. This is a lively story of the age of the Great Barbecue.