OPINION
The University Daily
KANSAN
September 2, 1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USP$ 60-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer-Flint Hall, Lawrence, KA. 60045, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions, $135 per student. Subscriptions to the university's digital collection are $125 per subscription by mail are $15 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a fee outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester pass through the student activity page FASTMATE! MESSENGER, www.fastmate.com.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
MICHAEL ROBINSON Campus Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER
MARK MEARS
Retail Sales
Manager
National Sales
PAULJESS General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK
Campus Sales Manager
JOHEN OBERZAN
Advertising Adviser
Why?
All the facts have yet to be known, but it looks as if a Russian fighter plane ruthlessly blew apart a defenseless passenger jet, leaving the debris and 269 passengers to fall to the sea.
"Words can scarely express our revulsion at this horrifying act of violence," said President Reagan.
Barbaric, reprehensible, incomprehensible, unacceptable — those just won't do.
It makes you angry. It makes you hate the Russians. It makes you hate anything Russian. The need to channel hate at somebody, somewhere is satisfied. And such a hateful act by a nation ruled by tyranny seems as if it almost gives justification for hate.
Why did they do it? The hate and misunderstanding will be more intense than ever. And this time they started it. No matter what they say, their words of denial cannot mask the deed.
There was a great outcyr in the United States yesterday. Leaders from across the nation condemned the act. But the outcyr must come
from all over the world.
The whole world must now let the Soviets know they can't get away with it. The Soviet Union must hurt for the deed. It must know that the world will not tolerate such behavior, and world leaders must consider a unified action to punish the Soviets.
Such an act also shows those leaning toward the Soviet bloc that the big bear is not as benevolent as Soviet propaganda would have them believe.
Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, although they were already severely strained, probably will be damaged for quite awhile because of the incident. But it can hardly be any other way, at least considering how humans in their nearsightedness play at world politics. The superpowers will now distrust each other even more. The hate builds on both sides, and the world keeps inching toward the unspeakable.
Why did they do it? But then why do humans hate one another?
Political wrangling
Some politicos in Kansas are making political hay from pot. They're complaining about the state's enforcement of marijuana laws, but the verbal exchanges look like another petty row.
It goes something like this: Jerry Harper, Douglas County district attorney, recently said he was baffled by the state's handling of the marijuana trade. Fields of pot are destroyed without identifying and arresting the crooks who grow the weed, he said. That's good for making headlines but not for catching the growers, he said.
But said Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephan, "Political mishmash." (These guys are playing political hardball.) Stephan even suggested that Harper spend less time doling out advice and more time searching fields for the illegal weed.
State Rep. Vic Miller, D-Topeka, also noticed the state's inept approach to eliminating marijuana
and prosecuting the growers. Last week, in a letter to the director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Miller criticized the KBI's handling of a raid on a Leavenworth County field. A "bungled publicity stunt," he called it.
Next exchange: KBI Director Thomas Kelly this week defended the raid. But he needs more men if the state wants to eradicate the weed from Kansas soil, he said. "It is our hope in the 1984 legislative session to request a substantial increase in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation drug unit," he said.
Despite all the jawing over marijuana, the pot continues to grow and the growers continue to reap it and the cash it brings. More volleys will come, but Kansas legislators should not give Kelly another penny until they put more money back into state education and social programs. The state has more pressing problems to address, and the politicians certainly could find something better to wrangle over.
A hope for democracy
In Chile, the military government of President Augusto Pinochet approaches its 10th anniversary next month with its future up in the air. Protest is mushrooming, labor groups and opposition politicians are getting bolder in their demands, and the regime is starting to loosen its grip.
Last week, Pinochet's interior minister announced that the government would soon legalize political parties and move up the date for congressional elections.
This spread of freedom is good for South America and good for the United States. If it lasts, it may produce some stable, broad-based democratic governments.
spreading. Several military strongmen are making plans to let go of power, or are at least promising to do so.
The fire of democracy is definitely
Democracy that works is America's great non-military line of defense, as well as a blessing to the people in the nations that have achieved it.
-Los Angeles Daily News
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff affiliation. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office. 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
LETTERS POLICY
Giving education a low priority
"Those who can, do.
"Those who can't, teach."
It's a grim saying. It reeks of cynicism and condescension, and it describes a society callous toward the intellectual development of its
It describes the United States.
Dale Scannell, dean of KU's School of Education, said the top scorers on the SAT don't enter education schools.
This myopic country has showed education to the bottom of the list, well beneath space exploration and military preparedness. It can't see that those things depend on a well-educated future generation, so it has turned teaching into a miserably underpaid, unrespected profession to be performed by those who can't do.
High school seniors planning to become elementary and secondary school teachers scored 80 points below average on the Scholastic Aptitude Test in 1982, according to a report released last week by the Carnegie Foundation. In 1973 they were 59 points below average.
A few bright students are dedicated enough to withstand the hardships. But most of the brightest ones avoid the stigma of being someone who can't. They want the respect that goes with doing.
The profession is left largely to average and below average students, and classes for education majors must be tailored to them.
No wonder education is considered an easy major. No wonder the intelligence of anyone in it is suspect.
And no wonder bright students who would like to teach and are
DEBORAH BAER
Staff Columnist
willing to put up with a starting salary of $13,000 decide to find something else they would like to do.
And they don't want to wind up in a field in which they won't have much respect for their colleagues.
They don't want to sit through classes that insult their intelligence and they don't want to face the inevitable condescending smile at parties when they reveal their chosen major.
So, at KU, they go into the School of Engineering, where last year. 47 percent of the students were in the KU Honors Program, an imprecise but noteworthy indication of achievement. Or they study English or history in the College of Liberal Arts and Science, where 3.3 percent of the students are honors students. Some of them enter business or journalism, where 2.6 percent and 2.3 percent, are in the program.
The situation won't improve dramatically until the United States decides to make teaching a more prestigious occupation. And although President Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education made waves in the spring by announcing education's "rising tide of medicinity," the chances for quick, significant change are slight.
But they don't go into education.
Six-tenths of 1 percent of the students in education are in the honors program.
For Reagan wants schools to improve themselves, but he doesn't want to give them any money.
We can't reward teachers adequately for their work, but we might be able to at least stop driving the smart students away.
KU's School of Education seems to be trying to shake its reputation as
an easy school, and for that it should be commended.
The program has been extended to five years instead of four, and the minimum grade point average required for entrance has been boosted from 2.3 or 2.2 depending on other circumstances, to 2.5.
That requirement is flexible. According to this semester's timetable, students with lower GPA's can be admitted on probation.
The GPA change might not make much difference.
Adding challenging, useful classes would. Hard classes would attract those who avoid education for fear of boredom and having mediocre
Scannell thinks this year's classes will be tougher than last year's. Most of the classes are different.
The new program, he says, is more rigorous. It requires more course work outside the School of Education, so that students will have to learn more about what they need to teach, not just how to teach it.
It seems to be an improvement. Whether it will better prepare students or attract and keep some of the smartest ones we can know.
Reagan needs clearer Mideast policy
Every time he has gone to California for a summer respite from his official White House duties for the past three years developments in the Mideast have interrupted his leisure.
HELEN THOMAS
United Press International
In 1891, U.S. planes shot down two Libyan jets in Mediterranean waters. In 1982, in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Reagan unveiled a peace plan for the Middle East and moved to send 1,200 Marines there as part of a three-nation peace-keeping force.
This year, Marines are at the barricades and being fired upon by various warring Moslem factions in the country, including the country by the Lebanese army.
Despite the setbacks, and there have been many in the past year, Reagan insists that his peace plan is alive.
But the U.S. policy is as confusing as Arab factionalism.
After the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling the Israeli settlements on the West Bank illegal, Reagan delivered a radio speech on Saturday contention of arguments "we" an obstacle to peace.
In recent speeches he also has spoken of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.
But the United States also has joined Israel and Canada in boyciting a U.N.-sponsored conference with Israel, which rights are currently under way.
Some observers believe Reagan reaffirmed U.S. support of U.N. Security Council resolutions dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian problem and territorial borders as a result of sharp criticism by Jordan's King Hussein in a Los Angeles Times interview.
ne settlements are illegal, that
is the long and short of it." Hussein said, and expressed shock and disappointment over the U.S. veto.
Many diplomatic observers have written off Reagan's peace plan
Reagan has decided to keep the Marine contingent in Lebanon but not increase its size. At the same time, he realizes the more precarious the Marines' position becomes, the louder will be the congressional and public clamor for them to be brought home.
because it has been stalemated by rejections from both the Israeli and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The lack of momentum in the peace process can be partly attributed to the administration's preoccupation with efforts to stabilize Lebanon and to help it to attain its sovereignty again with the withholding, Israel, and Palestinian troops
Those diplomatic efforts have run into severe problems and outbreaks of new fighting. Failure to agree to evacuate Lebanon has put an Israeli-Lebanese agreement on troop withdrawals currently on hold.
Syria has declined to recognize the agreement because it claims it was not consulted.
Reagan has decided to keep the Marine contingent in Lebanon but not increase its size. At the same time, he realizes the more precarious the Marines' position becomes, the louder will be the congressional and public clamor for them to be brought home.
So far, all of the president's recent moves in the Middle East have been like putting his finger in the dike. From all indications, he has to sit down again and determine clearly what the U.S. policy is and what Americans are willing to do or not in that region in pursuit of peace.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
American forces should remain in Lebanon
To the Editor:
I understand the despair in the editorial "Out of Lebanon" of Aug. 13 with regard to the deaths of the two U.S. Marines in Lebanon. The Marines are stationed in a war zone and unfortunately they are vulnerable to the warring factions of Muslims and Christians.
Their deaths are a horrible reality, but this reality should not deter us as Americans from continuation of this practice, namely to facilitate peace in Leba.
non and a sovereign Lebanese government. This is a very difficult task, as we have seen, but it is wrong to break our promise to help because some judge the cause to be “failure.” We must not renegotiate on our promise.
It is also irresponsible to label Israel's operation in Lebanon as a "blood march across the country." This wrongly implies that Israel is responsible for the majority of the bloodshed in Lebanon. That is not the case, and rather the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, to rid the
When Israel weakened the PLO, it gave Lebanon a chance to regain its sovereignty. America is there now and is playing a strong democratic government.
country of the terrorist that continually attacked Israel and Israeli citizens. No one has condemned Israel for this move. When the PLO moved north, Israel had little choice to but follow them to Beirut.
The Muslims and Christians, whose battles continue to destroy Lebanon and its chances for peace.
began fighting many years ago. They are responsible for the recent American deaths as well as the civil war that began in 1976 and continues to this day. America and Israel face them, as well as the Syrians and the PLO in the mission to create a free Lebanon. The opponents are great, and the odds may not be good, but we as Americans must continue to work for peace in Lebanon and in the Middle East.
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Edwin L. Goldberg Prairie Village senior