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University Daily Kansan Friday, February 25.1955
Publick Occurrences BOTH FORREIGN AND DOMESTICK
Friday, Feb. 25, 1955
CAMPUS
Fieldhouse talk—Reports are that Kansas State students are complaining because not enough tickets were sent to Manhattan for the dedication of Allen fieldhouse Tuesday. And it's still indefinite whether K-State student councilmen will sit with KU ASC members at the ceremony.
At least Kansas State was able to get the governor's support to keep its reserved TV channel closed to commercial use. But Gov. Fred Hall still wants to wait a year before building up a statewide TV system in schools.
Look for "Phog" Allen to get his Cadillac. When a group of active alumni gets behind such a project, is usually succeeds. (However, Allen isn't likely to pull a Bowden Wyatt and head for greener pastures.)
A few weeks ago Chancellor Murphy spoke of "a double standard" on retirement of officials. But the University has a triple standard—the Campanile chimes, the clock on Blake, and the whistle are all set for different times.
Speaking of the whistle, it may be a grand old institution but visiting lecturers scowl, stop talking, and look to see if a tug is pulling a liner into port.
Despite the summer heat lying ahead, many students are awaiting the arrival of spring and work by the department of buildings and grounds on Malott hall landscaping. The steps to Malott and the muddy, rutty road create bills for new shoes and for auto tires and springs.
Watch for the pay-as-you-see TV argument stirred up by Zenith Radio and the FCC's sudden interest in the subject to pick up momentum. TV companies want the plan to come into effect, and they're pushing for it.
Watch for announcement of a new editor of the Kansas Engineer and don't be surprised if a woman gets the job.
NATIONAL
And look for the Congressional pay raise to go through. But don't expect a higher caliber of congressman. Many of the worst candidates will still get elected to office.
Now an Olathe farmer has admitted that he gave false testimony about a Toledo, Ohio's lawyer's Communist connections. Harvey Matusow has started something which will prove a boon to psychiatrists and the aspirin people.
INTERNATIONAL
Richard H. Nolte of the American Universities Field staff said here this week that "the American assumption of responsibility for defense" is the reason why U.S. troops are found in the Middle East. Good relations in the future will be assured if the people continue to get what they need: independence and security.
Chiang won't be allowed to invade the Chinese mainland. The Chinese Reds don't have the facilities to invade Formosa very soon. And Russia will be expected to try to curb the cocky Chinese Reds, because the Soviet isn't ready for war on the mainland.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
(A faculty member received the following letter in a black envelope. We're not certain what it means or if it means anything, but anyway, here it is:)
Letters
"We can't afford printing like the other campaign and we're not trying for a Cadillac. How's about four bids to help buy an Austin for retiring ex-Dean Swarthout? If you don't like music, what do you say about fifty cents on a second hand Ford for John Ise? Remember him? Let's go! Onward Spirit of Kansas!
The Committee
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas Student Newspaper News Room, KU 251 Ad Room, KU 376 Member of the Inland Daily Press association. Associated Collegiate Press association. Representative for Madison campus valuation. Number 420 Madison ave., N.Y. Mail subscription rates: $ a semester or $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester if in Chicago). University of Kansas, every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays and examination. Second class room Sept. 17, 1810 at Lakeside Hall post office under act of March 3, 1879
NEWS STAFF
Executive Editor... Letty Lemon
Man. Editors: Amy Deyong, Ron Gan-
ranc, Jennifer Hilmer, John Dillon,
News Editor... Nancy Neville
Asst. News Editor... Lee Ann Urban
Staffer... Stanley Starr
Wire Editor... Tom Lyons
Society Editor... Mary Bess Stephens
Asst. Society Ed... Irene Coonfer
News Advisor... C. M. Pickett
"Worthal's girl—Sometimes I almost dread to see him make a basket."
Book Review—
Rivers, Floods, and Controversy Lead to Thoughts on Education
The raging floods of 1951 stopped when the rains went away and left a mud-soaked Kansas to lick its swollen wounds. But the controversy over which dam should be placed where in order to prevent future floods still can be heard up and down the Kansas river.
One of the loudest and most outspoken voices to spur the controversy is that of Kenneth S. Davis, English professor at Kansas State college, Manhattan, who wrote a book, "River on the Rampage," in 1953 and set it ablaze with truths that sprung out of the Kansas flood.
The book, starting out merely as a comprehensive study of the flood, its aftermath, and the search for a solution to floods in the Kaw valley, winds up like a shot of adrenalin when Mr. Davis puts the blame on Kansas educational institutions for a lack of cooperation in finding a solution.
Taking a swing at K-State, he contends that the college is not preparing its students for future problems that they later will have to face. The unnecessary haggle between the Army Engineers, the Missouri Valley authority, and the Blue Valley Study association to settle on big dams (Tuttle Creek) or little dams, he says, is the indirect result of Kansas schools and their inability to produce "whole" persons.
Mr. Davis has taken the flood problem and has drawn an objective picture of dams, silt pollution, irrigation, health and controversy. But most of all he has linked floods to people and has carefully outlined the 1951 flood's impact on our own local society. It is little wonder, then, that he has searched for and discovered a missing fundamental in Kansas' school system closely related to dams and indecision.
In short, Mr. Davis condemns the pragmatic education that has arisen from such land-grant institutions as K-State, which emphasize vocational and professional training to the virtual exclusion of "liberal" education.
The problem which faces the Kaw valley today is more concerned with building dams to benefit the most people than how to build dams. Unfortunately, our engineers have been trained exclusively in the construction of the physical aspect rather than the social aspect of flood prevention. Our engineers know how to build dams, but they are at loss when it comes to finding an integrated purpose in making life worthwhile for flood-frighhtened residents of the Kaw valley.
In the same light, world technology has grown to new glorious heights because our chemists, physicists, and scientists have been trained to perfection. The perfection is so perfect and the training so rigid that there is little additional time to decide what to do with all the technology. For that reason, we can dump our vast knowledge on
Hiroshima without difficulty, but we flounder disgracefully when we are forced to consider an atoms-for-peace plan.
Our schools have tended to draw a rigid line between the thinkers and the doers. The curriculum for technical instruction concentrates almost exclusively with how to do things, but the question, "Why am I doing this?" hasn't time to creep into four years of John Dewey education. Reason is omitted because there isn't time to learn both atoms and philosophy or just plain living.
But there is going to have to be time. Time becomes unimportant and life ends too abruptly when homes are flooded and mushroom clouds take their toll. All the technology in the world cannot compensate for shattered hopes and lives destroyed because we were too busy developing a scientific world to see that there was something bigger.
Each individual has the right to do as he pleases and to train himself as he sees fit. But individuality is worthless if it cannot be applied to something beyond dam building, if the mere construction of a dam becomes an end in itself.
Mr. Davis particularly is concerned and disturbed by the fact that so many individual specialists are working to solve the flood problem that nobody is seeing is as a whole problem that requires many specialists working together toward one common goal.
To Mr. Davis the flood problem reaches into the realms of irrigation, silt pollution, sewage disposal, conservation, and navigation. He considers the fact that dams can go a long way toward solving problems in each specific field. But he is aware of the fact that each specialist is working for his own special goal, his own special solution to his own special problem, but few of them are working for the problem as a whole. The specialists simply have not been taught beyond their fields.
Again Mr. Davis relates the division of thoughts in regard to dams to educate when he writes, "Unhappy practical experience taught us that general truth we required (on the job) could never be achieved through a simple mechanical combination of the particular truths which (we'd been taught) composed it. It was precisely the concept of wholeness—a continuous unbroken integrity—which was necessary to the success of our operations, and of course this could never be achieved by placing one specialized block against another like stones in an uncemented wall."
And while the cement is drying on dams being built along the Kaw and the Missouri, the controversy still rages over a valley where once rivers were on the rampage. —Gene Shank