PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
MARCH 21,1947
Kansan Comments.
Better Education
The recommendations Chancellor Malott made to the College faculty Tuesday should be a push in the right direction, if the conclusions of the recent student-faculty conference are correct.
The theory was advanced at the conference that this is no longer a university, but a federation of trade schools, with each department fighting for majors. With the multitude of pre-requisite courses it is impossible for one in engineering or a similar highly-specialized field to get a liberal education. In a day when scientists and technically trained men stand to be most highly respected, they know comparatively little of social, political, and economic problems.
The problem is to reach across lines of the different schools. You cannot ask the College to waive prerequisites for engineers which they would not wate for their own students, the chancellor said. More survey courses were suggested to provide background for specialists, and to avoid the diffusion an underclassman may get in filling divisions when he has not chosen his major.
The chancellor reminds the faculty often that it should eliminate unnecessary pre-requisites; but pressure of current matters may push this into the background. Pre-requisites for junior-senior courses in some departments are not needed, according to their faculty; but other departments whose subject matter requires preliminary courses object to abolishing those unnecessary requirements because it gives them a disadvantage in attracting students. The chairman of the conference appointed a student committee to work with faculty on this.
Introducing some recommended courses like Problems in Family Living also would cause trouble between departments which might logically teach them. The highly-specialized system might even make it a problem to find qualified persons to teach a general course such as one dealing with human thought, in which psychology, physiology, and philosophy would give three different aspects.
Before any changes are made in curriculum, education must have a goal. What do you think it ought to be?
The language requirement was thought to have questionable value because what is learned is forgotten promptly from disuse. Even if the majority of students were to use the language they study, present methods of teaching are not the most practical. Native-speaking laboratory courses were agreed to be best, but the University cannot afford to do more in that direction than it is doing already.
Eliminating uneven work requirements throughout the College is a talking about the semester in which we spent more time on a two-hour course than on a five-hour one, and got a C in the first and a B in the second.
That there is too much training for vocations, and too little training for citizenship, is generally conceded. It seems to be a chicken- and egg question of whether the educational system should or can be changed before the materialistic society, however. You cannot cram citizenship down persons' throats, someone said.
Dear Editor---to hold it off the table. It's impossible for anyone sitting opposite or beside them to write without having his pen isolated repeatedly.
Suppressed Comment
On March 12 I submitted a letter to the editor of the University Daily Kansan which expressed my contempt for the dictatorial methods exercised by the authorities of this University by closing the library and the Student Union (World War I memorial) to force students to attend a convoitation urging support of the proposed bell tower, which I incidentally indicated is not a popular choice with the veterans as a World War II memorial. There would be little or no opposition to any memorial which would serve a useful purpose.
I further pointed out that those in the library were really given an option of attending the convocation or remaining there—locked in—which, by all safety standards should be contrary to fire regulations.
By printing only the weak excerpts of my letter and thereby masking its real purpose, the Daily Kansan only lent convincing argument to the existence of dictatorial tendencies at K.U., for a newspaper which refuses to print criticism leveled at the practices of public officials must be muzzled and certainly can't be a true representative of democratic principles. Our government officials are subject to constant press censure, which acts as a restraining influence on the exercise of practices they are not anxious to have called to the attention of their constituents. Why can't the Daily Kansan do likewise on the campus?
(Name withheld by request)
Business Junior
(Editor's note: The Daily Kansan, like all other papers, reserves the right to edit to fit space requirements, and material which does not further the essential argument sometimes must be omitted. We assumed that your principal objection was to locking the library for the convocation, and therefore omitted the first paragraph imputing the characteristics of Hitler to Chancellor Malott. Even if such name-calling were based on evidence and did not border on libel, we do not feel like "taking the rap" for a person who does not wish to sign his name.
We apologize for omitting the argument that locking persons in the library might violate safety regulations. The fact that it was added as a postscript misled us as to its importance.)
Some of the talks on etiquette being given on the campus should be on the subject of library manners. It's disgusting how little regard some students have for the right of other students to a seat and comparative quiet while studying in the library.
Library Etiquette
Despite the scarcity of space, I've seen individual students occupying three chairs at one time: one for wraps and books, one to sit in, and one to prop the feet in. Ask, ever so politely, for just one chair, and you've made an enemy.
Then there are those who choose the library for sociability. They spend their time talking in sibilant whispers that shred the nerves of anyone trying to study in the vicinity. Glare at them and they glare back and continue whispering, this time about you.
In the periodical room you'll find those who can't read a paper unless it's spread out to take up all the space possible, and who are too weak
Would large placards giving library rules, tacked at the entrance to study rooms, help? Maybe the librarian could appeal on behalf of the students who want to study, at the beginning of each hour. Or perhaps booklets should be printed telling students how to use the library and how to behave while they are there.
College Senior
(Name withheld by request)
The Tammany society of New York was first organized May 12, 1789, and known at that time as the "Columbian Order." In 1805 it was chartered as the "Tammany Society."
About four-fifths of the U.S. corn crop came from hybrid seed corn.
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Student Newspaper of the UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Member of the Kansas Press Assn., National Editorial Assn. Inland Dally Press Association, Californias State College Press. Represented by the National advertising Service 420 Madison Ave., New York.
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Editor in Chief ... Alamada Bollier
Marcelia Stewart
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City Editor ... William T. Smith Jr.
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1910, at the Post Office at Lawrence, Kan., under act of March 3, 1879.
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