University Daily Kansan, March 31, 1982
Opinion
Easing financial burden
Painful cuts in federal student financial aid programs will be easier for some KU students to bear thanks to the efforts of the Kansas University Endowment Association.
The Endowment Association recently announced that it would allocate an additional $1.1 million in scholarship support for students next year.
The total amount of money available for Endowment Association scholarships will be about $3.4 million, a 50 percent increase from the amount of money available at this time last year.
The average scholarship awarded by the Endowment Association this year was $792.46. Private donors generally set up scholarship funds for students majoring in specific fields or participating in particular organizations.
Realistically, private contributions can
hardly fill the void left by substantial cuts in federal assistance programs. KU students received about $24.5 in financial aid this academic year, and $17 million of that was in the form of federal guaranteed student loans.
But the Endowment Association has been busy reminding private contributors of the rapidly rising cost of education and the diminishing availability of other sources of financial aid.
The generosity of these donors, and the hard work of the Endowment Association, will provide more and larger financial awards for many students.
Not all students agree with some of the organization's policies and practices.
But by expanding an alternative source of financial aid, the Endowment Association is proving to be a valuable friend to many at KU.
Stiffer programs for teachers may stop decline of schools
When I was home last week, my two younger brothers wanted my advice on what courses they should pre-enroll in for their last year of high school.
So I thumped through their enrollment guide and told them what I had taken as a senior: world literature, government, economics and chemistry.
As I looked through the booklet, I came across some courses that had familiar titles, though I had never taken them: Single Survival, Creative Careers, and Home and Family Relations.
Although I was relieved to see they had dropped a Creative Leisure class from the schedule—it must have been pre-empted by Fast
access. So find the list of
such unconventional course names.
TERESA
RIORDAN
Now my old high school offers World of Children, "to help the student to develop an understanding of the value system of a child;" Math Lab, for "students who have not passed the Math Proficiency Test;" Health Education, to teach students about diseases; and Science Topics, where the student studies topics like "keeping fit, buying and selline, and gut reactions."
Unfortunately, the courses offered at my alma mater probably closely resemble the academic transcripts of many education majors that colleges have been turning out. We see far more courses like Pom Pon and Family Relations than in previous years; our teachers are increasingly more qualified to teach.
Education schools will, of course, always have the dedicated and qualified few who go into education for the simple love of teaching. But recently, the education school has become sort of a college. Students are academically in the more competitive schools of a university - a refuge for the underqualified.
As a result, universities tend to send out second-rate teachers who give second-rate elementary and secondary education to students in it to college, but who are grossly ill-prepared.
Small wonder that an overwhelming majority
of college faculty members declared in a recent study that college freshmen were "seriously underprepared."
Certainly the decline in the quality of public school teachers, and therefore education, can't be entirely the responsibility of education schools. Poor monetary compensation is the principal reason that qualified students flock to more lucrative professions.
"We confronting factors beyond our control," Lelon Capps, associate dean of the School of Education said recently. And one of those factors is the low-pay scale.
But instead of resigning itself to relaxing its standards, as are many other universities nationwide, the KU School of Education is making its program tougher.
Education students started courses this semester for the school's new, and stuffer, five-year plan.
Capps said that the faculty changed the program from four-year to five-year because "the teachers we were preparing didn't know everything that they needed to know."
Because the school had to teach students more and more education programs like mainstreaming—handling handcapped children—they were shipped away at its liberal arts base, Camps said.
The school restored that liberal arts background by implementing a whole new program, because teachers "need to be well-educated as well and know how to teach."
KU is not the only institution making progress in improving teacher competence. The Legislature recently made a 2.5 teaching GPA requirement for certification and is considering licenseing teachers.
But while the state ponders the question of providing funds for licensing, KU continues to improve quality within its school on its own initiative. Along with the five-year program came an English proficiency exam for education maitors.
Perhaps other universities will follow KU's lead in turning out competent teachers. What our public schools need are fewer courses like English and math, but more teachers qualified to teach English literature.
In the meantime, according to Cappe, the school is insisting on quality operating with smaller enrolments rather than just turning out teachers haphazardy.
The School is considering implementing a similar math competency exam if the state recommends it.
The dichotomy of drinking has been with us through the ages. It alternately represents worldliness and weakness, frivolity and fear, joy and sadness. The fact is that, it is a passion we hate to love and love to hate. It's a passion we hate to love and love to hate.
Drunken driver makes selfish choice
This debate is certainly nothing new, although each generation, with its exaggerated
CHRIS COBLER
sense of importance, likes to think it has uniquely uncovered the compulsion and revulsion created by alcohol. As in any moral question, there are extremists, discompanies and prohibitionists, but most of us fall somewhere between in a cloud of confusion.
Toots Shar, a minor celebrity, boasted,
“Through booze I met two chief justices, 50
world champs, six presidents and DiMaggio
and Babe Ruth.”
Shakespeare might not have impressed. In "Macbeth" he wrote, "Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things . . . Marry, sir, nosepainting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance."
But equally compelling are the words of A.E. Houseman in "A Shronshire Lard."
“Oh,” tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around. If young hearts were not so clever, they would be like the penguins. Think no more; ‘tis only thinking
On the other side of the coin, an fraternity boy faced with finals would agree with Charles and play the game.
It could have been said, although probably not as eloquently, by the Rev. Richard Taylor, leader of the Kansas dry forces, but it was Shakespeare in "Othello" who wrote, "O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!"
We should not feel ashamed, however. The great and not-so-great minds of history have considered this strange form of consumption, agreeing upon little and deciding upon less. Yet for all this discussion, remarkably little changes in our drinking habits have occurred.
A night of good drinking
Is worth a year's thinking.
Lays lads underground.
Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows when it hurts to think:
oil pots
To see the world as the world not.
to use the world as the world we do.
To use the world as the effects of
drinking water or our behavioral
Publius Syrus in "Maxims" observed, "He injures the absent who quarrels with a drunken man."
And so it is that through the years we have discussed drinking but never really taken it seriously. As long as we don't get carried away, it is an indulgence in which we see little harm. We would have abandoned it long ago were we sincerely fearful of its dangers to our minds.
But other effects were noted in "Drinking" by Jack Weiner, "Other drugs tend to make you introspective, contemplative of your own troubles." In the book, you make you contemplate other people's navels.
Drinking may lead to self-destruction, but we
have long accepted the responsibility for any harm we choose to inflict upon ourselves. And they have done so.
Or so we would like to believe. Instead, we are caught in the midst of a dangerous culture gap created by centuries of imbibing and only years of driving. We refuse to change our tradition-established drinking habits so that they conform to our driving habits.
The automobile becomes a murderous weapon in the unsuspecting hands of a drunken driver. It is conservatively estimated that 10 percent of all traffic accidents and 40 percent of all injuries are caused by drunken drivers. Clearly, drinking and driving is not a personal choice.
But habits ingrained into our culture centuries ago do not die easily. It's软喝 to drink water and be hydrated.
And drinking is such fun; we refuse to take it seriously. Will this change after we have seen our friends, our family broken and battered or not? I don't believe that I but hope others won't have to learn that way.
As I watched my friend lying in a hospital bed, I realized there were consequences to drinking greater than good or bad, right or wrong. The car, a two-ton piece of metal capable of great speed, had made the consequences life or death.
Letters to the Editor
'Discriminatory' state liquor laws not new
To the Editor:
The comment made by state Sen. Edward Reilly Jr., R-Leavenworth, that a bill allowing private clubs in Kansas to sell 3.2 beer on Sunday might discriminate against people who could not afford to join private clubs is a real laugh. What Reilly think the current private club laws do?
I am not aware of Reilly's position on alcohol coverage control, and I am not for or against this bill.
If this bill were amended to allow the sale of beer on Sundays on any other day, it would be good for the company.
It would also appear to violate the separation of church and state. If we are to legislate equal protection, as required by the Constitution, why aren't business establishments required to close from sunday Friday to sunday Saturday to protect the rights of Seventh Day Adventists?
The only reason I can see for banning the sale of beer (or anything else for that matter) on Sunday is that the first day of the week happens to be the Christian holy day. Sure, we're a Christian nation, but if this isn't tyranny of the majority, I don't know what is.
Why isn't it illegal to light a fire on the Sabbat in deference to the beliefs of orthodox Judiism?
If a person believes it to be a sin to sell beer on Sunday, he shouldn't be forced to in his establishment. On the other hand, no law forces a person to buy anything, except auto insurance.
If you don't believe in drinking, don't drink. And if you want to get plastered six days a week, Sunday's as good a day as any to sober up. I just like to be able to buy a beer with my pizza on
It's too bad more of our legislators don't have the same attitude toward the Private Club Act that they did with the House.
The current liquor laws discriminate against those who can't afford the $10 to join a private club and tourists who can't wait the ten days required by law for a club membership. The law allows free instant memberships to guests at Motel 6 and hotels that stay at the Hilton, you can drink at the bar, but if you're one of us plebias住 Atotel 6, you have to make due with brown-bagging it in
your room if you want to wet your whistle. Talk about discrimination!
I'm not arguing for the right to drink; that isn't the issue. I'd just like to know why a membership card is a priori evidence that the holder is a reasonable drinker.
I'd also like to know how many legislators who vote against submitting a constitutional amendment allowing rational liquor control to retailers are themselves private club members.
The last time this issue was voted on was twelve years ago, when it lost by a margin of 48.2 percent to 50.8 percent. There was a "sort off!" vote in 1978 when more than twice as many voters approved the public sale of liquor in restaurants than disapproved it. The Kansas law, passed in 1993, saying, if effect, that our state's liquor laws have to be discriminatory to be constitutional.
When that’s the case, I say it’s time to change the Constitution.
F. L. Wassermann. Salina senior
"It's okay. It'll help the economy."
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