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University Daily Kansan
Monday. Jan. 9. 1961
The Era Ends
Today in Topeka, an oath will be administered that will end one era of government and begin another. The eyes of the University have watched the one ending with certain trepidation and are watching the one beginning with hopeful expectancy.
ALL WAS NOT GOOD WITH THE OUT-going administration, nor was it all bad. One cannot judge any figure or part of government as one differentiates the good guys from the bad guys in a TV western. And when working in the public service it is impossible to please all of the people all of the time as Abe once said.
George Docking was elected governor in 1956 by a plurality of 115,361 votes, the first Democrat to be elected in 20 years. In 1958 he was re-elected by a plurality of 102,470 votes. From this margin it is obvious that his "fiscal sanity" policy of holding a tight rein on the state budget won immense favor with many — but not all.
IN 1956 THE UNIVERSITY AND KANSAS education itself entered a four-year period of "dwarfmanship" rather than the "growthmanship" that bulging classrooms and the demands upon education necessitated. While the system was not completely strangled, it was stunted through the determined efforts of Gov. Docking and his rationalization that things were good enough as they were.
During his tenure, he consistently vetoed or exerted pressure to stop measures designed to meet the minimal needs of the state schools. Building construction, faculty salaries and faculty retirement provisions all met with the incessant hatcheting of the governor as they were submitted and re-submitted.
As a consequence, many teachers moved on to other states, the schools were handicapped in their bargaining for talented faculty and administrative members, classroom and office space is now at a premium and KU lost an outstanding educator in Chancellor Murphy.
WE ARE NOT SAYING THAT ALL IS lost or that the University has been put into a position from which recovery is hopeless. Nor can it be said that the plight of Kansas education is all one man's fault. The University has moved forward slowly during the out-going governor's stay in the capitol but it is despite his efforts rather than because of them. We are, of course, biased toward education and its welfare. We are well aware that this is not the only area of consideration for the state officials. But as a child of the state, education has been neglected by the parent for four years too many.
It is with this in mind that we bid farewell to the ex-governor and welcome the new governor. May he smile more favorably on the child, nourish it and provide for its growth more than did the man who leaves today.
— Frank Morgan
Statistics Lie?
Statistics, the old saying goes, can be used to prove anything. Right now, they are being used to try to prove that the United States, like the old gray mare, ain't what it used to be.
What this all stems from is the fact that a new game seems to be in vogue this year. It's called "Show How the United States Is Going Downhill." The easiest way to play it is by using statistics. The most original statisticians get bonuses—they get to predict the year when utter decadence finally will crumble our country. If these "proofs" and predictions are taken at face value, Uncle Sam might as well toss the Russians the towel right now.
IT ALL LOOKS PRETTY HOPELESS. A glance at many magazine and newspaper stories today gives only a slight twist to the old theme, "By 1970 the Russians will be producing more ..." The figures and quantities change, but the context never does—the United States, while actually in a position of superiority, is made to seem inferior.
However, statistics can prove many things besides inevitable downfall.
They can prove, for example, that if we cut our steel capacity by 60 per cent, the Russians could match our yearly production. They can
prove that if we blew up two-thirds of our hydroelectric plants, the Russians could match our hydroelectric output. They can prove that if we scuttled 80 per cent of our merchant fleet, our civilian navy would be only as large as the Soviets. They can prove that if we ripped up 14 of every 15 miles of concrete roads, we would have no more paved highways than the Russians.
THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT THE STATISTicians are doing the nation a disservice. Americans need to be warned that to remain in the same spot is, in reality, to lose ground. But America deserves to be patted on the back once in awhile, too. Statistics, it would seem, have not done this very often. Statistics give credit to the Russians for things not yet accomplished. At the same time, they give no indication of the flexibility of America as a nation. Perhaps, this is the inherent shortcoming of statistics.
Taken in the right dosage, statistics are valuable medicine that can help perk up the old gray mare. And by the way, if the same expert who points out the old mare's statistical shortcomings is needed to pick out another horse's statistical good points, who wouldn't favor that old gray mare?
Dan Felger
Segregation Blasted
Editor:
This letter is written with reference to your issue of Friday, Jan. 6th., specifically, to the laudable comment by Mr. Donald K. Alderson, the dean of men. I could not help but be impressed by the depth of insight with which he pondered. In fact, that comment set at nought the blatantly poignant and ignorant claims by certain individuals to place their interests above those of their own motherland, namely, the great power and force called the U.S.A.
The practitioners of the noble art of restaurant segregation, or any other form of segregation, for that matter, have very gracefully sounded out their candid opinions. These opinions are, indeed, praiseworthy, knowing that racial segregation breeds its own excuses to justify the practice. Yes, individuals have every right to concoct whatever pleases and satisfies their whims and fancies!
The emphasis on the worth and dignity of the individual—among
... Letters ...
others, being able to act and speak without fear or favour—is a great asset to the U.S.A. Indeed, such a trait that makes other humans, suffering and belabouring under the yoke of domination and tyranny, very often hanker after the freedom of life in the U.S.A. Sometimes, however, such freedom to live so blindfolds some individuals that they never do realize—or maybe some of their acts are deliberate—the repercussions of their own inconsiderate acts and misdeeds to other people from far and near. Yet it is very important also to remember that the world of our day is more interdependent than ever before. Local conditions in every country, today, have a good chance of erupting into such proportions as merit the forum of international affairs. Whoever did suspect—U.N. Secretary Hammarskjold did — that the strife-torn Congo would suddenly jump from the backwoods and the dismal gloom of the jungle to the open fields of the international cold war?
I still remember an apt description of Lawrence by Mr. E. R. Zook of the Chamber of Commerce, over two years ago, that it is the Gibraltar of the Midwest, that is, the international cross-roads of the Midwest. That description I thought, was very accurate and correct, except that there is no segregation in Gibraltar.
From these and other crossroads, the foreign student will return home with his education. No matter how prejudiced he becomes — if ever — there is the U.S.A. gift of education he will forever treasure back home. As a gift of treasures, he will always make every effort to defend or preserve it; for that is what has helped him improve to face the challenges of life. In defending it, I think that he attempts also to defend the U.S. and her "good name" of which we are all proud. Truly, if only it were possible, he would not like to defend the U.S. with some "lousy" corner of his conscience pricking him!
Augustine G. Kyei Ghana student
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"-] REFUSE YOUR QUESTION ON TH' GROUNDS MY ANSWER MAY TEND TO INCRIMATE ME."
From the Magazine Rack
Accelerating the Gifted
The demand of the talented student is for a clear break from the high school pattern. He wants a new level not only in course content but in maturer and deeper approaches to learning. Acceleration by itself will only seem to parallel what good students are becoming increasingly familiar with in high school. As David Riesman has said, the student wants to feel that "something earthshaking" has happened when he comes to college. Because students are coming to college better prepared and better informed than previously, "the demands put on the colleges today for superlative quality are ever so much greater than most of us recognize."
WITH THE POSSIBLE exception of areas of protracted preprofessional and professional education—medicine for example—the virtues of acceleration per se are far outweighed by the need for penetration in depth, for syntheses needed for the matured insight, and for the realization of the interdependence of knowledge and values. This takes time. Gavin De Beer of the British Museum has for these reasons said that his impulse always is to hold the bright student back. A weakness of our American culture has been the worship of speed as such—often the most effective way of missing as much as possible between any two given points.
The proper place for acceleration is primarily at the level of propaeductics and the mastery of skills, tools and data—mathematics, languages, etc. This points to the grades and to the high school. At these levels, as is rapidly being demonstrated through the advanced placement and other programs, students can move ahead without loss and can arrive in college prepared for richer fare than it has been the custom to offer them.
AT ITS BEST acceleration in college can give the abler student time—time to explore more fields prior to his decision on a major, time to take more work in other fields once he has realized the interinvolvement of disciplines, time to delve more deeply into his specialty and to take a graduate course or two as a senior. Its greatest contribution will be manifested in the undergraduate's power to press for richness as a junior or senior. The maximum benefits of acceleration, however, will only be realized when the climate of the college favors the intellectual rather than the vocational goals of education. It is when the latter goals prevail that acceleration is treated as the preferred educational strategy for the gifted. If we concern ourselves with the climate and equality of education, the limits of acceleration will become clear.
(Excerpted from The Superior Student Magazine; the editorial is from the November, 1960, issue.)
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press, Represented by National Advertising Service. 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service. United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.