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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. Oct. 29, 1958
Classified Students
The current (Oct. 20) issue of The Reporter magazine contains an article that should encourage educators throughout the United States.
The article outlines the school system of San Angelo, Tex. San Angelo has set up a three-level system of courses, with different course content for the bright, the average, and the slow student.
Colleges and universities have complained that today's high schools do not prepare students for college work. The San Angelo system may be a means of bringing high school education up to college requirements.
The "three-rail" system has been tried before, at Columbia University and in Canada, but did not last. In San Angelo, it seems to be working. The purpose, of course, is to teach each student as much as he can learn. Two features in San Angelo set its system off from other honors courses:
1. The San Angelo system starts with the first school year, when many children lack the physical maturity to cope with education. Rather than promote these children indiscriminately, San Angelo holds the mover until they mature and can learn at their true rate.
2. Students are not stratified or restricted to the "bright" or "slow" categories. One student
may be in the highest-level course in English while only average or below average in mathematics.
The advantage of the system is that it lessens the drag on the more intelligent children. The class does not have to wait for the slow learner to catch up before proceeding with advanced work.
A serious objection to the three-level system is the potential cost, which might be expected to be much higher than usual school costs.
Another objection may be raised at a method that creates intellectual discrimination. However, the difference in mental ability is inborn—the system only recognizes it.
A danger exists, of course, that the three-level system may operate to the detriment of the middle and low groups. So far, San Angelo seems to have steered clear of that.
If equal emphasis is given to all levels of school achievement, every student should approach his maximum potential.
Among workable systems, San Angelo's seems to be one solution to the problem of educating children of varying abilities. It is not perfect, but it is a start in better developing our nation's brainpower—an essential resource. —Al Jones
Education Problem
Editor:
I have attempted to express in this enclosed article my opinion on one aspect of the many-faceted public education dilemma using Paul Woodring's "A Fourth of a Nation" as a point of departure.
In the expanding national debate on current theories and practices of public education, the critics are becoming more vocal while those who favor the status quo are maintaining a silent defense. Why? Evidently "progressive education" no longer enjoys the respect of a vast segment of the American people. Even if this is so, it should not obscure the fact that the debate is growing too one-sided.
...Letters...
The topic most cogent for those of us who comprise this University—students, faculty, and administrators—is "the persisting prejudice." It concerns the bias against
For those who are sincerely concerned about the status of public education, Paul Woodring's A Fourth of a Nation is an excellent primer. Professor Woodring outlines not only the "classic thesis", i.e., the traditional education prior to approximately 1500, and the "pragmatic antithesis", i.e., progressive education, but also a provocative synthesis; a philosophy of education which reconciles the classic and progressive views.
educators and the schools of education common among liberal arts faculties. These "scholars" are opposed to the "professional educators" and their methods courses. They dissuade many students from entering professional education, either indirectly by caustic, clever jokes or directly by their advice. The inference is that teaching at any level below college is intellectually inferior.
I submit that an atmosphere of hostility toward the School of Education exists on this campus, and that the subsequent disparagement of its students discourages others from entering. If this hostility is justified, then we should recognize that our best students inclined towards teaching should be encouraged to enter elementary and secondary education.
The direction of reform at all levels, in elementary, secondary, and college curricula, in state laws governing teacher and administrator certification, must come from effective leadership within the ranks of professional education—at least, until the apathetic public and irresponsible scholars and administrators realize that public education is the responsibility of all, not just professional educators.
Bill Mullins McPherson junior
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
WELL, IT WAS YOUR IDEA TO HAVE YOUR CLASS FILL OUT THAT TEACHER EVALUATION SCALE
An Answer to Arnon
Editoi
I would request the courtesy of your columns to acquaint Kansan readers with the Arab view, with reference to the statements of Mr. Arnon in the Oct. 28 Kansan.
His statements give an impression that the resurgence of Arab national aspirations is primarily a political stunt against the West. This seems to me a basic misrepresentation of legitimate Arab aspirations.
After breaking the shackles of Western domination, the Arabs are laboring to remedy the injustices done to them rather than carrying out any anti-Western campaign.
It is a fact of history that Arab resources were exploited and channelled to feed the industries of Europe. Arabs are now determined to utilize these resources to remove illiteracy and raise the standard of living.
The four problems listed by the Israeli experts are being tackled effectively as one can see in the development projects of present-day Arab states, especially Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Perhaps the blunders of the West's own policy coupled with misstatements like the one being discussed have been wrongly attributed to President Nasser.
The Israeli expert's charges that the Middle East Arab states are spending their money and energies on armaments would not stand a close scrutiny of statistics, of the magnitude of money spent by Israel on defense, and of the continuous flow of capital from the West to help maintain the fundamentally ill-conceived creation of Israel.
With euphemisms wearing out so fast in the advertising racket, the guy who comes up with a better name for "tummy" will make a fortune from the girdle industry.
Yacoub Qanndil Jordan senior
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Here and There It Looks This Way...
By Doug Parker
Homecoming is coming up soon and that once a year spirit will be present. One comrade says he could go all year without a date as long as he could have one on New Year's Eve and Homecoming.
Tommy Dorsey's orchestra will be here for the dance after the football game Saturday. Just recently the band, led by Warren Covington, appeared on the Steve Allen television show playing its big hit of the year, the "Tea for Two Cha-Cha."
Of special interest this year will be the bright musical to be presented on Homecoming Friday and then the following week. "The King and I" has all the prospects of being a feather in the hat of all persons connected with the production. Special casting for the play was done earlier when a number of Lawrence children were called in and asked to play the Siamese school children. It wouldn't be far fetched to predict that the University Theatre will have to extend the play a couple of days to handle the crowd.
Sunnyside and the monetary matters involved in its maintenance have been in the news the past few weeks. It's a funny thing that the housing committee and the administration keep calling the areas slums and fire traps. Many persons who live in Sunnyside grimace everytime they see or hear the words slum or fire trap. After all, who wants everyone to know that your living quarters are a slum. And some of the residents do not believe that Sunnyside is a slum.
Considerable anguish is going into the selection of a spot to put the bronze Jayhawk, the recently completed statue for the class of 1956 who will give it to the University as a gift. Those in charge of the arrangements believe that if the gift is put outside, rather than inside the buildings, it will become another Jimmy Green statue and have paint daubs on it half the time. I guess the statue painting is an occupational hazard the administration must endure.
Football fans have seen the Tau Kappa Epsilon bell at the north end of the stadium. It is an impressive looking piece of metal that looks as if it could wake the entire city of Lawrence if sounded at a proper time in the wee hours. However, when KU makes a touchdown, the elation of those in the stands drowns out any impressive sounds that might emit from the bell. Maybe this is to soon to comment on the bell ringing, since one must admit the TKE brothers have not had much opportunity to perfect their technique.
Since the Homecoming game is with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the biennial problem is present. The Jayhawk must trample, kick, kill, bruise and defame a husk of corn in the house decorations. Now how do you do that to a plain old good-for-nothing ear of corn and make it mean something. The ingenuity shown in past years by KU students indicates nothing is too great a problem.
By Ann Hyde
. . . Books in Review
FRANCOIS VILLON, D. B. Wyndham Lewis. Doubleday Anchor Books. $1.45.
The high-class paperbacks, such as Anchor, rely on the classics of the nineties and of the twenties for a good part of their list, which means that these publishers issue a number of authoritatively titled and authored books of antiquarian interest only, and also some books which are extremely useful and highly pleasing.
Anchor has just issued a fat biography of Francois Villon, in which the life of the 15th century French poet and rogue is reconstructed in full and colorful detail. The sources are his autobiographical poems, many legal documents concerning him, and Wyndham Lewis's flourishing imagination and his knowledge of the history and customs of medieval France. Lewis makes "legitimate assumptions," as he calls them, but he warms the reader with a "probably" or "I see him . . ." each time he relies on his intuition to flesh the bones of his facts, and, paragon among imaginative biographers, he has no axe to grind.
Most of the pertinent legal documents are given and translated by Lewis in the body of the text. He also gives most of Villon's extant poems and many others of the same period (even including some music), all in French, but again with translations (sometimes his, sometimes by poets like Syneg and Swinburne). He describes and explains the verse forms which Villon used, criticizes the poetry, and draws surprising parallels. He adds the history of Villon's manuscripts and of his literary reputation, and a bibliography.
This book is both a biography and an energetic, if muddled, history and description of the medieval University and medieval Paris, which emphasizes English-French relations, student life, and underworld life.
The usefulness of this book to any amateur of the Middle Ages would be obvious, even if the style were dry. But can the casual, nonhistorical, reader enjoy it? Certainly. Wyndham Lewis's style is, if anything, too vivid, too full of movement and the flavor of the period, too idiosyncratic. He leans toward the boisterous Chestertonian sentimentality of the twenties, reveling in fleas, wine, song, melancholia and religion. He delights in length, stuffed, mobile sentences, in incredible Jurgenesque lists of beautiful medieval terms, and in showing off his culture with quaint archaisms, facile quotations, foreign phrases, and outspoken snobbery.
These last drawbacks are compensated by his fine foreshortened perspective into history, which makes Horace and Morgan le Fay match profiles with Dr. Johnson and Baudelaire. In short, he uses an individual and provocative style to convey the passions and colors of 15th century Paris as seen by a man of culture.