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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Feb. 28, 1961
Guest Editorial: Talk It Up
'Off the Beach'
(From the University of Colorado "Colorado Daily." Feb. 15, 1961.)
College students don't know enough about international affairs.
This was the word from government officials and foreign newspaper correspondents addressing a recent student editors' confab in New York.
THE RECOMMENDED CATALYST FOR increasing student interest in foreign affairs? The student press.
Top Kennedy administration officials and foreign correspondents chided the collegians for failing to utilize their media to provoke their readers on the important questions of foreign policy and governmental policy in general.
The speakers all sounded a note of foreboding. We are competing with an opponent who
is eager to learn about the rest of the world and will be happy to fill the void left by Western ignorance, they said.
THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE MORE people capable of coping with the complex problems of international relations in this world of Congos and H-bombs. Its college grads must be conversant with these problems and some must even have solutions. "On the Beach" or in the foxhole may be the alternative.
The editors heard that they must find space in their columns to treat some of these problems to evoke a response from their collegiate readers.
May we evoke you?
May we evoke you?
We've been trying.
We will try.
We don't like it on the beach.
Dailu Hansan
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
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. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
John Peterson... Managing Editor
Bill Blundell, Carrie Edwards, Lynn Cheatum and Ralph Wilson, Assistant Managing Editors; Tom Turner, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Sue Thieman, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
John Massa Business Manager
F. Mike Harris, Advertising Manager; Tom L. Brown, Circulation Manager; Richard Horn, Classified Advertising Manager; William Goodwin, Promotion Manager; Marlin Zimmerman, National Advertising Manager.
Business Manager
Teaching Excellence Considerations Listed
Editor:
You are probably aware of the fact that there has been established by Mr. H. Bernerd Fink, of Topeka, an award for excellence in teaching which will be presented for the first time at the forthcoming commencement season.
In establishing the award the following general provisions were outlined: (1) that the award be primarily associated with instruction at the undergraduate level; (2) that the award normally be made to faculty members at the assistant and associate professor rank and normally to persons under age 50; (3) that the award be limited to faculty members on the Lawrence campus who have given a minimum of three years of service to the University.
It is quite possible that members of the student body would like to submit nominations for this award to one of the academic deans. Certainly I want them to feel free so to do. This is not a popularity contest but one based on the principles outlined in the enclosure entitled "Thoughts on Learning and Teaching," prepared by the anonymous committee that will make the final selection.
W. Clarke Wescoe Chancellor
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From the Committee on the Bernerd Fink Award
Although the committee does not intend to commit itself in advance to a precise set of criteria, the following statements have been drafted as a result of discussions preparatory to the consideration of nominations for the Bernerd Fink teaching award. Our thoughts are here expressed in terms of definitions, initial premises and propositions regarding the nature of learning and effective teaching.
1
DEFINITIONS
Learning in the broad sense includes not only the accumulation of information but also the systematic development of understanding, skills and attitudes as means to adapt one's self to one's environment. Learning is effective to the extent that it results in a change in behavior that increases one's usefulness to society.
Teaching, in accord with the intent of the award, means to educate, or to draw out and to develop harmoniously the mental and moral powers of other individuals. The teacher is one who points the way, encourages effort, removes obstacles and creates a setting that provides opportunities and incentives for effective learning. There is no teaching except as learning takes place in another person.
II
INITIAL PREMISES
1. Every student has a potential learning capacity in excess of the learning that is actually realized.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
III
2. The degree to which actual learning approaches one's potential capacities depends upon (a) opportunities that are available, (b) the student's perception of those opportunities, and (c) the stimulation of incentives to take advantage of those opportunities.
3. The quality of teaching is a measure of the degree to which the teacher contributes to the opportunities, perceptions and stimulation enumerated as contributing factors in premises no. 2.
4. In practice we must evaluate the quality of teaching in terms of teacher behavior and student behavior. Such behaviors may be interpreted in terms of the propositions enumerated in outline form in part III of this statement.
LEARNING EXPERIENCE AND THE TEACHER
"WHATSAMATTER? YA CUT HIS CLASS AGAIN?"
The following outline represents an attempt to depict relationships between attitudes that lead to effective learning, experiences that arouse attitudes favorable to effective learning, and teacher behaviors that tend to bring these experience stimuli into play.
A. STUDENT ATTITUDES THAT STIMULATE EFFECTIVE LEARNING.
2. A sense of need, and a feeling that learning will help to fulfill that need.
1. Curiosity, a natural human trait that may be motivated or stifled by academic environment.
4. Broadened perspectives and new insights. Learning is self-energizing; perception of opportunities sharpened; achievement and need fulfillment stimulated.
3. A sense of satisfying achievement is a consequence of rewards of recognition and accomplishment; of usefulness in fulfilling sense of need.
The primary skills might include communication, computation, conceptualization, reasoning, and physical control of dexterity.
B. EXPERIENCES THAT STIMULATE ATTITUDES CONDUCIVE TO LEARNING.
1. Opportunities to develop skills essential to academic success.
2. Meaningful experience in classroom and study.
Whether the purpose is to acquire information, to gain new insights, or to develop skills or attitudes, a meaningful presentation of materials is essential less interest lag and rote memorization supplement a search for understanding.
3 Opportunities to form interpersonal relationships with teachers.
These opportunities help the student to understand and appreciate a scholar in his role as teacher. As the appreciation increases, learning is stimulated.
4. Practice in stating and defending one's views.
Education at the university level should enable the student to become a person in his own right, to realize that he has his own views, and to be able to state and substantiate them. Only through this process can he learn to think and act responsibly. Uncritical repetition of facts or of a teacher's views does not contribute to intellectual and emotional growth.
C. TEACHER BEHAVIORS THAT PROVIDE LEARNING STIMULI.
1. States goals clearly.
From the start the student needs to understand what is expected of him. Statement of goals also facilitates self evaluation on the part of the teacher.
2. Organizes lectures and class projects with a view of clarity, balance and stimulation of student interests.
Assignments, class discussions and examinations can all serve as challenges which give the student opportunities to practice skills that are being developed, and as means of unifying and correlating the course materials.
3. Demonstrates enthusiasm for his subject.
A teacher's enthusiasm fans the interests of students and inspires them to work beyond minimum requirements.
4. Seeks constantly to anticipate student needs and draw out student interests.
Student evaluation of the usefulness of a course depends largely upon the selection and presentation of teaching materials, including information, illustrations and exercises.
What a student learns by his own reasoning becomes more meaningful to him and more lasting than what he merely learns to repeat from memory.
5. Encourages intellectual disagreement and places responsibility upon students to justify their views.
6. Listens sympathetically to students, in and out of the class-room.
Personal warmth and a show of interest in students and their problems stimulate learning as a normal human response.
7. Seeks opportunities to evaluate effectiveness of his teaching in terms of student responses.
Examinations can serve as guides to improvement of teaching in addition to their use as teaching instruments and measures of student achievement. Other student responses may provide evidence of attitudes stimulated by teaching.
8. Relates his course and teaching behavior to the broader objectives of his department, his school, and the university.
Evidences of sympathetic mutual understanding among professorial colleagues serve to broaden student perspectives and to increase the effectiveness of the entire university program.
IV
SUMMARY
The teacher is responsible not merely for the transmission of knowledge but even more so for the translation thereof. During the translation process the teacher creates an atmosphere wherein the student should be able to:
1. Develop attitudes that stimulate effective learning,
2. Have experiences that stimulate the learning process.
3. Become self reliant in the development of his own set of values,
4. Become responsible for his work and his self development.
Excellence in teaching, a matter of subjective judgment, is the skillfulness with which the student is guided toward understanding and toward making meaningful contributions to the world about him.
Worth Repeating
But one may fail to see how harmful the mania for research has become in the centers of higher learning, where it now produces symptoms of some gravity. I refer to the invidious system of academic promotion, the perversion of the undergraduate curriculum, and (most recent) the professional teacher's contempt of teaching. These three are related to one another and to a rather vicious habit, which used to be absent from scholarship when the phrase "a gentleman and a scholar" still had meaning. The habit I have in mind is self-praise. Today, it is no longer forbidden to parade oneself as "a research scholar" and to look down on those fallen creatures who "do not publish"; it is no longer improper for university departments to boast of their greatness, due to So-and-so and So-and-so, mighty "producers" in the sight of men. A golden glow is diffused over an entire academic community from the individual halos earned by research. When one of these halos is extinguished by retirement or death or—worst of all blows—by removal to another institution, there is no peace of mind until a replacement is found...Jacques Barzun