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University Daily Kansan Thursday, March 20,1958
Stop Evaluating Teachers
"If you take 'Modern Europe' next semester, make sure you don't get Professor Snooks. He doesn't teach you anything."
You're off on your favorite binge, evaluating teachers. You tell your friends, your enemies and your tom cats that Prof. Sharpe pores you to death, that Dr. Roden doesn't know anything and that Mr. Donald is a nice person, but he just can't teach.
There's one odd thing about this, though. If you ever asked around you would be sure to find somebody that disagreed with you. He probably thought that Professor Snooks was the best teacher he ever had. Maybe he got better grades than you did in "Modern Europe." On the other hand maybe he didn't; he just liked the course better, that's all.
Students vary considerably in what kind of
teaching they respond to; that's why we have so many different kinds of teachers. There isn't any teacher that you can't stand who doesn't have his own fan club.
But even if you did discover a teacher whom nobody liked, you wouldn't have a right to criticize his techniques. You don't know for sure exactly what his teaching goals are. It's quite possible he doesn't believe it is important for you to learn every last date in the book. Maybe he wanted you to learn general trends instead or maybe he just wanted to get you interested enough to read similar books on your own.
Whatever technique he uses, he chose it because he sincerely believes it is the right way to teach.
Teaching Opportunities Abroad
The United States Army's annual hunt for grade and high school teachers has been "spectacularly successful thus far," a spokesman reports, despite the shortages that plague most of the nation's civilian school boards.
Three "teams" of two educators each have been touring the country interviewing applicants for teaching jobs in Europe and Asia. Teachers drawn by the lure of travel have turned out "in droves," said Mrs. Viola Wright, who for the past five years has been in Okinawa, first as a teacher, then as a school principal.
On the West Coast, she said. "They were practically hanging from the ceilings."
Mrs. Wright, who began her teaching career in the Hill Country rural schools of Texas County, Mo., said she was eager to get back to the Far East. "I went to stay two years," she said, "and now I suppose I'll stay 50."
For the past three years, Mrs.
Wright has been principal of an elementary school in a land she finds intensely interesting.
"For cheap and easy travel," she said. "Okinawa is the most strategically located spot in the Far East. It's only two hours by air to Formosa, four hours to Tokyo, Hongkong and Manila are within easy reach and it's only a little farther to Bangkok and Singapore."
many teachers stationed on Oki nawa travel to India during vacation leave, she said.
She described living conditions on the island as "equal or better than those anywhere in Europe."
And in Europe, especially in Germany, they're very good, said Charles Tinder, formerly of Hutchinson and Wichita, Kan., the other half of the teacher-recruiting team that toured the western part of the country.
Tinder now is director of personnel for U. S. Army schools in Europe, but he went abroad, nine years ago, as an elementary school
principal. Like Mrs. Wright, he intended to remain only a year or two.
Tinder said many school superintendents have come to recognize the value of overseas experience and readily grant leaves of absence for that purpose.
Hutchinson is a prime example, he said. It has sent "seven or eight teachers overseas in the same number of years," he explained. The local superintendent of schools selects the individual teachers for the Army. He or she stays a year or two, then returns to Hutchinson.
The leave of absence, however, makes for a fairly high turnover among the Army's overseas teachers. About one-third of them go home each year, mostly because they have to return to their permanent jobs. Tinder said.
Pay abroad starts at $4,525 per year for a full 12-month period. Each teacher is given an option of summer work or unpaid time off.
United Press
Letters To The Editor
Review
. . .
There is probably not a doubt left that the editors of this year's Kansan have injected some life into their project.
They are, for example, to be commended for their interesting (if rather useless) examinations of student government machinery, race prejudice, etc.
Why, then, must members of the staff resort to self-righteous defense
of their offerings in lieu of better journalism? Surely John Husar will not gain from his wounded retorts to Mr. Schonplug; indeed, there are probably many of us grating at the shallow, souped-up, boyish pedagogical remarks that pass for John's "reviews."
But let it be understood that neither I nor many others would enjoy John's task as an almost weekly agony, either. No one expects more of him than that he do his best to improve, and he cannot do this by depositing his juvenile invective on
those who, by their very act of constructive criticism, add dignity to his writing.
Arthur Harkins Ottawa junior
News Quotes
CHICAGO — Dr. James B. Edson, assistant to the Army's director of research and development, describing a future time when people will live on many planets:
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
By Dick Bibler
"We can imagine a time when the destruction of mankind on any single planet would be like the loss, in earlier times, of a city of culture. A tragedy, but not the end of everything."
"The Russians are the most proAmerican people in the world. They like jazz, movies and other things connected with the American way of life."
WASHINGTON — Col. Gordon Moore, Mamie Eisenhower's brother-in-law, when asked by Rep. Oren Harris (D-ARK) if he is a Republican or a Democrat:
LOS ANGELES — Producer Mike Todd, telling University of California at Los Angeles students about his trip to Russia:
"Mr. Harris, when I grew up in Texas, they only had Democrats in Texas."
LONDON — Debuntante Rosalie Barnett, who got a black eye in an automobile accident three days before she was to be presented to the Queen;
"Ive just got to get rid of this shiner in time."
WASHINGTON — Air Force Lt. Gen. Clarence S. Irvine, in a speech for the Armed Forces Communications Electronic Association;
Daily Hansan
"One of the most interesting space vehicles we are now studying is a satellite that can hover under control over a given portion of the world. This of course means establishing circular orbits of over 20,000 miles."
University of Kansas student newspapers
1904, triview 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
1908, triview 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
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Associated Collegiate Press. Represented
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based in Lawrence, Kan.; published
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during the University year except
Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and examination periods. Entered a second course matter Sept. 17, 1918; at awaived Kan. post office under act of 3月 5, 1879.
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