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Monday, October 8,1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Cut Those Troops
The Senate pursued sound management policies in voting to cut foreign-based American troops from 471,000 to 361,000.
Both houses have been accused in the past of abusing the national budget. The Senate should be commended for its action, which is the best out of either house. The Congress passed its own budget ceiling.
The balance of payments, which has been in deep trouble, will undoubtedly be helped by the measure if the House also passes the bill. Troop cuts can be made selectively to alleviate the balance of payments with countries where the most help is needed.
Traops won't necessarily be cut in Europe, although they should be. The United States trades more goods with the Common Market than they do in the world, and the effect of the cuts would be more effective there.
Europe has become extremely strong economically through unity in the Common Market during recent years. Europe has become one of the United States' biggest diplomatic headaches—unpredictable and stubborn in its new economic independence. It has used American resources to recoup its World War II losses. The United States is still expected to come running when Europe calls.
The purpose of the Marshall Plan was to rebuild Europe. The plan seems to have succeeded in light of their recent economic success, and
Europe no longer needs the United States.
President Nixon has also said that the diplomatic proceedings toward mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) between the United States and the USSR would be set back with voluntary troop cuts in Europe by the United States.
However, MBFR is outdated. Long ago the United States and NATO moved to a strategy of flexible response in regard to the possibility of an attack on Europe by Russia. Flexible response, a balanced defense posture, would barely be altered by troop cuts. The United States and Europe's defenses don't depend on the use of weapons in Europe, but the number of bombs available at the push of a button. Recent U.S. military strategy in Vietnam proves this.
It could be hoped that when the House acts on the measure, it will increase the number of troops cut in foreign countries. However, the possibilities are slim in light of the lobbying by the Nixon administration against the cuts and the fact that the House defeated a 20 per cent cut in foreign-based troops earlier in the session.
Failure of the House to at least sustain the cuts approved by the Senate would be unfortunate. When considering the national budget and the balance of payments, it can clearly be seen that the United States needs to reduce its spending abroad. —Diane Yeamans
-Readers Respond-
Safe Airport Needed
To the Editor:
It seems to me that Hal Hirt's editorial, "airport & Progress," is wide of the mark.
Lawrence does not need a big, fancy airport; nor is the Chamber of Commerce pushing for one. But Lawrence does need a decent airport, a safe airport.
I received my pilot's license in Lawrence
four years ago, and much of the time I was
working on that.
The proposal is to add a second runway at an angle to the present strip sufficient to make use of winds prevailing in other directions. As things are now, small aircraft are frequently subjected to strong cross wind and this creates a dangerous situation.
I suggest that all interested citizens take a tour of our "airport," *the*劲笑ness of the thing speaks for itself. I don't think it needs "boosterism" to get rid of this劲笑ness.
Then there are the hangar and terminal facilities, such as they are. Nobody is suggesting that we build a temple to Icarus. But must we have a terminal building which makes the Fraser Hall temporaries look like twin Parthenon's? Must we have hangar facilities crafted from something like bricks? Must the ceilings be falling down?
The biggest customer of the Lawrence airport has always been the University of Kansas. Shouldn't we have decent facilities for alumni飞 into town for a continuum of academic opportunities undergraduates taking flying lessons, for Chicago people doing business with one of our west campus pharmaceutical firms, for faculty members who want to shuttle to KCI on the way to a conference in New York or another institution to fly to an alumni meetup in Hava?
The fact is that a decent airport could provide many needed services for KU, and this need will surely increase in the years to come.
The city of Lawrence has received a very thorough report on alternative airport sites done by a private consulting firm. It concludes that the present airport site is a good one from both an economic and ecological point of view.
The Federal Department of Transportation will send 5 per cent of the funds it will use for projects. The funds will be $600,000, or
about one half mill on a property tax bill.
This will not be a fancy airport.
As one city commissioner who is against "growth for growth's sake," I support the airport proposal because I think it is common sense of a quality of all in our public facilities.
Barkley Clark
Associate Dean, School of Law Lawrence City Commissioner
Growth Isn't Issue
To the Editor:
Hal Ritter's editorial raises the ugly spectre of growth and suggests that one solution is to refuse to improve the airport. But the problem of providing adequate public services, whether it's air transportation, highways, bridges, fire stations, libraries or bicycle paths, and the problem of planning for or eliminating growth, are two entirely separate issues. For as Ritter writes in his book *The Future*, in the future continue to grow whether we improve the airport or not. So growth is not the issue.
The issue is whether the city should provide safe, adequate facilities at a reasonable cost to present and future citizens, and what share the users should pay, whether we're considering an airport, streets, parks or bicycle paths. That is the issue that should be discussed whenever a city improvement project is being boosted by any group. The fact that anything we do in this area will also make it more attractive to outsiders should not be the basis for opposing all city improvements.
If we decide that Lawrence should not have any more jobs, businesses, homes and population, then it is an easy matter to stop the growth of land for parks or agriculture, refuse to issue building permits for homes, apartments, store and local business expansion, place prohibitively high taxes on any business that would not be able to freeze on enrollment at K.U., which is the largest growth industry in Lawrence. What would be the effects, the legality and the morality of such action? I would like to see that Lawrence is given to Kanser editors. David L.Kohlman
Aerospace Engineering
A Camera for Every Home?
Bv MIKE MCGRADY
NEW YORK—You don't see it at first. Even knowing it's there, you have some difficulty locating it. It is a narrow, white box and it has been bolted to the top of a lamp post, up above the lights and cables and street lights. It is a television camera and it is pointing its single eye down on the 45th Street toward Eighth Avenue.
Four of these television cameras—three stationery and one rotating—have just been installed in Times Square as past of a new police video scan system. The four cameras send their pictures of the area to a police van parked nearby.
The closed-circuit system is being hailed by local law enforcers as a giant step forward in the war against crime. It represents an important future that not everyone is anticipating.
THE AIM OF THE PROJECT is undoubtedly worthy. Deputy Inspector James Dicke, the man who put it all together to prevent an intent was "to bring the police right where the action is." And Mayor John Lindsay said this was only a beginning, a test. If the video scan system produced the footage, it could be used in other sections of the city.
The equipment itself is impressive enough, the kind of futuristic apparatus that generations of Americans have pasted into their junior crime-fighting
notebooks. Thanks to an "automatic
iRs" for example, the cameras work as
effectively at night as during the day,
so you can take 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The other night at 11:15, the camera was locked on Lance Geshwil, uniformed guard at Astor Plaza, as he went from door to door checking the shops. The knowledge that he was being watched did not bother him in the least.
"THINK IT'S a very fine idea," Gesh-wind said. "There are a lot of prostitutes in this neighborhood and a lot of nickel-ware sellers. Then someone goes and gets completely out of hand. Just the other night there was a shooting right here and within five minutes, there were a dozen patrol men; they caught the guy right on the spot."
On this particular evening, however, it
was quiet. There was no shooting, no
dramatic crime in progress, nothing
to do. He focused his attention to focus
on. So it took in other things.
It was focused on the Minskoff Theater ("Irene—A New Musical Comedy") when the star, Debbie Reynolds, came out. She was in the company of a slim, messyressed man who appeared to be 10 years old senior, and the camera took him in, too.
IT TOOK IN TWO plump women on the other side of the street and perhaps it
"She's even better looking than in the movies," one of them said.
even caught the excitement on their faces when Debbie Reynolds emerged from the theater.
"I can't get over how young she looks," the second said.
The camera caught a Pontiac with New Jersey plates as it pulled away from an changing traffic light, its tires squealing
It focused unwaveringly on a man wearing a black hat and a long black topcoat who gathered a small crowd around him. "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enthe by it; for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who leave."
THE CAMERA NOTiced a young girl wearing a green and white athletic jacket, eating a hot dog and carrying a full showroom hat. Possibly a runaway.
arriving a full shopping bag. Possibly a runaway, them well over six feet tall, clumping along on high heels, wearing orange wigs and the costumes of prostitutes, swinging handbags, but talking in their normal
It saw a man with an American flag pin in his lap, walking with the clear timidity of any out-of-tower approaching this forbidden area.
"Do you know that you're on television?" he was asked.
When the television camera was pointed out to him, he decided against giving his name.
"You're kidding," he said
The camera, like the grave, is not discriminatory - it accepts all who enter. White-aproned countermen and showgirls, tourists and hoodlums, policemen and pimps, drunks and nurses.
POLICE REPORT THAT the cameras have already succeeded in frightening away the hookers, they have retreated and are now farther west in the city. Perhaps, then, it will actually cut down crime. And that, in a sense, is the most dangerous prospect
Because then we will see more and more of the white boxes.
Why shouldn't they be installed upright where they would be useful in halting the movement of the customer? Shouldn't they be installed in every store so that we can stop the shopper? Perhaps they should be part of every entrance or exit to drive away the muggers and rapists.
And maybe they should share our apartments and homes as protection against second-story men and murderers.
Why not? Why not everywhere? After all, they will give us protection, and we are clearly a people who value our security above our privacy.
NFL Blackouts Threaten Fans' Enjoyment
Bv ED COMERFORD
Newsday
Nothing warms a politician's heart like seeing an issue where there's a mob of voters on one side and only a handful on the other. That's why Mr. Cuomo is majority, as safe as though he were endorsing Mon's apple pie. He can win a lot of brownie points with his constituents while being on the other side.
No wonder there was a mad rush in Congress to climb aboard the bandwagon when the issue was the blackout of home gas. The average household estimated number of voters in favor of eliminating the blackout -60 million. Estimated number opposed—maybe 1,000 NFL stockholders and executives. A majority thought it to be too bright to figure that arithmetic.
So the Congress, which has been known to dawdle over trivial matters like Indochina and inflation, rushed this one through faster than a short-order cook facing a crowded counter. The House Commerce Committee approved it after only 20 minutes of discussion and the entire House of Representatives voted to Senate and voted overwhelmingly to prohibit blackouts of sold-out sports events.
That means the National Football League will probably be the only group which is in contention.
THE HELL IT IS. This is legislation insincere in intent, wrong in principle and
The politicians have trumpeted this as a great victory for the downtrodden masses, oppressed by the opulent oligarchs of the NFI.
guaranteed to be disastrous in practice for the very fans it is supposed to benefit.
Insincere because it is designed only to placate voters.
On the surface it seems plausible: millions of fans can't obtain tickets to home games (even if they could afford them) because they're too expensive enough. Why should they be penalized? If the club has sold all the tickets it has to sell 72 hours in advance, why deprive them of a ticket?
Wrong because it is telling an unessential business how to operate, something conservatives in Congress would scream about if directed against an essential business.
Disastrous because the eventual result will be less, not more, pro football on television—and maybe the fans will wind up paying to see it.
He is, rather, being saturated with it. But he insists on seeing a particular game which is blacked out in his area. Let him enjoy, the politicians cry.
THE CONVENIENTLY IGNORED two facts: the contrast between stadium football and TV football, and the climate in which NFL games are played in many cities, including New York, late in the season.
Unlike baseball, whose geometry seems to defy good television, football is a perfect game for the cameras, more so since the invention of instant replay. The home viewer sees a lot more of a game than the guy perched in the rafters of a stadium. Putting home games on it don't make the guy equal to the guy in the stands, it makes him superior.
Especially when the weather turns bad.
During the New York deal, final home game
would be played in Montreal.
frigid blush Off flushing Bay made the Alaskan tundra seem like a tropical resort. Yet there was a near-full house at the kickoff. How many of those fans would have been nuts enough to go if they could have seen it in a warm, cozy living room?
But it assumed enough idiots will buy tickets for those games to carry the living-room fan on a free ride. Really? Look what the crowd showed at the big show, in Los Angeles last January. With the blackout in effect, all 90,182 tickets were sold. Then, under Congressional pressure, the blackout was lifted. Exactly how did that happen? Election candidates to stay-home—on a balmy day.
THE FIRST RESULT of this law is that there are going to be damn few sellouts after this season, for which the suckers have paid in advance.
The third is an eventual switch to pay TV,
the end of the fans' free ride.
The second is the probable disappearance of those televised road games which the police had shot during the invasion.
At the hearings in Washington, NFL commissioner Pete Roezle laid it on the line for the politicians. At least one of them was sensible enough to view his comments as a "threat." Though Roselle denied it, in effect he was making a threat.
Roselee said if this legislation cuts heavily into attendance, which seems inevitable, he would ask for a few road games. He added that in four years or so, "Pay television may be big," so much for the big, gaudy present which we now gift-wrapping for pro football fans.
This is a bad law not because it threatens the profits of NFL owners--it's embarrassing to be in their corner--but because it threatens the enjoyment of the fans.
Beware of politicians bearing gifts.
Phil McKnight
Last week I discussed some of the causes and events that led to an educational cult of efficiency in America during the second decade of this century. This discussion will focus on the consequences of that movement in hopes that familiarization with the cult would present similar events from occurring today in secondary and post secondary education.
Ideas have consequences, yet those who became enamored with efficiency in education did not anticipate the consequences of their ideas and actions.
As a result, efficiency became an end in itself, and the grand plans for making all aspects of education identifiable, measurable and therefore accountable become oppressive means of stifling educational institutions and endeavors.
Perhaps the underlying cause of the tragedy was one of misplaced precision—of
Griff and the Unicorn
people who tried to make education accountable but who ended up trying to make
Instead of undertaking the very difficult task of more adequately assessing educational growth, the reformers turned to assessing what was assessed by using the industrial efficiency models of Brendan Tolman, and recommended Raymond Callahan's book for a thorough discussion of the events and results of the cult of efficiency.
IT IS Difficult TO IMagine the logic of comparing schools to mercantile establishment, teachers to factory managers, and students to raw material, but it is not difficult to identify other examples of such reasoning. Consider the need for "educational engineering." In particular, note point x:
"Such engineers would make a thorough study of (1) the pupils who constitute the raw material of the business of education; (2) the students who teach, which make up the plant; (3) the school boards and the teaching staff, who correspond to the directorate and the working force; (4) the means and methods of administration for the demands of society in general and of industry in particular upon boys and girls—this corresponding to the problem of markets; and (6) the question of the cost, which is almost purely a business question."
"Why is a pupil recitation in English costing 7.2 cents in the vocational school while it costs only 5 cents in the technical school? Is the "vocational" English 44 per cent superior to the "technical" English or 44 per cent more difficult to secure? Why are we paying 80 per cent more in the vocational than in the technical school for the same reason? Is instruction in the technical school why does cost from 55 per cent to 67 per cent more in the Newton High than in either of the other schools?"
THE APPLICATION OF WHAT Calahain calls the Great Panacea led to practices such as keeping elaborate systems of records and reports to provide factual data on education. One inevitable category of hard work is developing better data development means of assigning budgetary dollar values to the subjects taught instead of seeking means of
Frank Spaulding's system, for example, led to the question:
”
assessing the value of the subject to the art of teaching.
THE INEVITABLE RESULT of such reasoning was the reduction of costs by (surprise) increasing the number of classes offered, thereby extending the legacy of which we struggle with today. Another crucial result of such reasoning was the idea that the same school administration should be responsible for tasks such as both a financial and educational nature.
In terms of the cult of efficiency's impact on teachers' and students' activities, the following practices speak for themselves: 1. Joseph Taylor's charts for rating teachers on such things as the time they spent passing and collecting papers.
PERHAPS ELLWOOD CUBBERLY'S statement sums it up:
2. A student efficiency test that asked students whether they slept with at least one window open (worth 2 points), whether they slept in a dark room, whether while studying, and whether they 'loafed on the streets' (worth minus 2 points) and whether they got enough sleep to awaken on their own accord at a regular hour. Presumably, having so much sleep waken them up early.
"Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the knowledge of the civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils to the specifications laid down. This demands good tools, specialized machinery, continuous measurement of production to see if is according to specifications, the types of manufacture and a large variety in the output."
Next week I will discuss the tragedy of considering education as the means of producing standard, uniform products from the student raw material in factory schools. The cult of efficiency in education eventually collapsed because of its own trivial, imane and impossible methods, but its importance remains. I will discuss why education is inherently inefficient and why we should be thankful it is inefficient.
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