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Thursday, November 4.1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page reflect the view of only the writer
Toughen up testing
Education is one of the most exciting and challenging processes, or at least it should be. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things we don't know that aren't interesting to everyone.
Schools have met this problem in a variety of ways. Progress has been made in making some basic subjects more "fun" for youngsters without sacrificing learning. Some choice of subjects is good for high school students and most school systems provide them. Some schools without teaching less material, have let students see how what they learn will apply to their lives and careers.
NONTHELESS, too many schools and teachers have gone too far in "reforming" education. Some schools let children, no matter how young, decide what they want to learn. Who cares that they can't add when they are grown? Or that they don't know a noun from a lump of coal?
Many "wise" educators will have nothing but scorn for my opinions. The National Education Association says that standardized tests prove little, and that teachers should vote learning should be things of the past, some educational scholars say.
But in most cases, common sense says otherwise. A recent survey indicates that 11 per cent of 17-year-olds can't read everyday items such as newspapers and medicine bottle labels. College entrance examination scores keep declining. Clear speaking, writing and thinking become more and more difficult as the American language becomes filled with jargon.
BUT WHAT is to be done? You might think I want a return to traditional teaching methods and subjects. To an extent, those steps are needed. But
rather than just straitjacketing schools and teachers, a way must be found to insure accountability. In other words, we must make sure students learn the basics of English, mathematics, science and government.
Sam Owen, superintendent of schools in Greensville County, Virginia, decided to require standardized tests for everyone. Students couldn't move to the next grade unless they passed the tests. Many students flunked—something most schools avoid by passing everyone, regardless of achievement.
But overall, students improved. After two years, the county's students are doing markedly better on standardized tests. The dropout rate is declining. Those who graduate from high school truly have a high school education.
PERHAPS such mandatory testing isn't needed everywhere. But standards must be set and met if we are to stop turning out students who are poorly equipped for life, especially in so complex a society as ours.
Testing or some similar method of insuring that students learn wouldn't have to mean boring schools or rigid uniformity of teaching methods, either. Rather, we would have to look for the different student subjects in different people. The same methods don't work for everyone, and this would have to be faced.
Measuring achievement more closely would help to identify students who need more ehlp and students who can advance faster than average.
Rather than abandoning standardized testing, as some advocate, we should work to make tests and other indicators more widely used. By Greg Hack
Contributing Writer
Letters
Von Hoffman off mark
To the Editor:
Your front-page article in the Kansan of Oct. 20, "Von Hoffmann's choice suggests that Von Hoffmann didn't do his homework before speaking to a student," writes Donna Urnall Room Ballroom the day before.
The race for the White House started officially with the victory of Republican Hillary Clinton American citizens. Nicholas Von Hoffman, being a "decent" citizen should date "such a good-looking girl like America
On foreign policy, Von Hoffman says, "Richard Nixon was
the only president who attempted any change in foreign policy and see what happened to him." I would like Von Hoffman to answer this: was Watergate domestic or foreign?
Von Hoffman's solution to a dall campaign" .. that Secret Service protection be removed from the best public solution to death. Would Von Hoffman run for the highest public office in "such a good-looking girl like America" .. that inadequate protection? I doubt it.
Baridoo Deeyor Ikaba Port-Harcourt, Nigeria, senior
Injudicious label To the Editor:
I'm glad that KU is becoming more responsive to the needs of the physically disabled, and that I am confident we week was commendable. May I suggest, however, that you be more judicious about the words you use, especially in your writing. "I am not a cripple," have a perforative connotation and should be avoided. Next time, if in doubt about a word, why not check out the Office of Affirmation Action.
3rd year law student
We'd like to change dying
October-November is the season of the harvest and nature's most psychedelic colors. It is also the season of wreaths, as skeletons doing the dance macabre in the night, one of the periods of the year when we hear a bell. For this is the time of Veterans Day when wreaths are laid at tombs where the soldiers stand guard and where flags and stones are put on graves less grand.
are that we'd like to make some changes if we only knew what and how.
Nothing in this world or the next would seem to be more settled, less changeable than death, but it's not so our attitudes and behaviour have changed fairly frequently through the centuries and may include dying and our deaths are expressions of our life and our living, and the outward sings
WE'RE AT something of a crossroads as to how to dispose of our bodies. Cremation or burial or some form of preservation? In much of Western Europe, it appears,
services take place; the black arm bands for the men and the mourning clothes for women are unheard of. Restrictions of activities for a period after a death include the official Cult of the Dead, the keeping of flags at half mast, the cancellation of parties and
Nicholas Von Hoffman
(c) 1974 King Features Syndicate
cremation and the rapid nullification of any public expression of memory of the dead is on the ascendance. This isn't, of course, true of the State's official observance, like the Tomb of the Unknown in Jerusalem and signs of mourning so universal in the 19th century have vanished on both sides of the Atlantic.
Black bunting is now seen only, and even rarely, at the church where the funeral
given way to the declamatory figures of angels and such. Now that's gone. Death has become a secret subject; too awful and taboo to speak of children. It is also difficult to privacy that many hospitals discourage the presence of relatives or friends, a practice that would have been appalling to people so indispensable to people 100 years ago.
Beneath the glory, politicians normal
I have always been comfortable with romanticized political reality but the closer I get to politics the more I see politicians falling to earth with the power and influence of presidents and men of power who truly have been set apart from others because of their brilliance, charm or advenience in political machinations. In addition, government leaders are merely shrewd political bargainers who intuitively take the right steps at the right times. All are compromised to some degree. Not many have any division of government or America.
Power with a capital P. That's what the White House represents in the minds of most people around the world. The Strangevow war rooms, formal state dinners, the hot line and Air Force One. The world is at the fingertips of the men who reside there.
When people are invested with such power society naturally elevates them to an elite class that most of us will never come in contact with, let alone be interested in. Such people are permanent residents in the White House. The public delightes in tidbits of intimate information in the media concerning the powerful and their families and the powerful are usually treated as long as it harves their interests.
THUS AMERICA asks for and gets literally thousands of magazine and newspaper articles about the Kennedy assassination. Jack Ford as if he was an exotic animal—the meeting of the decadents with a homo all-american. Nixon was a perilous heavy. Johnson was a poterious Machiavelli with a Texas drawl.
These political movers work their way up through the ranks of governmental leaders, and often outside their home states or even districts for many years before they make it to the rarified power levels inhabited by men like Henry Johnson.
THEY HAVE families that could be interchangeable with millions of upper middle calfs families in suburbs throughout America. The kids need braces and barely know the point of asking for a divore.
Bob Dole is an excellent example of the type of politician I'm talking about. I got to see firsthand the clash of everyday reality with the American version of power this week when I went to Dole's and mv hometown, Russell, Kan.
would soon be a "heartbeat away from the presidency."
In fact, almost every facet of this type of politico's life is normal, normal, normal. Except for the fact that these men are sometimes fortunate and persistent enough to gain great power.
I WENT there to cover Dole's brief homecoming on election day. I had a personal angle on the story because I've been friends with Dole's nephew, Bill, and his family for years. A friend I met in Washington one summer and wanted to ask him for a job since there was a good chance that the senator
Monday night my friend and I stopped in to see Bill and found that he had become something of a recluse. He certainly didn't give a damn about politics. He wasn't all enthusiastic about the prospect of a rally for Uncle Bob's fundraiser, but he's the Bill's nick name Dole's mother, Bina.) He told us to go on over that night and see the preparations so we did. He stayed home.
I had met Dole's mother and father several times but since the senator visited Russell infrequently I never had the opportunity to meet him. I just heard about "Uncle Bob" and his doings in Washington.
Several relatives and friends talked about the secret service men patrolling outside and the excitement of the arrests, Mrs. Dole demanded quiet.
WHEN WE arrived at Mrs. Dole's modest but comfortable brick house, Bill's sister was fixing Mrs. Dole's hair and complaining about a headache and the fact that she hadn't eaten all day, so all day because of all the activity.
Then Bill's father took us out to see the podium and the makeshift press area in the tiny garage. He made jokes about Carter's peanuts, gave his opinion on the election reform laws and gave us a Ford-Dole button.
Everyone watched Dole on the newscast and I wondered how many times Mrs. Dole had hushed a room like that before to see her son on the
SHE REPEATED one sentence quietly to herself that he had said: "The spirit's still there but the voice is zone."
The next day more relatives and friends showed up at the house along with 1,000 spectators. The house was
"Ssshhhh! Bob's on," she said, pointing to the TV.
DOLE GOT a heroe's welcome from the townpeople then went back in the house to visit with the select group that had been put on the secret service watch, and it turned out he seemed he had been campaigning so long he did not know how to stop circulating through a crowd shaking hands. He did this for about 20 minutes and after his mother fixed a plate of sweets to go, he was off.
set up like a big family dinner was going to be there with all sorts of home-baked pies, cakes, meats and vegetables. There was the mandatory pie, the everyone's pie and everyone was given little American flags. It was so wholesome.
Now Ford and Dole have lost. I will offer one reason that contributed to their defeat. Both men are cut from the mold that I have described. They are capable administrators. They have learned the workings of power over their many years there and know what it takes to make it in politics.
Dole hadn't made much of an impression on me. He just didn't have the aura of a man that could meet the needs of a world if ever he were to become president.
BUT THE public has built a mystique around the White House for at least one good reason. That is that the man must truly measure up to the office. He must either be strong and ruthless or possess vision and the ability to inspire the people. Perhaps he presidents combine these qualities.
hangman do his job in the public squares and marketplaces. Death wasn't as horrible or as terrifying, but more problematic as fascination. The 8th century had grotesque death fantasies, the dancing skeletons and the dramatic depictions of death in ghoulish style. The 19th century saw the死 romanticism of the lovers who lived to die sweet deaths in each other's arms. Even the deaths of warriors were quite the rage.
The public wants leaders—not administrators. Carter may not measure up either but there is a chance he will and the public took it
By John Fuller
Contributing Writer
other activities that might be deemed inappropriately gay. IN THE last four or five decades it has become increasingly important to show what's now considered excessive grief. He who walls too long the loss of his beloved is liable to find himself fact to face with psychiatry. Death is bad and it's banished. It's been pointed out that, whereas the Victorians did their own manifestations of manifestations, they revealed in death. Prolonged mourning, visiting graves and such is a very 19th century activity. In fact, it wasn't until the 17th century that the common run of people had individualized forms for their bereaved kin to visit.
OUR PASSION now is for hidden, mysterious deaths. We can't get enough of the lonely men in our lives. Marilyn Monroe and Janis Joplin. They always die offstage, but if we don't permit ourselves to see them commit suicide, they will come home, we'll watch it for hours when it comes in the form of violence. It's almost as if it had to shoot its way into our conspiracy cognition with magnum force.
THERE ARE probably millions of us who have seen other people mate but have never seen another human die. An absolute reversal of the past, of the Victorian death scene in which women took children and the great granchildren around the bed with minister and friends of the family in attendance. We, on the other hand, can't teach our students enough, but never is death mentioned. Death is looked on as such an unnatural, sinful act that even the most ardent advocates of capital punishment would not support, but public execution. You would imagine that if execution is a deterrent to crime, televising our electrocutions and our gas chamber dramas would teach the lesson even more vividly. But these suggestions of such an idea most pugnag.
Before that most people were buried in a field next to the church around which galleries were constructed. The first graves would sometimes come to the surface, as in Hamlet's "Alas! poor Yorick," or sometimes they be dug up and used to decorate the chamber houses; was the grave of an army or of terrifying and disgusting our ancestors, there was a good deal of socializing and carrying on in such places, until in 1231 the Church Council of Rouen had decreed that people weren't as respectful of authority as they might have been because two centuries later the forces of law and order were still issuing decrees against gambling and making money in the courtiers.
By the 19th century all that had changed, and we had highly individualized mortuary art in which the simple headstone had
Our ancestors, who went with the flow of life somewhat more harmoniously than we, weren't harmed at seeing the
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor are welcomed but should be typewritten, double-spaced and enclosed in brackets. All words are edited and may be condensed according to space limitations and the editor's judge. Any student must have been signed; KU students must provide their academic standing and hometown; faculty must provide their contact information; provide their address.
More and more, those of us who can face our own mortality, don't wish to perish out of sight but are born with the ability not only of natural childbirth at home but natural death at home as well. There is even discussed that you must die on mortals, as you might call them, where we might escape the lonely and hidden death of the hospital to depart this earth with our friends and lives nearby. Reqnexe in place.
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