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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, May 4, 1965
U.S. Interference
The United States now has termed the revolt in the Dominican Republic a "communist conspiracy." How far-seeing of us! At last count, we had 14,000 combat Marines and paratroopers in the revolt-torn nation, approximately half the number that are now fighting in South Viet Nam.
When the revolt first began, Johnson sent troops because the Dominican Republic could no longer protect the Americans in Santo Domingo. This is a valid reason.
However, the reasoning changed Sunday night, when President Johnson declared that what had begun as a "popular democratic revolution" has since been taken over by a "band of Communist conspirators."
THE UNITED STATES seems to be acting upon the theory that we are the protectors of democracy (in capital letters) in the western hemisphere.
We did not send troops into Cuba when the
revolt, under Castro, first began. We have been erroneously bewailing that fact ever since.
If the people of the Dominican Republic are as enlightened as the democratic theory asserts they are, they should have the intelligence and good sense to realize for themselves that a Communist conspiracy is turning their revolt into a dictatorship.
In the South Viet Nam situation, we were asked to send our troops. We have not been asked to send troops to Santo Domingo. We have no more right there than the "Castro Communists" who are now apparently in control of the situation.
The problem should be handled solely by the Organization of American States. We have no right to set ourselves up as judges of the intentions of the revolutionaries in Santo Domingo. Nor do we have any right to send troops to Santo Domingo. Enforcing democracy with arms is no more democracy than Communism is.
Leta Roth
Guest Book Review
Dick, Jane Retard Reading
Editor's Note; Albert Burgstahler is the McAmbster School representative to the Lawrence PTA Curriculum Advisory Council.
READING WITHOUT DICK AND JANE, by Arther S. Trace Jr., Assoc. Prof. of English, John Carroll Univ, Henry Reginery Co., 114 Illinois St., Chicago. Ill. 1965.
One of the most perplexing problems in our society is the extreme difficulty the critical thinker has in opposing the collective forces of well-established positions. Often he is immediately labeled as a "quack" or an "ax-grinding extromist," especially by the self-appointed guardians and "authorities" who quickly appoint special committees of "experts" to deal with him when he sallows forth with his latest salvo. It happened to Arthur Bestor, to General Lemay, to Admiral Rickover, to Rachel Carson, and it will undoubtedly happen to Arther Trace, author of "What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't," who has now had the insolent temerity to attack the sacred cow of the controlled vocabulary philosophy of the typical Dick-and-Jane basal readers.
Yet, unless or until we reach George Orwell's "1984" (God forbid!), the man of common sense, as well as the untiring scholar, will continue to question and challenge, and sometimes even unseat, the mighty titans of programs and philosophies that may be basically unsound or ultimately injurious.
Whenever critics come along, and they are always with us, they usually make a man uncomfortable; but it is a rare man who cannot profit from criticism. The mark of a truly wise man, it has been said, is his willingness to examine with care and to make improvements from what even (or especially!) his severest critics say of him. It may seem easier for a time for him to put his head in the sand, but in the long run it is far wiser for him to look up and keep his eyes open
and his ears attuned to what is going on around him that concerns him.
WE LIVE IN A real world, and life is full of unpleasant things to be faced as well as wonderful things to be enjoyed. No matter how we look at it, the problem of serious shortcomings in the elementary reading programs here as elsewhere in the U.S. is a very real and pressing one.
Ten years ago Dr. Rudolph Flesch's "Why Johnny Can't Read" stirred up a veritable hornet's nest of charges and countercharges, many of which are still going strong, between opponents and proponents of the "whole-word" or "look-and-say" approach to beginning reading instruction. In the wake of Flesch's book many significant changes and improvements in the teaching of reading have occurred, but the "vocabulary-control" philosophy of the standard basal readers, even in their latest revisions, still very much dominates the average American classroom.
Now a new, forthright, fact-laden indictment of these "life-adjustment" readers has emerged from Prof. Trace's researches under the catchy title "Reading Without Dick and Jane."
Without apology to his readers, Trace engagingly and almost mercilessly points out what he sees from a careful study of over 200 current European and early American primers and readers as the pedagogy of built-in "programmed retardation" in today's typical American basal reader. Taking a cue from educator Ruth C. Penty's "Reading Ability and High School Dropouts" (Columbia Teachers College, 1956), he develops a strong up-to-date case for the view that poor instruction materials and methods are among the most significant causes of school failures and jobless delinquents. Certainly
those who are concerned about the primary causes of school dropouts cannot afford to overlook the role of Dick and Jane.
WITH AN estimated speaking and recognition vocabulary of at least 15,000 words and derivatives (1964 research), today's average six-year old first grader, Trace argues, should not have to be subjected to the stifling George Orwellian vocabulary control of only 326 words, to take a typical example. And without sufficient instruction in phonetic synthesis at the very beginning of the reading program, it is no wonder that children can cope with nothing better than the repetitious monotony of the Dick-and-Jane readers. They are denied access to the beautiful poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson and the delightful stories of Rudyard Kipling. They cannot thrill to "The Village Blacksmith" of Longfellow nor even be inspired by Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
This is a book that literally brizzles with quotable passages. Speaking of "reading readiness" and "teacher readiness," he tartly observes: "I suppose that if students aren't ready to read and if the teacher isn't ready to teach, they might as well all go home and try again next year with the hope that someone will be ready by then to do something."
Speaking of the suppression of inspiring literary content found in the early American readers, he points out that "The 'New England Primer' was the daily companion of John Adams in his long career as statesman; we may be grateful that the Dick-and-Jane primer is not the daily companion of our president today."
Dailiif Fänsan
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
NEWS DEPARTMENT
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Bobbie Bartelt, Clare Casey, Marshall Caskey, Fred Frailey, Assistant Managing Editors; Judy Farrell, City Editor; Karen Lambert, Feature-Society Editor; Glen Phillips, Sports Editor; Janet Chartier, Telegraph Editor; Harry Krause, Picture Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Again: "Many people are beginning to wonder why students can no longer read the words of our great patriots in their readers. The answer is simple. Our great patriots did not obey the rules of vocabulary control. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster introduced too many new words on each page and they didn't repeat them often enough. Anything that students learn about their country in the Dick-and-Jane type reader will have to come from the pen of someone far less famous than Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson, preferably from a professional programmed retardator who knows all about the rules of vocabulary control and who knows how to write bad prose."
Tom Fisher
Tom Fisher...Business Manager
Nancy Holland, Advertising Manager; Ed Vaughn, National Advertising
Manager; Dale Reinecker, Classified Advertising Manager; Russ Calkins,
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IE IT ANY WONDER that high school graduates today often can't read or write? Is it any wonder that bored students become the untrainable, unemployed dropouts that haunt our streetcorners and breed violence in our cities? The critics tried to make lightly of the late Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," but almost every day brings new evidence which confirms the major portion of her charges. President Kennedy's special science-study panel, it should be remembered, also gave strong endorsement to her basic thesis.
"War-On-Poverty Is Hell Too"
BOOK REVIEWS
MANDATE FOR CHANGE: 1953-1956, by Dwight D. Eisenhower (Signet, $1.25).
The rapid appearance of this book in paperback following the Truman autobiography almost looks as though the question of equal time was raised. Such a book is an important document, even though it has certain weaknesses that disturbed critics when it appeared in 1963.
It compares with the Truman books in several lights: similarities of these two presidents are growing more apparent—their Midwestern backgrounds, their folksiness, their simplicity. The Truman books were far from great literature. The Eisenhower book is far from a complete picture of the Eisenhower years.
Yet autobiographies are usually unsatisfying. The writer tells us only what he cares to tell us, and the man he sees in the mirror is not likely the man the voters saw or the historians will see. Eisenhower sees his White House years as a mandate for change; to many voters there was little change; to others there was too little effort to try to come to grips with the problems of the times.
Foreign policy dominates this book. The big issues in Eisenhower's first four years were the war in Indochina, frequent trouble in the Formosa strait, the Suez crisis that broke in the 1956 election year. Eisenhower treats McCarthyism, too, but not the way his critics treat it. McCarthyism, like civil rights, was seldom something that Eisenhower cared to involve himself with.
Assessment of Eisenhower's place in history cannot be based on this book. Debate continues about Eisenhower; already his once-shining image seems dull; the national consciousness seems touched seldom by his name or his memory or his actions. Scholars will need to see what Eisenhower said about his first term in office, but they will have to go elsewhere for the amplifications history needs about any man or any event.
* * *
It was such a short time ago that J. K. Galbraith labeled it "The Affluent Society." It was affluent, of course, but it was other things, too, because behind the facade was the other society. So many such books have been appearing, almost coinciding with Johnson's program to fight poverty in America, that the cynics may label it all a plot. But the books are only too factual.
This one is by a special assistant in the Bureau of the Census. His work is well garnished with graphs and statistics—the conditions of poverty or near-poverty in America. The claims of Miller are grim; he sees no alleviation of the problem in the near future.
Miller's crystal ball shows him many Americans still living in sub-standard conditions, even like those FDR described in his one-third-of-a-nation words of so long ago. Miller tells us things like this:
The earning power of the Negro college graduate is equal to that of a white man with an eighth grade education; one-third of all Americans (how the "one-third" continues to ring out) have less than a comfortable living standard; poverty would be even more widespread if there were not so many working wives; what was once a decent living wage is marginal today and soon will be sub-standard; service and non-farm income has not kept pace with the economy.
A SHORT HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY, by Isaac Asinov (Anchor, $1.45); SOUND WAVES AND LIGHT WAVES, by Winston E. Kock (Anchor, $1.25); PERPETUAL MOTION, by Alec T. Stewart (Anchor, $1.25)—Popular science for the layman, and handy guides for many readers. Numerous photographs and diagrams make these books of more than specialized interest.