U.S. educational innovations are far reaching
By RICHARD LUNDQUIST
Two kindergarten children were standing in the schoolyard, pointing to an airplane overhead.
"That's an unusual engine configuration," one of the children observed.
"Yes," agreed the other, "I don't see how it can utilize the full thrust potential unless the regenerative cycle is aided by an afterburner."
JUST THEN the bell rang for class to resume. As they walked towards the school, the first child remarked, "Well, let's go back in and string some more of those damn beads."
Exaggerated?
Of course it is. But it helps point out the fact that educators today are dealing with a highly sophisticated generation.
In dealing with this generation, innovation and experimentation have been the key words.
ELEMENTARY STUDENTS in Berkeley, Calif., and all fifth graders at Racine, Wis., take a problem-solving course, called thinking. The teaching material is comic books.
In Caldwell, N.J., talented high school seniors who took algebra in the eighth grade pass up calculus for an improvised course in statistics and the laws of probability.
Their laboratory equipment:
crap tables, cards for playing
Fill 'er up course
STOCKTON, Calif. — (UPI) — Forty unemployed young men will learn how to become service station attendants here under a $4,112 grant from the federal Manpower Development a n d Training Act.
The students will undertake a nine-week course.
blackjack and a chuck-a-luck device.
--lies in the student-teacher relationship."
NOT ALL INNOVATIONS in education have been this extreme, but they all have been far-reaching.
"In the last three years, a whole new set of content and ways to teach it have come into being," Lelon Capps, associate professor of elementary education, said.
Capps said that where once there was an emphasis on teaching the mechanics in each study area—science, mathematics, social studies, language, and language art—there is now an emphasis on teaching concepts and the interrelationship of the different areas.
WHILE EDUCATIONAL change has been most obvious in elementary school, where modern math and foreign languages have frustrated parents' efforts to help their children with homework, it has not been confined to this area.
Stan Roth, Lawrence High School biology instructor, said "I ignored the concept of evolution and sex education when I started teaching (eight years ago). Now we get into it with no holds barred."
But changes in curriculum and attitudes show only part of the educational revolution. The other part can be seen in technology.
Some education experts think that some day the child will be able to "go to school" at home. Computerized learning could present a student with a wealth of knowledge simply by turning a knob or pushing a button.
Does this mean that teachers will be obsolete in the future?
"I doubt if machines will ever replace the teacher," says Capps, "the basic unit of teaching still
Roth says, "I think what a student gets from a personal relationship is vital to education.
Daily Kansan Friday, April 21, 1967
Machines will never replace teachers."
chines will put greater stress on the need for excellent teachers to keep up with them. I feel machines will help more in the clerical aspects of teaching."
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Gary Hoeltke, director of the Educational Research and Service Bureau, optimistically says, "Ma-
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