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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Feb. 26, 1964
English Pro
The English Proficiency Examination, which will be given tomorrow evening, is not looked forward to by more than 500 students hoping to fulfill a graduation requirement.
The exam, first given on Saturday, May 14, 1938, was made a requirement for all students graduating after 1940.
THIS COMPOSITION TEST was suggested for graduating students, since some were incapable of composing a well-organized, intelligent piece of writing. It was hoped that the test would serve as an incentive to students to continue writing after they had passed their freshman and sophomore rhetoric courses.
Today, students in the departments of nursing, architecture, architectural engineering, and the College of Liberal Arts and Science, the Schools of Business, Education, Fine Arts, Journalism, and Medicine have to take the examination in order to graduate.
THE PERCENTAGE OF FAILURES on the examination has tended to run between 25 and 40 each semester. A large number of students failing this semester will be seniors. They will find their dreams of departure from KU faded with the announcement of the English Proficiency Examination results.
AMONG THE SEVERAL PURPOSES claimed by the English Proficiency Examination committee members are:
What of this test that prevents a number of students from graduating? Has it any value? What are its purposes?
To give the University a final check on how well its students can handle the language before they are graduated.
To determine just how much ability the student has before he begins his professional career.
To know if proficiency has deteriorated after the basic English courses.
It also has been claimed that the test is just like any other placement or exemption test and
that students are unnecessarily afraid of it.
IF THESE ARE the purposes, then isn't the administration (the Students' Curriculum Planning Committee) concerned about the students who do not have to take the examination?
Answers on the examination—ranging from discussion of international politics to campus parking permits—are graded on organization, paragraphs, specification, relevance of content, grammar usage, punctuation, and spelling.
If an accumulation of mechanical errors and incoherent writing are responsible for failures, why doesn't the Committee do something about it? Why doesn't the Committee force the failing students to repeat their freshman and sophomore English courses? Or why doesn't the Committee send them back to grade schools where they might learn the mechanisms of the language?
A person who hasn't mastered the art of writing after studying English from the grade school through two years of college is not going to learn anything more from the examination regardless of the amount of pressure or effort.
THE EXAMINATION either should be abolished or the standards of grading should be lowered.
The examination is not a true sample of the student's actual writing ability. When a student writes a paper, he usually spends quite a bit of time on it. The exam only serves to see how clever and accurate a student can be under extreme pressure. This is not the purpose of the exam.
So let's hope that the students who pass through the long and steep road of college do not find an unanticipated barrier blocking their path when they reach the summit. And let's presume that the students who have gone through four English courses have achieved sufficient writing ability.
Dailiī Hänsan
111 Flint Hall
—Vinay Kothari
University of Kansas student newspaper
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"And Over Here We'll Set Up Our Passport Bureau"
from the morgue
Plan 1-(1) Elimination of representatives from organizations; (2) some plan for school districts based on proportional representation; (3) rather than 16 members elected, 26 members elected and the 10 representatives from organizations eliminated.
The political reorganization committee of the All Student Council presented in March 1945 the following plans for a new election system - from which one had to be selected by the whole student body:
Plan 2- (1) Abolish organization representatives; (2) abolish present system of districting schools; (3) establish two districts on the basis of division between men and women; (4) the representation of the two sexes from each division to tend toward a mean between proportional and equal representation.
Plan 3—(1) Elimination of representatives from organizations; (2) establishment of three divisions: Greek, organized independents, and unorganized independents. Representatives on the All Student Council of the three divisions on basis of proportional representation and in turn within those three divisions representation between men and women. This would tend toward a mean proportional and equal representation.
After long discussion and investigation, Plan I was adopted.
Chronic Foreign Ailments Continue to Plague LBJ
Robert Murphy was a career diplomat under three presidents. His experiences go back to World War II and embrace the Korean-War era and the East-West conflict that soon will be in its 20th year. Murphy also is an author; his book, published last week, is entitled "Diplomat Among Warriors."
What Robert Murphy has to say may provide ammunition for the Republican party this year, though Murphy is critical of the Eisenhower administration as well as the administrations of Democratic presidents. His contention is that the U.S. has been involved in a series of unfortunate blunders in dealing with Russia, that what is needed is a tougher policy line.
IN A WEEK full of significant news bearing foreign datelines the Murphy thesis has particular relevance. This year's presidential election may be fought out on foreign policy issues. A Gallup poll whose results have just been published suggests that President Lyndon B. Johnson may be most vulnerable on his handling of foreign affairs.
The poll tells us that 7 of 10 persons interviewed approve Johnson's handling of domestic issues, that 6 of 10 approve of his handling of foreign issues. James Reston, head of the Washington bureau of the New York Times, contends that the Republicans, however, might be erring in telling Johnson that foreign affairs will be the major issue this year.
RESTON AGREES with those who point to Latin America, Asia and Africa. But the U.S. is not the only major power in trouble, he says. Trouble within the Communist world, conflict over famine and ideology show that the Soviet Union and China also are not entirely successful in foreign relations. And Reston reminds the Republicans that Johnson has not been in power long, and cannot be blamed alone for the record of his administration.
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Cuba remains a sore spot for the United States; one headline after another relates to the Cuban question. This nation's leaders are still mulling over the Johnson-Home meetings and the question of trade with Cuba. We are not in favor of consumer boycotts against goods of countries trading with Cuba, the State Department said last week.
Republicans — some Republicans, at least — said they favor such boycotts. And last week the government halted its aid to three countries which trade with Cuba — France, Britain, and Yugoslavia—and suspended new assistance to two others—Spain and Morocco.
THIS ANNOUNCEMENT came in a week that brought arrest of two American fliers who had been held in Cuba after their plane reached the island in a mishap. One of them, Richard Wright, was freed. The other, Trevor Burns, was held.
The U.S.-Cuba conflict over water for Guantanamo naval base brought these developments: the U.S. commander at Guantanamo cut the pipe which once carried water to the base,
--and Florida freed 29 pro-Castro Cubans who had been arrested for poaching in Florida waters.
***
South Vietnam remained a significant foreign policy problem for the U.S. Warfare continued; terrorists struck last week, bombing a U.S. movie theater, ambushing three men in a grenade attack in Saigon, wounding one of the men. As terrorism continued, U.S. officials permitted relatives of personnel in Vietnam to return home.
President Johnson was on the West Coast, and in a talk at the University of California at Los Angeles he issued a warning to outsiders who support Red guerrillas in South Vietnam. They are "playing a deeply dangerous game," he said. Johnson seemed to be in the mood of his recent blast against "bellyachers," as he said that Communists face troubles more acute than those this country faces.
* *
Reporters were trying to read significance into a foreign policy utterance by the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana. Mansfield said President De Gaulle of France has demonstrated "a sense of history and statesmanship" in trying to deal with the Vietnam crisis.
HOT SPOTS were common for the headline writers last week. It appeared that China is trying to work on Pakistan and develop the long-time quarrel with India. The Chinese, who are not formally recognized by the U.S., rejected a U.S. "open door" offer that might lead to some kind of accord between the countries. Indonesian leaders seemed worried that the Indonesian campaign against Malaysia is losing ground.
And still more; the U.S. has provided emergency arms and ammunition for Ethiopia, which is having a border tiff with Somalia. The giant Watusi continue to flee into Burundi from the Bahutus, Gabon, which most newspaper readers probably cannot spot on the map, had a coup, the fifth upheaval of 1964 in a new African nation.
\* \* \*
Some of that American wheat finally is reaching the Soviet Union, 6,000 tons from North Dakota docking late in the week at Odessa. The shipment arrived about the same time that Republican congressional leaders were criticizing the wheat sales as "a sorry mess" and calling on the President to end them. Others are against the wheat shipment, notably leaders of the Maritime Union, with whom Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz is conferring in an effort to end the longshoremen's boycott of wheat shipments.
ALL OF THIS for the political mill, and more. It may be hard to blame the Johnson administration for the Mexican ambassador to Bolivia who was arrested in the smashing of a $13.5 million international narcotics ring, but some politician will succeed. Others may be able to tie Johnson to the French veto of European Common Market recognition of Nationalist China. The administration can be thankful it had nothing to do with the earthquakes that struck Sao Jorge island in the Azores.