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University Daily Kansan
Friday, May 17, 1963
Can't Pay-Or Won't
If you will listen carefully,you can hear a very sad sound in the State of Kansas.
It is the sound of many of our better teachers packing their bags to leave. It is a slow, quiet exodus of excellence away from Kansas.
IT IS NOT A mass migration. If it were, people might notice and do something about it. But its effect will be the same: downgrading of education in Kansas.
The State of Kansas is losing good teachers for the saddest of reasons: money. Who can blame them for leaving? Teachers have families too.
It is not just better salaries which attracts teachers away from Kansas. The latest good teacher we have lost listed three reasons for moving elsewhere:
"Second, I have been appointed there as a full associate professor.
"First: I will have a lighter teaching load (five hours).
"And third, I will receive a larger salary than I am presently receiving."
Speaking was Vaclav Mudroch, assistant professor of history, and 1962 winner of the Outstanding Teacher (HOPE) award at KU.
He was speaking, but was anyone listening? He was talking to anyone who might have an interest in good education in Kansas.
But the Kansas Legislature and Governor Anderson already have told us that we can't afford to pay the good teachers enough money to keep them in Kansas. The Board of Regents told the state schools it is all right for them to buck for 12 per cent salary increases. Then Governor Anderson says, "that is too much."
MAYBE THE MAN is right; maybe Kansas can't afford good education. Most certainly, it isn't free or even inexpensive.
But it is a vicious cycle. We can't afford to raise taxes to raise salaries because there isn't enough taxable industry in the state. Or something like that.
" . . . Out, Out, Brief Candle! Life's But A Walking Shadow . . . "
So it boils down to, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," and Kansas gets the hindmost.
Is that what Governor Anderson and the legislators want? Of course not. But neither do they want to face up to the task of providing the necessary leadership to prevent Kansas from ending up with the hindmost.
While the state's leaders fiddle in Topeka, the good teachers are walking away from the growing flames at every school in the state. They are not running-yet.
BUT THAT IS the choice which confronts them. Pay the price or give up the fight. It may not seem that way, but that is the choice.
The Governor said, "we can't afford it"; so far it has been louder than the quiet noise of the Mudrochs leaving for the places where they say, "we can afford it."
Mudroch this year, and who knows about next year?
And when the quiet noise of walking turns into the loud clamor of a mass exodus, what will the Governor say? Probably nothing more original than. "See. I was right; we can't pay good teachers enough to keep them in Kansas."
— Terry Murphy
... Letters ...
"Cynics Say No"
The young man speaks truth. I know, for, having graduated last year, I am among the disillusioned and have only recently resumed my fight. Truly the atmosphere of college and that of everyday can be worlds apart.
RE: "Cynics Say No," by Terry Murphy, UDK. May 9.
Life by any standard is infinitely complex, to say the least. And did you ever stop to think that as long as one lives he must live every day? Wouldn't it be nice if there were "fadeout pills" whereby one could take brief respires from life, in a sort of suspended animation, and return ready and willing to cope with the act of living — or would it?
recall a maxim from the Netherlands: "It is necessary to turn around and confront life, for life loves the brave"; the line "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"; and finally the promise "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted."
Since that is impractical and certainly improbable, it is well to
Faith with work, plus ideas, determination, and belief in one's own potential, is a hard combination to down.
An employee Strong Hall
Spring is a call to action, hence to disillusion, therefore April is called "the cruelest month."
Short Ones
Cyril Connolly
Daily Hansan
111 Flint Hall University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Founded 1889, became blieckley 1004,
trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service and served in New York, NY News service; United Press International. Mail subscription rates; $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the summer months. Subsidies to Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Fred Zimmerman ... Managing Editor
Ben Marshall, Bill Sheldon,
Mike Miller, Art Miller, Margaret Cathcart Assistant Managing Editors Scott Payne City Editor Steve Clark Sports Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dennis Bransthy ... Editorial Editor
Terry Murphy ... Asst. Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Jack Cannon . . . Business Manager;
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BOOK REVIEWS
FATHERS AND SONS, by Ivan Turgenev (Bantam Classics, 60 cents)—A restyled reprint of a Bantam Classic of several years ago. "Fathers and Sons" is the best known of Turgenev's works, a disturbing tale of mid-century Russia in the intellectual torment of nihilism, a theme Dostoevsky also explored in "The Possessed." The conflict which Turgenev demonstrates is between the young revolutionaries and the traditionalists who had been raised in the absolute monarchy of Russia.
* *
THE VIOLENT SHORE, by Anton Myrer (Bantam, 75 cents)—a new one by the author of "The Big War." It deals with Sally Marcherson, passionate and demanding; Byron Cantwell, a disillusioned man; Pete Heralds, an ex-football star. Full of raw excitement and bedroom episodes.
* *
PLOESTI, by James Dugan and Carroll Stewart (Bantam, 75 cents)—A documentary of the celebrated raid of World War II. It took place Aug. 1, 1943, when 178 Liberators took off from Africa in a raid on Ploesti, the oil refineries of Rumania. There were 1,250,000 rounds of tracers and 311 tons of bombs aboard the planes. Out of the raid, five men won the Medal of Honor, but many more died.
* *
THE WHIP, by Luke Short (Bantam, 35 cents) a fast-moving western, by one of the best, about a tough guy on the old Midland stage east of Salt Lake.
WHO WAS AT
THE BUDGET
HEARING?
ANYBODY GOT
THE STORY?
I GOT IT. I STOPPED BY
ON MY WAY TO THE
BARBER SHOP. HERE'S
THE PRESS RELEASE
THEY WERE HANDING OUT.
WELL, FAIR'S
FAIR. NOW ALL
I NEED IS A
WHITE HOUSE
PRESS RELEASE.
ILL PICK IT UP, GUS. I HAVE TO STOP BY FOR A PRESS RELEASE ON NEWS MANAGEMENT. ANYBODY NEED ANYTHING ELSE?