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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 19, 1963
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Middle Road Loses Out
It used to be that the middle of the road was the safest path to tread. But thanks to the unwavering efforts of a legion of U.S. flag-flappers this is no longer so.
In American politics, especially, you are either a 101 per cent, prime, clear-thinking American or you are a comsymp dupe, unwittingly working as an unregistered agent for the Kremlin.
NO CLEAR-THINKING, Red, White and true Blue American can question the methods of the John Birch Society. The reasoning is simple (as those who reason this way): Since the Birchers are for America, anyone who is not with them must be against America.
Out in California, a growing bastion of ignoramic rantings, a Los Angeles department store caught bloody hell from wrathful "Me Americans" because the store was selling goods made in Communist countries. (It is very important to spell communism with a capital c., preferably in red ink.)
The objection to selling these Communist goods are: (1) they were produced by slave labor, and (2) it hurts the U.S. economy.
BOTH THESE claims are out of whack with certain facts, but let us return to the general theme of how dangerous it is to be a non-101 percent.
You can catch bloody hell by suggesting that the African nations are not ready for statehood.
IT IS with great trepidation that we non-101 percenters watch this whole-hog theory take hold. What would happen if the John Birch Society decided that spumoni ice cream is un-American?
Naturally, since the African nations are inhabited mostly by Negroes (not that this had anything to do with your reasoning in doubting their preparedness for sovereignty), it is just plain clear thinking to realize that you are a racist.
You either believe that all Negroes are endowed with an inherent wisdom or you are a racist. It is all right to question the intelligence of leaders of nations inhabited by caucasians, but that, my wavering friend, is the outer extremity of safety.
IF YOU think that African statehood should be delayed, you are, of course, in sympathy with the White Citizen Councils.
If you believe that Tshombe or Adoula is wrong, you naturally think that it is wrong for a Negro to be able to eat at a lunch counter in New Orleans.
That would be the final straw; there are some of us who like an occasional bowl of spumoni.
- Terry Murphy
"—WELL DIDJA EVER STOP TO THINK THAT THIS 'F' JUS'S MIGHT REFLECT A PRETTY POOR JOB OF TEACHING? //
Critics Seek Ways To Improve U.S.Education
By Terry Ostmeyer
One of the biggest problems confronting American education today is education itself.
The term has been used lightly because of tradition throughout American history, but in recent years it has become the chief concern of many who are beginning to realize the dark educational position in which this country has placed itself.
America is far behind and she knows it. The problem is not so much what to do about it, but how. The number of pros and cons are growing rapidly and the issue is now a major one. More and more students are entering American schools each year, and world problems are becoming more complex each day—time is running short.
If American education is to be changed, and it is likely it will, there is only one direction it can go-up. Of course the trend for several years has been in this direction, but snap courses and pro-athletic institutions are still common across the country.
The latter has been known to exist along with higher education, but American education critics continue to cringe at the thought of Harvard's course. Fine Arts 13, dubbed "Darkness at Noon" because it meets at that time to view color slides,
with no homework whatsoever.
Even Yale boasts such courses as Sociology 69B, a criminology course which requires the reading of Rocky Graziano's autobiography, "Somebody Up There Likes Me." The granddaddy of them all, though, is Geography 652, which gives six credit hours for touring Europe with the professor. This course is offered at Wayne State University in Detroit, the same school with the dubious distinction of being the best in the fad of destroying a piano and depositing the pieces through a seven-inch hole. Wayne State did the job in 4 minutes and 51 seconds.
This is only one aspect of the problem, though, and a small one at that. Most critics agree that the main difficulty in American schools is that of maintaining a high intellectual plane. This failure has been the cause of our lagging behind Russia and the European schools in education today.
The best known and most widely heard advocate of this theory is Vice Adm. H.G.Rickover of the United States Navy. His book, "Education and Freedom." has been the guiding voice in the move to strengthen American education.
Rickover sees no letup in this push. He says that due to technological progress, man must use his mind more and his body less. We have cheapened the value of intellectual competence too much in the past and have failed to raise the level of this competence as high as the student is capable of achieving.
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"Today we must have schools which develop all children and which help them understand the complex world of today and how it came to be what it is." he said.
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Young people's minds must be trained to think clearly, logically, and independently, but Rickover says our teaching institutions will have to be reorganized if we are going to do this, or make any other rapid technological changes.
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Rickover believes our biggest crisis now is the failure of American schools to identify and develop their talented youth. He says many students waste too much time in elementary grades when they could jump ahead of the others. Yet, even if a student jumped two or three grades in his schooling, he would still be two years behind his European contemporaries.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Fred Zimmerman ... Managing Editor
Ben Marshall, Bill Sheldon, Mike Miller,
Art Miller, Margaret Cathcart ... Assistant Managing Editors
Steve Clark ... Sports Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dennis Branstiter Editorial Editor
Terry Murphy Assistant Editorial Editor
There are some in America who maintain that the European system of six school days in the week, with longer hours and no limit in giving the student all he can handle, is the best way. The Russian 10-year system is superior to America's also, but its strong ties with the Soviet government keep it from being in the European class.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Jack Cannon
Business Manager
The striving for better education in America is a certainty, but its consequences are just as certain to be many-sided.
The tremendous progress in science has recently led to the necessity of teaching the American children with more vigor and has further increased the need for special schooling for the exceptional.
"We can't demand less than the best of these kids (Andover students). But we may be trying to get the wrong kind of best. There's just not enough emphasis on the old dream of simply being a good father, a good man." Kemper says.
The fact that a highly intensified American educational system is needed has brought comments from those on the other side of the fence. They hold that the pressures which will result from education on a higher level will be too much, besides subjecting the student to overwork
service and an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University. He has made four main observations in studying the effects of today's increasing pressures of higher education.
Men like Prof. Black know American education must improve rapidly and with results, but they balk at the question of how it is to be done. Others like John Kemper, headmaster of highly regarded Andover Prep School, are so close to the trend, they see need for some of the old to be brought back.
Agreeing with this is John D. Black, director of the counseling
First, competition has multiplied greatly, and Prof. Black says education is the only channel of upward mobility in our society; second, he says technology has become dependent for its growth on intellectual manpower; third, education has become some sort of a god who helps handle fears and anxieties such as nuclear war, overpopulation, politics, etc., and finally, the bachelor's degree is not enough today. The student must strive higher.
"We must not impose our anxieties about the world on our children, or try to decide for them what their roles should be in a future we cannot even visualize," he says.
Black says that with the added pressures inflicted by ambitious or overly concerned parents,the load has become even heavier. He says the parents should not exert this pressure because the student has enough to do.
Letters to the Editor
Effects of Alcoholism Editor:
The time has come for my annual letter to the editor of the UDK. You may recall that the topic of last year's letter concerned the fact that the Pioneer statue was only six feet tall, rather than eighteen, as erroneously reported by the Kansan.
Recent "insipid" editorials in the Kansan have provided me with a controversial subject which seems to be quite novel to this campus, especially on weekends. For I am an advocate of total abstinence from poisonous alcoholic beverages.
A RECENT article by Mr. Murphy closed with a query as to what results an increase in uptake of alcoholic poison might have.
I suggest that if Mr. Murphy wishes a brilliant demonstration of the results of an increased uptake of this poison, he might find it worthwhile to visit a "rescue mission" in the nearby cities of Topeka or Kansas City. My own personal contact with the end result of alcoholism was at a rescue mission on skid row of San Francisco, a city which can boast the highest number of alcoholies of any U.S. city. One visit to this place quite clearly demonstrated that an increase in use of alcoholic poison can readily result in wretchedness and decay, physically, morally and intellectually. There was a loss not only to the person involved; there was a loss to society as well. Since that time I have been a highly prejudiced TTT (teetotaler). I cannot deny that alcoholic poison has not contributed to society: Pasteur's work on fermentation gave rise to the modern science of bacteriology. It is also said that Kekule conceived his idea of the ring structure of the benzene molecule during a drunken dream. Nonetheless, the loss to society in increased crime rates, drunken drivers and so forth has greatly outweighed the meager gains.
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T of and with ly i
I CANNOT agree with Mr. Strevy, who appeared before the House State Affairs Committee. I feel that prohibition would not greatly improve the situation. I do not feel that my views on this personal problem should be forced upon my neighbor through legislation. My task lies in attempting to point out the dangers of poisonous alcoholic beverages, which I have done here, and to let those around me make their own decision.
David E. Byer Hamlin senior