UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of
MARCH 28,1979
Bilingual bill is unfair
The right of all Americans to an education has long been accepted by the people of the United States.
However, there are thousands of American school age children who find the promise of an education empty because they cannot understand their teachers. These students find themselves not only lost in an English-speaking world, but also rejected by their fellow students, teachers and school administrators because they do not speak the same language.
They repeatedly have been denied the right to an education. And now, hundreds of these students in Kansas may have that right denied again if debate in the Kansas Legislature halts attempts at bilingual education.
ALREADY THE Kansas Senate education committee has deflated much of a proposed bilingual education bill when it took out all references to "bilingual" and "multicultural" education and replaced them with the safe words "English proficiency development."
But such changes have not been welcomed by those who want actual bidding.
State Sen. Bert Chaney, D-Hutchinson, said, "They gutted the bill. That's what they've been teaching for years, English proficiency. That's no change. The bill is meanless."
Indeed, the entire purpose of bilingual education is to teach minority-language students, primarily young children, the basic skills at their
own grade level and in their own language, if necessary. In addition, they would receive intensive English instruction to prepare them for regular classes.
THE BILL now is under consideration by the Kansas House education committee and is likely to come under even more pressure from school district administrators who are worried about the cost of such programs and the possibility that they will have to admit deficiencies in their current programs.
Opposition also is likely to come from groups that think such programs will mean teaching subjects in a school. It's easy tongue for his entire school career.
But the objective of bilingual education is exactly the opposite of that—to give a student an education at the same time that the student is learning to cope with an alien American culture.
However, the objective of any bilingual bill should not be to try to instantly provide the student with a proficiency in English while he falls further and further behind in school. And the objective never should be to strip the bilingual student of his cultural heritage.
A responsible bilingual program is needed in the state of Kansas. To water it down would be to ignore the problem and also to ignore the right to an education to hundreds of Kansan school children.
Latin Week recognizes significance of minority
There is something new at the University of Kansas; Latin Week.
Throughout this week the office of minority affairs and Latino student organizations are sponsoring films, slides, a musical and cultural programs on the various Latin groups.
This is the first week-long recognition of Latinos here. This seems to be an extension of the nationwide emergence of the Latino American as a formidable minority.
Government estimates place the Latino or Hispanic-American population at 12 million. But the presence of illegal immigrants, about 15 million or 7 percent of the U.S. population. Because of natural increases in population (more births than deaths) and increased immigration, the Latinos might be the largest group in the United States by the end of the next decade.
THE BLACK POPULATION makes up 12 percent of the total population, but the number of births and deaths does not equal the Latino pace.
The largest Latino group is the Chicanos, or Mexican-Americans, with 7.2 million people located mainly in the Southwest. There are an estimated 1.8 million Puerto Ricans who live mainly in the Northeast. And of 700,000 Cubans, most live in Florida.
in addition, there are about 2.4 million other Latinos—Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Colombians, Costa Ricas and people from other Latin American countries.
WHAT ALL THIS means in pragmatic terms is that the United States now is the world's fourth largest Spanish-speaking country. The country's predominant in areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and to a lesser degree, Chicago, is all of are centers that attract big business.
The political clout of American Latinos, just by the fact of numbers, will increase and propel the Hispanic-American vote as a vital campaign goal. Already, Gov. Jerry Brown of California has established ties with the California Chicano community. But while the state's Democratic candidate Brown has not kept campaign promises for support of Chicanos. The importance Brown places on the Latino vote is exemplified by the fact that Cesar Chavez, the renowned
United Farm Workers leader, is in his corner.
PRESIDENT CARTER, after receiving 28 Texas electoral votes from Chicano ballots, responded by appointing more government positions than any other president.
But there are serious problems that face the Latin-American community.
There are only 5 Latinus in the U.S. House of Representatives and none who are Senators. The two former Chicago Mayor, the one from New Mexico, no longer are in office.
Only 37.8 percent of Latinos eligible to vote are registered. In California Latino voters have only 2 percent of 20,000 elected state posts and only 8 of the 120 seats in the Senate.
In New York, Puerto Rican make up 24 percent of the student public school population.
No doubt education has been and will be the key for the advancement of America's labor force.
And the push for more Latinos to enter the fields of engineering and medicine, previously at a minimal level, will aid the United States in dealing with Mexico and other Latin American countries for exchanges of oil and technology.
BUT JUST AS there are problems, there are good signs.
Latinos in Miami, mainly Cubans, are responsible for $2.2 billion in annual income
Registration drives in Texas and California have increased voter eligibility to more than 50 percent of the eligible Latino vote.
And of course, the Latinos still hold firm to their religion and family, two vital institutions which lately have not received total faith.
The emergence of the Latinos as a significant minority in America no doubt adds to this country's vitality and its effort to unify them with its Latin American neighbors to the south.
Peanut inquiry resembles Watergate
Two interesting developments in the special investigation into financial transactions between President Carter's family peanut business and the National Bank of Georgia: Bank records show that the president knew about the problems the bank was facing. In the special council has been granted the full powers of a Watergate-style prosecutor.
Earlier this year the White House said that Carter knew little about the warehouse finances in 1976 or the problems the business was having, and that he left most of the management to his brother, Billy, while he conducted his campaign. And in a television interview last year, Carter denied that any information from the bank was diverted to the campaign.
But according to bank records and statements from persons involved in decisions concerning the business problems, Carter did participate in some important discussions about the warehouse's finances:
- ON JANUARY 29, 1976 he participated in negotiations with the National Bank of Georgia and finance company officials at Plains, Ga., according to two participants.
- On August 26,1976,the day when a loan
agreement between the National Bank of Georgia and the Carter warehouse was signed, Bert Lance, the bank director, met with Carter in Plains to discuss the warehouse business, according to logs from a customer owned by the National Bank of Georgia.
- Earlier in 1976, according to Samuel R. Hunter, director of an Americus, Ga., bank, Carter asked him to release his bank's claim on the warehouse so the Carter business would have adequate collateral to cover a loan from the National Bank of Georgia.
The FBI is investigating the record-keeping of the National Bank of Georgia on questions Congressional Republicans want that Congress concerns whether the proceeds from bank loans that went to brother Billy, illegally purchased by the primary election campaign of President Carter.
Tuesday appointed Paul J. Curran as a special counsel to investigate the Carter financial affairs. But to the irice of Republicans, Curran, a former U.S. attorney, was not given full independent investigative powers.
ATTORNEY GENERAL Griffin Bell last
According to a Justice Department statement, Curran would not be allowed to make final decisions about whom to prosecute and he would not be allowed to grant immunity to potential witnesses. He was also told to make final decisions about indictments.
Understandably, the limitations placed upon Curran caused much criticism and disapproval.
"It is not proper for the Administration to be dragged kicking and screaming into this investigation," said Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn.
By Friday however, Bell appeared to have had a change of mind, and Curran was given the full powers of a Waterestate-style prosecutor. But he stopped short of changing Curran's formal title to "special prosecutor" as the Republicans would like.
THE TITLE of prosecutor was not appropriate in this case because there was no evidence a crime had been uncovered, Bell said.
"What we need here is fact-finding," he said. "I don't know where all that will lead, but I can't imagine anyone having any more power than Mr. Curran now has."
Thus, in the short space of a week, the honesty and integrity of a president is in question and the wheels of a formal investigation have begun to turn. The haunting spectre of Watergate once again in upon us.
The attorney general is correct in asserting that he doesn't know where all this will lead. No one does. Nevertheless, the appointment of a special counsel, and reports that the Justice Department is prepared to seek in indictment against Bert Janssen, does not make for brighter days ahead for the Carter administration or the nation.
This is the second time in the history of the United States that a special investigation has been launched into the affairs of a sitting president.
The first investigation led to the unprecedented resignation of a president and was the darkest political hour the nation had ever seen, but the nation pulled through.
But to have to go through all that again in less than a decade quite possibly may be too much for even the strongest among us to stomach.
BY T. M. ASLA
Students could battle adult illiteracy
By JONATHAN KOZOL
N. Y. Times Feature
BOSTON—Twenty percent of adult men and women in this nation cannot read a computer. You are likely enough to fill in a job application. The term for this cripping condition is "functional."
The figure for blacks is 44 percent and is 56 percent for those of Spanish surname. The total is 23 million at the lowest and more likely 30 million. The cost to the nation, including welfare and lowered productivity, is $6 billion a year.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Title I, was the last great hope for an injection of adrenalin into public school reading programs. It is of no use to adults, nor is it of much use to those still in classrooms.
TITLE I students receive less time in reading than those not in Title I. The program appears to hinder more children than it helps.
Rather, it is to turn our backs on this, and all on other standard substitutes for action, and to launch an all-out national attack on adult illiteracy, giving it the same priority as plague, pestilence or war. If we wished to learn from experience, we would start this course in a maximum-school setting. We would also insist on a maximum teacher-learner ratio of 1-5.
STATE U.
The answer is not another research project.
VOLUNTEERS might be as young as 15, others might be over 25. They would receive a 10-day crash course in the basics of a strong phonetic method, heightened by an intensive course of words, proved in a number of pilot projects to bear the greater power of provocation.
Our first need is to sign up and prepare 5 million literacy teachers to go into the homes of from 23 to 30 million literate people. We know this many people in the ranks are classroom solution is to free from class individuals who have the energy and competence to do the job, and to do it virtually for free; university students can be taught and write with more than marginal费。
The words (not "Dick" and "Jane," but "grief" and "pain" and "lease" and "license," "power," "protest," "police") are those that set the heart and mind alive with possibilities of making something different of the world.
Volunteers would live in the neighborhoods in which they teach. They would work at least two hours with each pupil, providing them with tutoring and pupils' homes or in a house especially renovated for this purpose, a "literacy center" designed to facilitate activities that their living needs teach.
IF VOLUNTEERS began their work in June at the school semester's end, Christmas might be a logical target date for victory. Brazil, Cuba and Israel have succeeded at the same task in periods that range from 60 days to seven months. If there were to be a follow-up, as literacy experts in Florida and Texas reported, place in a two-month "crash" course running for two years in a row during each of the two subsequent summers.
Volunteers might properly receive course credit from their colleges and high schools for the time devoted to this endeavor. Instead of having spent one full semester studying "Problems of Democracy," they should have done their best to solve one such problem.
The volunteers would operate in "teams" or groups of black, white and Hispanic children selected to provide the class and ethnic mix that has a chance to overcome the usual problems of top-down benevolence.
VOLUNTEERS should receive their living stipend from the federal government,
In cases where teachers do not wish to leave classrooms, or where school boards won't agree, leaders might easily be found in the classroom. Teachers certified teachers who are out of work.
$20 a week perhaps, personal backup, friendship and specific pedagogic counsel from an older man or woman, a "team leader." The leader might be a teacher in the public school or college that the volunteers would attend if they were not in the school. The teacher ought to get a normal salary from the local school board, university or college.
A QUESTION about this proposal is asked repeatedly: How can we expect so many youngsters to give up a full half-year out of school? How can we give pedagogy and historic struggle of this kind?
I have just returned from a tour of 30 colleges in 2012. The myth of student lethargy is just that—a myth, and it is not even working as a self-fulfillment prophecy. The children I met remain alive and ethical in their convictions. The students are less rhetorical and more realistic. They are very lazy when they say what they rather than to watch it on television. One thing they have greatly missed since 1972 has been a single concrete focus for their energies and ideals. This project offers that focus for the first time in seven years.
Jonathan Kozol's first book, "Death At An Early Age," won a 1986 National Book Award. This article is adapted from a work in progress.
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