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Wednesday, February 4, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinions
Wanted: quality training
Once again, the University of Kansas is making a bold move to stay at the leading edge of teacher education. It has joined the Holmes Group, an organization with more than 90 members that advocates a revision in the way tomorrow's teachers are trained in college.
Among other things, the Holmes Group has published a report calling for education students to get a bachelor's degree in a liberal arts major and then earn a master's degree in education. The report says the change is necessary because teachers are certified to teach all things, "but few of them know much about anything because they are required to know a little of everything."
It seems to be common sense to require teachers to have some expertise in the subject they teach. A well-rounded
education is important, and would not be sacrificed, but if the education system in the United States is to improve upon its somewhat inferior performance of late, raising the quality of teachers has to be the first step.
This is not the first time the KU School of Education has been a leader in the field of education. In 1981, the school made education a five-year program. The extra year allows students time to take additional education courses and time for internships.
Amidst recent reports that U.S. children lag behind their counterparts in other countries in knowledge of math and science, it is nice to hear that officials in the School of Education are working to improve the program through involvement in an organization such as the Holmes Group.
Military not the answer
The kidnappings continue.
One by one, U.S. citizens are
kidnapped and released, only
to watch other kidnappings.
No end to this continuing saga
seems to be in sight.
The Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that claims it kidnapped three Americans and an Indian last week, demanded that Israel release 400 prisoners, or the hostages would be killed.
Ideally, the government should not get involved. U.S. citizens in Lebanon decided to stay there and thus should be responsible for their own actions. However, if the U.S. government decides to bail its citizens out, it should hold off on using military force now.
Instead, the U.S. government should pressure these countries economically.
Abominable as their actions may be, military force, such as bombing terrorist countries, is not the solution to the hostage crisis. It's destructive.
The United States needs to take firm, constructive measures.
The country cannot turn its military loose on every country that supports terrorism. Innocent people who live in those countries should not have to pay for the acts of their government or other radical groups.
Money talks, and it can be effective in weakening a country. The U.S. government should put economic pressure on terrorist countries. The United States should ban all trade with the countries and encourage its allies to take similar measures.
Although talks and diplomacy may be ineffective with terrorists, the United States should exhaust all other measures before resorting to violence.
The government should ground the military. Bombing is not the answer, yet.
Respecting civil rights
Sometimes, it is hard to imagine that we are living in what is supposed to be a modern, liberated society considering some of the events that have taken place recently, especially in the area of civil rights.
Unfortunately, this is
Last week in Hutchinson, Robert Rawlins was awakened by a phone call. The caller told him to look at the side of his house. He discovered that someone had spray-painted racial slurs on the house. His wife, Martha Rawlins, is a well-known civil rights activist in the community. She has served many years on the Hutchinson Human Relations Commission and coordinated the city's Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration this year.
nothing new. Yet, for a while,
it seemed as though the public
was maturing when it came to
civil rights and racial equality.
It seemed as though blacks
and whites were learning to
live together, or at least to be
tolerant of each other.
However, the recent rash of racial incidents is quickly disproving this belief.
We live in the 1890s, not the 1880s or the 1950s. Events like the one in Hutchinson, as well as recent events in Cumming, Ga., and Howard Beach, N.Y., must stop. Americans should act like the sophisticated and educated country we claim to be.
We have come a long way since the racial turmoil of the past. Let's not allow a few ignorant people to make history repeat itself.
News staff
News staff
Frank Hansel. Editor
Jennifer Benjamin. Managing editor
Juli Warren. News editor
Brian Kablerette. Editorial editor
Sandra Engelland. Campus editor
Marik Sübert. Sports editor
Diane Dullmeier. Photo editor
Bill Skeet. Graphics editor
Tom Eblen. General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Lisa Weems. Business manager
Bonnie Hardy. Ad director
Denise Stephens. Retail sales manager
Kelly Scherer. Campus sales manager
Duncan Calhoun. Marketing manager
Lori Copple. Classified manager
Muriel Lumianski. Production manager
David Nixon. National sales manager
Jeanne Hines. Sales and marketing adviser
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Focus on 'student' in student-athlete
At any big university in the United States, there are students and there are athletes. Indeed, there are some students who also function, by choice, as athletes. But only by an act against nature is the hybrid student-athlete formed.
Douglas Houston Guest Shot
"Student-athlete" is a job title that defines a person who is paid in educational script for laboring on the fields and courts of a big university. The National Collegiate Athletic Association crowns these young men and women as the best that our universities have to offer. Instead, student "hyphen" athlete status is a requirement preventing some very reasonable and honest developments in sports and education.
The prestige and revenues attached to football and basketball are valued highly by most alumni
and university administrators. A university president may find greater job security if the football team is successful than if half the faculty win Nobel prizes. The rub always has been that there are very few young athletes who can bring instant sports glory and a large number of schools that bid for their services. Much of the NCAA's behavior can be explained as preventing bidding wars for these athletes by setting strict rules for recruitment and payment. Thus, a college education, with some incidental small expense pickups, is the limit. Presumably, most universities can afford this small sum and the destructive competition for the bodies of young men and women should cease.
The facts are far different. Bidding for the student-athletes continues, albeit in disguised fashion. When schools get caught enhancing the payments, we condemn the cheaters. Yet the rules continue to conflict with the values — the glory and prestige of highly visible and winning sports teams. The resulting tension has led to an incredible record of deceit.
most schools do what is necessary to be competitive in retention of the key resource – the student-athlete. The important point, it seems to be, is not to get caught. That is the real sin. This message of deceit would be damaging to an institution that should focus on intellectual achievement. Universities have devalued their reputations, and public trust has been replaced by a sharp cynicism.
The problem is not that people who love glamorous sporting events have impaired values. It is not inconsistent to want both a top-flight basketball team and an excellent intellectual institution. The inconsistency is trying to tie the two products together. The "needs" of the student-athlete, as defined by the NCAA, often leads to the subordination of education at the university to big sports success.
These problems cannot be swept away by better enforcement and more intensive oversight of the "student-athlete." The heart of the solution is to allow the pent-up demand for these young warriors to be vented in an open market for their services.
But like the University of Georgia.
If an athlete then wishes to use direct money payments to purchase education, that's his choice. The athlete, with competitive options, would make a market-tested wage and, if he so chooses, spend some of his income on education.
Sports that generate revenue at universities should be separated from educational and intellectual matters. State institutions that wish to continue sponsoring high-powered teams, finally, would see clearly the full costs of doing so, probably dissuading many from continuing revenue-producing programs. If alumni and others wish to sponsor a team, then the effort more appropriates them by managing privately, perhaps as a non-profit adjunct to the university — but fully separated from the university. Universities no longer would be party to NCAA-sanctioned exploitation of young athletes. Then, perhaps, the difficult task of repairing the damage done by big-time sports to our universities can begin.
Douglas Houston is an associate professor in the School of Business at the University of Kansas.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Allergy increases hostility towards cats
The allergy doctor made a series of about 40 tiny scratches on my arms. Then the nurse dabbed each scratch with a different fluid.
Mike Royko Columnist
The idea was to determine why I frequently break into sudden fits of sneezing, my eyes cry, and I feel like I have a cold when I don't have a cold.
"It takes about 15 minutes for a reaction," the doctor said. "It'll be back."
As I waited in the examining room,
I wondered if I hadn't made a mistake by taking the tests. What if he told me that I had a terrible, lifeshattering affliction, such as being allergic to booze, pork shanks, smoke-filled piano bars and blonde women?
After several minutes, a couple of
On the other hand, I thought, the news could be good. He might tell me that I'm allergic to regular work, Midwestern winters and that the only cure is to retire to a tropical beach and drink rum and Coke all day.
the scratches began to redden and itch like mosquito bites.
The doctor returned and peered at the festering little bumps and said: "Dust."
"Yes. You said that your eyes sometimes water when you read the newspapers in the morning!"
'That's right.'
The doctor studied the bumps further. Then he nodded and said, "It's cats."
"Some types of paper give off dust particles."
"Yes. You said you had two cats at home, did you not?"
"Cats?"
"That's not exactly true. They aren't my cats. Never in my life have I willingly acquired or possessed a cat. These two animals belong to my wife. They came as part of the deal." "Deal?"
"Getting married. But it could have been worse. I have a friend who married a widow with five sons. Two become dope heads, one wears women's undies, the fourth watches dirty movies 16 hours a day and the eldest lad is doing two to four years
for being a nocturnal porch climber."
"Well, the cats are your main allergy," the doctor said.
"But I seldom get near them. The one I call —head, he's cross-eyed. He thinks I'm a large dog and he hides under furniture when he sees me. The other one, I call her The Slut. She thinks I'm a piece of raw liver and she sinks her chops into my arm every chance she gets."
"You don't have to get near them," the doctor said.
He went on to explain that the problem stems from something in the cats' saliva. They lick their coat, and the sneeze-producing agent eventually falls on the hair, gets all over the face, and eventually winds up in my nose.
Then I get up in the morning feeling like I have a hangover, even when I haven't had the pleasure of earning money that has to be the height of injustice.
After he explained this, I said,
"Doc, could you do me a favor and write a note to my wife?"
"Why?
"Just say in the note that, in the interest of my health, it would be best if I put the cats in a burlap sack and slung it into the Lincoln Park lagoon."
He said he couldn't do that. Doctors, they're all alike.
But he did give me some pills that I can take before I go to bed. And a device that I use to squirp something in my nose four times a day.
He also gave me still another reason for being hostile to cats.
Here I am, a grown man. Not necessarily mature, but grown. And four times a day I have to squirt something in my nose. I hate squirting things in my nose. It is undignified. Ask yourself, ladies, how you would feel the man about Robert Redford or Paul Newman if you saw them squirting something in their noses four times a day?
But in order to coexist in my own home with one cat that fears me and another that attacks me, every four have to squirt something in my nose.
So I asked the doctor, "Tell me, there any indication that I'm allergic to any other kinds of animals, such as dogs?"
He said no.
In that case, I might stop at a kennel on the way home. I wonder what one of those mean little pit bulls sells for these days.
BLOOM COUNTY
LOLA WHY DID YOU TAKE MY CEREAL BOWL OUT OF THE FRIDE?
BECAUSE
IT'S TOTALLY
RIDICULOUS
THAT YOU KEEP
IT THERE.
by Berke Breathed
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