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Monday, February 6, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
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Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Education reform little help to those the system has hurt
"I'm terrible at math. Besides, I hate it."
"Me, too, but I'm not going to be a computer scientist or a math teacher, so who needs it?"
math teacher, so who needs it. Recent studies by the federal government and the Educational Testing Agency reveal that three out of four college freshmen in this country are deficient in math skills. And U.S. eight graders were ranked second to last in math in an international survey.
Why have we slipped into the abyss of deteriorating education?
international students of poor academic skills among this nation's young people have been pouring in for far too long.
U. S. public education has gone through changes during the last couple of decades.Many changes were good.Some weren't.
Educators wanted children to be allowed to choose courses and thus become part of the learning process. A move was made to friendlier classrooms where children felt comfortable. Electives became the name of the game.
However, test results and surveys have proven that sending a child through a cafeteria line without supervision often results in a plateful of pudding and no vegetables.
results in a paletite of pudding and no vegetarian. After these children finish high school and get to college, the ill effects of poor choices and weak curricula are revealed. Charles Himmelberg, chairman of math at KU, said that a lack of basic skills contributed greatly to attrition at colleges.
Some people comfort themselves by saying that we're doing better, that we won't be in last place forever. It's about time we started improving education. But frankly it's little comfort to the students who are already behind.
The generation that lost out on skills in math and other basic subjects is still ignorant. What is being done to help those who are the products of the education backslide?
Even grade school children can be taught that what they do at a given time will affect what they are allowed to do later. It's called discipline.
It's called discipline.
Many deey the defense of the family in the United States as the problem of education. They blame a lack of discipline in the home. They blame uninvolved parents and rocky home environments. Valid points.
environments. Children who have been harmed by poor education and lack of engagement from home are without question the most unfairly set back. They must have guidance from strict curricula that will afford them a chance to succeed in life.
curriculum that will allow
Although much time is spent pointing fingers, deciding who
is to blame for the education slippage is only valuable when
one is trying to fix the system for future students. For those
already affected, it is time to make up the defect so they can
move on.
move on.
For those old enough to choose, it is time to realize that ultimately, their educations are their own responsibility. They must decide to attend class and to demand to be challenged
Sure, it's easier to sit in back of the class and be a victim of poor schools and support. It may even be excusable. But the only payoff is pity from those who bother to notice.
only payoff is pity from those It's not fair. It's not easy to take on the burden of playing catch up. But it must be done if U.S. students are going to bring themselves up to par with their peers around the world.
around the world Karen Boring for the editorial board
Other Voices
Bush no better than Reagan
The nation's nuclear-weapons plants have been operating under substandard safety conditions for almost 40 years. Remedying the situation will require as much as $120 billion over the next 20 years — $6 billion a year.
The ever-optimistic Reagan allowed for only $1 billion in his last budget proposal. Bush still hasn't offered a substantive plan to remedy this situation — much less a plan that reconciles his self-contradicting campaign promises.
What he has offered, however, are projections on the economy only slightly less rosy than those of his former boss. Do rosy outlooks solve budget messes?
If the past eight years are any indication, the answer is a flat no.
The Daily Texan, the University of Texas at Austin
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The Pits
Lashing out at LaRouche, cat-hater
A crowd of protesters had gathered on the sidewalk outside the building where I work. They chanted and yelled and sang songs.
this isn't an uncommon occurrence. Various groups occasionally come downtown to demonstrate their support of or opposition to one cause or another.
Because such expressions of free speech are legal, I respect their right to do so, even though listening to them can be a pain in the ear.
While this particular group set up its din, a coworker, who had just come into the building, stopped by to talk.
I asked him who the demonstrators were. "The LaRouchies," he said. "They're all upset." The Prince is going to prison.
I immediately went to a window that overlooked the street, opened it and bellowed:
"Shut your (deleted) mouths, you stupid (deleted), I hope that (deleted) rots in jail."
Someone has since informed me that it is the policy of this newspaper that employees not lean out windows and shout obscenities at demonstrators or anyone else. This is a class joint.
I wrote about their scams and cons, using legitimate issues such as drugs and nuclear war to play on the fears of gullible people, hustle
If there is one group of political nasties that I loathe, it is the laRouches. I began tangling with them at least 10 years ago, back before they became well known as a public nuisance.
So I won't do it again. But that one time, I couldn't resist it. The joy of the occasion simply overwhelmed me.
As you may have read, Lyndon LaRouche has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. And six of his followers got prison terms ranging from two to five years.
Mike Royko
Syndicated columnist
them for money and pump the funds to LaRouche so he could live like a king and indulge his fantasy of being a major international political force.
force. They didn't like seeing their scams exposed. Nor did they like reading facts about their leader, LaRouche, and themselves.
For example, it upset them whenever I wrote that LaRouche and many of his original followers used to be Communists. LaRouche was a vocal defender of Joe Stalin and his methods.
But for a variety of reasons, one of which was that you can't make a very good buck being a Stalinist, LaRouche and his top people switched political gears and became sort of a hodgepodge right-wing cult. It's still hard to categorize his beliefs because most are bizarre if not outright nuts.
nuts.
One thing that didn't change, though, were LaRouche's methods for keeping his followers in line. He and his top people still believed in the Stalinist approach. They demanded total, mindless obedience. They brainwashed, bullied and intimidated the mentally troubled misfits who gravitated to their cult.
But their methods finally caught up with them. The government gathered evidence that they had biked people out of more than $30 million in loans that they never intended to repay.
And they nailed LaRoche for claiming that he had no taxable income despite living on a huge estate with servants. His expenses were all paid by corporations he set up.
And they used them to raise money for themselves and LaRouche.
But what I dislike most about the LaRouchies is that they have humped off cats.
is that they have bumper or crates.
I'm not a great cat lover, although I provide food and shelter for two of them. However, I think it is cowardly to murder them.
And that's what LaRouchies did. When a reporter in New England wrote about some of their antics, they killed several of his cats. The killings didn't stop until the articles did.
Later, when I wrote something about them, they sent a cat death threat to the young female reporter who was my assistant.
I figured that anybody who threatens cats is basically a coward and a wimp. So I phoned the LaRouche office here and said that if they threatened harm to any more cats, I would come there with some large, violent friends and we would break their furniture, their legs, and maybe a few fingers and noses, and jump up and down on their chests.
down on their chests.
They shouted and sputtered that those would be criminal acts. I agreed but said we'd do it anyway and take a chance on getting a cat-loving jury. And that was the last I heard from the creeps.
I don't know which prison LaRouche and his associates will be sent to. But I hope that this column finds its way to his fellow inmates. They should know that they have a cat-killer in their midst. And I hope any cat-lovers among them do whatever they think is appropriate.
■ Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Chicago Tribune.
Bill would cut aid, alter social contract
You may not have read about it in your newspaper, this being basketball season, but an event that should be of interest to students occurred last week
when Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia introduced to Congress a bill to eliminate current federal programs and program.
student in Nuniyi bill would establish a voluntary national service program for youth, requiring two years of service from anyone wanting federal financial aid for post-secondary schooling. The service could be performed either in the military or in some as-yet-undefined public service jobs such as working in hospitals or conservation programs.
George Mitchell. Senate majority leader, called the bill "an effort to redefine the social contract between Americans and the government." Mitchell said Nunn's bill would be among the top five priority bills during this session, according to the New York Times.
The bill has more going for it than just the opportunity to redefine the social contract; it also provides a chance to reduce the budget.
The volunteer military force relies on what Charles Mosks calls a marketplace philosophy of trust.
To compete with the civilian economy for the declining numbers of 18- to 22-year-olds, Moskos said Congress had maintained military pay rates
Dick
Lipsey
Staff columnist
that were high by previous standards and by comparison with other armies. Thus the nation has a military force that is expensive and would be too small to meet its commitments in an emergency. The United States in turn has tried to develop state-of-the-art technology to compensate for small numbers of troops.
Nunn's bill would reduce the budget by paying two-year national service soldiers lower salaries than career soldiers for what amounts to a revived GI Bill. This GI Bill and its counterpart for those performing civilian volunteer service would be financed by eliminating other federal student aid.
student aid.
Professor Moskos also raised the larger issue suggested by Mitchell. What kind of society would excuse from service its privileged, who benefit from what Moskos called a "GI Bill without the GI," the system of loans, grant guarantees and work-study programs now in effect? Shifting federal support to those who earn
it through some form of national service is what Mitchell means by redefining the social contract. Those who serve would receive $20,000 or more that they could use only for post-secondary schooling or for a down-payment on a home.
schooling or for a law school. Redefining the social contract also means the military might once again become the social leveller it once was, the place where all races come together on relatively equal terms and are able to high positions. An example is Colin Powell. Reagan's national security advisor, Juan Winnings of the Washington Post called the Army "possibly the least segregated part of America's work force," because the white middle and upper classes aren't in the Army and other services. They now are segregating themselves at places such as the University of Kansas, which has dwindling minority enrollments. Nunn's bill might, in the long run, alleviate racial tensions that result from the current lack of interaction between groups.
GROUP
The three essays in any case deserves more attention than the few lines of print it received from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the disgraced shown by most other papers. Given the social attitude of recent years, Numn's bill would be a welcome step forward.
- Dick Lipsey is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed