1
opinion
Slouch By Jim Earle
“At this point, there’s no need for you to write your name
in the concrete. Since you’re stuck there, you can just tell
people your name on a one-to-one basis. ”
Schools lose monopoly
on higher education
by Patricia McCormack
United Press International
The monopoly on education held for
years by schools and colleges has crum-.
bled, says Dr. Ernest L. Boyer, president
of the Carnegie Foundation for the Adv
ancement of Teaching.
The unheralded teacher includes cor
porations, for one. And television, and
videocassettes, and, perhaps, the greatest
teachers of all, peers of students.
Consider what’s happening at the cor
porate level, Boyer said in a report at the
87th annual meeting of the North Cen
tral Association of Colleges and Schools
in Chicago Monday:
1. The nation’s corporations spent $30
billion last year on training and educa
tion for workers — about equivalent to
what was spent by all public colleges and
universities in that academic year.
2. Some insurance companies such as
Prudential run minicolleges for workers
— both new and those brushing up —
year after year. The same for oil com
panies, banks, accounting and engineer
ing firms, steel companies, those in elec
tronics, aerospace and all the rest.
3. These are not two-penny opera
tions. AT&T spent $1 billion for training
and runs one of the biggest schools away
from the traditional school setting in the
nation.
4.1’he job-based training served up by
the corporations isn’t the wet noodle sort.
More than 2,000 courses offered by 138
corporations have been identified by the
American Council on Educa
tion as worthy of academic credit.
Boyer, former U.S. Commissioner of
« Education and past Chancellor of the
State University of New York, said the
many non-traditional sources of educa-
^ tion are a mighty force on the contem-
- porary scene.
< “I’m convinced that for both schools
and colleges the developments in non-
- traditional education cannot be
ignored,” Boyer said at the 87th annual
meeting of the North Central Association
of Colleges and Schools.
“The schools’ monopoly on education
has crumbled.”
Boyer’s report, in a benign way, took to
task those who run schools and colleges
as though such sources are the only ones.
His report was titled: “What Consti
tutes a High School? What Constitutes a
^ College?”
His answer was that more than a tradi
tional school constitutes a school or a col-
> lege. And the non-traditional teachers he
v numbered included more than those
“ working on the job-based education
scene.
“Satellites, computers, calculators,
cable television and videocassettes are
the compelling new teachers of our
time,” he said.
“Some day soon, through new technol
ogy, almost any subject may be studied
conveniently at home and newspaper
subscribers may routinely be able to ‘call
up’ on their home consoles stories from
their favorite publications.”
Here’s some more evidence Boyer put
down to show schools have lost their
monopoly on education:
— Peers have become the most in
fluential teachers of the young.
— Young people spend about 20,000
hours in front of television and only ab
out 11,000 hours in the classroom. The
electronic teachers are here to stay and
the potential for better education is enor
mous. “A student who has gone with Jac
ques Cousteau to the bottom of the sea,
or has traveled with an astronaut to outer
space, or met Leonard Bernstein with the
Vienna Philharmonic or listened to the
creationism debate on MacNeil-Lehrer
— such a student has seen and heard far
more than classroom can provide.”
For the educators, traditional and
non-traditional, there’s also the
“changed student” to add to the mix on
the education scene, Boyer said.
“Student have become more sophisti
cated, more adult, more skeptical and
much less innocent — or so it seems,” he
said, making these points:
— Today, one-third have sexual inter
course by their 15th birthday.
— Forty percent of the girls who are 14
today will be pregnant at least once dur
ing the next five years.
— Forty percent of the high school
students say they have had five or more
drinks in a row during the past two
weeks.
— Every hour, 57 teenagers try to kill
themselves.
“These darker trends suggest a youth
culture that is trapped in a youth ghetto,
a kind of thought zone of uncertainty
and ambiguity during which childhood
innocence is lost and adult responsibility
is chemically denied.
“The current folklore says that young
people are largely undisciplined and self-
indulgent.
“The larger truth appears to be that we
have forced this life upon them.
“Young people are denied the respon-
siblity of growing up.
“Since the 1900s, they are biologically
more mature and more worldly wise and
yet the rigid lockstep (of education and
entry to society as responsible members)
has not changed.”
the small society
by Brickman
IN
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AlJPIT-
IN^ A<^A IN -
©1980 King Features Syndicate. Inc. World rights reserved
Battalion/Page 2
April 2, 1982
Tension in the Democratic camp
by David S. Broder
WASHINGTON — The Democratic
Party wound up one important piece of
business last week and started another.
The Democratic National Committee
gave final approval to rules which will set
aside about 550 seats in the 1984 conven
tion — one of every seven — for elected
and party officials uncommitted to any
presidential candidate.
At the same time the party was giving
this preferred status to its officeholders,
another party commission was beginning
the ticklish task of exploring how to hold
those same elected officials accountable
for the promises in the party platform.
The work of the new commission is
unlikely to produce any result as clear-
cut or dramatic in its political effects as
the rule creating the bi^ bloc of uncom
mitted delegates. But it illustrates the
continuing tension within the party.
It is a tension between its politicians,
who prefer a flexible, accommodating
style of operations as the surest path back
to power, and its more idealogical in
terest-group supporters, who see the
party primarily as a vehicle for promot
ing their own causes.
The officeholders tend to blame the
issue-activists for pushing the party in the
1970s into support of policies that were
outside the mainstream — and saddling
it with presidential candidates who were
rejected by most voters.
That is why they demanded — and got
— a bigger role for themselves in the next
convention hall.
But the issue activists have not dis
appeared. Their energy, money and
advocacy are still very important to the
party, and their demands on its officehol
ders will not cease.
The resolution creating a “platform
accountability” commission was pushed
through the 1980 convention (with the
acquiescence of Jimmy Carter) by the so-
called Progressive Alliance, an amalgam
of labor unions, civil rights organizations,
feminist groups and other mass-
membership organizations with their
own, mostly liberal legislative and politic
al agendas.
Representatives of these groups
dominate the commission, chaired by
Yvonne Brathwaite Burke of California.
Burke illustrates the kind of private
agendas that flourish among commission
members. Although she is a former
member of Congress, she went to Dallas a
couple months ago to endorse another
black woman who was running for the
House against the Democratic incum
bent.
Burke makes no apologies for her ac
tion, saying explicitly that she wants to
see more women and blacks in Congress.
But the incumbent, Rep. Martin Frost, is
part of the House leadership who has
fought the Boll-Weevil defectors in his
state, while Burke’s endorsee had so little
regard for party labels that she has subse
quently decided to run as a Republican.
That fact puts Burke in an awkward posi
tion when it comes to preaching party
loyalty.
But the clearest example of the ten
sions in this territory comes from the
commission’s co-chairman, Terry Hern
don, the executive secretary of the Na
tional Education Assn. Herndon is an
aggressive, outspoken liberal who has
tried to turn the 1.7 million member
teachers’ organization into a political
machine for promoting a wide range of
progressive programs.
Under Herndon, NEA elected 302 de
legates to the 1980 Democratic conven-
tion and in many states so dominate
delegate-selection procedure that
trolled other votes as well.
NEA has a very explicit ageni
win NEA endorsement, a legislator
not only support large-scale federal
to education, he or she mustalsoopi
any form of aid to private or pan
schools.
Thus, in his NEA role, Herndon
he cannot, at this point, supportsoi
like Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (IM.
whose record is marred (in NEA’s
by his advocacy of tuition-tax crei
Yet the same Herndon, as a Deoi
tic Party activist, is trying to instillwlJ
calls “idealogical substance” into!
organization and persuade the
cians they should not automatically
port just anyone who manages I
nomination as a Democrat. Thata
eclecticism, lie says, “won’t do.”
The tension between the idealoJ
and the office holders, the purists#
the pragmatists, is not new. Butt;
particularly acute in today’s Democii
Party, which has grown increasl
ependent on independent orgai
tions, like NEA and the unions, wi
have their own agendas.
It is important that these tensiod
examined now, while the Democratj
out of power, because they will bet#
more critical if and when the Derm
regain control of government
If the Democrats are to function
governing party, they need someim
of dealing with those legislators (likti presentation
Boll Weevils) who defect on criticalisi
of budget and economic policy
equally, they need a method than
assure that their agenda foractionis
party’s agenda — and not just a comp
dium of interest-group wish lists.
Sonia Walsl
future mns
by Beverly
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During theii
•WHKS XWUK VertSgcn
Letters: Reagan has tough questioij
Editor:
In listening to President Reagan’s
news conference Wednesday night I
couldn’t help noticing the parody in his
words. In one breath he wishes for a un
ilateral reduction in nuclear armament
between the U.S. and the Soviets to bring
long-lasting peace. In a following state
ment he claims the only way the U.S. can
achieve this is if it speeds up nuclear
armament.
the student body of Texas A&M Univer- task that is too formidable for one®
sity to offer their comments and sugges- handle.
tions to this volatile situation. This is a Richard J. Gosse
On the surface this would seem to be
quite a paradox, but it may also very well
be the solution to the current dilemma. It
is quite obvious that the Soviet Union is
definitely superior to the U.S. with re
spect to nuclear arms. With this in mind,
what advantage would it be to the Soviets
to make a nuclear arms reduction agree
ment? It seems the only way they would
succumb to this is if they were intimi
dated. The only way they will become
intimidated is if the U.S. appears
threatening to them.
The question is this: Do we build up
our nuclear arsenal and then go to the
bargaining table or do we bargain with
what we have now? That is a tough ques
tion for which I unfortunately have no
answer.
However, someone will have to come
up with an answer, and that someone will
be President Reagan. With this, I invite
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