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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 14, 1986)
Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, March 14, 1986 Opinion Testing teachers won’t solve education’s problem'we Too many tests this week? Defi nitely — 210,000 too many. And to teachers, no less. T he Texas Exami nation of Current Administrators and Teachers (TECAT) literally “dogged” teachers Monday into lap ping the state government’s feet to hold on to their jobs. Collared into taking this literacy test to measure their reading and writing skills, Texas teachers are breathing no easier now while they wait for the results of an impersonal exam that wasted their time and our money. In the midst of Gov. White’s ballooning education reform dreams, teachers themselves may lose that dogged will to keep pushing students up — too busy looking over their shoulder for fear the state will pull them down. Oh come now, it’s just one test, the Texas Education Agency says. Why all the irritating prattle about a few mul tiple choice questions and a 150-word essay, a test that’s supposedly so simple only 5 percent of our teachers should fail? As test-benumbed college students, we could easily scratch our heads at all this ruckus stirred by an exam testing such skills as grade school grammar and spelling. But think back to that *!#!•* SAT that pried open for us the impos ing doors of ivory towers across Amer ica. Maybe you were an “A” student and bombed The Test. You made it to col lege all right, but you’d swear on the Bi ble that test was no mirror of your smarts, your savvy and your will to sur vive the system. Likewise, too much is riding on this exam for teachers, who already endure an obstacle course of testing to win their certification in the first place. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) stip ulates that teachers pass both the Pre- Professional Skills Test, a literary test similar to TECAT, and the EXCET Exam before they can even look at their license to teach. At Texas A&M, future teachers must also sail past an English Proficiency Exam and three graduated checking points that make sure students are qualified first for Teacher Educa tion classes, second for student teaching and finally for that degree and certifica tion to teach. So now state legislators are spoon feeding teachers and Texas taxpayers into accepting just one more test, one more miracle worker from House Bill 72. Readily admitting TECAT does not measure teacher competency, the TEA also has in the works a yearly set of four classroom appraisals of teachers, two per semester by local school administra tors. With these on-the-spot critiques regularly taking place at each public school, there’s simply no need for the state to get back in the act of evaluating teachers with one more test that’s te dious, expensive and solves nothing. “We may be entering into an era of over-testing,” said Dr. William Peters, head of the Educational Curriculum and Instruction Department at A&M. And like a magnet, the threat of TE CAT failure has attracted a swamp of preparatory classes which Texas teach ers have been rushing too throughout the past year, resulting in the devalua tion of the ultimate evaluation. For these courses build confidence more than anything, but budding quizmanship is no sign of a good tea cher. Entangling confusion with costs, the school districts are paying for all these preparatory courses to assuage teachers’ testing fears. Add to that the $4.7 mil lion spent by our state government Monday just to administer this test to thousands of teachers. Add to that the costs incurred in legal fees when Texas teachers tried to get the TECAT ruled unconstitutional. And more lawsuits are likely to follow. A common concern abounds that black and Hispanic teachers will fare the worst on this exam. The Dallas Inde pendent School District has been ad ministering a preemployment test like TECAT' for the past five years. “Despite higher failure rate, minority teachers were hired because the district is under court order to boost the number of black and Hispanic teachers,” The Houston Chronicle reported, adding that the district must also hire low-scor- ... so what’s the point of tests So many Texas teachers were suf ficiently upset about having to take the Texas Ex amination of Cur rent Administra tors and Teachers (TECAT) Monday that I’ve begun to think there might be something to their complaints. Michelle Rowe Why should a teacher who already has earned his or her teaching certifi cate have to take another test in order to keep that certificate? Why should a tea cher have to be tested on his knowledge at all? Having to take an exam which may dictate your future is unnerving, to say the least. And in this trying world we live in who needs the extra pressure? To put an end to all this unnecesary emotional strain I propose that tests be abolished — all tests. No more sweaty palms or upset stom achs that come with worrying about fail ing. No one will fail because no one will be tested. High school students won’t have to take the SATs to get into col lege. Why should they have to take a test to prove what they have learned from certificate-wielding teachers? A high school diploma will be all the clout any kid needs to get into the college of his choice, or to get the job of his choice. No more nerve-wreaking job inter views or employment exams. Why should anyone have to prove what he knows or what he is capable of? This is the land of opportunity. Everyone ought to be able to dp anything he wants for a living. You want to be an airline pilot? Sure! Can you start Monday? An air traffic controller? Great! We can never have too many air traffic controllers. People won’t have to take tests to get into law school or medical school. They won’t have to take tests while they’re in school. For that matter, why should they have to have a certificate from such schools to practice law or medicine. You want to be doctor? Can you play golf? No more tests for drivers’ licenses. Anyone who can get their hands on a motor vehicle can drive it. No more try-outs for sports teams. Too much pressure is put on athletes anxious to make the cuts. Just let every one play. No more entrance requirements for the military academies or the armed services. Let everyone join. Let’s abolish all qualification restric tions for any job. What purpose do they serve? You want to run for president of the United States, but you’re afraid the fact that you’re only 14 years old might be a hindrance? Nonsense! Have some self-confidence. What possible differ ence could a few years make? Why should people be discriminated against and prevented from getting cer tain jobs just because they aren’t qual ified? That’s not very nice. Wouldn’t the world be a much hap pier place if everyone got to do what he or she wanted to do? No more pres sures, no more hurt feelings. After all, it shouldn’t matter if a person is qualified for the job. All that should matter is that everyone get his own way. Michelle Powe is a senior journalism major and the editor for The Battalion. Ignorance no excuse for Holocaust Among the causes to which Kurt Waldheim has devoted his life, ignorance is surely one. Asked to account for his years as a Nazi sol dier, he said he never knew about Richard the atrocities be- Cohen ing committed — around him. Asked how he could not, he answers that he still does not know. For .almost 45 years, the former U.N. secretary general has pursued igno rance as if it were truth. He thinks it will set him free. The charges against Waldheim are several. The first is that he was an early Nazi recruit. Not true Waldheim says. The second charge is that Waldheim served both in Yugoslavia and Greece under Gen. Alexander Lohr, who was later executed as a war criminal. In Yu goslavia, Lohr’s forces committed atro cities. In Greece they were responsible for, among other things, the deporta tion of 42,000 Jews from the city of Sa lonika to extermination camps in Po land. To the last charge, Waldheim says not guilty. He was merely a staff officer to Lohr, an occasional translator, and not only did he have nothing to do with the expulsion of the Jews, but he did not even know about it. Confronted by the New York Times, Waldheim confessed not just innocence, but ignorance as well. “I regret these things deeply,” he said, referring to the deportation of the Salonika Jews while he was there. “But I have -to repeat that it is really the first time I hear that such things have hap pened. I never heard or learned any thing of this while I was there. I hear for the first time that there were deporta tions of Jews from there.” It could be that Kurt Waldheim worked for the very Nazi general who organized the expulsion of the Jews of Salonika and never heard a thing to make him suspicious. It could be that al most half of Salonika’s residents van ished — much of the merchant class — and Waldheim did not notice. It could be that the butcher went, the shoe maker, too, the lawyer in his office, the doctor in his clinic, the haberdasher in his store — and still Wldheim took no notice. The children were gone off the street, the old men from the park and the wind banged the shutters of empty homes, but Kurt Waldheim walked by, noticing nothing. It could be. But it could not be. Or it could be that he did notice. But what could he do? He was a mere cog in a huge killing machine — a soldier in the army, not a race-hater in the SS, not a sadist for the Gestapo torture cham bers. Europe was a vast charnel house and everywhere the innocent were be ing murdered. To admit casual complic ity for what happened during the war is almost to earn moral immunity now. What could one person do? What would you have done? But the measure of the man can be taken in his proclamation of ignorance. Here is the self-confessed dumbbell in all his glory — a person who boasts no knowledge of history as if that frees him from its consequences. In Waldheim’s case, a great crime took place under his nose and he smelled nothing. He was, he insists, the three monkeys rolled into one. Stop picking on him. Even in the awful annals of the Holo caust, the saga of the Jews of Greece is a special horror. It was a very long way from Salonika to the killing camps of Poland. The Jews of Salonika — men and women, children and the aged, the pious and the cynical, the jaded and the romantic were put into trains and shipped across Europe. The journey took days and all this time the Jews of Salonika went without water or food, without toilets or baths — in some cases without air to breathe. By the times the trains reached the camps, many of the Jews were already dead. They suffered terribly and the Jewish community, 500 years old and renowned throughout Eu rope, was no more. After the war, Kurt Waldheim be came a world leader. He is now running for the president of Austria. It is barely acceptable for him to say he was oblivi ous to mass murder when he was a ju nior officer; it is not acceptable for him to say he spent a life that way. As a man and as a political leader, it was his obli gation to find out what happened dur ing the war, to see what, in his modest way, he made possible — to know and, in the telling phrase of Arthur Koestler, “to be haunted by his knowledge.” But Waldheim says nothing haunted him. He proclaims his innocence by con fessing ignorance. But what it really comes down to is indifference — an in advertent confession pf guilt. It is what made the Holocaust possible. Richard Cohen is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. ing white applicants to avoid charges of reverse discrimination. If test results on a statewide scale heel after this trend, we may see law suits and prejudice charges galore. It’s becoming a never-ending cy cle — one minute the state draws an un bending line and the next minute it must make excuses for failure. ;or But hold everything, Gov. White sa\s this illustrious literacy exam is the be ginning of a “new economy” in Texas as the state moves away from dependence on oil and gas. Our teachers will help build this economy “with greater pride because they passed that test," White says. Now, how he expects a test that is costing so much and doing so little to in augurate the solving of Texas’ economic woes is beyond comprehension — pure political rhetoric at its finest. of scores of dubious adminisn While mam parts of Texas artfe dering on a teac her shortage, tl absurdh hands administrators atH wanted exc use to cull their toBy t anks. We aren't giving out school* S,J cipals the credit lot evaluating the® A&M , >gnmngpooi|. ewed ■iters at th Once again, we’re allowing p® Fair in i mem to step in .is the greatniam out students' slipping perfortrJ ers displ The problems begin in the home.B es< *‘ 1 '' ‘ m< evet. when parents neglect both phn Kane, t coinage and to discipline theird iter, said th No wondet 1>.i<! and Mntn areeat®' 1, 1 * cart kids off to school to knock® ale 111-1 , fers and sc school stalls and i chers. ith tite teacher lor / hours a tb As if dishing up more doubt to covet White’s piece of cake, Peters cited the testing policy of the Education Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, N.J., which gives similar literacy exams. But there's one hitch. These exams can’t be used to exclude teachers from their profession. With all its research and experimenta tion, ETS does not deem its tests reliable or valid enough to cost a teacher his or her job — which exactly contradicts what the state of Texas is attempting with TECAT. “I don’t know any teachers we have on our staff that 1 hope fail so we can get rid of them,” says Navasota Superin tendent John Webb, echoing the views this, te; at hers suf fer low pay, lowrt lion tit id potential low esteem. B years 1 atei when the strains oil and G ircumstance” greet the e gradual ites and their parents,there sihilits is thrust solidly hack in the ly’s hat Alth ough we make patsiesofi ers, tii ue responsibility remains; front < doorstep throughout these trovers home t iial educating years, never It intil the 18-year-old does ! tion c; mnot be vastly improved parent s evaluate, or rather test. selves. their children and theirs — insu ead of depending on goveti and tet tellers to do the dirty work. Cynthi ra Gay is a junior journalis its. ■ Holland. 1 his busines ufc from tin ’teompete 5 prices, but lal Compu ■fleeted 1)' fifessional QfCO Asso tlioi Mail Call .HOUSTON . , , , . ,^Bl bottom J or and a weekly columnist fo« lon an d mt $1 per g airman Le< ■day. ‘Ighink a bi fmd itself,” I elite. “You Bo our pla He noted th; Letters to the Editor should not exceed 300 won right to edit letters Lor style :md length but will m.ikc Each letter must be signed and must include the addt ^^^■olling ol irm ial staff resents® S2- nd. Iliocca, on t m.lint.tin theauthot’sii me number of the write Beware of thieves i tour to pi dels, said li ces were the ort by the ( ■Exportin EDITOR: To the thief who stole my backpack f rom Sbisa on Monday, 1 wouldfi^‘ire impc you to consider just what you got out of breaking the law. You stole an lete, six-year-old Radio Shack computer, a check book which vou cannotm a Management 21 1 text, a TAMU paycheck, some notes and some compui program listings. All of this will provide you with maybe S15 if youselliB iTYr text and possibly a few minutes of enjoyment from tinkering withapodfl computer I doubt you have the mentality to use. You risked being thrown* of the University for that? Now what did 1 lose? I lost the notes and the tei for a test I would take in two days, programs 1 ne class I would have in two hours, time and mom checks, a pocket computer which I had become fai worth much and a ragged but functional backpack. To the people who eat at Sbisa. Don’t make the manager at Sbisa told me that a backpack is stolen inconvenience to carry your pack with you when th< is not nearly as inconvenient as having it stolen bv a 15 bucks. p. y stc niliar ■tits Mat >k I needed tostti®Hi repor t<> tut it in durinj®£ et tf pping payment m wou same mistake 1 did almost every day. Its lockers are full, butt student wanting to mall Joseph Gish Guns can be fun . “Basement arsen; 1 he battalion. EDITOR: This letter is in response to Michelle Powe’s article don’t defend traditional values,” in tite Mar. 7 edition of I have an AR-15 which is the semi-automatit version of the M-16, and sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, which 1 carry in my pick-up. With theset' 1 weapons I pay for my way through college. During breaks in the schoolveat I am traveling to Angola, Afghanistan and other countries in needofhitf guns. All that I require is the right price. Yep, 1 can make enough money pay all my college expenses and have plenty left over. But seriously, folks. I do actually own an AR-15 and a sawed-off shotgun. The shotgun islej as hell, so don’t get anymore ideas about people overstepping the law. Iguei- you have never shot an automatic or semi-automatic gun. They happentolx some of the most accurate rifles around. They are also light and very durable This would make the semi-automatic gun an excellent rifle for hunters have hunted deer for 12 years, and my father for many more. We have us semi-automatic rifles for a number of years and are extremely pleased. reason you have never known anyone to hunt with an automatic is that in' illegal as hell to hunt with one. You say that people kill people. I agree totally. But doing away withgun* will not stop the killing. The only purpose of automatic weapons is not to^ people. They are good investments and fun to shoot at targets. One more question. How many people do you know have a tank parked at their house for protection? Chuck Klein egents. 'erry Etc; t of Tina ash baht hich cast out o hut a in the contra Frestd this is he Batt The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Editor Managing Editor Opinion Page Editor City Editor News Editor Sports Editor Michelle Po* ( Kay Malk* Loren Sied 1 Jerry 0# .Cathie AndeD 0 * 1 Travis TinjX community cc to Tt ns A&M and Hrvan-CM Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper operated Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the Editorial Board 01 the author and do not necessarily represent opinions of Texas AScM administrators, faculty or the Board of Regent The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within^ Department of Communications. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and eun^ lion periods. 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