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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1961)
t English Courses Said Poorly Presented in Many Schools of Nation Full Dimensions Of Growing Crisis Now Documented By LOUIS CASSELS UPI Correspondent ' Take an inadequate number of teachers, most of whom are ill-trained for the task. Ask them to teach the most basic subject in the school curricu lum, under conditions ranging from bad to impossible. If you think that is a form ula for educational disaster, you need wonder no longer why Johnny can't read, write, spell, phrase or punctuate. The reason is that he is being taught English under precisely those circumstances. Colleges, employers, par ents and others closely as sociated with America's high school graduates have long been aware that something was horrendously wrong with their preparation in English. But the full dimensions of this growing crisis in literacy have only now been docu mented. The documentation is a 140 page report issued by the Na tional Council of Teachers of English. No False Alarms The council is an old and prestigious organization, not given to raising false alarms. Its report is soberly worded, backed up by extensive sur veys, heavily laden with sta tistics. Its conclusions should be terrifying to any citizen who knows that American students spend more time on English than any other subject; that two of the "3 R's" are in cluded in the subject; and that a mastery of his native language is the one indispens able skill that any person should be expected to bring away from a process called education. Just how poorly English is presently being taught in many U.S. elementary and high schools is dramatized by two statistics in the report. 1. Last year, of 600,000 high school graduates who took college entrance exami nations, 150,000 flunked English. MEDFORDns tU IT Tribune SECTION E MEDFORD, OREGON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 19(il PAGES 1 to 8 POLD WEATHER EXERCISE Sp5 Daniel exercise Willow Freeze". Behind Sowers Sowers": of Alameds,rCaUf., leads a-iamou,. are MSgt. Melvin Keoppel of Fresno, Calif., (flaged-patrol through wociis- 15J0: frtiles- in- and Pfc. James CbrBfeau, " San Francisco. 'land from Anchorage, Alaska, durlng-.the Soirie 7,000 men are taking part in the ex SUniled Staies Army's colli weather training, ercise. (UPI Telephoto) LOCKER c-2(8)c- DCCC and Quick J W DCCr Frozen ZZS 2 lb LEAN TENDER ' xx AHBKil a II II m Ifc. El H. VJU IS 18 III mt':Z!:'mil3 CUBES U7lb. 1pr OUR OWN MAKE COUNTRY SAUSAGE 3, ,.T CUBE STEAKS - 5 T Baby Beef Liver 39' Polish Rings ' 2 - 49' Big FREEZER SPECIAL 25 lbs. BEEF Only s1298 Cut, Wrapped and Quick Frozen CHRYSTAL MEATS 4th and Fir SP 2-7315 2. More than two-thirds of America's college and univer sities now find it necessary to offer remedial courses in Eng lish to incoming freshmen. Several Reasons The council pinpointed sev eral reasons for the poor quality of English instruction. First, there is a chronic shortage of teachers who meet state certification require ments for teaching English in high school. A survey indi cated the demand for such teachers outran the supply by 27 per cent. Second, many of the teach ers who do meet state certifi cation requirements are ac tually ill-prepared in English. The average state requires only 18 semester hours of col lege credit in English (three courses) to qualify as a high school English teacher. Six teen states will settle for one college course beyond fresh man English. A survey by the council in dicated that about half of the men and women now teach ing English in U.S. high schools do not themselves have a college major in Eng lish. (The percentage ranged from 40 in some states to 60 in others.) Colleges engaged in pre paring teachers could help the situation by requiring more ft . scsJZ? si I Small Worlds Around Us of their graduates than bare compliance with state certifi cation standards. But the council's studies clearly indi cate that few teacher-training institutes arc going a good job of preparing English teachers. To cite just one hair-raising statistic, only 17 per cent of the colleges require a course in modern grammar of gradu ates who are preparing to teach high school English. Preparation Inadequate Summarizing the situation, the council says that the prep aration of English teachers is "seriously inadequate" and "the great body of teachers now in English classrooms" are "simply not equipped" to deal with the subject properly. That would be bad enough. But there is more. Even the most highly quali fied English teachers are not able to teach effectively under the overcrowded conditions which exist in many U.S. schools. The average English teacher carries a "teaching load" of 150 to 200 students daily, whereas the council says 100 is a maximum for good teaching. Perhaps the greatest single weakness, however, is the chaotic condition of the Eng lish curriculum. Thousands of separate school districts plan their own English courses, with little coordination be tween elementary and high schools, between high schools and colleges, or even between Ouf-of-Hospital Coverage Increases New York -HIPP- There is a growing trend in the health Insurance business toward providing coverage for out-of-hospital diagnostic X-ray and laboratory work. As of the end of 1959, at least 32 million persons were protected by insurance com panies against the cost of out-of-hospital diagnostic work. one grade and the next. A hodge-podge of assorted courses bear the name English (California has 217 such courses in its public schools) and the really important studies - language, literature and composition - tend to get lost in a profusion of peri pheral studies. The council concluded that the outlook is desperate, and can be relieved only by a massive national pro gram such as Congress adopted, in the National Defense Educa tion act, to improve the teach ing of science and mathematics. English is surely no less 1 important. What good is a scientist who can't read? Or a mathematician who can't write a letter? NOTICE PEAR and PEACH ' GROWERS! - Lime and Sulphur 30 GAL 1ft DRUMS OU Gal. LIMITED SUPPLY . Jackson County Co-op SP 3-8464 1 wtl.:n (Register Tribune Syndicate, 1961) Wasps Anesthetize Victims, Use Them Later Induced anesthesia to ren der a patient unconscious, was practiced by some insects mil lions of years before man dis covered it. Chief among these lower creatures are the wasps and the spiders, and their mo tives, of course, are different from ours. Certain species of wasp have perfected the technique to a really high degree, even injecting enough of the mater ial to render the victim in capable of the slightest mo tion, and leaving the victim in a state of helplessness for in definite periods. The common mud-dauber wasp uses this technique in her daily life. On her ability to inject the proper amount and in the right place, de pends the welfare and future of her offspring. Deposited in Crypt I The female wasp seeks small spiders to anestnetize and deposit in a small earthen crypt of her own making, so that her offspring will have fresh food when they emerge from the egg. She has to pos sess a certain, instinctive knowledge of the anatomy of her intended victim. She must know just where to make the injection, as her victim must not be killed, but merely ren dered incapable of the slight est movement. - The insect victim of course, resists, and no two victims are exactly the same size. But with unerring instinct she plunges her hypodermic nee dle into the victim just back of the head. When the victim stops its struggles the wasp delivers other stings or in jections, i The prey now be comes limp and helpless, but is still alive. Into the farthest corner of the mud-capsule she has made, she stuffs the helpless vic tims. They are the living dead. There in silence and ab ject helplessness they await the hatching ol tne wasps egg, carefully placed and neat ly sealed in the capsule. Task Complete With this final gesture she flies away, instinctively know ing that her task is complete, that she has built a nursery and has stocked it with the proper food. Also, she must be confident that she has ad ministered just the proper amount of anesthesia to hold the captive spiders in a state of unconsciousness until the proper time. Spiders that might come out from under the influence of the drug before the wasp ba bies hatch would, in their frantic struggles to escape, probably kill the tiny wasp larvae. Strangely, the "dose" is al ways right; the insensible in sects, regardless of how long they must wait for the egg's hatching, are incapable of the slightest motion, yet they live. They are the food that will give the wasp babies the strength to break out of the earthen crypt and fly away as adult wasps. Unlike the human patient undergoing surgery, and in sensible to pain because of the injection of an anesthesia, the wasp's victims have no future. : They are forever suspended in a great void of insensibility j until the final end and then j there is nothing. j Eighty-three motion pic- j tures were imported and re- j leased in Japan in the first! half of 1958. 1 SMWvViV,t.tAi. . Hit hmlq S&xi Y!mjstsvy ' v imp Now W.A. Brings You A .Sizzling SALE From Their Complete Furniture De partment. Hurry! EASY TERMS. 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