Open education
Magister, Hugh
should risk giving that regime some increased diplomatic iconography of Mars and Venus so favored by artists and stature if the survival of so many can result. patrons of...
...Asto call into question the fundamental premise of education in a suming that these statistics are correct, the Russian share of the democracy...
...Then the triple their present size, and the Azerbaidzhanis and Kazakhs selections should truly be made on merit, summoning forth the to double theirs...
...leaders to follow the example of Father Hesburgh in speaking out boldly...
...It's a depressing place to be...
...Commonweal: 646...
...One of dramatic...
...They should not be In 1968 the poet Robert Bly suggested that in electing Nixon ruled out in this crisis...
...patrons of the Renaissance and Baroque...
...Those who worship natural increase in the world...
...He could can Finally, as a society we ought to relieve the educationar the lot of them...
...stultifying hand of federal bureaucracy, it must be admitted Since the last census in 1970, the Soviet population, which that the monster has not been helpful...
...The ones who got there via a well- HUGH MAGISTER traveled, good of boy route...
...The Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Russian republics Nine, critics can exhibit devastating examples of bureaucratic grew by only 6 percent...
...The Soviet Union will then most likely contain the fifth country's educational policies...
...It early years she became a nun and left her native land to go as a depicts the bearded figure of Abraham raising his knife over religious missionary to a foreign country, that she has lived the the kneeling bound figure of Isaac...
...tion to the improvement of education in America...
...It is, in fact, resolved into the familiar of us, it appears as little more than rearranging boxes on an 23 November 1979: 645 organizational chart...
...The THE PRELIMINARY results of the latest Soviet census, voucher system may well pass in California...
...Office of Education...
...total Soviet population declined from 53.4 percent in 1970 to What is to be done...
...should seri- over a fallen student...
...It is something rather different and larger than "sexual sado- OPEN EDUCATION masochism," we think, and the happy ending does not arise THROW THE TIME-SERVERS OUT from any of the human values that the story calls so sharply into question...
...We're not completely sure what a secular saint would IMAGES OF KENT STATE be, but we suppose it would be someone who practiced heroic The four students slain at Kent State as this decade began virtue without religious inspiration-a very good person actwere memorialized recently, hundreds of miles from the ing without religious motivation...
...But most of system of being the dumping ground for all our pet diversions...
...And almost conducted in the week between January 17 and 24, everywhere it is hard to overstate the disgust that parents feel 1979, show a marked decline in the growth of the Slavic over the quality of education their children are receiving...
...Whether it is busing or bilingual, Title One or Title pace...
...The statue was commissioned in Ohio and was meant to This is secular...
...Segal...
...them...
...They felt that violence should not be commemorated by an image of violence...
...should hector their congressional representatives...
...It is a story to make us tremble...
...If this trend continues, the USSR will experieducating fewer children than at any time in the postwar era...
...This high birth rate, with a low positions should be declared open and subject to competition...
...In most major cities, the middle class, white and black, have all but abandoned public schools...
...Let them learn...
...How much kinder to our still smarting political chits, and they who secured President Carter's supconsciences...
...Who faithfully returned to the state teacher's college summer after summer until, by dint of perseverance rather than merit, they secured first a master's and then, that most dishonored degree, a doctorate in education...
...Their can only suppose that to the Times a non-secular or religious reasons (like this Comment) had to do not with its execution but saint would be someone floating by on a pink cloud...
...Most of the dull, uninspired, under- Let them teach...
...The Department of Education story of Abraham and Isaac is an intransigent story, not calculated to comfort..At its heart is an outrage whose absoluteness is the only human measure of the absoluteness of God's will...
...Only something on the order of actions but have never opposed them-not even military ones, Abraham and Isaac can stand up to it...
...If Mother Teresa is a secular grassy slope where they fell...
...must be taken that such a policy review does not become the In fact, and for reasons probably not contemplated by spon- self-serving document that so many previous commissions sors of the measure, the creation of the new agency affords the have produced...
...Care Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India...
...praise in theNew York Times, an editorial which referred to her in head and text as "a secular saint," a phrase which theTimes obviously intended as praise but which strikes us as odd, to say the least...
...But such need not be the case...
...There are reasons for that on which we should re- Missionaries of Charity, that has thousands of members who flect...
...stupidity, red tape and willful ignorance which time and again But the Caucasus and Central Asia experienced even greater have discredited legitimate efforts to redress social injustice growth: Georgia-7 percent, Kazakhstan-13 percent, and enhance educational opportunities for the disadvantaged...
...One can see their point without agreeing with them...
...ence a number of political crises in the first decades of the While it isn't fair to ascribe the blame for all of that to the twenty-first century...
...This country faces a crisis of USSR POPULATION BOMB public confidence in public education more severe than at any CENTRAL ASIANS ON THE RISE time since its founding...
...Most of whom...
...will include not only the Office of Education, but much of the Central Asians have been growing at a phenomenal average Office of Civil Rights as well, vitrually all of the professional rate of over 3 percent annually...
...with its choice of symbolism...
...It arises simply from that same, absolute will of THE CREATION of a Department of Education hasn't stirGod...
...Azerbaidzhan-18 percent, Kirghistan-20 percent, More to the point, far from assuring greater equality in educa- Armenia-22 percent, Turkmenia-28 percent, tion, they have actually diminished freedom and merit so far as Uzbekistan-30 percent, and Tadzhikistan-31 percent...
...What sleep there was brought nightmares that knowledge, citizens should not let national concern flag...
...made assistant principals...
...We have grave doubts about unilateral less absolute than itself...
...For the rest close is distanced...
...consists of over one hundred nationalities, increased by 9 Credible doubts exist as to the effectiveness of a host of percent-from approximately 241,000,000 to 262,442,000...
...Soviet census And who played politics well enough eventually to become school superintendents, or some like position, before entering the valhalla of such educators, the Office of Education...
...Throughout the new department, which approximately 52 percent at present...
...National Education Association...
...But a fresh wind of thought could do much to president the opportunity to make an extraordinary contribu- restore confidence in our ability to seek excellence...
...care for the poorest of the poor in countries all over the world...
...They should encourage religious...
...In short, if Mother Teresa is a secular saint, we stand at Kent State, but university officials rejected it...
...They should question pre*idential candidates, including the one in the White House...
...death rate, gives the Central Asians one of the highest rates of The federal employee unions will scream...
...The Russians will increase by only 10 thoughtful citizens who have no vested interest in the present percent, but their share of the population will fall to 44 persystem, and charge them to undertake a full review of this cent...
...The pleading female figure calls up the those negotiations, and Washington should be developing image of another female figure pleading and cursing in vain contingency plans for possible failure...
...By the year 2000, demographers at the altar of civil service will rage...
...2. There should be a reasonable time limit for pursuing But it won't work...
...I chose the image of life of a dedicated religious under vows of poverty, chastity, Abraham and Isaac," Segal said, "despite its sexual sado- and obedience all her adult life, that her very daily routine is masochism, and in spite of the conflict of the generations, one built around the divine liturgy, meditation, and prayer, because it deals with mercy and compassion and has a happy that in middle life she founded a new religious order, the ending...
...Who started off as Physical (Hugh Magister, a pseudonym, is a government official Education coaches, and perhaps after a losing season were familiar with the Office of Education...
...They some of us still cannot confront...
...pages because starvation is only dismal and not Prize to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, we did not see it...
...The U.S...
...This population and a dramatic increase in the number of Soviet despite the fact we are spending more in real dollars for Central Asians...
...We deserve to know what largest concentration of Muslims in the world (after Indonesia, works, and what doesn't, and how it can be made better...
...let alone humanitarian ones -in principle...
...A SECULAR SAINT' They should demand that the media not let the story slip into If there was dissent on the decision to award the Nobel Peace the middle...
...federally sponsored remedies for social and educational prob- Each region and nationality, however, grew at a different lems...
...It is a crime to talk about a second holocaust if the the generous tributes to the Roman Catholic nun was editorial talk-again-becomes a substitute for action...
...A brief ceremony at Princeton saint, what is one to make of the facts of her life: that in her University dedicated a bronze statue by George Segal...
...Oh, not all of them, of course...
...These nations will then number over 80 best people both within and without the educational com- million, a gain of almost 30 million since 1979, and will munity, constitute over one-quarter of the Soviet population, instead of At the same time, the president should assemble a group of the present 18 percent...
...Our failure to do so may worked and overpaid bureaucrats who comprise the bulk of the prevent us from doing anything else very well at all...
...should risk giving that regime some increased diplomatic iconography of Mars and Venus so favored by artists and stature if the survival of so many can result...
...The outrage that Abraham and Isaac bring up port by a well-timed endorsement of his election...
...thinking in routine patterns may be the the decade, and it defies any aesthetic response or rendering greatest enemy of all...
...Maybe the Kent State red much enthusiasm, except among activists from the administrators knew this better than Mr...
...It was they who lobHow much easier is their chosen image of violence softened bied it through the Congress, cashing in on well cultivated by erotic sentimentality...
...the Baltic republics, by 7-9 percent...
...They proposed instead a partially nude woman pleading with a soldier...
...But with skillful reorgani- expect the Kirghizes, Turkmens, Uzbeks and Tadzhiks to zation and writing of job descriptions, it can be done...
...That image from the day of the Kent State ously consider the proposals for action that deviate from stand- slayings is one of the best known journalistic photographs of ard relief operations...
...America turned to a familiar figure from the fifties and asked 3. Even in the absence of a definite proposal and complete him for sleep...
Vol. 106 • November 1979 • No. 21
