Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 342, Greencastle, Putnam County, 17 September 1985 — Page 7

opinion

Letters to the Editor Special meeting will decide future of Fillmore Lions Club

To the Editor: At the recent meeting of the Fillmore Lions Club Board of Directors, it was decided to call a special meeting for the purpose of determining the future of the club. The meeting is open to all present and past Lions Club members and all interested residents of the Fillmore community. Attendance and participation in Lions Club activities have become very poor. Average attendance at meetings and work projects is about four to six members. There are only 17 names on the current roster and three of those are behind in dues. Lions International requires 20 members to maintain a club. At this meeting we must determine if the community wants or needs a service club. We must determine if the Lions Club will remain in Fillmore or disband.

City should step gingerly before signing cable TV pact

To the Editor: I applaud City Councilman Bob Sedlack’s pertaining to the lackadaisical attitude of Horizon-TCI cable TV, until it appeared the city would not renew its contract with the company when it expires Nov. 11. Only until then did Horizon begin an extensive maintenance sweep of their Greencastle operation, hoping to calm the undercurrent of hostility area residents feel over the company’s poor service and picture quality. Since we are now so interested in Horizon’s negotiations for a renewed contract with the City of Bloomington, it should be pointed out that the company did a similar maintenance sweep there, prior to signing a new contract. In addition, Horizon’s cable contract with Bloomfield was also renewed, but not without numerous complaints pertaining to the “horrible service record” they compiled in that area. That was the assessment given by Bloomfield cable advisory board chairman Michael Rudicil, which was reported in an edition of the Bloomington Herald-Telephone newspaper. Horizon’s poor service record apparently precedes itself not only in Greencastle, but in its other cable TV market areas as well. Horizon Area Supervisor Louise Balzer was quoted in the Sept. 11 Ban-

The Banner-Graphic welcomes your views on any public issue. Letters must bear the writer’s signature and printed or typed name, full address and telephone number. We routinely correct errors of fact, spelling and punctuation. All letters are subject to editing, but such will be held to a minimum and the intent of a letter will not be altered. We do not publish poetry or personal expressions of thanks as letters to the editor. Letters containing personal at-

Evaluating schools: Why such opposite conclusions among experts?

By FRED M HECHINGER c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the public schools. One set of experts asserts that the schools are better than they have been for years. Others say that the schools are in terrible shape and are responsible for every national problem from urban poverty to the trade deficit. For example, earlier this month, the Committee for Economic Development, an organization of leaders in business and industry, blamed low education standards for a decline in American industrial competitiveness. With a new school year under way, these conflicting judgments are bound to confuse parents who want to know what’s in store for their children. The picture may become clearer if they understand how the experts arrive at such opposite conclusions. One group of experts looks primarily at such indicators as test scores, and they cheer what they see: all the indicators reading scores, minimum competency test results,"'the Scholastic Aptitude Test

The special meeting will be held in the Christian Church basement at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 19. There will be no meal. Members of the Greencastle Lions (the chartering club for Fillmore) also will be in attendance. Also to be discussed will be the distribution of the Lions funds in the event the club ceases to exist. At present, there is $547.12 in checking account and SIOO in savings. Recently the Lions Club purchased glasses for needy children in the community, prepared Christmas baskets for the needy and placed streetlights for those requesting them. These services may cease if the club folds. If you fill Fillmore needs a services club, and is you feel you can assist, please plan to attend this meeting. Bill Seibold, secretary Fillmore Lions Club.

ner-Graphic, saying the Greencastle office was “receiving compliments on the picture quality.” She also told city councilmen “people are very pleased with the service.” As decrepit as the service was before, any improvement would be a miracle. I imagine if the Greencastle office received even two favorable phone calls, it would constitute a favorable majority in her mind. Councilman Larry Taylor said he was tired of discussing the issue, which the council has heard for over a year. Whose fault is it that the city has not resolved the issue by now? I agree with Councilman Sedlack that the City Council, and the Board of Works, should step gingerly, if at all, before it commits itself to a new cable TV contract with Horizon-TCI And for those persons who sat snickering when the cable TV issue was being discussed, apparently determining it has no real merit, residents concerned about this issue find it to have more worth than you think In fact, I feel it carries just as much importance as the trees, city map, park benches and other landscaping you plan as an improvement project for the Vine Street parking lot, which was detailed to the City Council. Becky Igo Greencastle

tacks on individuals, libelous statements or profanity will not be considered for publication. Use of initials in lieu of the writer’s full name will be permitted only in cases in which the Banner-Graphic determines there is an appropriate reason. Send your letters to: Letters to the Editor, The Banner-Graphic, P.O. Box 509, Greencastle, Indiana 46135. Letters also may be brought to the newspaper at 100 N. Jackson St., Greencastle.

scores are up, some by substantial margins. Students are required to take more academic courses more mathematics and science, along with greater stress on basic skills, including knowledge of computers. More than 40 state legislatures have mandated such changes. Such improvements have caused Reagan administration officials, along with other observers, to contend that Americans are heeding their warning about a rising tide of mediocrity issued three years ago in a federally sponsored report titled “A Nation At Risk.” The standards proposed in the report were subsequently adopted by many politicians and by many local school boards. By those standards, the schools today are better than they were two, five or ten years ago. But in the eyes of another set of school reformers, such changes are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive. These experts say that merely toughening requirements, without either improving the quality of instruction or, even more important, changing the way schools are organized and children are taught makes the schools worse rather than better. They challenge the nature of the tests, mostly multiple choice or true or false, by which

Dealing with The Odds a series of trade-offs

c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK-For hours on end last month New Yorkers waited in those lottery lines, pulses quickened by hope, minds purged of logical perspective, hearts lusting for that big gold ring. How could we have wasted so much time, money and adrenaline? We knew, after all, that the odds were 6,271,756 to 1 against winning poorer odds than those of getting mugged or hit by a car, odds roughly the same as those of being struck by lightning in a given year. We knew, but we put the dismal knowledge aside and let our dreams rule us. And as it turned out, a few of the dreamers are now rich Casinos, banks and insurance companies prosper by playing odds rather than hunches, but to most of the rest of us, The Odds are the enemy, stacked against us at the race track and the office and the cancer ward. But a tenet of our culture is that however grim The Odds may seem, true grit can defy them. When Harvard scientists disclosed evidence in 1982 that coffee drinkers might be three times likelier than normal to contract pancreatic cancer, the bad tidings spread swiftly. But did we take the warning implied by those odds seriously? Of course not. A poll taken by University of New Mexico researchers showed that of hundreds of coffee drinkers who had heard of the Harvard findings, only one had stopped drinking coffee. Although there is now some skepticism about those findings, the coffee drinkers didn’t know about the doubts at the time. Our perceptions seem immune to The Odds. The polls

( ON THE OTHER HAND \ } THE DOCTOR DID TELL ME )

Effect of Reagan proposal: lower tax bills

c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON With the help of a national accounting firm, two members of congressional taxwriting committees have examined how President Reagan’s tax-revision plan would affect the taxes paid by their constituents and have concluded that if the plan were enacted intact, a large majority would wind up with lower tax bills Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-lowa, and Rep. Fortney H. (Pete) Stark, D-Calif., advertised that if constituents brought their 1984 federal tax returns to the legislators’ local offices, accountants would calculate on the spot how they would have fared had the president’s proposals been in effect. About 120 lowans in five communities took up Grassley’s offer last month. About 50 people from the Oakland, Calif., area came to Stark’s office Sept. 5 to have their returns checked. Accountants from McGladrey Hendrickson & Pullen, the nation’s 12thlargest accounting firm, participated in the project.

children’s progress is measured; they charge that raising the test scores by drilling pupils to come up with the right answers does not improve knowledge, understanding and the capacity to think logically and independently. In addition, these critics fear that the get-tough approach to school reform will cause more of the youngsters at the bottom to give up and drop out. This, they say, may improve national scores but drain even further the nation’s pool of educated people. Among those critics are such noted experts as Theodore R. Sizer, a former dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who is director of a national inquiry called a Study of High Schools and author of “Horace’s Compromise,” a book that shows how able teachers must compromise their ideals in order to adapt to a system that does not encourage independence and initiative. In the same camp are John I. Goodlad, a former dean of the Graduate School of Education at UCLA, and author of the study, “A Place Called School,” and Ernest L. Boyer, a former U S. commissioner of education who is president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and author of “High School.” In addition, in a class by

generally rank nuclear wars as greater risks than cars, even though cars kill 50,000 of us a year and no American has ever died by nuclear blast. We fret over X-rays and wolf down our peanut butter, even though experts say the risk of death (by cancer) from a year of diagnostic X-rays is no greater than the risk of death (from aflitoxin poisoning) incurred by eating four tablespoons of peanut butter every day. Instinctively, we know that The Odds are statistical and therefore meaningless in individual cases. Statistically, it is all but impossible for two houses in the same town to be struck by meteorites. But the impossible happened in Wethersfield, Conn., in 1971 and 1982. Moreover, the actuaries who calculate odds rarely take into account all the factors that influence events. Take smoking. The well-known health hazards of smoking substantially lengthen the official odds against a smoker’s reaching a hale old age. But in computing those odds, the experts ignore nonclinical factors. At least one statistical study has shown, for instance, that passengers seated in the rear of commercial airliners stand a better chance of surviving a crash than do the other passengers. Since rear seats are reserved for smokers, it follows that in one narrow sense, survival odds actually favor the smoker. Balancing the risks and benefits of insecticides is a more serious paradox. Such chemicals as DDT (which has heavily damaged the world’s environment) and methyl isocyanate (involved in the disaster at Bhopal, India) are dangerous poisons that have claimed human

Altogether, about three-quarters of the taxpayers found that their taxes would be lower under the president’s plan, and about half would see their taxes cut more than 10 percent About one taxpayer in 10 learned that his taxes would be increased more than 10 percent under the administration’s proposed package. At a meeting Wednesday where a group of California officials tried to persuade members of the California congressional delegation to oppose parts of the tax package, Stark related the findings of his survey and said they meant the basic proposals would be enormously popular. Many of the people who came to his office last week. Stark said, were members of labor unions that oppose the president. “They came in with a chip on their shoulder and walked out S6OO or SBOO richer,” the congressman said. “They ain’t going to object to savings like that.” Grassley said in an interview that he had not studied the lowa results carefully but that if, as it appeared,

himself, is Mortimer J. Adler, the philosopher, who has written “The Paideia Proposal,” a plan that would give all children a common background based on Western civilization’s great books and ideas, taught largely through the Socratic method of questions raised by the teacher. The way to cut through the confusion is to understand the different yardsticks used by different observers. The question, “How are the schools?” recalls the old story about the man who, when asked. “How is your wife?” replies, “Compared to what?” Compared to what schools used to be like “in the good old days,” with lots of drill and uniform requirements, and the expectation that many youngsters who could not make it would drop out and find their way into unskilled jobs by those yardsticks the schools have measurably improved in recent years. The gains are real ; they show up on the charts in the Department of Education; they also show up in the performance of pupils as measured by major tests But by the yardsticks of those experts who believe that the old school was deficient in teaching the skills needed in

Tuesday, Sept. 17,1985, The Putnam County Banner Graphic

the modern world, today’s schools have not become better. These educators believe that rigid new mandates may actually have made the schools worse. They say, for example, that merely demanding that pupils spend more hours studying mathematics and science will not improve their knowledge unless there are more and better science and mathematics teachers. They doubt the validity of reading scores based on standardized tests on which children fill in spaces or answer true-and-false questions. They admit that drilling youngsters in grammar and vocabulary will raise their test scores, but they doubt that it will make them better writers and readers. Citing Goodlad’s findings, they charge that no matter what the new requirements, children will not learn effectively so long as in the average classroom period all the pupils together speak for only eight minutes, while the teacher holds forth for the remaining 42. And they despair of effective high school writing instruction as long as, says Sizer, the average teacher must read ar.d correct the writings of 150 to 180 students. The conflict over the yardsticks by which the schools should be measured is

lives. On the other hand, by saving crops and preventing famines, they have spared others. The same kind of trade-off occurs in vaccination programs, which, on the one hand, prevent epidemics and save masses, but on the other, kill a handful of the people they are intended to protect The subtle balance of risks affects us in large ways and small. The acids in cola drinks attack teeth, but regular drinking of cola may decrease a person’s absorption of toxic lead from our polluted environment The replacement of gas-guzzlers by compact cars may stem pollution of the air by benzopyrenes, thereby reducing the cancer toll; but a Brookings Institution study indicated that reduction in the size of automobiles was causing 1,400 deaths a year, because the small cars offer occupants less protection in crashes. Besides the understandable trade-offs, there are quirky, unexplained paradoxes that gum up 1 he Odds even more. Most of us, for instance, would consider that the odds of having a good life are enhanced by a good education. And yet, a clinical study by Los Alamos National Laboratory has found that, for some undetermined reason, there is a relationship between the level of a person’s education and his or her susceptibility to melanoma a rare but vicious form of skin cancer. Are Ph D. degrees somehow dooming some of us to early graves? All in all, it’s probably just as well that most of us take The Odds with a large grain of salt. We probably won’t live any longer by ignoring the experts, but at least we’ll worry less.

most people would pay less tax with the proposed plan, it would be hard to oppose politically. John D. Bryant, tax coordinator at McGladrey Hendrickson & Pullen, said he would have to review the results more closely before he could discern a true pattern of who the winners and losers under the president’s plan would be, but he said these generalizations could be made: Wealthy people would save considerably because of the reduction in the top rate to 35 percent from 50 percent, and low-income people would pay less because of the increase in the standard deduction. Prosperous farmers who took advantage of investment tax credits and capital gains allowances on the sale of cattle would be hurt because those tax advantages would be abolished under the president’s plan. Large families would be helped a great deal by the doubling of the personal exemption to $2,000 from $1,040.

not new. In 1843, when Horace Mann, a leading advocate of universal education, reported after a European tour that he had found many schools there less authoritarian than American schools, he was attacked by the traditional school establishment for wanting to make education too pleasurable. Today there are still the two camps: one seeking to build excellence on tough, standardized requirements, reinforced by standardized tests, and the other pressing to make the schools more flexible and the curriculum responsive to the children’s needs, capacities and interests, with less standardization Those who are confused when they find the experts divided over the present state of public education may have to clarify their own goals for their children’s education, and then look for schools whose yardsticks are compatible with their goals. If they are lucky, they may have a choice of schools in their communities. Otherwise, they may have to take part in the local debate over what constitutes a good education and work with their local educators and politicians to get the kind of schools they want.

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