Excellence in the Classroom
Sir: TIME'S beautiful, stimulating and heartwarming cover story on great teachers [May 6] was an editorial jewel. It will undoubtedly stimulate teachers throughout the country to seek new levels of excellence in their own classrooms.
ALLEN A. RAYMOND
President and Publisher
Grade Teacher Magazine Darien, Conn.
Sir: The scandal of poor teaching is infinitely greater than you suggest. There is so much of it, the worst of it so awful, that house cleaning is imperative if our "quest for excellence" is not to become a bad joke. Tenure is a license for laziness and incompetence. Ph.D. degrees should have to be revalidated every ten years; excepted should be only those who publish significant results of their independent research, which, incidentally, should take care of the "publish or perish" nonsense. Also, the graduate student part-time instructor is much more valuable than you make him appear. He is an economic necessity; without him, many important elementary courses could never be taught at all. And he is often a truly excellent teacher.
RANSOM TAYLOR, PH.D.
Associate Professor of German
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, N.C.
Sir: TIME is wrong to think that tenure lowers the level of teaching; it raises it. Any institution that does not judge competence within seven years is not likely ever to do so. Forcing a decision leads to weeding out deadwood that might otherwise remain on sufferance. More important, without tenure academic freedom would be unrealizable; teachers with unpopular ideas could be dropped at any time.
Louis CROMPTON
Department of English
University of Nebraska Lincoln, Neb.
Sir: Berkeley's Schorske might be described in the words of Gibran in The Prophet: "The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind."
JEFFREY M. LULOW
Austin, Texas
Sir: It is a good thing Professor Miner likes to teach only small classes; this restricts the number of students receiving misinformation from him. Anyone who has read anything on evolutionary theory published in the last 20 to 30 years knows better than to make such remarks about the saber-toothed cats. Thirty-five million years ago, during Oligocene time, the saber-toothed cat pattern was essentially frozen. In some cats, the length of the saber was proportionately as great as or greater than that of the culminating species in the ice age. Thirty-five million years is a pretty fair length of time for a model to be in style. Let us hope Professor Miner has a better background in sociology than he does in paleontology and evolution.
J. R. MACDONALD
Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology
L.A. County Museum of Natural History Los Angeles
Sir: The legend of Vincent Scully's falling off the platform in the midst of a passionate lecture was well established when I was at Yale. It went something like this: Mr. Scully was lecturing on Greek art, on the Feminine God of Minoan Crete, and while "entranced," fell off the platform into the lap of a beautifully endowed female in the front row. He leaped up, ringingly proclaiming, "Into the arms of the Mother Goddess!" and then went on with renewed articulateness.
AUSTIN C. TOWLE, '60
Cincinnati
Sir: My sympathies to Berkeley's Haller, who seems to have fallen under the random eye of your report on college teaching, under the heading "Harsh Judgments." As a Berkeley student, I found Dr. Haller a fine teacher and a serious scholar. Neither he nor his students seemed "bored." I mention this merely to indicate how difficult it is to say what is, and what is not, good college teaching. Students lap up flair, but too often they are too dull or too lazy to sense depth.
R. A. CHRISTMAS
Teaching Assistant, English
University of Southern California Los Angeles
Sir: Great teachers? Maybe. But you should put more emphasis on the teachers at East Alphabet State, who work with a minimum of salaries, facilities and raw material to turn out the people who are the backbone of our country. On a clear day one may feel that the backbone has slipped a disc, and yet I sometimes have occasion to take a dim view even of our product.
ROBERT M. KOZELKA
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Williams College Williamstown, Mass.
Sir: Your failure to mention any teachers at the University of Wisconsin leaves me to conclude that you realized there are just too many whom, in fairness, you would have had to include.
EDWARD F. BERGMAN Madison, Wis.
Sir: Not a single "great teacher" from the Deep South? I nominate T. Harry Williams (Lincoln and His Generals) of Louisiana State University.
BETTY HARREL
Shreveport, La.
Sir: Your coverage of Harvard lecturers was lamentable. You mistake patronizing showmanship for inspired teaching. Professors Bruner and Fieser, though not so "entertaining" to freshmen as Professor Wald, communicate complex material far more comprehensively and effectively.
FRANCIS X. COLE, '66
ROBERT M. NELSON JR., '66
DONALD L. ROSSMAN, '66
CHARLES N. SMART, '66
Harvard College Cambridge, Mass.
Sir: You forgot two outstanding teachers at the University of Alaska: Dr. J. Meeker and Dr. W. Hollerbach.
(MRS.) DANIELLE-PAULETTE KOZLOSKI
URSULA OTTO
College, Alaska
Sir: Dr. Joseph R. Berrigan Jr., chairman of the department of history at Loyola University.
FREDERICK H. GRAEFE
New Orleans
Sir: Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian?
JOHN C. DEVONA, '66
University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Ind.
Sir: Professor Richard Gustafson, head of the Russian department at Barnard.
ANYA KAPTZAN, '69
Barnard College New York City
Sir: To your list of great teachers, I would add Mrs. Mabel J. Hoyler of Frederick, Md. Her importance and dedication are not diminished one iota by the fact that she prefers to teach junior high school students. Teachers of her caliber are urgently needed to influence the unfocused minds of youth; many college students were "pointed in the right direction" by teachers like Mrs. Hoyler.
ROBERT RISK
Frederick, Md.
Sir: I saw your list of teachers, but I didn't see my teacher's name. She is the best teacher I have ever had. Her name is Miss McAllister, Grade 3, Crystal Spring, Roanoke, Va.
BOBBY MCINTOSH
Roanoke, Va.
Hippocratic Oaths
Sir: Doctors, as human beings, fall somewhat short of being perfect in the handling of each of the ever-increasing number of patients seeking their aid [May 13]. It is also painfully obvious that the astounding increase in technology has forced the physician into being somewhat more of a scientist than a holder of hands. The modern doctor spends half of his life with his patients, a quarter of his life trying to keep abreast of the enormous increase in medical knowledge, and the rest of the time trying to get some sleep. Instead of devoting two pages to an enumeration of the known ills of modern medicine, why not use them to discuss how the problem might be solved?
KENNETH SACK
Second-Year Student
Tufts University School of Medicine Boston
Sir: I was raised in the home of one of your "60-hour-a-week" physicians, whom my brothers and I were lucky to see once every two to three days. My father never owned a Rolls-Royce or had plush vacations. He rarely had time for family functions or a movie. I am 31, in debt, and struggling to support my family while completing my training. With luck I will be able to open my office at the age of 35, thereby going further into debt. However, when I die at about 55 or 60 (20 years from the time of my gala opening), I will be able to say that I am free and clear. Hasn't the time come for an Essay about the four-day-a-week, four-hour-a-day executives?
JOHN E. McHUGH, M.D.
Needham, Mass.
Hung Jury
Sir: TIME'S irresponsible cover story on Escobedo [April 29] should be cited for contempt of accuracy and objectivity and sentenced to the wastebasket.
JAMES P. MCCLELLAN
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Emory University Atlanta
Sir: As a criminal lawyer, I confess that when I turned to the article, I had a preconceived feeling that a layman's oversimplification of complex technical issues, colored perhaps by a widespread attitude toward criminal law matters and constricted by the necessarily short format of your articles, could only result in an inconsequential piece of ephemera. This letter is penance for an injustice I did you. The article was a brilliant piece of writing, painstakingly fair and objective, and constituted a real public service. You have cracked a hardened artery in my working prejudices.
HARRIS B. STEINBERG
New York City
Gary's Arrests
Sir: It is true that gambling and vice are still law enforcement problems in Lake County and Gary, Ind. [April 29]. But Gary is making a greater and more sincere effort with these problems than in any prior administration. Our arrests for gambling and vice violations have tripled in the past two years. Both the mayor and the chief of police have recently appeared before the Lake County Liquor Board asking the board not to renew liquor licenses for taverns frequented by known prostitutes. This is unprecedented. Bear in mind that law enforcement authorities must work within the framework of the law. To "know" a woman is a prostitute is one thing; to be able to produce evidence of prostitution that will justify arrest and conviction is quite another.
(MAYOR) A. MARTIN KATZ
Gary, Ind.
Sir: This publicity about Gary came at a crucial time--on the eve of the primaries. As soon as copies of TIME were available at the newsstands, "the Gary outfit" bought them up in entire lots and shipments from the local retail outlets. Consequently, very few copies reached the general public--that is, the local voter.
ALFRED P. SHEPARD
Gary, Ind.
Every Gory Word
Sir: That the Indianapolis torture-murder [May 6] was described in agonizing detail, and that I, and millions of others, ate up every gory word, attests to the latent sado-masochism in all of us: everyone is a latent Mrs. Baniszewski, who can experience pleasure in giving pain, or a Sylvia Likens, who can enjoy being burned, beaten and humiliated.
JUAN R. SANCHEZ
Chicago
Sir: I hope the jury is a group of Godfearing people who will be able to overlook the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" and use, as a basis for their verdict, "An eye for an eye," and then punish these creatures accordingly. May I be forgiven for my evil thoughts of wanting a murder!
JULIA WEISS, '68
Wheaton College Norton, Mass.
A Modest Proposal
Sir: The population explosion [May 6] must give pause to any thinking man, especially one who is the father of twelve children. A possible solution: a crash program could find a simple method of changing the average height of man from 5 or 6 ft. to smaller sizes, so that the space-nutriment requirement per person could be diminished as the total population increased. What difference could there be in a 6-ft. man sitting in an electronic control room rather than a 2-ft. man, if we assume that the 2-ft. man could think just as well as the 6-ft. man?
PETER J. J.
RABBIT St. Louis
Sir: "On Trading in the Children for Color TV," or, "Now They Tell Me":
While four were In, we had these kids,
But now this trend is on the skids.
Now four are OUT, what shall we do?
Will Sarnoff take the other two?
PEGGY CLARKE SNOW
Madison, NJ.
Sir: I read with interest "The Morning-After Pill" [May 6], about the new drug ORF-3858. The similar drug diethylstilbestrol, which Yale researchers are finding equally effective, has been used by veterinarians for years to treat mismating in animals. One of the most noted side effects is the increase in libido. This sounds like the beginning of quite a vicious cycle. Anyone for tennis?
RONALD C. FRANCIS, D.V.M.
Slidell, La.
Sir: No doubt there will be a spate of discussion by semanticists as well as theologians about the morning-after pill. Can its use be termed abortion without conception? Or ovum frustration? I suggest it be termed simply deception.
J. R. RAINES, M.D.
Portland, Ore.
Over the Horizon
Sir: Your reference to "uninspired paperbacks by Pan Am" [April 29] puzzles us, since all our books are hardcover. We do have a series of eight reference guides that cover 17 countries. Could you possibly be referring to the 27 European countries in our New Horizons World Guide? As to who sells the most general guidebooks, Fielding runs a poor second to New Horizons, which has sold over 1,250,000 copies--43,000 of the current edition since January. We like to think that size of circulation is some indication of worth with guidebooks as it is with magazines.
GERALD W. WHITTED
Manager, Publications
Pan American World Airways New York City
> TIME was referring to Pan American's eight guides, which are somewhat hard on the outside and rather soft within.
Crossing Out the Cross
Sir: In "The Surfer's Cross" [April 22], you say that the German Iron Cross is being sold in reproductions by such "high-quality stores as Bergdorf Goodman." This is not true. While for many years we and other fine shops have sold jewelry in the form of variations of the traditional Maltese Cross, we have not, nor do we ever intend to offer for sale the Iron Cross, with its tasteless, macabre implications.
ANDREW GOODMAN
President
Bergdorf Goodman New York City
Heads of Clay
Sir: Three cheers for ex-FBI Clerk Carter! His sadly amusing story [May 6] is a bright spot in an ever-increasing sick male homosexual world.
KAY BARNES
New York City
Sir: As one who has esteemed the FBI for its purposes, direction and efficiency, I grieve to find, not that their feet are of clay, but that their heads are.
RICHARD L. CROWELL
Los Angeles
Peering Hyperbolically
Sir: TIME blurred its image by reporting [May 6] that De Gaulle peers myopically through his thick-lensed spectacles. As is the case with the vast majority of people who have undergone cataract surgery, he now peers hyperopically through his thick-lensed spectacles.
ANDREW P. FERRY, M.D.
Department of Ophthalmology
Mount Sinai Hospital New York City
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.