Wednesday, April 15, 1937
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
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University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Curriculum report disappoints
It was too good to be true: A
university reviews its curric
ulum and decides that a mas
sive and wide-reaching educa
tional overhaul is necessary. Con
sequently, sweeping reforms re
quiring students to take a sub
stantive core of liberal-arts
classes in an effort to produce
fundamentally educated persons
rather than simply trained and
appropriately credentialed pro
ducers. It was too good to be true.
But we should not have hoped so
much. The rhetoric of the Chan
cellor's Commission on General
Liberal Education was so prom
ising throughout the process,
but the final product is so disap
pointing. Instead of daring to ask what
students should know, recom
mending the imposition of such
requirements and arguing that
hiring practices should be tai
lored to accommodate the vision,
the report simply requires that
students take a certain number
(typically very few) of liberal
arts classes and rests satisfied
with the university's current
department distribution. Blah!
Why shouldn't every student
read PJato and Shakespeare while
getting a university education?
Why can't every student grapple
with Descartes and Conrad before
being given a piece of paper that
tells most of the world, "this
Letters
New computer deserves better fate
It was interesting to read in the
Daily Nebraskan today that UNL finally
has a computer system (IVIS) with a
touch-sensitive screen. It was particu
larly so considering that I and a few
other folks have been using PLATO, a
system at UNL with this capability, for
about three years. But the abilities of
PLATO have been one of the great
secrets at UNL during that time. So it
seems safe to assume that the errorwas
due to honest ignorance on the part of
the source cited in the article, rather
than to a misunderstanding by your
reporter.
This is not to put down the new
system. It has far greater graphics and
sound capability than PLATO. I am
sure it will be a real asset to UNL. But
on the other hand, PLATO already has
thousands of lessons available on a var
Student finds proof for
I have recently enrolled in a six
credit class through the Division of
Continuing Studies. Because several
books are required for the course, I
attempted to obtain used or library
copies. I was unable to locate the cor
rect edition of one title, "Story and
Structure" by L Perrine. I was charged
$19.72 for the paperback edition.
This letter is to protest the inflated
cost of this text. The most recent edi
tion of "Books in Print" lists the retail
cost of this book as $13.95. In the last
bulletin for College Independent Study
the bock was sold for $14.35. There has
been no corresponding increase in the
retail price. I feel it is unjust to inflate
the price more than 40 percent above
retail.
I am aware of the financial difficul
ties being suffered by the university
because I am a fall-time employee in
Leva Library, but I must pretest this
Jeff Korbelik, Editor, 472-1766 .
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Lise Olsen, Associate News Editor
Mike Reilley, Night News Editor
Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
person is ostensibly educated."
The report belongs in a pile with
all the other lukewarm, well
meaning, mushy, "reform"
minded, muddleheaded, medio
cre and oh-so-safe "educational"
reports. That is, in the "ignore'
pile.
Just listen to the utter lack of
strength represented in the re
port: "All courses, including
introductory ones, ought to in
clude material that is intrinsi
cally important and interesting
and be taught in a way that
actively involves the student in
learning." (You may take time
out to vomit here.) Somebody
should have informed the com
mittee that the time is long past
for platitudes to pass as vision.
University of Chicago philo
sophy professor Allan Bloom
argues for an educational pro
gram with some backbone, a
quality quite lacking in the chan
cellor's bowl of watery educa
tional gruel. He argues that the
cure for what ails the curriculum
ills of the modern university
(which scarcely deserves the title
nowadays) is "the good old Great
Books approach in which a lib
eral education means reading
certain generally recognized
classic texts."
Chancellor's report gets a D-:
Too predictable, too safe and
utterly pedestrian.
iety of topics. And in PLATO, it is not
hard to write programs that let 30 peo
ple at different terminals interact with
one another. My understanding (from a
friend who did a little programming on
IVIS) is that the interaction there is
only between you, the program and the
videodisc.
If you look back about 3 12 years
ago, the acquisition of PLATO by UNL
was being widely touted as a great
advance in educational computing for
Nebraska. But due in part to various
subsequent policy decisions, it never
caught on with faculty and thus sees
limited use now except from one polit
ical science course. I wish IVIS abetter
fate.
Leo G. Chouinard II
associate professor
mathematics and statistics
inflated book prices
unfair practice. This book is not avail
able anywhere else in Lincoln, so stu
dents are forced to purchase their
texts from DCS. Taking advantage of
this monopoly by inflating textbook
prices creates a hardship for many who
are struggling to obtain an education.
Judy Winkler
freshman
arts and sciences
Letter Policy
BB a i an vaH - -mta------aw
The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief
letters to the editor from all readers
and interested others.
Letters will be selected for publica
tion on the basis of clarity, originality,
timeliness and space available. The
Daily Nebraskan retains the right to
edit all material submitted.
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They might have made a little sense then, but this is now
Just when we thought it was safe to
wade back into high fashion, along
comes this news from trend spotters
on the shore: THE MINI IS BACK! Yes,
yes, THE mini, the very same skirt that
brought goosebumps to the arms of
men and chilblains to the thighs of
women in the late 1960s: The mini is
back and it is after YOU.
There were, of course, scattered
sightings of this menace over the past
year or two. Teen-agers a generation
once carried in the wombs of women
dressed misguidedly in maternity minis
were spied innocently baring their
knees. But who among us ever imagined
the mini would reappear in such a big
wave, threatening to swamp our hopes
for a graceful midlife?
Didn't designers promise us that
this was the era of choice, that hemlines
were a matter of personal preference?
Hadn't they insisted that no modern
women could ever again be driven into
a fashion pool or forced to travel
upstream to where the thigh meets the
hip?
But while most women of a certain
age spent this spring gaping at resur
rected crinolines, giggling at the re
appearance of hoops and wondering
why anyone would want to return to the
ghastly yesteryears of the 1950s, these
same perfidious designers were sharing
their 1960s scrapbooks and scissors.
The reports out of Paris and New
York predict that next fall will be mini
and skini. Skirts are going up as is
their price per inch and the fashion
writers are predicting with a breath
lessness I haven't heard in years that
anyone who doesn't want to look dumpy
better dump a few inches. The only
good news is that these are vertical
inches.
Kirkpatrick parroted tired cliches
After reading the Daily Nebraskan
(April 6) news article on Jeane
Kirkpatrick's visit to Nebraska, I
nearly vomited. The article was a mani
festation of a walking Reagan clone.
She mouthed all of the standard cliches
of this tired, tepid administration. I
was not in the audience; nevertheless, I
could picture the flock of fascists and
flag-waving neophytes standing around
enjoying the cadences of trash.
Kirkpatrick started her speech by
making a definitive statement that
"U.S. allies are less bothered by arms
shipments to Iran than they are by the
orgies of attacking the president." The
former ambassador to the United
Nations appears to hsve the intelligence
of a pigscn. Only she would make such
an asinine statement During her tenure
0UT OUR RgfiOeST POR A SOUND -PROOF VAK&fcCAUSe
IN IHg tmnz&i, w b uuue rwu?u vr.
According to Goodman's Rule, any
thing you wore the first time around,
you are too old to wear the second time.
This is applied, by and large, to Dr.
Dentons, Mickey Mouse hats and pedal
pushers. But it also works for mini
skirts. I have therefore taken a personal
exemption. Still, I cannot figure out
why designers think the time for the
mini has come back.
In the 1960s, this shortest skirt was
regarded by some as an artifact of the
youth cult. In "The Language of
Clothes," Alison Lurie lumped it with
babydoll pajamas, as evidence of the
era when grown women wore their
clothes at the same distance from the
waist as 2-year-olds.
Ellen
Goodman
Others thought it was part and
parcel of the '60s sex cult. Exactly 20
years ago, the Vatican weekly con
demned the fashion, saying: "Some
brainless women, professing a pseudo
non-conformism, end up resembling
monkeys in adopting the most carpric
ious excess of fashion."
There was clearly a touch of rebellion
in 1960s fashion: Baring your knees was
thumbing your nose. In Greece, the
minister of health ordered all female
workers to keep their knees covered. In
Morocco, school children were asked to
pray for the salvation of women in
miniskirts. In Zambia, miniskirted
women were attacked on the street. In
America, there were mini and non-mini
nothing happened at the U.N. from an
American perspective except the vetoes
and overt support of South African
apartheid and its fascist allies.
Guest Opinion
Ask most rednecks about Reagan's
policy and these feeble-minded citizens
would say it was largely developed on
hot air. Therefore, when Kirkpatrick
uttered trash and heaped flattery on
Reagan's foreign policy, it was the
Valium at work and not the cerebral
cortex. Reagan was slapped in his
dusty, painted face by Congress on
South Africa. However, reliable reports
show. he. had the laugh on. covert
support cf the regime. Americans know
c
jobs and restaurants. .
But the '80s are supposedly the
sober era of AIDS and aerobics, entre
preneurship and values curriculum in
the schools. A fashion that seemed
liberating to women in the '60s can be
utterly inhibiting in the '80s. Any
veteran can remember the restrictions
of real life in a miniskirt. You cannot
bend over, sit down, get out of a car or
run . . . for Congress.
The only thing that's truly "eighties"
about the mini-surge is the attempted
coup by a traditional junta to get the
hierarchy back in order. They make, we
buy.
The original mini was probably
brought down, literally, by three things:
December, January and February. Now
the same designers want to see if
women will once again prove their
allegiance with a badge of frostbite.
What to do when you find yourself
surrounded by racks of miniskirts? When
you catch yourself hoisting your own
skirts in the mirror just to see how they
look? When you try to remember how to
do the hemstitch? In the event of a
miniskirt attack, remember my favorite
relic from the 1960s:
In 1969 a bulletin from the federal
government warned: "The legs of young
women respond quite rapidly to ex
posure of cold temperatures. The bodily
response is a quick buildup of succes
sive layers of fatty molecules under the
skin areas of the thighs, knees, calves
and ankles of female legs." There you
go. Fat knees or covered knees: It mini
mizes the issue.
1S87, The Boston Glob Newspaper
CompanyWashington
Post Writers Group
Goodman is a Pulitzer prize-winning
columnist for the Boston Globe.
Reagan has a fetish for the Contras. His
administration has climbed in bed
with every Marcos, Pinochet and Botha
type murderous regime in the world.
Under Ronald "Redneck" Reagan's
administration we call countries such
as El Salvador, Honduras, Chile and
Argentina friends and allies. All of
these thug nations are known for blatant
human-rights abuses. Some analysts
have come to label those countries the
torture club of the '80s.
Reagan's administration has cement
ed its lips to Zaire. The president of
that country is so corrupt he can't be
corrupted any farther. This government
has a passion for breast-feeding inter
national criminals. We can lock at the
sea o?i::io:j on 5