trojan
Volume XCIII, Number 13
University of Southern California
Friday, January 28, 1983
Education school reports in student teachers
drop
By Douglas Lytle
Staff Writer
The number of university students who are studying to become teachers has dropped by 80 percent in the last five years, a change that is a reflection of the national trend away from teaching, officials in the school of education reported.
“We are faced with the most crushing shortage that the United States has ever seen, and in some areas, like here in the Los Angeles schools, the need for teachers is very apparent,” said Nathaniel Hickerson, an associate professor of teacher education.
Hickerson said on a national scale, the lack of teachers is already becoming apparent, and the nation’s schools are facing a severe shortage because of the falling enrollment of students in university education departments.
Enrollment in the university’s teaching education department during the last five years has dropped from 450 students to only about 75 this semester, said Donald Wilson, chairman of the department.
The teaching education department, a division of the school of education, has responded to this drop in enrollment by initiating a full-scale recruitment program.
“The hope is that we can get the message to the people and say, ‘hey, here’s an opportunity staring you in the face,’ ” Hickerson said.
The department is sending recruiters to high schools and junior colleges as one way of finding able students who would like to become teachers. The department has also created an advisory panel with
five or six students to help get the message out to other students on campus.
Hickerson said the lack of instructors was caused in part by a large surplus of teachers in the mid-1970s, as well as by legislation such as 1977’s Proposition 13, which reduced state educational funding as well as teacher morale.
The business world has also been responsible for luring students away from teaching, he added. But Hickerson said students who are enrolled in business and science programs and hope to “immediately find jobs once they graduate” better have other plans.
"Several years ago, the business market had many openings, while at the same time, the teaching jobs were overloaded,” he said. “But now, things have been reversed. The business market is saturated, and we are hurting for teachers.”
Hickerson said business schools are graduating “many young men and wom«n who are making a mistake by thinking that the world of business is a paradise. The job market for these people is depressed, and still, people are training themselves for a market that isn’t there.”
Consequently, a tremendous imbalance has been created as a result of schools turning out more business-oriented students with no future and less students with teaching credentials who are badly needed.
Hickerson said the faculty in the teaching education department is concerned over why teaching has become an undesirable profession.
“People are forgetting that
teachers have quite a bit of advantages such as a long summer vacation, no relocation and tenure after three years, giving them an almost guaranteed job,” he said.
Wilson said, “After all, the schools are the foundation of the United States, and we cannot do without them.”
Bill Bolton, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said the district has a critical shortage of math and science teachers. He added that although teaching has several advantages over (Continued on page 3)
New leadership set to run radio station
By Jeffrey Tylicki and Joann Calardy
Staff Writers
The movement to get KSCR. the university’s student-run radio station, back on the air was stepped up this week with the media board’s selection of a three-person management council to run the station.
Jim Dennis, vice president of student affairs, announced that on the recommendation of the media board, Mike Roth, Kelly Porter and Jeff Covert have agreed to share the responsibility of getting KSCR back on the air after almost three years of silence.
The three will form a management council in which Roth will act as director of administration, Porter will serve as program director and Covert will be business manager.
Dennis supports the board's decision, which ended several weeks of speculation on the future of the radio station.
“Each of the three students are uniquely qualified and have strong enthusiasm for the station.” he said.
Mike Roth, a senior in communications and TV/radio broadcasting. has been pushing to get KSCR on the air for several months and was actually broadcasting from the station's former headquarters adjacent to the Jefferson Building last semester.
Roth explained the duties of the three directors.
“Kelly is in charge of everything that goes on the air,” he said. “He’ll be the one who will have to baby-sit the station once we get it going.”
Covert will take care of all of the financial affairs of the station, Roth said. "As director of administration. 1 will handle all of the technical arrangements — talking to the administration, faculty and other outside sources.”
Bob Moore, a broadcaster with KNXT, the local CBS affiliate, has agreed to act as adviser to the station and is teaching a radio management class in which many of the station's employees are enrolled.
(Continued on page 3)
Students protest history revision by Japanese education ministry
By Laura Castaneda
Assistant City Editor When the Japanese government revised its textbooks last June, groups from Korea, China and the United States were outraged and charged »hat the Japanese government was trving to soft-pedal the facts about its territorial expansion campaign during World War II.
But George Totten, chairman of the university’s political science department, and Michael Robinson, an assistant professor of history, do not think the Japanese Ministry of Education’s action will have any major side effects.
“There have been no serious consequences,” Robinson said regarding the textbook revisions. “If anything, (the issue) has raised the consciousness of the Japanese people.”
Totten and Robinson spoke informally Wednesday night at the Student Activities Center before a large audience of predominantly Korean students. The conference, entitled “The truth about the Japanese textbook revision." was sponsored by the Korean Student Association.
Although the Japanese government formally apologized for the revisions and promised to correct the changes, the textbooks have still not
been revised, the professors said. Japanese textbooks are normally updated every three years, and consequently, many people are worried that the books will not be corrected until 1985.
Totten explained what one of those changes involved describing the relocation of Korean workers to Japan during the war as a voluntary move rather than a forced one. The books also said Japan's bloody attacks on China occurred because of Chinese provocation, a claim that has been disproved.
Robinson, who chronicled the historic racial clashes between Korea and Japan, stressed that all governments "whitewash” history.
“Every government, to a certain extent, does this thing," Robinson said.
He said that, although the two countries are connected by similar languages, history and culture, there have always been problems because of many past conflicts with each other.
The younger generations of Koreans have an “almost instinctive and automatic dislike” toward the Japanese because they have been taught to act this way by older Koreans who lived through Japanese colonization of their country'.
(Continued on page 2)
Staff photo by Craig Stewart
HOPELESS SITUATION — A shovel is a poor match for the muddy swamp that was Cromwell Field yesterday- Rains created flood problems on much of the campus.