University of Southern California
SUMMER
TROJAN
VOL. LXV NO. 5
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1972
Prep debaters work here for four weeks
By PETER WONG
Editor
The 16th annual Western Forensic Institute began here Sunday, with 36 high school debaters watching some dramatic demonstrations by members of the university debate staff.
However, the debaters, most of whom are from California, will spend little time watching anything in the next four weeks until July 22. They will work to improve their skills in oratory, oral interpretation, extemporaneous and impromptu speaking, and contest debating, with the assistance of the debate staff here.
They will also gather evidence in the university’s libraries in support and in opposition to the proposition that is the 1972-73 national debate topic for high schools, “Resolved: That the federal government should exclusively finance public education in the United States.”
Later they will use this information in debate.
The students attend classes in the morning and afternoon. Morning sessions will be devoted to classroom instruction and practice in such individual events as oratory, oral interpretation, and extemporaneous speaking.
Afternoon sessions will be aimed at developing the theory of argument, leading to practice debates.
Both sessions will allow time for practices and individual conferences, and will lead to participation in the institute’s tournament, held the fourth week. Each
institute member will enter all speaking events.
The students use Doheny Library, the Law Center Library, and the School of Education Library for reference work on their debate topic, through special library cards.
But the institute is not all work, though there are classes and library work.
“This is a total program in scope,” John DeBross, the director of debate here since 1963 and director of the institute, said.
Although it is not mandatory, all institute members are staying in the dorms for the four-week program, thereby helping members to form closer working relationships.
This also allows members to go out as a group for recreation, and a program has been developed for them. On weekends the students will go to such places as the Los Angeles Zoo, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games, California Angels baseball games, the Mark Taper Forum and the Ash Grove.
There will also be a film festival assembled by John Reinard, social director, and the annual faculty-student softball game.
But the main part of the institute is the development of skills in the first three weeks, closing with the tournament and the awards banquet, at which the winners of the speaking contests are honored.
Entry into the institute, the oldest in the West, is not easy. The enrollment is limited to between 30 and 40 students.
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AWAITING THE RESPONSE—Lee Garrison (left), a senior in speech communication, and Geoff Goodman, a senior in political science and speech communication, prepare their affirmative case as they listen to the argu-
preferably an even number so that two-member debate teams can be easily formed.
High school students seeking admission then go through what DeBross, the director, said was a miniature application to the university.
An applicant must first rank scholastically within the top one-third of his class, and preferably the top one-fourth.
He must file a grade transcript; an application asking details about his educational background, experience, and forensics record; two letters of recommendation; a personal statement as to why he wants to join the institute; a photograph.
ments against complete federal financial support of public education. They took part in a debate Sunday as part of the 16th annual Western Forensic Institute for 36 high school students. Photo by Pat Murphey.
The photo is not used to discriminate against applicants, DeBross said, but to help faculty and student evaluators become familiar with the high school students.
Usually two applicants, and sometimes even three, will compete for each place in the institute, DeBross said, and the number of applicants during the past five or six years has ranged from 60 to 125.
“It is tending toward the low side now because so many more debate institutes are being opened each year,” DeBross said. Last year three were opened.
Then why does the university’s institute still hold its appeal?
(Continued on page 4)
Race tal
“Urban Universities Face Up to Race” will be discussed by Marvin Wachman, the new president of Temple University, at 1:15 p.m. today in Hancock Auditorium. He is sponsored by the Summer Session administration.
The public is invited; there is no admission charge.
Wachman. one of the nation's few black university presidents, earned his bachelor's and master’s degrees from Northwestern University, Chicago, in 1939 and 1940. He was awarded a doctorate in history from the University of Illinois in 1942.
He has taught at Colgate University. San Diego State University, and the University of Maryland’s overseas program. He was president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (not Nebraska, as reported in Friday's Summer Trojan) from 1961 to 1969, when he became vice-president for academic affairs at Temple University.
Music instruction must become less rigid, New York prof says
Academic programs will be featured in newspaper
Feature stories about the uni versity’s academic programs during the summer session will be published in the Summer Trojan when space is available.
It is hoped that at least one such feature, and possibly more, will be published in the newspaper from now until the last issue Aug. 23. The first such article. about the 16th annual Western Forensic Institute sponsored by the debate staff. Department of Speech Communication. appears in today’s
Prof to lecture about literature
Harvey Goldstein, associate professor of English and comparative literature, will begin a special summer lecture series with “Literature and Lies” at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday in Phillips Hall B-27.
The lecture series, sponsored by the Summer Session administration, will later present Max
•	Schulz and Steve Moore, ofthe English Department faculty, and Richard Levine, professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
issue as the first of this series.
This does not mean that news, announcements, and other feature material will not be published. All contributions are welcome.
The summer academic series is simply an attempt to help readers get acquainted with some of the many programs offered here in the summer.
Because of limited manpower (a one-person staff) and previous commitments to other activities, every program cannot be accommodated in this series. Those held only in the summer will have priority.
However, suggestions for stories (and even prospective writers) will be accepted by calling ext. 2203 or 2204. or by coming to Student Union 420 in the morning Monday through Friday. Messages may be left on the bulletin board in front of the office.
Genuine news, including Summer Session announcements, will continue to have first claim on total newspaper space.
If music is to become more important to both adults and young people, instruction must become less rigid, a top music leader said here Thursday.
“We say that music is part of our cultural exchange with other parts of the world, yet this really isn’t true as far as our kids are concerned, and we’ve got to stop using learning by the rote method,” Robert Pace, Columbia University professor and educational director of the National Piano Foundation, told some 200 piano and general music teachers at a seminar.
“The rote approach is the hardest possible. The kids will drill wrong, reinforce the wrong techniques, and consequently, they practice with their fingers in high but their minds in
neutral, because they aren’t allowed to think.”
Pace’s appearance was sponsored by the Summer Session administration, the Preparatory Division of the School of Music, and Ralph Pierce of Pomona, whose shop provided the two pianos for Pace’s demonstration of Contemporary Group Piano, an approach to piano lessons that has reduced the dropout rate of students.
“I’m against any specific method of teaching music, but I’m for trying to promote an understanding of good musicianship,” he said.
“But this is not accomplished merely by a fast wiggling of the fingers. The principles of musicianship are such that they can adapt to change....
Mainland China talks to be offered by ASSC
The ASSC will present a series of eight lectures about modern-day mainland China, to begin at noon today in the Student Activities Center.
Jack Nicholl. a graduate ofthe University of California at Berkeley, will deliver the lectures. Nicholl is a community organizer in San
Diego.
The first lecture is, “One Hundred Years of Humiliation and Defeat by Western Powers and Japan,” which will cover the period from 1842. when the Opium WTars between imperial China and western European powers began, through the collapse of the old Manchu dynasty and the revoluation of 1911. led by Sun Yat-sen.
Other lectures, all to be at noon, and their dates are: “Development ofthe Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Parties and their United Front, 1911-27,” July 6; “Building the Red Army and a Popular Base in the Countryside,” July 18; “The Anti-Japanese War and Popular Support in Northern China,” July 27.
“The First Ten Years ofthe People’s Republic of China,” Aug. 3; “The Sino-Soviet Split, Revisionism, and the Origins of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” Aug. 15; “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” Aug. 24; “Chinese Foreign Policy and the Nixon Trip,” Aug. 31.
“I thought that back in the 1950s that rock music wasn’t here to stay, but often what appear to be the least significant factors in music turn out to be among the major influences of the next period. Who knows what will music be in a few years from now?”
Pace, who is head of piano instruction at Teachers College, Columbia University, said he begins simply with an explanation of melodies—how they can go up or down the scales, how they can go by steps or skips.
“Then I have students imitate what I’m playing, and ask them to create something similar, but not to memorize anything. In this way, they’re soon doing Mozart —in their own words,” Pace said.
This greater emphasis on self-discovery and consequently, less on memorization, is vital if the students are willing to stay in music and enjoy it, Pace said, and their sensitivity, creativity and interaction with music should be enlivened.
“Kids are musical until they get close to their music teachers,” he said. “Then the trouble begins.”
Such an approach needs to be taken also because teachers must show they can hold their students’ interest and justify music instruction in the schools. Pace said.
"After two or three years in a kid s life music comes after the Cub Scouts, the Brownies and everything else. Many school systems throughout the nation are eliminating music from the curriculum, and music even goes further down on the after-school activity list,” Pace said.