ustxtxb_obs_1957_06_07_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Page 5

by

One of the mysteries of the age ule, which must keep him hopis that newspapermen so devotping from hobby to hobby in. a edly propagandize for higher saldesperate effort to absorb all the aries for teachers. I call it a mystery because the hack bawling into his SmithCorona is probably making one hell of a sight less money than is the self righteous biddy who teaches the newsman’s child how to color pictures without stepping on the crayons. I don’t know what the average Texas newsman’s salary amounts to, but I would wager that it falls somewhat short of $75 a week, and probably far enough short of that to give real meaning to the publishers’ definition of a “free” press. I remember with relish a University of Texas professor, whom I am not alone in considering a pretty smart fellow, who appraised his professional colleagues as “by and large a bunch of peanuts.” It doesn’t bother me that peanuts are admitted and harbored so readily in the teaching profession, for even we peanuts have to eat, but it does bother me that the peanuts squeal about the rather good salaries they are making, and it does bother me that they have, with the full support of a gullish public, wrapped a sacrosanct shawl \(“we are molding the characters of the time given to preparing the lesson, plus time given in grading student papers. The last two are variable items that the teacher slaves. Slavery was profitable and necessary to the economy of the country. It was not too long ago when men were saying the same thing in our country and denouncing those who called for the liberation of the slaves in the South. Pharoah arrogantly refused to set the Hebrews free un AUSTIN To judge by the credits for some of the films now playing at the “art houses” throughout the state, one might well suspect that movies are, as the infectious phrase goes, “better than ever” since such worthies as Alberto Moravio, W i 11 i a m Shakespeare and Emile Zola are listed as original sources. However, as has been pointed out elsewhere, a play or novel is one thing, a motion picture another, and for proof of this hardly astounding thesis, spend good moneyagainst advice of counselon any of the three adaptations discussed here. First up at the bar is the PontiDe Lamentiis production “A Woman of Rome,” in which the estimable Gina Lollobrigida plays some female who, during the course of her perigrinations about the Holy City, manages to attract such types as a spineless young student, a two-timing chauffeur. a Fascist bureaucrat, and a homicidal cretin. They are a varied lot but they have two things in common: all are irresistably drawn to Miss Lollobrigida, and all are bores. Matters are helped but little by the againat an upgrade in rank and a salary boost to better than $5,000! This I mention to encourage the misfits who didn’t think it was possible to be cashiered into prosperity. I know another professor who was told by the chairman of the department that “if you hadn’t bought a home here, I’d fire you.” How do you like that for a reason. to keep a mug on the state payroll and in a position to “mold character”? The public is told that, although some professors don’t have a heavy teaching load, they are forced to publish many articles. Maybe soat some colleges. But in the department where I work, I know of only three men published anything this year, and get bigger, too. There is always the imminent danger of our whole economic life being paralyzed by a great strike or shutdown. A walk-out in the automobile, the steel, or the communications industry could bring disaster beyond description. N o w, most businessmen blame labor unions, and they resent the power of these vast bargaining groups. It is too late, certainly, to think of the abolition of unions. But the hard fact is that unions came on the scene because employers failed, voluntarily, to do what is right. It wasn’t too long ago that in a factory the pay was $9 for 66 hours of labor; girls 14 years of age working eleven hours, six days a week for $4.95. In the lore of industrial relations, there is the experience of Ella May Wiggins, who at the age of 29 had nine children and worked in the night shift of a textile plant. When her children got whooping cough, she was refused the privilege of working on a day shift; and when. to save her children, she quit her job and had no money, four of her children died. Then she began to speak to the mill workers, and when she was shot by a mob, they sang this song over her grave: “But, listen to me, workers, A Union they do fear; Let’s stand together workers And have a Union, here.” We had better remind ourselves that in the fight against child labor, for decent homes for working women, for minimum wages, industry fought against these ideals and called them socialism. But they could not be denied, and what businessmen refused to do voluntarily, to care for the welfare of their workers, organized labor forced them to accept. The free enterprise system can exist only if its devotees voluntarily obey the moral principles in human relations. Unions, today, are big and powerful, and they, too, are confronted with either voluntarily disciplining themselves or bringing upon themselves some outside authority which will compel them …. THE RACIAL ISSUE is another and certainly a more immediate area \\\\There the ideal is the practical. The basic question is one of morality which endows every person with the natural right to life, liberty, and the opportunity to fulfill the talents and potentialities of his being. Anything which discriminates against or stands in the way of a person’s right to these is blasphemous and immoral. There is no escaping the judgment which falls upon the segregation of the Negro in our midst. It is immoral to say to any person, regardless of the color of his skin or the church of his faith, that he cannot sit where I sit, eat at my table, study in the same school as my children, apply for the same job of work as I do. Segregation is immoral. It is a survival of slavery, and is an insult to the dignity of man who is made in the image of God. The question is not whether segregation shall continue or not, but whether we shall voluntarily do what is right to be forced by experiences painful and damaging. Is it going to take ten plagues upon our society before we accept the truth universal, that what is right and just cannot be evaded? This principle of the moral imperative which cannot be denied is at the heart of a great deal of our personal and social life. Pharoah is the historic example of one who had to learn this the hard way. Most of us still have trouble realizing that the choice before us is not whether we shall do what is good and right. What is always confronting u s i s, rather, whether we shall obey the good voluntarily, or whether we shall be compelled in a more painful way to submit. Pharoah was far from being a practical person. In fact, he was the most impractical of people, because he failed to discern the truth that what is right is practical. A TEACHER ON HIS RACKET fessor I mentioned had to undergo years of sound scholarly training before he arrived at the professional level, and that society should reimburse him for his preparation to work. I don’t know about that. I only know that the fellow has only a master’s degree Bob Sherrill and that the scholarliness of his background is best evidenced by the title of his thesis, to wit, “The Effect of Blue Stage Lighting on a Small Audience.” I know another professor who was fired from State College No. 1,passing on to State College No. 2,from which he was canned a year later, only to bounce back to the payroll at State College No. 1 one of those was in Playboy magazine. The public is told that college teachers meet frequently for conferences with their students. Utter nonsense! The average load per professor in my department is 120 students, no more. If each student had two fifteen minute conferences with hi s instructor \(which is an unheard of amount still have worked only the equivalent of 14 forty-hour weeks. And as a clincher, take my job …. But I admit it’s a racket. I’ll be in Monterrey this year, from June 3 to September 20, and I hope by the time I get back that the sweatshop news hack has turned out enough propaganda to persuade the public that my salary should be raised, so that I can spend next summer in Mexico City. There’s too much riffraff in Monterrey to suit a highclass molder of character like me. til, in a series of plagues, he was compelled to free them. What he rejected voluntarily, he w a s forced to do under pressure. For it is a basic truth of life that a moral principle cannot be evaded. Consider, then, how this confronts us in some pressing social problems. Take the matter of our being free citizens in a democracy, a situation in which we take great pride …. This freedom is ideally wonderful in -our eyes. But in actual practice, how many of us take seriously our role as free citizens? How many of us take the trouble to go to the polls and vote for city councilmen, for school board members, for representatives in the state legislature? …. A Chinese visitor once described us as a people who enjoy n o t practicing what we preach. It is only when corruption hits the headlines and scandals in public office shock us into awareness that we become bitter and resentful against the culprits. But the fault is really ours, who had the opportunity to exercise the greatest right in a democracy, and we just indifferently neg- lected it …. THIS MATTER of a voluntary or a compulsory adherence to the moral ideal is most poignant in our industrial tensions today. Whether we approve or not, business is constantly getting bigger and labor unions must inevitably direction of Luigi Zampa, whose technique would suggest that he learned his trade ushering at theaters devoted to the exclusive showing of Joan Crawford films, interspersed with amateur performances of the nineteenth century melodrama. WE NOW COME to the English production of “Romeo and Juliet,” a 1954 film that has taken its own sweet time about reaching certain parts of the state. Such a delay, though, would prove no great loss. Filmed in Italy by Renato Castellani, a native son who has but slight feeling for Shakespeare’s verse, the matter has little to recommend it except the irrelevant documentary charm imparted by actual shots of fair Verona. To alleviate this sad if not irremediable lack of poetic feeling, Castellani injects a little second-hand visual splendor by aping some of the Old Masters in costume, color, and scene composition. For reasons unknown, the golden chiaroscuro of Rembrandt and the sensuous pallette of Titian are considered undesirable for this play with its great contrasts of mood and imagery, but the vul paring, preparing. Reality is quite another thing. After all, when you have gone over ancient history or English grammar or Restoration drama, or what-have-you, for a couple of semesters, you pretty well know how to pace your teaching, and thereafter, for the next 20 years or so, you go on doing what you learned to do the first year as a teacher. That’s “preparation.” Perhaps it SHOULD be otherwise, but that’s the way it IS. As for paper-grading, professors in the larger universities usually have a flunky for that \(paid in the small schools have the equally foolproof system of just throwing away about half their papers. Now, as to the pay, here are some sample salaries, which I quote from the Legislative Budget Estimates: The average salary for a full professor at the University of Texas is $8,405; for associate professors, $6,147; for assistant professors, $5,109; for instructors, $4,007. The averages at Texas A&M for the same ranks are: $6,297 and $5,311 and $4,596 and $3,944. The averages at Texas Tech are: $5,829 and $5,169 and $4,575 and $3,813. Let’s take a sample case to see how the salary-work coordinate comes out. I know an assistant 12 hours a week. With the exception of one class in freshman composition, he teaches o n 1 y speech courses \(no papers to suming that severe work sched time off, he is paid $5,000. It is hardly necessary that the $5,000 is for nine a nine-month period with long vacations. I have been told by many long-faced teacher that vacations don’t put food on the table, but I imagine many a working stiff in industry who has to stay with the same company 10 years before he gets as much as three weeks off would agree that three months off each year, plus two weeks at Christmas and one week at Easter, would be better than food on the table. SUPPORTERS of the Pity The Poor Teacher Program, however, would remind me that the pro to add months riddled a a situation that should be appraised mainly from the standpoint of pay-for-work-given. WELL, WHAT IS the work given, and how is it paid? In answer, I’ll stick to the area I know something about: the college level. pride ourselves on our down-toearth, practical way of life, and idealists are certainly impractical people. They mean well, and their intentions are good, and on the Sabbath it is pleasant to hear the preacher pay tribute to high ideals. But to take them seriously \(In an address over WFAA, Dallas, Rabbi Levi A. Olan of Temple Emanu-El Brotherhood of Dallas ventures into the area of the relationships between religion and social policy. The address is excerpted with Rabbi Olan’s IDEALISM IS THE ONLY PRACTICAL WAY Our age shows a condescension, The work given is usually in the day-to-day business of life