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when he left Fluvanna. And if he does, the teacher is going to get low-ratings. 6. The criteria by which teaching is judged at this university where I work have nothing to do with style or content, they have to do with effect. Good teaching is “exciting” and “stimulating,” just like the Playmate of the Month. There are, it seems to me, more honorable professions than academic pornographer. 7 The new university does not really want university teaching. It wants high school instruction. The high school teacher is a competence model and a rhetorician. He presents a model in himself to be imitated, and by hook or crook tries to make what is necessary look like fun. A professor does not instruct students in necessary rituals, or so I have always thought and the OED has led me to believe. A professor professes his subject, he affirms it and declares his sentiments about it and his beliefs. The student must imitate an instructor, but he has a free choice in honoring a professor’s profession. In theory. 8. In my classes, so that I may profess freely, I have been granted by the community what is called “academic freedom.” This means that I may say things for which I cannot be held responsible, and my students have to listen. But if I also have the power to grade my students on the things I say in class, then my freedom is no longer academic. It is police power. It makes me a cop, and I have not studied 16 The Texas Observer literature all my life to be a cop. 9. Being a cop and teaching a cultural luxury item like literature is particularly ironic. For everyone but English teachers and English students the experience of literature is one which is freely entered into with no promise of reward, and no necessity of significance. A book needed only be delightful in itself, unless you are an instructor who must say something about it which will allow the student to make some gradeable response. So English teachers teach the “meanings” of literature and the rewards of studying it the two attributes of literature which are irrelevant unless you must read it for a living or a grade. 10. On the faculties with which I am familiar this has resulted in a rather strange confusion. Most English teachers do not know if literature is the subject of the course or the text. It usually ends up being the text. In committee meeting I have heard a professor recommend teaching Billy Budd because. it is useful in demonstrating the conflict between justice and morality. Whether this is a just or a moral thing to do to Billy Budd or to teach in an A Tax Dodge . . . [A] Dallas legislator \(in real estate trary to the interests of urban citizens. A constitutional amendment was proposed to base the state ad valorem tax on rural property on “productivity,” not the assessed value of the land. Attempts to amend this measure so as to restrict its applicability to those who derive at least 51% of their living from farming and ranching failed. Thus the effect of this measure would be to open the door to land speculators to invest their profits in rural property and hold onto it while it skyrockets in value without paying their fair proportion of property taxes. \(In recent investigations, Congress has already found that some businessmen are evading income taxes on their profits by investing in farms and claiming losses on their farm operaTexas is going to have to find additional i sources of revenue in a special session this year or next; yet, to adopt this amendment would have the effect of decreasing revenue already being received 3/4 of which is earmarked by the State Constitution for public education. It also means that the urban citizens’ proportion of taxes would increase. Urban citizens should remind their legislators of their responsibility to support the best interests of their urban constituency and the majority of Texans, not select, English class was not discussed. 11 In the English department we discuss the quality of everything but literature. We rank the quality of scholarship on a scale from “Teaching Assistant” to “Professor” to “Friend of the Dean.” We rank students on a scale from “F” to “A” to “Friend of the Professor.” We rank the quality of teaching on a scale from “Hard” to “Dull” to “Friend of the Student.” The quality of literature we avoid like th plague. We assume that all literature is “good” because it is literature. By disguising or repressing the criteria according to which we invest literature with value, we ignore one of the basic cultural attributes of literature and the fine arts: its function as an arena for the exercise of existential judgment. Our taste in literature and art \(our likes and implicit in it the values which we honor as free men. By ignoring these values which are certainly private and always relative, we either give the students the impression that value in literature is absolute, or that it is arbitrary. In either case we cloud one of the few mirrors in which man may see his judgment at work and compare it with that of other men. special interests. Any measure to aid small farmers and ranchers in this way to incorporate foolproof safeguards to insure against exploitation by speculators and those desiring to evade taxes. Mrs. Jocelyn Heller, 4636 Dove Creek Rd., Dallas, Tex. Anticipatory Revenge Your story “Hunt and the Vatican II” in the June 6 issue, quoting Christian Century at length concerning H. L. Hunt’s beliefs, contains at least one error of considerable magnitude, wherein it states Mr. Hunt’s belief that he must be accorded credit for the 22nd amendment, and then states that the reason is “revenge for the Eisenhower administration’s failure to grant him oil leases he wanted.” Utter nonsense! Consult United States Code Annotated, Vol. Amendment 14 to End, p. 587, and you will discover that the 22nd Amendment was proposed to the states by the Eightieth Congress, House Joint Resolution No. 27, on March 24, 1947, during the administration of President Truman, and declared ratified by the necessary number of states on March 1, 1951 during the Truman administration. Eisenhower was not elected until November 1952, and took office in January, 1953. Would you call this anticipatory revenge? Wilton H Fair, Box 689, Tyler, Tex. 75701. Dialogue