4,392 research outputs found
The Gospel on the Margins: The Ideological Function of the Patristic Tradition on the Evangelist Mark
No full textIn spite of the virtually unanimous patristic opinion that the evangelist Mark was the interpreter of Peter, one of the most prestigious apostolic founding figures in Christian memory, the Gospel of Mark was mostly neglected in the patristic period. Not only is the text of Mark the least well represented of the canonical Gospels in terms of the number of patristic citations, commentaries and manuscripts, the explicit comments about the evangelist Mark reveal some ambivalence about its literary or theological value. In my survey of the reception of Mark from Papias of Hierapolis until Clement of Alexandria, I will argue that the reason why the patristic writers were hesitant to embrace the Gospel of Mark was that they perceived the text to be amenable to the Christological beliefs and social praxis of rival Christian factions. The patristic tradition about Mark may have little historical basis, but it had an important ideological function in appropriating the text in the name of an apostolic authority from the margins or periphery
UMUC - Asian Division - Mason G Daly - Greetings - March 26 1961 - Tokyo
No full textAsia;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Daly -U of Md, FED
Director
Commencement Ceremony
Tokyo, Japan 26 March ‘61
GREETINGS
Because our campus authorities have other Maryland convocations to attend in early June, the traditional American time of graduation, this Far East Division ceremony is held two months early and happens to coincide with commencement in this part of the world. At the time of the equinox, of the vernal spring, of the start of a new flood of life in the cycle of the year, Japan has picked the best time for the symbolic business of commencing , the best time to graduate the new generation into life. We are pleased that there is both logic and tradition involved in our time of sending forth this new academic generation.
To refer to this 1961 Maryland Far East class as a new generation produces surprise on some very well lined faces down there. A group that averages more than 38 years of age is not quite a fresh generation in the full flush of youthful idealism. Those of us who have dealt with these graduates know there is little about them that is naive, know that their idealism is very well tempered with realism, know that their dreams are rather more solid goals than undefined enthusiasm. The families of these men and women, sitting right here, know the years of sacrifice which have gone into the realization of those goals.
But here in the Kudan, and all round this city and nation in commencement convocations this afternoon, this American university and those Japanese universities hope that the seal of learning conferred today, the diploma which climaxes this affair, symbolizes significant progress for the graduates (regardless of age) and for humanity as a whole.
Although the University of Maryland began graduating new generations of scholars as far back as 1810, this is only the fifth time that degrees have been conferred by this university in the Far East. We mark with pride this fifth anniversary.
Speaking for our staff and entire faculty, I urge the military commands and commanders to join with us in this sense of pride. I especially invite the civilian corps of education directors and advisors, those base and post specialists in education, without whom no one of these graduations could have happened, to take joint pride in this landmark. And I include with them the military personnel, officer and enlisted, who have been charged with education responsibilities. I also wish to include the librarians of the immense complex of Armed Forces libraries who have, cooperating with us, compiled, coordinated, and purchased into being a library system capable of supporting the collateral academic needs of this, now large, student and faculty body.
The despair of the academic statistician is to measure the acquisition or dispensation of learning. The sum total of knowledge we may have lodged with these graduates, and with the four classes before them, will never be known. But because it is a kind of anniversary, I have given in to the temptation to compute something.
More than 36,000 different individuals have so far taken course work with us in the five years. The size of our graduating classes is hardly dramatic when related to that total. But our graduates in Tokyo each year cannot include those several hundred students whom the military returned to the home campus to finish the degree; and it does not include those thousands who have, since study with Maryland out house, completed degrees in other universities, or are now in that process. And no statistician would dare to chart Maryland's contribution to the happiness, livelihood, and enlarged knowledge, whether through one course or a completed curriculum, of each of the 36,000 who have entered our Far East classrooms.
That illustrates, I believe, the frustration of trying to document, define, or delimit academic accomplishment.
But if statistics fail me, I can lay full claim for this class, and for this faculty, to the most important fact of academic life - the fact that we have been, as free individuals, on an unconditional search for truth. This search for truth - this educational process - can be formalized and vigorously pursued anywhere in the world, even on remote military enclaves. Our five years have glowingly proved that, and that is our crowning achievement. We invite all of you here to mark with us this five year anniversary to join us in congratulating these scholars who have completed the baccalaureate, and to take pleasure in the reception which follows the ceremony
Boer War memories : personal experiences / by F.A.B. Daly.
No full text2nd ed. First published May 1935.; "On the early stages of the Boer War, 1899-1900."--T.p.; Electronic reproduction. Canberra, A.C.T. : National Library of Australia, 2011.; Library's Whelan copy inscribed and signed by the author
UMUC - Asian Division - Mason G Daly - Far East Commencement Greetings - March 24 1958 - Tokyo
No full textAsia;Hoffmann, RosemaryGreetings
Commencement Ceremony, Dr. Mason G. Daly, Director [Far East] Division, University of [Maryland] Overseas Division, Tokyo, Japan, March 24, 1958
The commission to extend greetings to this assemblage on behalf of the Far East Division of the University of Maryland Overseas Program, happily falls to me. We all know this division in Maryland’s world wide educational venture is the youngster, the new one; but those of us in it do not feel of another generation, we know we are quite dry behind the ears, we may have gotten started ten years late, but that does not mean we are a decade behind. We are, in fact, feeling very important today, sure that we have emphatically made our mark, confident that we deserve a full measure of attention. We are insistent that the size of our graduating class is not small, but startlingly large, and we have been insistent that the event getting underway here today must measure up to the significant number of significant men who are being honored.
This audience has assembled, I am sure, out of shared interest and effort, out of pride, and out of curiosity. Many of you are men and women who have worked directly with us and our students in your education services, you have invested time and energy in unmeasured quantity, and you have come to see an especially dramatic result of your cooperative effort. Others of you who have shared in the effort have perhaps come to collect some of the psychic pay that a teacher takes as part of his reward. You are the large number of lecturers who have bolstered our teaching staff and helped make this program possible. There are many commanding officers, from Generals and Admirals to company and wing commanders, there are fellow students, and there are the wives and children of these graduating men, all here in large number, all taking pride in their relationship with these men. And, there are many others present who are not immediately involved or closely acquainted with the graduating group or with dignitaries appearing here.
Many of you are Japanese who have come to observe this American ceremony taking place in your midst. Your press, radio and television are here and they will bring this event to the attention of still more people in the Orient.
You are all welcome, indeed. You are going to observe a traditional ceremony with is also unique. It is traditional in that it is being conducted in the same spirit and with the same procedures that hundreds of commencement are staged annually in the United States. I tis unique in locale, it is unique in the personnel of its graduating class (at least in terms of their age level and accumulated off-spring), and it is certainly a unique representation of an advance in university educational philosophy, a philosophy with now permits, even expect, a university to reach mature and deserving students wherever in the world they may be.
We were asked one day this fall, and not too facetiously, when we expected to set up classes on the far side of the moon. I suppose the replay must be: as soon as the requirement exists, and as soon as the conditions up there are correct (those conditions may have to include a big boost in the oxygen supply when college professors report in for action). I won’t dare anyone present to say that Maryland on the Moon is too wild a dream. However, it will be enough today to contemplate the significance of this American event in this place, to contemplate the significance of this American even this this place, to contemplate the fact that these graduates represent a Maryland student body of many thousands here in the Far East, many more thousands in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Atlantic area, the State of Maryland, Washington D.C., and the Pentagon. We bid you all welcome to our commencement and to the reception which will follow
Using mock voir dires to assess the law of evidence
No full textAs an adjectival subject, the Law of Evidence stands apart from other law modules. Its procedural nature makes it both fascinating and challenging for students. More than other law subjects, the trial itself is at the heart of the study of the Law of Evidence. At its core it is concerned with the manner in which a case is presented at trial. It makes sense then, it is argued, to incorporate experiential learning, focused on evidential arguments which might be made at trial, within the assessment of this module.
This chapter outlines the author’s experience of assessing the Law of Evidence by way of mock voir dires, wherein students act as counsel for prosecution or defence arguing either for the admission or exclusion of certain evidential material. The author reflects on a number of specific benefits and challenges posed by the mock voir dire assessment, for both students and lecturer alike, and uses surveys completed by students being assessed in this manner in Spring 2018 as a qualitative illustration of the issues arising
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - Army Education Conference: The Uses of GED - June 4 1964 - Berchtesgaden, Germany
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Mason G. Daly Director European Division University of Maryland
Berchteseaden June 4, 1964 Army Education Conference
THE USES OF GED [General Education Development]: A Professional Manifesto
After the presumptuous ring of that title, I believe I should fall back on scripture to bolster my courage and bless my purpose. I will take a few lines from Ecclesiastes, and hope it helps:
To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven……. a time to keep and a time to cast away ……a time for silence ; a time to speak.
I might argue that is is not seasonal at all to hold an education conference at this time, but there is purpose under heaven , I am told, in pairing conferences this week so that if one in particular is held in the Walker, the other has a better chance to make at the Berchtesgadener Hof, never mind Maryland registration week. Ecclesiastes would seem fairly relevant to GED in this time of keeping slots and of casting them away. You have given me a time to speak, and I am unable to keep silent about this absolutely remarkable time in GED history.
Every sign I read points to the certainty that this is a time when just about everyone up in the Walker-Civilian Personnel conference and everyone down here in the valley-GED conference is speaking out about the purposes , practices , processes , and personnel of GED. So keep your seat belts buckled. I am joining in, and I am going to take you on a fairly lively ride, pointing to some of the signs as I see them.
Educators 1n this "looking glass land" of education for the military -all of us , that is -to get anywhere must run twice as fast (or is it twice as s lowly) as any other educators. While all other populations to be educated promise to grow and grow, ours promises to diminish. If we do not turn into haggard educational hucksters , the boys up in the Walker will turn us into educational dodos, or, worse yet, send us home. Behind our facade of wildly fluctuating quarterly reports, that can never seem to be made to glitter, our slick-paper job descriptions, our education centers which must not look too much like cemeteries with lights , we discern here today in Berchtesgaden, not an auditorium full of happy people living in a society permeated with security, but a bunch of guys whose lives know much frustration and some fear, whose lives know the disruption of the dreaded musical chairs of civil service and most recently the big ruptures of reorganization; whose faces and bent backs show other evidences of professional and emotional ill health. We are all, let's face it, too middle-aged with cynicism and too full of wonder and worry about Warren Winstead's replacement, to be turned into smiling, smiling portraits of optimism and well-roundedness by any GED reorganization or middlemanagement courses at Bad Tolz.
This GED in Europe would seem to be on the make. I t is being institutionalized as never before. It will no longer be a dangling, sometimes unstructured part of something else. So this is no time to keep silence in remembrance of things past. Rather it is a time to speak out, to join in the anatomy lesson on the GED "body politic." There are signs which summon us to a breakthrough. And , to continue my muddled metaphors , this is a time to sharpen definitions , puncture balloons , and put the new GED into clear perspective.
Now just who am I to take off on such flights of metaphor and presumption. Well, I share a good sized shred of the same heritage. I stand in roughly the same place in the educational universe at this (I hope transcendent) hour of GED. I speak the same language. I suffer from many of the same insecurities.
I am very much with you in your present "period of adjustment." I use the same PX's and get my liquor at the same class VI counter. I may have been overseas too long, but Ray Ehrensberger won't fix up a direct exchange, even if I were ready to give up my cheap Scotch. Furthermore, we, you and I, have had a long and still abiding, usually fruitful and warm (sometimes heated) fellowship in GED. I was never directly asked to give any advice or consent in the present GED metamorphosis; in fact , I haven't been asked , as much as I need it , to take some middle-management with you. Still, as is your generous way, you annually give me your platform and, as is my way, I am most at ease speaking about our imperative partnership, our perilous profession, our joint image, and our future destiny. It is most certainly not a time when you can hope to have me keep silence.
I suggest the motto of this conference would better be stated: Changing Army Education in a Changing World. Although an argument might be formulated that the entrenched, long-tenured overseas educator doesn't welcome or risk change, there is some likelihood that the home-steading type most surely recognizes the change which is upon him; or, if he does not, he is so benumbed by cheap Scotch that he cannot effectively carry on decent guerrilla warfare against that change. He knows better than any newcomer this is not the Army of yesterday with its basics, its woefully under-educated officer corps, its segregated units, its hordes of draftees. He doesn't need to be fresh from Fort-something-or-other in CONUS to know that both the world and the Army are changing in dismaying, drastic ways . It doesn't take a nervous system somehow re-sensitized in the good old USA to tremble with awe and anticipation and anxiety about the shape of things to come. Only 6000 inducted this month. Married men exempted. Society's rejects funnelled into Johnson's new programs rather than the Army. Larger classes at the academies on the Hudson and in Colorado. Missiles instead of men. Co-existence as much as cold war. No wonder Warren Winstead got a new job.
It isn't altogether true that history has swirled past us GEDers stuck off here too long in Europe - this distant, dark-side of the moon. It is no more true that new blood, high in statesidecontact-corpuscle-count will refresh and revitalize the old corpse, than it is generous to look upon new blood as a carrier of change, something as infectious and feared as Typhoid Mary. As I read the signs about the often over-simplified matter, there is far more likelihood we will all go home all at once (and heaven help the balance of stateside education then), than there is any likelihood that any civil service formula, even with computer magic , can circulate and rotate education advisors in and out of stateside and overseas jobs for the regular refreshing of ideas and for the lowering of the level of Scotch in the blood stream. Given the formula , the balance of job exchange necessary, the switch from Scotch and Schlitz might be effected with gratifying ease . But no civil service or military Einstein can come up with such a formula at such a time in this changing Army and this changing world. Or, so the signs seem to say to me.
What is needed now, today, is a professional manifesto in GEO, a professional manifesto that accommodates new blood and old blood (there is no really significantly incompatible alcoholic Rh factor), a professional manifesto that gets on with what needs to be done to change Army education to fit a changing world. Go ahead and seek the elusive rotation formula, that's useful; but in the meantime let's grant that this old institution (GED) will be p6pulated for as long as it exists with many old timers, let's show that this old institution (GED) is not immovably moored to one place in time. It is just now being up-graded in organization so that all the old ones and all the new ones can experience strengthened status in our important calling, a status the military has not always been prepared to recognize, a status that is not yet fully assured. This old institution (GED) can, with any blood at all, break with at least some of its bleeding bureaucracy, eradicate at least some of its clinging obsolescence, and make this overseas military community, whatever its make-up and however changing its mission, a more intellectually integrated part of a fast changing world .
I believe there is the professional poise in this auditorium , the potential for professional extension and for professional up-grading (and I don't mean GS grades, although any of that kind of up-grading is alright, too) to come up with a fairly decent professional manifesto .
But it is right here, reference this poise , extension, up-grading in the profession, that I believe the old GED world is most like an Alice-in-Wonderland looking-glass land, most open to criticism. It does sometimes hump a long at twice the speed of other educational outfits to approximately stand still. It has sometimes let Europe seem like the dark side of the moon. It has sometimes let civil service strictures and slottage, military budgets and bumbling, make its professionals less imaginative, informed educators and more pale, palsied GS-somethings seeking safety in governmental sinecure. I hope it has the poise to prevent this happening in the now renovating GED structure. I hope it has the poise to show anyone that the way to better advisor-dom is not simply to exchange Mannheim , Germany , for Mountain Home , Idaho. The view from the education center is little changed. Same quarterly reports , same test s to keep locked in the safe , same counting of credits , just another tiresome university , same civil service regulations with the same bumpings and riffings and built-in anxieties , same distance to conventions and conferences because TDY money is always short , especially for civilians dealing in that intangible, education.
We know very well the mere change of scene does not guarantee professional outlook or development. We know very well what we need as professionals is repeated contacts with our peers in adult education, attendance at professional conferences, hardly more distant from Mannheim than from Mountain Home, seminars about service needs in education, short and long exposures to the literature and thought in adult education in the United States and, for that matter, just across the channel in the United Kingdom. 6.
In the new GED can’t there be a breakthrough for professional status and attitudes that shatters the strictures and budgeting for this kind of spending? Can't there be a breakthrough which challenges some of the existing fetish about professional up-grading through the tiresome adding up of education credits for education credits' sake, for the civil service point gate, never mind their irrelevance? Let's see a demand for education for the sake of professional relevance and up-dated knowledge, never mind the points. Let's get far out in a wonderful, but I think plausible and maybe even possible, professional land. Let's see, in the new structure, a budget for your own learning and professional extension. Why is it really so far out to demand what in industry and in some corners of government, and even here and there in universities, is commonplace and legislated for -subsidies and rebates and refund plans when real education takes place, when a conference or a course is attended, when a language is learned, when a talent is extended, when a profession is enriched and up-dated. Why is a final-semester or final-year plan not as valuable in an education advisor as it is in a uniformed man? Why indeed, must I sound outrageous when I say to hell with refreshing at Mountain Home, give the guy a sabbatical!?
You see, don't you, what too many years of overseas ' Scotch can do? I've become a nut! So nutty, so hopped up, that I think even momentarily that the new GED should be manned by an elite corps of professionals who take this opportunity to build in a dynamic system of self-renewal, an elite corps of adult educators who do not allow themselves to be isolated from other adult educator s , who do not allow themselves to be stymi ed by the count down of regulations intended for clerk-typi sts in civil service, who can command the funds and the respect to bring stimulating educators into their midst, more regularly and more intimately, and for more than a thirty minute talk at a once-a -year Berchtesgaden do. I'm so charged up that I can even wonder why the system can't subsidize a Master's or Doctor’s degree for a deserving professional, by some kind of sabbatical release, reasonable financial aid, or at least by the encouragement of a slot held open for him. If your good man wants a year to do an MA at Middlebury in French, why lose him, and why let anyone say that MA warrants less support or adds less to an advisor’s worth than some statistical project e valuating toilet facilities, leading to a Master’s degree in junior high school principalship?
Why can't the system send every professional in the ranks to one adult education conference stateside at least once every two years where contacts and ideas are enlarged; and I don't mean budgeting in the system for more TDY mileage for the top-dogs in the ranks , I mean for all of the ranks . Some fairly dulled eyes were lighted up with a real professional glow when a dozen or so of you by some budget miracle got back to Maryland's worldwide armed forces education conference a couple of years ago. What a shame and what a commentary on restrictive rules and restricted funds that Air Force in Europe can be represented at this good conference by only one man (although I'm relieved that someone around Europe is registering Maryland students this week ! )
What a fumbling instrument the new GED will be, if there is not enough professional poise and vision to up-grade every member with a decent and dynamic professional manifesto at this critical crossroads in its history .
While the new GED is going about up-grading its status, as I am confident it will, I hope it will study its reflection in the eyes of the military, in the "looking glass land" of education within a military command, in particular the reflection of its position in the realm of priorities in that mysterious spelling-out of what is always called "the primary mission."
The primary mission of this military community is, I am sure, spelled out in some sort of specifics about containment and cold war and readiness. How often you and I have had to bow to the command or commander who, with “primary mission" impunity and logic, has decided he had to dehydrate our activity because of our place in the priorities. We are always fair game when the cry "primary mission" goes forth.
But we must be the ones, my friends, because we believe it, not because it is our living, to show the military that the primary mission is only in a matter of degree more self-contained and separate from the welfare and intelligence of its least component, the drafted GI, than it is self-contained and separate from the wisdom and intuition of one Robert MacNamara. (Talk about presumption! I have it, do I not?)
Well, I really believe that we can get almost dead-center in that "primary mission" realm if we take a real professional stance, come out with a ringing professional manifesto. I really believe that the reinstitutionalized GED can switch itself from being about the most vulnerable element in this military community, to being one of the most vital elements in this military community - just as education is more and more considered the most vital element in national survival.
The professional up-graded, then, a professional manifesto formulating, the reflection of the organization improved in the eyes of the military.
What else is there to be done in changing this Army Education program to fit the changing world? Obviously, the uses of GED are always in need of re-examination and change, and obviously there is no better time than the present moment in GED history for setting up a system sensitive enough to constantly re-examine and change."
Clark Kerr in his stimulating book, "The Uses of the University," finds in his California institution (undoubtedly the most dynamic system of higher education in the world today) that the educational balance is always changing and finds that this is the unbalancing reality that saves it all from stagnation. The Uses of his university shift, reshape, appear and disappear. Well, to point to the obvious, and to assert there is more similarity between this education system and that one than the borrowed title of my speech, let's speak out about some shifts, changing shapes, appearances and disappearances in the Uses of GED.
The "timeless priorities" of this man's Army are not so timeless after all. New Uses will mold the good old GED and' the good old-timer in GED, if there is the guts, now that there is the organization to eliminate some non-essentials , and if there is the vision, now that there is a better looking-glass, to anticipate new essentials of the changing Army education in a changing world .
Our courage to eradicate and eliminate, and our powers to anticipate, are not always reassuring. Sometimes some of us (and realize I am speaking of Marylanders and GEDers, quite interchangeable cohabitors of GED-wonderland), some of us are more caretakers of past practices than we are up-to-date educators; some of us are more civil-service office-holders than leaders in change. We do find ourselves bottlenecked in our own bureaucracy, miserably contemplating banal charts, and regulations and records and reporting and testing and crediting that hasn't changed a great deal in a couple of decades . And our powers of anticipation-yours and mine-are hardly phenomenal to judge by the number of Maryland classes we hopefully schedule and drearily cancel each term. (Sometimes I think we are yet going to introduce Mark Hopkin's classic learning situation in Maryland overseas -you know, the teacher at one end of the log, and one student on the other end).
But although we know very well that we will never eradicate all of the bureaucratic nonsense and dodo practices and even dodos from our GED world, we hope that we now have, in the new structure, a chance to eradicate, we now have in the new structure a chance to anticipate, and shape still better Uses of GED.
I am told that this process of experimentation, innovation, and essential change takes what industry and all outfits on the make, even respectable universities, call "research a d development." Research and development shapes the chrome on a Cadillac and it shapes the nose -cone for the trip to the moon; it reshapes the bosoms of America, and the Arctic gear of Little America; it shapes some of Harvard , much of California, and, from what I understand, all of Warren's new Florida school ; it shapes everything of the hard and soft sells of creature comforts in America , and promises to enter more vigorously into the hard and soft sells of the soul . The phrasemakers call for "research in depth," then call for innovation following rigorous experimentation and testing and validating. Then you come out with the new Mustang and hope mightily that it won't turn out to be an Edsel .
Reorganized GED now, and in the foreseeable future, should face massive innovation and change such as it has never experienced in its distinguished career. I have the presumption to suggest it needs continuing research about its basic structure. As jarring as it may be, I hope you face continuing administrative reorganization, more musical education offices. You'll be in bad shape if you break old patterns only to fix new ones. There needs to be -there must be -a kind of "dynamics of planned change" built into your new system -because there must be a constant search for the best possible institutional arrangement of authority, responsibility, jobs, and personnel.
The logic of some of your new districts and arrangement of personnel in them is not yet based on very great depth in research or development. They are, I have the presumption to trust, a starting arrangement subject to the dynamics of planned change, subject to further depth research and further innovation. What a travesty it will be if after a shake-down period you find that jealousies , little human kingdoms , the myopia of selfish motives , fix the new arrangement of GED into a calcified cluster of Edsel districts and Edsel centers .
I have the presumption to ask, are your districts going to be dynamic centers for research and development into the proper Uses of GED, or are they going to be an arbitrary rearrangement of existing bureaucracy to enhance the status of the new superstructure? New ideas, new uses, new dimensions, new purposes, the re -examination and revision of old programs, re-treading and re-grouping of professionals you have.
Surely the new GED outfit will make every new district a "research and development center,” each with separate projects and the common mission. Not busy work. Not more surveys. Real projects to find out real things. Real centers of resource. Real "professional programming," I think some management wags call it. Busy work by any other name is yet banal. Research and development just might be another name for survival for every one of us.
One project I have the presumption to suggest [c]ould be piloted and pushed into the dimension of a resource center, which waits to be done in depth, is a project on post-service careers. Not post-retirement only, not just the usual tailspin around some middle-aged colonel who is about to retire, although you have woefully little that is up-to-date and helpful to him at most centers right now. What about the excitement, deserved attention it would draw to your purpose in life, your purpose in the military community, and especially, what about the greater service to America, by paying professional attention to the postservice careers of the 18-monther who is an unskilled, unteste
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - AF Education Conference: Tradition and Modernity - April 12 1966 - Toul Air Base
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryToul Air Base
Dr. Mason G. Daly
AF Education Conference Director, European Division
12 April 1966 University of Maryland
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
-Tradition and Modernity
The title as announced here in the program is not my own. It came to me in the mail from USAFE. Although I suppose a title can be a loaded, even a dangerous thing, it is a relief not to have to dream one up. And there is a challenge involved going at it this way , for the speech which follows a title should be related to it without undue strain. Now when I first got the speech assignment and the title I thought it seemed hardly fair that the USC and Boston representatives, who are given the same amount of time, were not also given a title with such seeming implications and connotations, were not given something that structured their presentations as mine seems to be structured. But I thought about the title and decided it was as good as any and probably better than anything I could come up with. The real challenge remains – to discover what I am supposed to talk about and make it relate. I could have asked, I suppose, but that hardly seemed sporting. Certainly it was sporting of USAFE to give me a title and then let me hook my own speech to it. If I had asked what it all meant I might have been told, and then the whole sporting arraignment would have collapsed.
Maryland, then, Tradition and Modernity, is my jumping off point. Let’s just see how sporting the exercise is.
Like USAFe and USAFI, the U of Md has been around long enough to come up with a few traditions. USAFI predates USAFE by quite a few years, but Maryland reaches back its cow college and land-grant days, and that’s long enough to collect a few barnacles of tradition, a few crusts of conservatism. . And although barnacles and crusts can shine in the right light, they do, from time to time, need brining to light, sometimes scraping in public. Even Maryland in Europe has been characterized as having a middle-aged spread and a conservative stance. Either quality may be taken to mean we have too much tradition or too many anxieties or too little imagination. It may only be that Maryland’s fall-guy in Europe is the real middle-aged factor, ever more angular and crusty in his stance, with some spread showing here in the area of the middle years. He takes some comfort in knowing that if he is Mr. Maryland in this gathering, in this Europe, Mr. USAFE, and Mr. USAFI, Jr., also present, have been around a long time too, and, like him, are showing signs of a slightly rearranged distribution of weight and or hair line. Larry Gates and Joe Elam move their headquarters far too often to let any barnacles form; Doug Beakes moves much too fast to worry about middle age, is far too harassed by changing regulations and changing budgets to assume anything like a static stance. I do not envy Joe his musical headquarters (he’s an expert on how to lift a filled filing cabinet), but I do often envy Doug Beakes his energy, his determination, and his sense of conviction. The creative ad-ministrator has been described as “a man of curiosity and discontent, with unlimited enthusiasm for his job. He is restless, intense, strongly mo-tivated, He creates an atmosphere of excitement and urgency among his associates. He is open-minded and listens to new ideas. He is unorthodox and questions conventional ideas.” If that description of a creative administrator fits anyone present, middle-aged or not, I suggest that it fits Mr. USAFE best of all.
Mr. USAFE, in his last USAFE-wide conference, quoted Admiral Rickover – another questioner of the orthodox, the conventional, the traditional – to the effect that “at different stages in history, different kinds of education are needed. Education either advances or retreats, and it will retreat if it stands still. For these reasons,” says Rickover and Mr. USAFE, “education must continually be kept under close scrutiny to insure that it will always produce the kind of people needed at a given moment in time.” We can all say amen to that, amen to this impulse to scrutinize our current programs and plan others that are more in harmony with the times.
You see, the first Beatitude according to Beakes is one with which we all fully agree: Blessed is the outfit that fears not innovation and change. Although Mr. USAFE and Mr. Maryland have recently been stalled in communi-cation reference language teaching by the complexities and cross-currents of their separate outfits, they have had no real conflict in principle, they are beleaguered by many of the same uncertainties, and they believe in the same beatitudes.
I ran into an article the other day in the Phi Delta Kappan magazine, written by a wag from the U of Illinois who made good sense and good humor in discussing some Beatitudes for Beleaguered Bigwigs, some worthy declarations of assaulted persons of consequence. I believe some of his beatitudes can be varied to apply here and I will, of course, introduce several of my own.
In the jargon of Biblical beatitudes, the first for today reads; “Blessed is the outfit which relies both on compasses and anchors in fulfilling its purpose.” Compasses are for going places; anchors are for staying places. It takes a cool outfit to live through the emergencies we all experience here – being deGaulled, Vietnamed out of funds an students, bomb-dropped in to excessive dropouts, that sort of thing. It takes a steady eye on the compass and a quick hand on the anchor chain to live amidst the excitement and turmoil and pedagogical testing and probing into new techniques and new materials and new teaching devices and new directives. To drag the anchor now and then may be the true mark of dynamic leadership. It is better to have the anchor at the ready then to settle for any port in the storm. Dynamic leadership calls for deliberation with caution are certainly as it calls for action with decision and promptness. It is just at this old middle-0aged outfit can some times suffer from too much caution, can seem to deliberate forever, can seem to fail to act at all.
Is it the anchor, then, for tradition, the compass for modernity? Maybe. Lord knows that’s abstract, but it sounds like we are at least still afloat around here, even in our present stormy seas.
“Blessed is the outfit which has a good oracle.”
Great outfits of the ancient past had it easy. When faced with emergencies, like deGaulle, they were not absolutely at a loss. If Alexander the Great, for example, wanted to know whether a chariot charge or a charge of shielded footmen was the best approach to a battle, he merely consulted the oracle. Today we rarely seem to have consultant help of such high calibre. When our university officials turn to us about next year’s budget, the size of next year’s faculty, to what oracle do we turn? Well, Doug Beakes is an oracle of some real repute, and there are one to two others in Europe to whom we can turn. They in turn, I guess, turn to higher oracles, like Karacik and Quick and Zeff, and finally it is oracle right up to the great McNamara and the Great LBJ and the Great Society, and God knows that outfit needs cracular help. I’d like to see the innards of the freshly killed sheep they must be digging around in just now – like the men of old – seeking some hint about better results in Vietnam and better results with l’gènèral. They may claim to be stirring the innards of some scientific computer, but surely they are desperate enough by now to be using more primitive methods too. I know I am. When I think that the new GI bill is almost upon us, that it is already being cinched into one of the most complex of bureaucracies, the VA, which has had 150 years or more to tangle up its procedures, I am ready to settle for the quick reading of the innards of a humble chicken. Do you realize we Marylanders haven’t even had a chance to compound and complicate our already myriad registra-tion forms; and you haven’t had time to put another column on the quarterly report.
We had indeed better try to sight together over the rim of the unknown in education in Europe, whatever oracular means the Gods happen to grant us.
“Blessed is the outfit whose communication is clear and cogent.”
It is not true that the greatest gap in existence is the one between two minds, a gap which only successful communication can close There are times when the greatest gap in existence is right between these two ears, but that is hereditary an can go unnoticed, especially if you keep your mouth shut. But the basis of communication is, I guess, speech, gesture, writing, language, and, to be sure, the temperament or temper revealed through it all. It is also that which is not said at all, either because of the hereditary gap or because of censorship or because the oracle didn’t provide a reading that could be articulated. Communication can be obfuscated (and that word itself will wreck communication), can be obscured by a lack of knowledge. Lacking enough facts, we usually give out infor-mation, ask and answer questions with something less than clarity and cogency. In today’s dictionary one finds, “dramamine: relieves seasick-ness.” Years ago before a cure was known dictionaries took a page or two to cover the subject inadequately. The best, most memorable Supreme Court decisions are apt to be the simplest: “A drunken man is as much entitled to a safe street as a sober one – and much more in need of it.” This account of a busy administration’s message to his wife upon arrival home after a hard day of letters and reports and directives is communication gone haywire:
Herewith my hat and coat. Please file them for future reference Has dinner been finalized? Good. Please hold it in abeyance until further advised. An associate has furnished me with the formula for a revolutionary kind of long, cool one with the request that I research it and report my findings at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, this project requires my immediate attention However, should you require my presence to discuss any [urgent] problems, feel free to contact me. I will be in executive session in the basement. Be assured that I will alert you before completion of my undertaking so that you will have ample time to bring your efforts to a successful conclusion, after which I will be happy to attend the regular meeting with you at table.
Yes, communication between a man and wife can break down. When it isn’t restored it can result in long-term unhappiness and sleepless nights in twin beds. Communication among these agencies in Europe which are ful-filling the somewhat distinct, always vital, and inevitably interlocking and complicated education requirements of Americans stations abroad, should be as maximum as possible, and, to be sure, as friendly as frequent as possible-for surely one important beatitude, which needs no illustration, is: “Blessed is the grand lit.”
And another is: “Blessed is the outfit which listens with big ears and a big open mind.”
And another is: “Blessed is the outfit which shrinks not in hot water.” The US Geological Survey report that the earth is just about the same size now that it was 200,000,000 years ago surely explodes the theory that everything shrinks in hot water. Just as surely the good traditions and philosophies of good education do not have to shrink in the hot water of exploding populations and exploding knowledge, do not have to shrink in the hot water of political chaos and hot war and hot controversy.
Certainly another beatitude is: “Blessed is the outfit which nurtures as a fragile violet its sense of humor.” Because humor is philosophy. The two, as pointed out by Will Durant, are intrinsically related. Each is the essence of the other. The stuffed scholar, the stuffed administrator, if he lacks humor probably lacks philosophy. Pope took a jab at the stuffed ones with a satirical couplet:
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
My head is by no means loaded with learned lumber, but I find it hard to be playful in these times, in our present circumstance, and so do most of you. If humor is the freedom flag of the human mind, the flag is too often – in me – at half mast, if on the pole at all. To see the headlines about NATO and curtailments, to dwell in the limbo of uncertainties about next year, next registration, next TDY patch, next week, tomorrow, makes it hard to be philosophical if humor is part of philosophy. But then, God Himself must have been somewhat of a humorist – else why the duck-billed platypus? Else why the education advisor? Else why the Maryland administrator?
And that leads to a far out and fairly useless beatitude: “Blessed is the outfit which understand the works of Mother Nature.” As we have just noted, Mother Nature has created some odd ones, including the duck-billed platypus and, sitting here, this hybrid, or throwback, or – I like to think – this brand new, important breed of educator. Us. We may be middle-aged, some of us, but in the evolutionary pattern perhaps this breed of education cat, or platypus, or whatever we are, may be rather new and a little promising. We are sometimes reminded in military circles, even in civilian personnel circles, that we are neither fish nor fowl. The albatross, an odd bird, is said to have the widest wing-spread of all birds in relation to body size. Thus it can fly on and on. It occurs to me that many administrators here have large wingspreads in relation to body size, enabling us to sever on and on. Because the sloth, another odd creature, spends most of its time upside down, its fur lies in the opposite direction to that of other animals, toward its back instead of down from it. So when the torrential rains come, the moisture merely drops off instead of soaking in. If we do not live in an upside down position, at least some of us have learned, haven’t we, to survive veritable deluges. And I have still another nature note under this beatitude – How to capture a porcupine: Wait until you can catch one out in the open; then, watching out for his slapping tail, rush in quickly and pop a large wash tub over him. This gives you something to sit on while you figure out your next move!
I said that beatitude was far out, and there really isn’t anywhere to go with it. It is merely descriptive and philosophically loaded, of course, with good humor.
Now let me pass to two more beatitudes before I quit this scriptural pattern.
“Blessed is the outfit which knows when to throw down the gauntlet.” and, “Blessed is the outfit which knows when to pick it up.”
These outfits, and I am speaking mainly about USAFE and Maryland now, are blessed with having to work together, with having to share the grand lit. Whether a gauntlet is, in fact, a mailed fist or a gloved and – or just a figure of speech – it has a good purpose in any good relationship, although it may not belong in bed. Most of our existence together we have bedded down rather tidily. We’ve handled our gauntlets, however mailed, well enough. Indeed, we have worked hand in glove, and we still work hand in glove.
The fact that the gauntlet was tossed down concerning graduate study in USAFE (and likewise in USAREUR) and that we fumbled in picking it up, has not been in the least damaging to our joint morale or our joint purpose. We have probably never served Air Force personnel and their dependents and their civilian affiliates more or better than since that particular gauntlet was picked up by someone else. I doubt that confrontation and its results really show us to be transfixed in one point in time by crusty tradition. I think it only showed that in taking up the gauntlet we did not find the right formula for action. Our compass was functioning alright, but our anchor chain was too long, Our history credits us with enough good sailing to be forgiven for this.
There have not been many gauntlets we have failed to pick up, and I doubt if there will be many in the future.
We have made it possible for USAFE to lead the Air Force world in the non-terminal TDY program, if we are, as we seem to be, temporarily stalled in the language element of that TDY program – because the gauntlet is being flung about over a misunderstanding about materials and over a two-way breakdown of communication – we still see more TDY challenges arising in physics and in mathematics. In addition to the now historic 14 language TDYs, we have had TDYs in history and business and automatic data processing, and we have seen the system work for the lone student who TDYs to reach other subjects to finish a degree, quite outside the TDY institutes we jointly sponsor.
If any outfit 0 and I certainly include USAFE in the judgment has spent more time, energy, adrenalin, and money in updating (modernizing, if you will) its philosophy of teaching language (and math), show me the outfit. Good heavens, in absolute defiance of fate and the great, Charles, we held a French faculty institute in the heartland of deGaulle last week. The results of this time and adrenalin and money are, we assert, already evident, and in step with the best academic and Air Force goals. If it is tradition which causes us to move ahead with deliberate speed in this field, if it is tradition which makes up insist on the very best available in materials (and none has yet found the ultimate in language teaching materials or methods), if it is tradition which makes us insist that those materials be tried out by us in our circumstance of teaching, if it is tradition which makes us insist that those materials be avail-able and used on our pedagogical terms, then tradition it is. If there are barnacles on that tradition, they look pretty good when help up to the light. If that gauntlet was tossed to us, we most emphatically picked it up.
Together USAFE and Maryland have for 17 years managed to intellectually stimulate tens of thousands of air men and officers in their gathering in of credits and degrees. If we have lagged here and there in becoming modern, our sense of tradition has kept the academic fabric of what we are doing whole and untarnished. If our credits are blessed in all temples of learning, it is because we strive to accommodate tradition and modernity.
The accommodation is sometimes painful and prolonged, but it is there, it is going on. Like most schools, for instance, we are slow in finding this means to develop non-lab science teaching, presuming – as many of us do – that there is an important place for that kind of science teaching in a university program. But we have now brought Geology successfully into this program, and together we will find what else can be done. Obviously there is a crying need for a sound course in the history and philosophy of science, but in this age of fracturing specializations where on earth would one find the teacher. This immediately suggests the camera and several canned teacher experts on a reel, I guess. Our powers of accommodation have managed to increase our offering in the humanities rather dramatically in the last few years, enriching what had been a too-social-science-centered curriculum.
Our modernizing with the times and the realities of a changing world and changing student body has resulted in the phasing out of the old degree program designed for upgrading old Air Force officers. It is no longer needed and no longer valid for the younger student body we have now, a student body which will duck a terminal-sounding degree, even though there is abundant evidence that no degree is really terminal for an intelligent and determined adult.
It may not be modern, but it is a present need, and we have continued to assist hundreds each year to get those magic, teaching-certifying Education credits, even though we are not one of the two universities who can take overseas personnel to graduate degree in Education.
Because we have your invaluable and always uncalculated and essentially unrewarded assistance in councelling and registering students, especially because we have the budgeting genius of Doug Beakes and the logistical genius of Marshall Boarman at USAFE level, in absolute resistance to modernity and modern trends, we are managing to hold tuition charges down for at least another year, Yet we are managing if only just to compete for teaching talent in the States and we have raised part-time teaches’ salaries 35% in four years.
With something of a modern stance we have encouraged the campus to send Dr. Aylward at the invitation of USAFE to this conference to see if we have yet another gauntlet to pick up reference credit courses via television.
We may have a useful modern idea to share with you reference a tiresome traditional problem of teaching freshman English. Certainly that course continues to be the despair of freshman (especially adult freshman), of colleges everywhere, and it is our shared despair wherever Maryland is over here. I will ask that the last few minutes of the 30 allowed to me be given to our English Supervisor, Dr. Bob Speckhard, who never despairs. He wills suggest this new approach and, since it has to do with programmed learning, it is modern enough; since it has to do with grammar, it is yet traditional. And after Dr. Speckhard you hear from Dr. Beyer about our joint struggle with the modern math.
Pascal once characterized man as “a chimera,” “a novelty,” “a chaos,” and “a contradiction.” The University of Maryland in Europe, even in middle-age, is still something of a chimera, a novelty, a chaos, and a contradiction. It is a simple, yet complex arrangement, it is a study in consistency and in contrasts. About it you have all been both op-timistic and pessimistic; you have found it enlightened
Justin-Mark
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph.
He called himself Justin, for his image; I used his real name, Mark. I\u27d known him as Mark all our lives. Why should I change just because he needed an image
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