University of South Carolina Libraries
Wednesday, November 15,1995 ,o0aitfoock Serving USC Since 1908 Wendy Hudson, Editor in Chief Matt Pruitt, Viewp< Editorial Board Lucy Arnold, Jamie Clark, Gregory Perez, Stephanie Sonnenfe Larry Williams, Ryan Wilson, Chris Winsto PrnfessnrQ ohnnl awarded for teai Chances are that at some point during your acader be taught by a professor who is less than enthusiasti subject. Perhaps one of your professors seems to care very her students, or acts as if teaching is merely seconda wondered why this is? Perhaps it is because students and professors ha about what makes a good professor. Students generally hope that professors not only ] ing knowledge of their subject, but also that they cai and can convey information in a clear manner. In sb for good teachers. Professors, on the other hand, are rarely awarded abilities. Instead, they are awarded for their efforts in 1 success in publication. Professors are encouraged t< teachers. This mentality causes some professors, especially t to place teaching secondary to research. Instead of shi the students and making sure they understand the sented in the course, professors view teaching as som do in order to get paid for their research. Fortunately, some awards, such as the Mortar Bo Teaching Award, do honor professors for their efforts room. However, teaching ability does not receive the attent Universities are here for the students. Professors sho Schools that teac virtues deserve f Last week I began a discussion on the current state of public edu- TOMMY TO! cation in the United States. This Colun week I want to begin by reiterating the main points from last week. vatization and/or ? I will conclude this week by com- would alio menting on some positives in some tothesch of our local schools. One Midlands whether it be Prot district does not teach secular hu- Jewigh or seculai h manism, and I believe they deserve naro?ea tote realized and congratulated the Democratic pa I also will touch on the subject of obvious, ? character education as the test lm- cauae as with eve mediate solution to our problems. , IheorebcaUyour system of tax- Fina]ly> j want payer funded public education is im- itiyes ^ moral. The very doctrine of separa- *Y 0 ,, n tion of church and state, which lib- ^C81 inTa.?U , ,,, i , , , schools. There is a erals hold so dear to heart, is violated , .. , . , . i . j. ..... j v i education which t by government-dictated schools. , Education is, in itself, a rehgious ^tofMucahcmi experience. Any method of education ]?ew^n . has to start with some type of view- bon.lt is a direct n point. The current viewpoint that [nanis ., uca dominates our nation's schools is one ayewi esprea a of secular humanism. Character edu< This secular humanistic view- ^ point is a religion itself, just as is , e classroom. Th Christianity or Judaism This means e tax-paying citizens are funding the courage> ^ religion of secular humanism. This Persfverancf' (**sclf must stop. fidelity, self-cont There are stark differences be- pendability, respec tween secular humanism and most ness' festivity, k other major western religions. These ness' justice and m differences focus not only on issues These virtues vs of morality, but on basic methods of a "common grour teaching and classroom conduct, Catholic and J Secular humanism often advo- J "ey ^ a maJor P2 cates the wrong side of a moral de- " Judeo-Christian cision, as is the case with sexual is- virtues are to be tai sues and personal responsibility, advocacy of any pa Secular humanism also alters the Th*6 is a very posit teaching process. Teachers are no and. who knows, it longer to teach facts and "common- lution to our school ly accepted" ideas but rather "deci- Furthermore, I \ sion-making" and relativism. a moment to congra Obviously, it is good to teach chil- School District On< dren to be capable of making deci- a great deal about I sions, but they also must be given my fiancee (who is moral and intellectual guidance by district) and other i parents, teachers and other role mod- had only good thir els. And they must be taught that these schools. 2+2=4 no matter how bad it may It appears that 1 make them feel. Certain statements er took part in the are facts, and they must be treated ist experiment am as such. performance rein I finished last week's article by sumption. They h? proposing a total restructuring of the scores in the state j nnWir srfinnl fivst".pm Knof ol rmfVinr o mnnK amol |;uv*iv ~wvcji ax gauxcx a xixuvix uhhaj ternative would be to allow for pri- the common teen-a ?(5aiflcock a?^? FAX: 777-6482 Student Media Russell House-USO Columbia, SC 29208 Wendy Hudson Lucy Arnold Martha Hotop Editor in Chief Stephanie j Cece von Kolnitz Matt Pruitt Sonnenfeld Asst. News Viewpoints Editor Features Editors Ben Pillow Chris Winston Jamie Clark Chris Dixon Copy Desk Chief Ph?<? Edi,or Asst. Features Allison Williams Robert Walton Jason Jeffers News Editor Asst. Photo Editor Cartoonist Larry Williams Robbie Meek Keith Boudreaux ???? Asst. Sports Circulation Manager Sports Editors Ethan Myerson Gregory Perez Graphics Editor Design Editor The Gamecock is the student newspaper of the University of _ ? k South Carolina and is published Tuesday through Friday dur- j p ing the fall and spring semesters, with the exception of univer- should be 200-250 words and m sity holidays and exam periods. sional title or year and major if; Opinions expressed in The Gamecock are those of the editors sonally delivered by the author or author and not those of the University of South Carolina. in Russell House room 333. The Board of Student Publications and Communications is the The Gamecock reserves the rij publisher of The Gamecock. The Department of Student Media possible libel or space limitation is its parent organization. under any circumstances. VIEj iints Editor Id, Allison Williams, Id Hp - -w W"1 ching * oic career you will \\ c about his or her little about his or ry. Have you ever ve different ideas have a commandre about students ort, students look for their teaching esearch and their ) be scholars, not hose with tenure, 3wing concern for information preething they must ard Excellence in > inside the classion that it should U??? uld be, too. , QUOTE. :n "Not that we donM raise ? iCHBEnny Drew ? inist It's about that time oi i voucher system. /all. It's time for eating b w parents to send tening to music, Deggmj tool of their choice, and kissin' grandmaw. estant, Catholic, No, I ain't talking ab< umanist. It would giving. I'm talking about oice rather than year where a big ol' fat Lily's choice. The down your chimney and 1 ill oppose this be- BB gun when you were 1 rything they op- Remington 30.06 deer rii or us Americans. Yep, you guessed it. to focus on some mas time!! e already taking Some of you may ask 3 arolina's public you are reading a Christ] new viewpoint to when it ain't even Thani ;he S.C. Depart- Well, the stores get in or s promoting. This ly, so why not me? Even t character educa- mastime in the South is a val to secular hu- son, not just one day. and it appears to For those of you who 1 ppeal. experience your first Chi :ation focuses on below the Mason-Dixon lii rig of basic virtues to hear a little bit about h tere are 19 virtues First of all, Chnstmast -ppd on- hnnpst.v starts the day after Ths ity, self-reliance' That's when W momma )line, moderation, UP m a^c and pull d rol loyalty, de- naments for the Christm, t, love, unselfish^ess " LETTERS TO 71 rere developed to . id" among Protes- IDfO LrC 1 ewishviewpoints. | I <X 1 1 Ki ) J irt of the socalled " values. These All of us who live on ce ught without the experienced fire drills and rticular religion. a pain they are. Some of u ive step forward, been awakened in the nij might be the so- morning to the sounds of 1 ,'s problems. Few of us, though, have hi vould like to take of a real fire. The resident) itulate Lexington College had a scare Thui j. I have learned that they thought was a r this district from It was 3 a.m. Friday m a teacher in the the fire alarm went off. 1 fiends who have was another drill by the Ri lgs to say about up cursing the alarm am else that would listen. Wh District One nev- died up for the cold nigh secular human- was, of course, commotion 1 their students way. Once I was dressed, I forces that as- into the hall to join every< ive the top SAT the trek outside, and from what I As soon as I entered the ler problem with one cauerht mv eve. One ol ge social ills. bors was wheeling his bik room and saying, Tmgetti ables out of here!" I didn derstand the panic until Ryan Sims the other end of the hall. Online Editor Suzanne enc* ?* ^he hallway was < McDonald smoke! My RA came run Graduate Assistant the hallway yelling, "Don't h dSSSSS. and look at it, GET OUT!! Laura Day t? my roommate who was creative Director room and said that it wai Jeff A. Breaux we needed to get the #*&! c Art Director ? Marilyn Edwards When I left my room al w J yl?r what I was wearing and i Marketing Director . , __ Erik Collins my hand. Things were goii Faculty Advisor my head like, "What was I Po||cy if my dorm were to burn dc ? all letters received. Letters the key to my car, all I coulc ust include full name, profes- was gO home. "What about i student. Letters must be per- ? . to The Gamecock newsroom that IS 111 there? Not ever 5b, to edit all letters for style, ^Ve h?me I COuld s. Names will not be withheld live hours away, and many STPOEY t ' v m* ME t want to win. Clemson currently has lives saved, it makes you realize h Lansford, service chairperson for the Int ;ets prepared ] f year again, arbeque, lis- DREW STEWART g for money Columnist 5ut Thanks- After we get the Stewart hor that time of fixed up and ready to go, the to man comes Summerton (pop. 975) begins t brings you a orate downtown, hoping for a They put up all sorts of decon le. including trees, angels and star It's Christ- never Santa Claus. And there's a reason for that yourself why time, the town's official decoratio: mas column a Santa, complete with reindee sgiving yet. sleigh, which they put atop towi i it this ear- The day after Santa was put up hen, Christ- all of the reindeer had bullet ho n entire sea- them. Never think for a minute the are fixing to Summerton man alive who's g istmastime miss a shot at a big deer like that ae, you need or otherwise, ow its done. However, some people tend ime officially overboard with the Christmas tnksgiving. rations. There are people in Sumrr begins to go whose Christmas decorations i own the or- the ones Tim Allen put up on his as tree. look like a light bulb painted re IE EDITOR involving fire s impus have have a car. Most people have know what puters, televisions, refrigerators, s have even clothes and some things that c jht or early never be replaced, these drills. We were scared and didn't 1 id the scare what to think to do. The RAs wei 3 of Preston ing what they could, but no one 1 sday night anything. After the fire depart] eal fire. had been there and inspected th orning, and they let us back in the building Chinking it were told not to ask any question* \s, we woke after people started sharing whe i anything knew, we discovered that it was lie we bun- a prank! t air there I will admit to pulling my fair s in the hall- of pranks in my day, but this one walked out not funny at all! The night before me else for we had someone come and dui bucket of crickets down each ha] j hall some- Now I will give the perpetre F my neigh- credit for originality on that one e out of his setting off a fire alarm with smoke tig my valu- scaring over 200 residents into tl ?i r n - ii- -i ii ' "? " i iuiiy un- mg mat iney are going 10 loose ail I looked to belongings at 3 a.m. is not funnj The whole The persons who did this wen covered in far! It was not funny, and no on< ning down preciates someone who can't p iang around prank in good fun. I don't know !!" I turned nitely who did that, but all I ha1 still in the say is, you went way too far with s real, and one!! >ut of there! II had was Betsy Ken ny keys in Public relations sophoi ag through Lecture on evolutioni 1 have done theory raises probler everything yone could The talk by Dr. Phillip Johi have. Some last week brought up some very r don't even cial points. One of the most impoi of these was the claim that evolutic rs : zfir^iX I PARTY A 1 ADIILRUN1' , I in WTo... 1 ? i the trophy and we want it back, but when you see the amount of ow important this effort is to the community." erfraternity council, on the Carolina-Clemson Blood Drive for Summerton Christmas My favorite is the one where some- time season just to offset the weigl body actually had a ceramic statue of they gain eating all of the barbequi Elvis dressed up in a red suit with a And, of course, who can forget th ninlr daflillaf rnilla/1 Kv rainaaor in oa_ lo/fnnd nfCn?ln V/mvuumv |/UUVU Kfj *. VUXUW/1 ULJL OC~ K^gCXXU U1 UOXXMl ViaUO. nesite quin suits. That guy had people pay- It took me a while to figure out c wn of ing to see that one. Santa Claus is as real as the Lizar 0 dec- Of course, who can forget the bo- Man. And I found out the hard wa zillion Christmas pageants around I figured it out because on Chris itions, town. For every church, school, sewing mas Eve, 1984,1 decided to see whr 3. But circle, club and Boy Scout troop, there's Santa looked like. But instead of sa a Christmas pageant. ing a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reii ;. One And every group that puts one on deer driven by a big of fat guy in a re ri was argues about the way it should be done, suit, I saw a Ford pickup chased b r and Some say there should be about 10 eight hairy dogs driven by a skinn 1 hall, sheep and three shepherds, while oth- guy in a plaid shirt. there, ers say there shouldn't be any sheep But no matter how you celebra les in at all. it, the most important thing to r< But perhaps the best thing about member at Christmastime is the re ire's a Christmastime is the spread. If you son we have it: the Lord Jesus Chrii onna know somebody in South Carolina, Himself. ;, fake you're not gonna go hungry around And I'm sure that if He were g Christmastime. ing to spend it on earth, He woul to go Everybody in the South has a come to the South (and, I hope, ? deco- Christmastime get-together, and at would settle all of those pageant di lertan every one of them is a fresh cooked, putes while He was here), make pit-smoked barbequed hog. Drew Stewart can be reached oi show I know a lot of people who hustle line at: d. to lose weight before the Christmas- DrewStewart.Summerton@sc.ed i care go too far, not funny com- . naturalism exists in two different forms. I strongly disagree with this claii^H their In the first form, evolutionary nat- To say that truth is relative is to tfl :ould uralism is held as a theory that has self-refuting. What I mean by this I yet to be proven beyond all doubt, giv- that the clam "truth is relative" ca^f mow en the available evidence. We will call be taken as stating a truth. One cm e do- this the scientific form. I call it that ask if that statement itself is true. I mew because it is the view as expressed by it is, then the claim self-destructs, nent the scientific community. there is at least one truth in this worlH ings, The second form is the societal form, i.e.; truth is relative. [. We Here the society had adopted the sci- My solution to this problem is 3, but entific theory of evolution and uni- one to adopt a Christian theistic worH it we versally instantiated the theory into view. You may ask why Christian fl only an ideology that is supposedly true be- maybe why even God? To answer the* yond any reasonable doubt. Society questions adequately would take bocfl share has taken the theory as a true expla- length, but two things can be saifl i was nation of how the world came about. First, only Jesus said "You sh? ! this Allow me to expose some of the im- know the truth and the truth shall sfl np a plications that have followed due to you free" (John 8:32). Secondly, Jesfl 11. this unqualified move by society to ac- was the only one to say "I am the waH itors cept the theory of evolution as fact, the truth and the life, no one comes H , but The fundamental presuppositions the father but through me" (John 14^fl : and of the theory of evolution is basically We know these claims to be true bH link- stated as saying the world came about cause he hung on a cross and thrfl their through chance mutations and ran- days later he came back to life. EvH r. dom processes. The world is essen- lutionary theory cannot bring peopH it too tially purposeless in nature. Society back to life, nor have people been 3 ap- has taken this presupposition and in- tyred because of it. ull a stantiated it as a fundamental belief defi- within a philosophical ideology. What Stephen Napifl ire to I mean by this is that society has tak- Philosophy graduate studeH this en the theory of evolution out of its scientific status and has given it the status of being an ideology that is true iney beyond all doubt. 1 more This has resulted in the relativistic attitude that we see around us now wfiftBBUwW BH i?ft (The attitude that whatever you be- _ . lieve is true for you and visa versa). Reader responses are welcome. I US The relativism follows because the ba- Letters should be between 2001 sic presupposition of evolutionary the- ^ 250 words and should be I ison ory is that life arises out of a random ... , .. , _ cru- purposeless, therefore, whatever you delivered personally to The "tant think is right for you is OK! Gamecock nary I