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Show Viewpoint Emphasis of Change In a decade when grade school children "go steady" and junior high kids need evening clothes, the Victoria Independent School District is acting in a refreshingly Victorian manner. AS OF NEXT September, the South Texas town will have a four-year high school, three-year intermediate schools, and five-year five-year elementary schools. With revolutionary sterness, the school board has ruled that in the intermediate inter-mediate schools there will be no pep squads, cheerleaders, or school sponsored functions at night No dances, they insist, or crowning of queens, or elections . of class favorites. Only the seventh and eighth grades will have organized athletics ath-letics and the teams will be enlarged en-larged so that every pupil who wants to play will have a chance to do so. INSTEAD OF FOOTBALL banquets ban-quets and sweetheart elections, Victoria will have an honors day with awards for academic excellence. excel-lence. The town is taking a giant step toward remedying a dilemma among students that the Houston Chronicle has called "too much, too soon, socially too little, too late, academically." It is pathetic to hear junior high school girls lament that they don't have dates for the next school dance or compare com-pare the "motors" ridden by their respective boyfriends. IF IN THE lower grades a student stu-dent learns to put education before be-fore socialization, he may resist the strong attraction to hedonism in high school and college. He might go so far as to put study before fraternity. Certainly the social aspects in an educational community are not categorically evil or even undesirable, unde-sirable, but they are being overemphasized over-emphasized on every level. Victoria Vic-toria is right. It's time for a little overemphasis on academics. DAILY TEXAN |