Show I— uw nrmamiwwmrt micro When Japan talks The racism that nobody listens no-o- ne Mac Webster opinion editor bj Have you heard what the Japanese are saying about us? They say that we are lazy and that we have lost the week ethic It is almost impossible to believe that anyone could hold this view of the American people Wrong I think anyone that takes the time to look at the United States and realize what kind of woric ethic we actually have would agree completely with our Japanese "friends" Employment and productivity seems like a good place to start since America is number one in this field The average person woiks eight hours a day five days a week with only a few weeks of vacation every year Forty hours a week seems like a very sizable contribution to this countrie's ability to produce and it probably is What we fail to realize though is that we get coffee breaks every two hours and we get a break for lunch and if we just aren't feeling our best it's fine to let our work suffer The new "Buy American" plan of advertising is great stimulus for this type of behavior This ad campaign gives us a false sense of superiority and allows our manufacturers to believe they are creating useful quality products The realistic advertising slogan for consumers should be "Buy what is least expensive and most durable" Unfortunately if that was this countrie's advertising slogan American manufacturers would be out of business Our unions also help perpetuate this situation in a very militant fashion The steel workers in this country before they were unemployed were making an average of $2750 an hour that figure included benefits Almost $30 an hour and most of these people don't have college or even technical school degrees With this kind of wage you would think that steel workers loved their jobs well they didn't US Steel was continually on strike for better insurance better pensions or more wages Do you think that they had lost their work ethic? My question would ask whether they ever had one attitude in this country? The Why do we have this in this country behind the third the investor are Japanese only largest English and the Dutch but we don't seem to be bashing them for their economic contributions to our country Is (he fact that they bombed us at Pearl Harbor the cause for this hafred? We destroyed two of the entire cities and thousands of lives Do we not like them because they make better products than we do? Well I would rather buy a Japanese anti-Japane- se car than an American one especially when yesterday GM recalled thousands of their 1992 cars because there are manufacturing inadequacies What room do we have to argue with the Japanese? This scenario doesn't just happen people have to be socialized to believe that they can get away with this type of behavior That socialization comes through our education The College of Eastern Utah is the primary example of a breeding ground for "slackers" There is not a day that goes by in one of my classes where either one third of the students dort bother to show up or one will ask "Do we have to do this over the weekend? I have a date" Well people this is college it is supposed to be an institution of higher learning Social activities are wonderful things not a playground or baby-sittthey must exist but there needs to be a balance I'm not blaming the student body entirely I think someone forgot to tell our student government that they are in college The student government has done a lot for the socialites of the campus Do these people know that there arc things happening in students lives that mandate more than a week of Saturday Night Live Maybe a dale er rape seminar or ways to meet with a study group or something that correlates at all with our "educational experience" At CEU we have a unique experience to work study and live with citizens of Japan These students are leaching me quite a lesson about my study habits they never sleep Have you ever seen the Japanese students in one of your classes? These students are always taking notes and reading and looking up words in their dictionaries I know that several of the students in my biology class have no idea what some of the words in lectures mean but I have never seen an English speaking student looking up big words All of this sarcasm means that we really need to start reevaluating the way we study socialize and work The Japanese are killing us in the international business world and we are not training the leaden of tomorrow to be any more aggressive than they are today The Japanese are teaching us the most important albeit the most painful lesson our country will ever leant This is Mac Webster signing off from Price City USA reminding you to look to the East before you look at the TV Are we shortchanging our future? by Sam Pittman Eagle editor In addition to the budget cuts recommended by the Utah Legislature other elements of the budget affect education in a subtler manner A push is on to squeeze $2 worth of education out of every dollar spent so that we can have educated children at a discount Some of the proposals suggest a variety methods keeping spending to a minimum and adding revenues without raising taxes or tuition institutions The Utah Board of Regents encourages public four-yeto raise their admission standards index to control enrollment growth The Director of Admissions for the University of Utah Dr J Stayncr Landward studied the impact of the higher standards and found them to be negligible "The intent of the program is to direct more students into two-yecolleges” Landward said "where they have a greater schools result in chance of success" Higher rejection rates at four-yeincreased enrollment growth for two-yecolleges Two-yewith a are period of enormous growth aldealing colleges ready Preliminary indications from the State Legislature are that the College of Eastern Utah will be required to operate and accommodate growth with four percent less funding than last yjmr Directing stuschools will not solve the funding crisis our educadents to two-yetion system faces The higher admission standards have a positive side they force students at the high school level to adjust their curriculum Statistics show that the percentage of students taking four years of high school English from 70 percent to 98 percent and students taking four years of math from 66 percent to 99 percent Their thinking is correct but their methodology is wrong In light ar ar ar ar ar ar of the economic issues developed over the last ten years one solution presents itself but be warned it calls for a sacrifice One has only to watch the news to be aware that the United States is no longer on the cutting edge of industry Yankee ingenuity has been replaced by Yankee complacency The US can regain the cutting edge Were we to increase our investment in education we would win our current economic war in a matter of years We are willing to pay for a standing army to protect us and half the world against the threat of Communism yet we hesitate to arm ourselves for survival in the 21st century A simple step can be taken by gearing the efforts of high school teachers not students to college preparation We need to look beyond high school graduation and prepare students for college The burden on higher education would be lighter if education dollars were not spent high school material For every dollar on not spent a dollar could be spent on support programs and higher poybenefit packages lire current policy of squeezing $2 worth of education out of every dollar spent is burdening our instructors to the point of ineffectiveness They are unable to focus their abilities on teaching in their field because of their tremendous workload In the words of CElTs President Michael A Pttosen "It insures you an inferior education” In the long term an educated society will be less dependent on social programs representing further savings while creating a larger tax base to drew from Certainly this solution makes more sense than making the school pay itself for fossils or selling those fossils to the highest bidder I recognizes by Matthew Harwrard staff writer Racism prejudice and discrimination arc all ugly words every American is familiar with The country seems lobe facing an everincreasing onslaught of racial tension The public is appalled at the recent growing trend of racism that appears to be vexing our nation Many argue it has been there all the time but is beginning to rear its ugly head once again These arc times that try men's souls! Everywhere we turn the media is exploiting prcjudism for economic gain On television we see talk show after talk show dwell on the dilemma of racial hatred an overkill doing more harm than good Unfortunately there is a discrepancy in the information these programs propa- gate According to these shows racism is found and nurtured in only one ethnic group namely the "white” race Films like Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and Alan Parker's "Mississippi Burning" just to name a few present prcjudism and racial hale as a Caucasian problem with all other groups suffering under the crushing hand of the establishment which incidentally is all white Nothing could be farther from the truth What a gross inconsistency to believe that discrimination is only a white man problem It shows the ignorance and gullibility of the American public It would be illogical to say that whites don't hold a majority of the blame but while searching for answers to racial problems too many times it results to ed on page 3) O Scoresci (continued from page 1) most schools are on the back Bun- sen burner Executive director of the National Science Teachers Association Bill Aldridge said "schools don't have adequate supplies they don't have the resources and teachers are poorly trained In general it's not going very well and it's not changed substantially from a year or two ago" Aldridge is convinced that the US will reach President Bush's goal of making this nation's kids number one in the world in math and science by the year 2000 |