| OCR Text |
Show akc Uk Halt Friday Morning Section January tribune 17, 1986 aSe A U Gorbachev Puts Superpowers In Arms Control Alignment As far as nuclear disarmament is concerned, the United States and the Soviet Union seem to be in the same neighborhood. They are, however, driving on different streets. With the latest Russian proposal made Wednesday by Mikhail Gorbachev, both superpowers commit themselves to eliminating nuclear arms as weaponry leading toward potential global destruction. But agreement on the process remains as elusive as ever. It is no mere coincidence that Mr. Gorbachev released the contents of the Soviet proposition the day before Union arms control talks Geneva. The purported in resumed Russian willingness to initially help eliminate both U.S. and Soviet intermnuclear missiles from ediate-range Europe, through joint agreement, was surely calculated to impress public opinion in European countries of the Western Alliance. A measure of the propaganda ingredient is Mr. Gorbachevs call for mutual renunciation of defense systems. all space-base- d Just such a system, planned for the future, is currently President Reagans preferred answer to nuclear disarmament. With a Strategic Defense Star Wars Initiative in place, Mr. Reagan contends the sud perpowers can dispense with missiles because they will be rendered obsolete. As usual, the Kremlin doesnt trust this rationale. Convinced the administration is actually trying for a regained strategic advantage, the Soviet leadership defense syssays: Drop space-base- d tems and well enter agreements about actually scaling back existing nuclear arsenals to zero. Mr. Reagan has at least prompted a counterproposal embracing nuclear weapons U.S.-Sovi- et Earth-launche- phase-ou- t. The Soviet timetable for achieving this, a procedure culmiwith a world-clas- s nating by the year ban on nuclear weapons, introduces an intriguing new possibility, even if fantasy aspects cling to it. In conceding the French and British would only freeze their nuclear missile numbers during the initial reciprocal reductions, Moscow has changed its previous position, which was that those weapons must be counted in any balanced, mutual European missile trim. In now pronouncing itself ready to join U.S. intermediate nuclear missile cutbacks in Europe, without regard for British and French rockets, the Soviets seem to accept a previous Reathe forgan proposal to do just that mer zero option route. Still, the SDI obstacle remains. Mr. Reagan insists he isnt bargaining with SDI, that he truly regards it as the best assurance against nuclear war. But the Russians want it renounced as a precondition of their disarmament offer, an alternative they see as ultimate protection against nuclear annihilation. Consequently, while the search for effective nuclear arms control continues, it does so in conflict. Perhaps compromise lurks in the apparent Gorbachev reluctance to rule out SDI research work. An opportunity may exist to enter the Soviet Stage One withdrawing tactical nuclear weapons from Europe as well as reducing by half both U.S. and Soviet without first strategic missiles closing out all SDI involvement. Its a possibility certainly worth exploring. The Gorbachev announcement is not a dramatic breakthrough. It does, nonetheless, align the Soviet Union with the United States in expressing serious interest in slowing and reversing the arms race. The task now is to start facing the same rather than opposite directions. three-stag- e 2000 Upward With Arts the Arts Councils request for the grant. more precocious children, the Salt From all accounts there is nothing Lake City Arts Council. improper about the Arts Councils Since its inception in 1976, the Arts grant request. And the belated revelation about the city matching funds Council has been a agency that generally operated out of was apparently a result of bureauthe public view. This anonymity was cratic confusion rather than a sinister possible because of the agencys small attempt to sneak something through. size and generally satisfactory perfor- The Arts Council has done a decent mance. The only time city officials job for the city in the past and, if it receives the extra $600,000 in federal paid much attention to the Arts Council was during budget time or when a grant and city funds, the Arts Council minor feud erupted among the arts will probably put the money to good use. groups. The Arts Councils automony may The City Council and mayors ofbe a thing of the past. This relatively fice allocate $286,000 annually to keep obscure agency inadvertently caught the Arts Council afloat and its disthe attention of city officials recently officials that elected havent when it was awarded a $200,000 feder- tressingthemselves better informed al grant for local arts programs and kept about how that money is spent. City Council members realized they would be required to match the grant City officials owe it to both the with an additional $400,000 in city arts community and taxpayers to befunds over the next three years. City come more closely involved with the officials claim they were apparently Arts Council, to make certain this sort unaware of the requirement for of misunderstanding doesnt occur matching funds when they endorsed again. Its time for Salt Lake City to pay closer attention one of its maturing, quasi-autonomo- David B. Wilson Fatalities Up Under N.J. Boston Globe Seat belts save lives, right? Of course they do. Everybody knows that. Well, not in New Jersey. At least the fatality figures for New Jerseys first nine months under a buckle-u- p law do not support any conclusion that seat belts save lives. In the 10 months since its model belt law became effective, New Jersey has experienced: re declining trend. An increase in deaths of drivers and passengers required by law to Law Seat-Be- lt the offender must secondary offense" first have been cited for another, separate riders violation. Only drivers and front-sein passenger cars must buckle up in Jersey. efg Overall, New Jerseys forts seem to have borne fruit. Total fatalities have declined from 1162 in 1981, and hol-related deaths decreased 43 percent between 1981 and 1984. Cause and effect, however, are difficult to establish. Could it be that, as suggested recently in this space, the buckled-udriver obtains a false sense of security from his or her belt and is less attentive and alert and more of a menace to pedestrians, bicyclists and motorp at safe-drivin- cyclists? The Jersey experience alco- supports such a view and suggests that, aboard or afoot, seat belts are no remedy for An increase in traffic fatalities, versing a front-sea- t four-ye- ar buckle up. A dramatic, unanticipated increase in pedestrian fatalities. Because no one can know what the figures would have been in the absence of a belt law, it is impossible to prove to a moral certainty that the law is to blame for the unfavorable statistics. if not more But it is at least as difficult so to argue on the basis of these official numbers that seat belts save lives. What the numbers seem to say is that the law has cost lives, both of drivers and passengers and of pedestrians, since it became effective March 1. 1985. Here they are, in form as terse as possible, for the ensuing nine months, compared with the same period in 1984: Total highway deaths: 1984, 922; 1985, 955; up 23 or 2.5 percent. (In 1981, New Jersey campaign, began an intense highway-safet- y raising the drinking age, revoking licenses, stiffening penalties, saturating enforcement and flooding the media with messages. For four years, fatalities declined. In 1985, the year of buckle up for safety, the trend was revei sed.) Deaths of drivers and front-sea- t passengers required in 1985 to buckle up: 1984, 354; 1985, 370; up 16 or 4.5 percent. Deaths of pedestrians: 1984, 174, 1985, 196; up 22 or 12.6 percent. As a proportion of all deaths, the pedestrian toll rose from 18 to 20 percent. In March 1985, the first month of experience, to'1 fatalities soared from 57 to 81, or 42 percent. In that same month, pedestrian deaths jumped from 14 in 1984 the previous March to 29, or 107 percent. These figures, not yet formally released, are from official sources in Trenton. They are so controversial as to have generated bureaucratic conflict over the advisability of their publication. They were made available with the understanding that the sources be protected. Incidentally, these sources wear seat belts, supported the enactment of the belt law and favor its retention. They believe the use of belts will that, in the long-rusave lives. They also favor air bags. They point out that the Jersey law is written to avoid interfering with a federal Department of Trans- portation passive-restrai- requirement scheduled to take effect in the 1987 model year. The Jersey law provides a $15 fine for a King Changed a Bleak Dixie Into the Shining Sun Belt his was also an economic contribution. The Universal Press Syndicate Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma campaigns were instrumental in bringing about dramatic change. They helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned employment discrimination and other forms of racist economic harm. That law helped blacks gain access to better jobs, and thus become more effective consumers. A year later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which helped blacks become more effective citizens. Black electoral power ended most of the cheap, grandstanding politics of race that had stood in the regions way for almost a century. s moveBefore King and the ment, Southern median income ran about a third below the rest of the country. The gap was slightly narrower for whites than for blacks, but the truth was the South suffered as a region. Rigid racism was an expensive luxury. By the 1980 census, the income of Southerners, black and white, had grown significantly closer to the nation as a whole. The trends are such that over the next decade it will be unlikely the South will differ from the rest of the country in its basic economic pro- When Martin Luther King was killed 18 years ago, his eulogists universally declared his legacy would be his philosophy. One after another, they praised his leadership in the cause of change through e. at the onset of the first celebration Now, of his birthday as a national holiday, I won- - Robert C. Maynard civil-right- der if Kings legacy might not extend beyond philosophy into the economic fabric of the South and the nation. Today we commonly speak with admiration and respect of the economically dynamic Sun Belt. Thirty years ago, before King and the movement that overthrew Jim Crow, the South was a different story. It wasnt called the Sun Belt then. If it engendered any endearing terminology, it was Dixie, and that was not always complimentary. To some, the region was an economic backwater, a rural slum on a magnificent scale. Wages were cheap, land was cheap and the population was predominantly in poverty or close to it. Rigid segregation and the fanatic adherence to a caste system limited the regions outside investment. appeal to large-scal- e The politics of race skewed judgments and suppressed sound and systematic public pol- file. To be sure, other forces were at work in the region besides King and his followers. Lyndon Johnsons Great Society did a great deal to build an infrastructure in the South roads, sewers, power sources, urban mass transit, and so forth. Foreign investment began playing a positive role in the 70s, and oil and natural gas played a big role all along. Despite those forces, the key to the Souths rebirth was the end of Jim Crow and his reign of terror. On this, the first King holiday, we should recognize Kings role. In leading the war against Jim Crow, he helped set the stage for the transition of Dixie to the Sun Belt. That is a powerful economic reality for the Sun Belt, and for the nation. icy. In those times, it was common for some of the best minds of the South, white and black, to flee in search of a saner social climate. The artists and writers of the region frequently described or depicted a land haunted by the contradictions of color. That was the environment into which King and his legions marched. They shattered the status quo and laid the social groundwork for the new Sor.th" of the 60s, which in turn became the Sun Belt of the 70s and 80s. Youth is when you know all the answers before you know all the questions. Looked at that way, nothing of the moral philosophy of King is denigrated by saying One of the big adjustments for the retiree is getting used to seven-da- y weekends. Orbiting Paragraphs U.S. Ignorance of Russian May Doom Youth -- Exchange Idea By Frederick Starr Special to The Washington Post The proposal to open up large-scal- e youth exchanges between the United States and the U S S R, was, according to President Reagan, "one of the most exciting achievements of the Geneva Summit. Addressing a joint session of Congress on his return from Geneva on Nov. 21, Reagan affirmed that e exchanges "will help break down stereotypes, build friendships and, finally, promote an alternative to propaganda." pcople-to-peopl- Skeptics have rightly pointed out that the Soviets are unlikely to permit thousands of their most impressionable young people to gain firsthand exposure to American life. But not all the impediments are on the Soviet side. If a large-scal- e program of exof youths were changes opened tomorrow, Americans would be unable to participate. The reason? Too few young Americans are able to communicate in the Russian language. The most recent data ftnm the schools makes this deficiency abundantly clear. Only one out of five American high school students is studying any foreign language today as contrasted to five out of five in the U S S R. Those Americans studying Russian number a mere 5,702 from coast to coast. I i In each of 32 states, fewer than 50 students are learning the Russian language at any level today. In spite of the importance of the U S S R, in our lives, seven times more American schoolchildren study Italian than Russian, the number of Latin students is 32 times greater, and of those learning French fully 150 times larger. It takes several years of study to gain a solid foothold in Russian. Yet among all young Americans in grades seven through 12 level only 1,136 were above the second-yea- r in 1983, the most recent year for which complete data is available. In other words, only a few hundred high school students in the entire country have any practical competence in Russian. Didn't Sputnik change all this, one might ask? Not really, for the post- - Sputnik boom was both limited and brief. Even in the peak year of 1965, only 35,000 American high school students were studying Russian By 1985 the number had plummeted to a seventh of that. In short, the language of Tolstoy, Pushkin and Pasternak has never gained more than a toehold in American classrooms Surely, though, the situation is better in the colleges and universities Not really. In 1983 only 30,000 American college students were studying Pussian A much-toute"re covery" since then has been, in actuality, very limited. At present rates it will take a decade and a half to catch up even to the level of the late 60s. Even if that humble goal were attained, it would leave Russian language studies lagging far behind French, Spanish, and German in U.S colleges. Moreover, only a hand- - Frederick Starr, former secretary of the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center, is president of Oberlin College. ful of college students of Russian persist beyond the introductory courses. Like their counterparts in high school, most college students of Russian get all of the agony and none of the usable rewards. It is all but impossible to participate in meaningful cultural exchanges without knowledge of the other side's language. Language, after all, is at the heart of culture. Soviet youths are at a disadvantage in that their government prevents them from traveling freely in the United States. Nonetheless, millions of them study English. Our young people are at an even greater disadvantage because, for all their freedom to travel, they lack the essential linguistic skills to participate in mtercultural contact. necessary certification all too often lack the requisite fluency. Without a larger group of Russian-languag- e teachers, President Reagans dream can never become a reality. There is a simple solution to this teacher shortage. Let's send a few hundred prospective teachers of the Russian language to the USSR to polish their fluency and build their pedagogical skills. They can make themselves useful by teaching American English in Soviet classrooms. Meanwhile, let's open up a hundred or more positions in American classrooms for Soviet exchange teachers who can teach Russian for a couple of years each. While they do so, they can sharpen up their English for later use in classrooms back home. The Imcost would be minimal and the pay-of- f mense. Through such an effort, we would be in a position three years from now to send large numbers of American high school students to participate in exchanges in the USSR. Meanwhile, those in each country most immediately involved with introducing the other country's culture and values to young people the language teachers would approach their task with a degree of knowledge commensurate with their responsibilities. Only In this way will cultural exhanges live up to the high expectations o' the Geneva summit. The fault is not their own. It is due, rather, to the failure of American educators in colleges, universities, and especially in secondary schools to provide the opportunity and encouragement for Russian language study. The U.S. is the only industrialized country without a universal foreign language requirement in its high schools, and the only one that would allow its population to remain almost wholly ignorant of the language in which its chief adversary thinks. Can the situation be improved? Possibly, but only if some mistakes from the past are corrected First, it is impossible to build a corps of Americans fluent in Russian by starting at the college level. The attempt to do so has failed over 20 years, and for an obvious reason: College is too late. The center of language teaching must be in the schools high school if necessary, but preferably the middle schools or even grade schools To start later is like trying to build a house from the roof down, d Second, no progress will be made until we back the classroom teachers of Russian (and of foreign languages generally). Few state school boards or teachers colleges value fluency in a foreign language and the ability to teach it As a result, many of those who know Russian best including recent Immicannot easily begrants from the USSR come certified to teach, while those with the l t i f I |
