West Georgia College Review, Vols. 16-19

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WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE
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REVIEW

Volume XVI May, 1984

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

Myth, the Minataur, and Morris's The Field of Vision
Adelyn Fullerton 1

Population Change in the Chattahoochee-Flint Region of Georgia
Dick G. Winehell 9

Mind as Holographic Process: Psychic Dreams Explained

David Ryback 16

Symbols as 'Delirious Phenomena':

A Short Phenomenology of Symbol Use

Marc C. LaFountain 23

Support Groups for Grieving Persons

Pick Conner 29

Understanding the Structure of Human Experience:
Contrasting Approaches
J, J. Barrell 35

Abstracts of Master's Theses and Specialist in

Education Projects 39

Copyright 1984. West Georgia College
Punted in U.S.A.

\

Published by
WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

Maurice K. Townsend, President
John T. Lewis, III, Vice President and Dean of Faculties

Learning Resources Committee
Daniel Juengst, Chairman

Charles Beard
Ozzie Binion
Wayne Kirk
Marc LaFountain
Myrna Ness

Robert Reynolds

Elmo Roberds

Richard Sanders

Carole Scott

Charles Scudder

Jimmy C. Stokes, Editor
Martha A. Saunders, Associate Editor
Marc J. LaFountain, Assistant Editor

The purpose of this publication is to provide encouragement for faculty
research and to make available results of such activity. The Review,
published annually, accepts original scholarly work and creative writing.
West Georgia College assumes no responsibility for contributors' views.
The style guide is Kate L. Turabian's, A Manual for Writers. Although the
Review is primarily a medium for the faculty of West Georgia College,
other sources are invited.

An annual Bibliography includes doctoral dissertations, major recitals
and major art exhibits. Theses and articles in progress or accepted are not
listed. A faculty member's initial listing is comprehensive and appears in
the issue of the year of his employment. The abstracts of all master's theses
and educational specialist's projects written at West Georgia College are
included as they are awarded.

MYTH, THE MINOTAUR, AND MORRIS'S
THE FIELD OF VISION

by Adelyn Fuller ton*

In 1948 Wright Morris described part of the role of the contemporary
novelist as "an endless and heartbreaking search for an unstated myth." 1
His own novel The Field of Vision (1956), though, is a reader's delight
because he has found an instructive mythology and utilized it impressively.
Critics have recognized and discussed quite thoroughly his use of the Great
American Myths of the Frontier and the Wilderness, as well as his use of
mythic Success figures Davey Crockett and Ty Cobb. They have neglected,
however, two levels of myth which Morris develops extensively. The first is
his use of classical Mycenaean mythological allusions, in particular his use
of the tale of the Minotaur; the second is his use of the device of mythic
location 2 which creates a mythic aura about the setting of the entire novel
and invests it with a symbolic meaning. These two levels of myth form a
complex aspect of Wright Morris's novel, interlacing characters, their
moments of action, and the overall message in a stimulating fashion.

Although Morris does not force the action, the characters, and the
message of his book into a rigid mold based upon the Mycenaean myth of
the Minotaur, he does allude to it often enough so that it becomes a
prominent thread throughout the book. This tale is based upon the family
of King Minos of Crete. 3 When Minos was trying to gain the throne, he
asked for a sign from Poseidon to authenticate his claim upon the crown.
Poseidon sent it in the form of a magnificent white bull which he assumed
Minos would gratefully offer as a sacrifice to his benefactor. Minos,
however, was so awed by the bull that he added it to his personal royal herd
and sacrificed instead another good bull. While King Minos was away at
war, Poseidon took revenge on Minos for this disrespectful slight and
arranged for Pasiphae, Minos's wife, to be seduced by the bull. The
offspring of their union was monstrous, a male child with a human body
but the head and tail of a bull. Eventually this monster, called the
Minotaur or Asterios, became a threat to the community and was hidden

* Instructor of English. West Georgia College

'Cited by David Madden. Wright Morris (New Haven: College and University Press. 1964). p. 47.

-'Professor Da r re I Abel used this special terminology during a Hawthrone seminar at Purdue University,
Spring 1974 For him. the term "mythic location" is a somewhat more general term which could include the
world navel of Joseph Campbell, to be mentioned later in the paper, but would go beyond it to include any
place w it h special properties - - that is. invested w it h or haunted by symbolic meaning - - such as a cave, a
mountain top. a lake area, a garden, and so forth.

'This summary of the myth of the Minotaur is based upon material from Joseph Campbell, The Hero
With A Thousand Faces. 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series Paperbacks,
1972). pp. 13-15. 2.1-25: C. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks ( London: Thames and Hudson, 1951), pp. 109-
II. 260-70; and Martin P. Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (1932; rpt. Berkeley:
University of California Press. 1972), pp. 169, 171, 176.

1

away in an incredibly complex labyrinth designed by the royal master
craftsman, Daedalus. Children brought to Crete as spoils of war from
other lands were used to feed the Minotaur. (The historical base for this
part of the myth comes from the fact that Minoans were fond of the
bullfight which had become a popular and probably profane
entertainment rather than a religious one as proposed by some current
myth experts and young captives of war were often forced to train to
perform with and/ or fight the bulls just as Roman captives would later be
trained as gladiators. 4 ) One day, however, Ariadne, Minos's daughter, was
moved to bring an end to this situation. She loved the handsome youth
Theseus who, with other Athenian youths, was headed for doom in the
labyrinth of the Minotaur. After making him promise to take her away as
his wife, Ariadne provided Theseus with a skein of thread by which he
could retrace his route to the exit after he had killed the Minotaur. Some
later versions of the story say that she provided him with a radiant crown
by which the labyrinth was so fully illuminated that the wearer could see
his way out. 5 Either way, Theseus, with Ariadne as accomplice, killed the
Minotaur and escaped from the labyrinth.

Morris primes his reader for allusions to this myth early in the book. He
compares the bullring to the Roman Coliseum 6 which suggests
immediately the classical world and the realm of myth. When Morris
introduces the character Gordon Boyd, he identifies him with a family
appropriately named "Crete" (37). In fact, Boyd even wears the hand-me-
down "clothes of the Crete boy" (108), and Mrs. Crete shares with Boyd
"the Gods in her pantheon" (108). And if that is not enough to implant the
idea of mythic possibilities in most readers' minds, the word CRETE is
emblazoned on the local hometown lumberyard fence (103). All of these
references nudge the reader into a frame of mind which is receptive to the
Mycenaean mythology Morris uses as lumber to construct his novel.

Numerous direct and indirect references to the Minotaur abound in the
book. Needless to say, the bulls which the matadors fight reflect the theme
of the confrontation of bull and human throughout. For instance, after his
playful confrontation with the little fawn-colored bull, Boyd compares his
actions to those of Theseus, describing himself as "the gray haired youth
who slew the Minotaur with a squirt of pop" (101). The heroism involved
here is not on as grand a scale as classical mythology necessitates, but then
that's the only kind of heroism Boyd is capable of at the time. Dr. Lehmann
also sees a Minotaur, but his is personified by Mr. Scanlon. Lehmann
describes himself as staring into "the sightless eyes of the Minotaur. Half

4 Nilsson, Mycenaean Origin, p. 176.

Mbid.. p. 175.

Wright Morris, The Field of Vision (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bison Book. 1974). p. 12.
Further references to this book will be noted parenthetically in the text and will refer to this same edition.

man, half myth, the emerging God, dream-haunted, gazed toward the light
with eyes in which the pupils had not been drilled" (63). Here Scanlon's
refusal to confront the modern world around him with its absence of
frontier challenges has made him blind to reality. In the process he has
become a frightening monster to his family, capable of subverting the
sensibility of his small great-grandson so completely that the child risks the
loss of meaningful life, just as the mythic Minotaur consumed the lives of
captive children. Of course by the end of the book, Boyd, the Theseus, has
confronted and been victorious over more than just the Minotaur in the
form of the fawn-colored bull; he has also seduced little Gordon away from
the M inotaur Scanlon and his frontier ethos. These two specific references
to the M inotaur legend, then, work together and tease readers to look for
more.

Other allusions to the Minotaur are more metaphorical. The 40,000
people at the bullfight, Boyd suggests, have an equal number of personal
"monsters, half man, half beast" (59) which they must confront in their
own version of the bullfight. Dr. Lehmann recalls his first bullfight when,
at the moment of truth in the ritual, he wasconfouned by the "image of the
man as part of the bull" (73). Somewhat later, he has an even more vivid
impression of this merging of man and bull during the ritual and observes,
". . . at that moment man and bull were one. The youth seemed to grow out
of the bull's neck and shoulders, ... a living centaur, the archetypal man
growing out of the beast" (113-14). These same centaur impressions are
experienced even earlier, but less explicitly by Boyd (58). Indeed, the
Minotaur was not a centaur; the Minotaur had a man's body with a bull's
head and tail, whereas the centaur had the body and legs of a horse and the
head, trunk, and arms of a man. The principle of both is basically the same,
nevertheless: two different beings merge into one new mythic creature. The
centaur idea, then, becomes Morris's complementary twist on the basic
Minotaur theme.

In addition to suggesting that Scanlon is the Minotaur and Boyd the
Theseus figure, the novel also allows a metaphorical equation between
Lois McKee and Minos's wife, Pasiphae. The paternity of Lois's children,
n particular son Gordon, is figuratively open to question because the
.-hildren seem so unlike her husband, Walter McKee. Of course the novel
does not suggest that Lois literally had children by anyone other than
McKee, not in the supposedly literal fashion that Pasiphae bore the
Minotaur as a result of the consummation of her lust for the white bull of
Poseidon. Nor does Lois's son Gordon grotesquely resemble someone
other than McKee in the literal way that the Minotaur had some of the
physical characteristics of his sire, the bull. Yet Lois is strongly attracted to
Boyd, just as Pasiphae was attracted to the bull. ". . . Her body . . . knew"
^36) strong desire, and when Boyd kissed Lois on the porch thirty years

earlier, she was "drunk on Jove's nectar" (90) and hopelessly "bewitched"
(92), in fact "swept off her feet, and . . . never . . . quite the same again"
(182). Her dream, complete with collapsing bed, gives her the feeling of at
least a spiritual consummation with Boyd, if not more than that, because
"somewhere she had once read in the Reader's Digest of girls who thought
that a kiss might give them a baby but it was not at all as silly or as
strange as some people seemed to think. Not one of them had been kissed
by a man like Boyd" (183).

Is "MAMA'S SLIP . . . SHOWING" (216) that is, is Mama Lois's
sexual indiscretion with Boyd, whatever its nature, manifest in her son
Gordon as McKee's postcard suggests? McKee's choice of tourist
postcards may not have been a carefully reasoned one, but it reveals the
workings of his subconscious mind as it drives for the truth, an inadvertent
slip that belies his nagging fear of his wife's infidelity. Boyd himself
interacted with Walter and Lois's children "like they were his kids" (74),
and young son Gordon shows a passion for Gordon Boyd that he has never
shown for anyone else (176). Walter McKee "had the damdest sort of
feeling . . . the boy was really Gordon's after all" (174). Even the son
Gordon seems confused about his parentage, and "right from the first he
didn't really know who he was" (172). Of course by the end of the book,
Boyd has figuratively proclaimed his paternity of the grandson Gordon by
luring the boy away from the traditions of Scanlon and McKee. "'You're
too late . . .'" he announces to the disturbed Walter. "'Whose boy you think
he is?'" (246). Son and Grandson Gordon, like the Minotaur, are indeed a
visible slip in the expected order. Morris teases the reader into accepting
almost literally his description of Lois as "the chaste virginal mother of
three sons and nine grandchildren. All by divine compensation,
miraculous birth ..." (54).

Boyd arouses feelings of lust in Lois, then, just as Poseidon's white bull
aroused Pasiphae. Lois's husband McKee is a decidedly less virile man
who tends to perpetuate his wife's usual iceberg tendencies; he is a Minos
who stayed away at the wars too long and was not able to satisfy his wife or
somehow prevent the conception of the Minotaur child. From the
beginning, Boyd is the virile, phallic man who, unlike McKee, fails to be
responsible for his unzipped fly ( 1 6). The giant Pepsi bottle in the middle of
the bullring makes Walter only smile in recognition of its phallic
appearance (20); a Pepsi bottle in Boyd's hands, though, becomes an
extension of his penis, conjures up memories of childhood urination rituals
that border on the erotic (54), and masters the fawn-colored bull. Boyd was
the man who "got the girls in trouble" (195) while McKee stood by "like a
wooden Indian" (34) and permitted Boyd to deprive him of the first kiss
from Lois.

Walter McKee 's sexual inadequacy stems from that initiation ritual
during which Walter shot a hog for his uncle in Texas. The ear of corn,
strategically placed in McKee's fly to attract the hog, "stuck out in the air
like something else" (132). The onlookers "hooted" at the sight, and
McK.ee was convinced that even the hog "laughed himself to death"( 133)
over McKee's maize phallus. He felt as processed as the hog that day, and
figuratively McKee's penis must have been one of the "soft parts" (132)
boiled down with the hog's innards. Over thirty years later, Boyd's
"amused smile" (246) sends chills through McKee's pelvic zone, for he
realizes that Boyd and everyone else know that he is basically an impotent
man. He can buy endless cigars and bull horns (249-50), each an artificial
phallus, but still, when he gets back into the car with them, no one is
impressed, least of all Lois (250). It is true that Walter McKee actually
killed the hog while Boyd only figuratively kills a bull in the bullring, but
then Boyd is skilled at killing "woodpeckers" (24), and a wood pecker is
precisely what Walter McKee has. McKee is too much like his son's steers
-"no fight," no sexual drive ( 1 30) - - completely the opposite of the mythic
white bull sent by Poseidon.

All of the above suggest that Wright Morris is counting on readers to
know the main figures in the classical M inotaur myth, just as he is counting
on them to appreciate his use of mythic locality a deliberately selected
setting invested with symbolic meanings because of its special properties.
On one level, that setting suggests the Minotaur tale also because it is both
physically and psychologically a labyrinth. The structure that houses the
bullring is designed so that tunnels lead into the center of the arena to the
actual bullring (53, etc.) just as tunnels led to the center of the Minotaur's
labyrinth. I n the actual bullring, as well as more metaphorically among the
spectators, "invisible zones . . . were meant to stylize and limit the action"
(58); likewise, the passages of the intricate labyrinth constructed by
Daedalus literally limited the action of any unfortunate wanderer. Even
more overwhelming in the novel, though, are the psychological labyrinths
which face those who would wander through the psyche. Dr. Lehmann
expresses well Theseus's escape strategy, but in reverse, as he describes
what any psychotherapist must do: "One had to take the ends of a frazzled
string ... and follow them back ... to the heart of the labyrinth" (63).
Likewise, for Lehmann, exploring the mind of Paula Kahler was a little
ike being in a labyrinth because "these echoing corridors would go on
mdlessly" (75). Indeed Lehmann concludes that the key to the psyche is "at
he heart of the labyrinth" (120) of the mind. Even Scanlon had been
werwhelmed by the labyrinth of technology that defied his early 19th
:entury mentality and he could only turn his back on the symbol of
echnological progress, the maze of railroad tracks that "were tangled like
nop strings" (224).

Other references to the labyrinth pick up on the idea of its darkness and
the later version of the tale which suggests that Ariadne rescued Theseus by
giving him an illuminating crown of light to see his way out. As the
darkness of evening fills the bullring, the spectators cry out for light ( 1 79,
206) so they can see the completion of the struggle of matador and bull.
Lehmann describes this as "the inscrutable impluse . . . reaching for the
light" (204). He gives as the reason for this demand an interest in self-
preservation, for "in the fading light one could hardly be sure whether it
was man or beast. One could not be too careful. Dusk in the windy
labyrinth" (200). And when he envisions the incredible processes of his
own or any human mind, he pictures it as "a labyrinth of lights ... A milky
way in a rhythmic cosmic dance, evolving and dissolving, assembling and
dissembling"(203). The ideal way, then, to survive the labyrinth, whether it
is literal or psychological, is to demand, to hope for, as much light as
possible so the intricacies of the maze or mind can be fully appreciated and
successfully negotiated.

In addition to alluding to the mythic labyrinth of the Minotaur, The
Field of Vision suggests a mythic location where heroic transcendence can
occur. In The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell calls such a
spot "the world navel," 7 the " axis mundi, "the "Immovable Spot, ""around
which the world may be said to revolve. " x Under the surface of this spot is
an abundance of pro-life energies. The special realm usually includes a tree
of life and an unceasing spring of water. Marked elevation often
characterizes the spot. There the cosmic person, "the hero as the
incarnation of God is himself the navel of the world, the umbilical point
through which the energies of eternity break into time." 9 This world navel,
existing in timelessness, becomes "the symbol of the continuous creation:
the mystery of the maintenance of the world through that continuous
miracle of vivification which wells within all things." 10 Campbell talks
about a "transcendence" 11 that is beyond good and evil in the same way
Wright Morris talks about transformation, the key word of his novel's
message.

At one point Morris's character Boyd echoes Campbell and calls the
bullring "the sanded navel of the world" (59), around which 40,000
spectators cluster for a significant experience. He calls the ring variously
"this golden eye ... a mirror, . . . like the hub caps" of "a crazy goddam
world" (59). Here la suerta supretna, the moment of truth (61), can be
continually recreated. Even McK.ee knew that "if you got as many people

Campbell. I he Hero. pp. 411-45.
"Ibid., p 41
"Ibid.
'"Ibid
"Ibid . p 44

as there were . . . sitting around a little hole in the ground ... it just
naturally followed that something would happen" (15). Of course, in the
strictest sense, the bullring does not fit Campbell's specifications for a
world navel. Despite Mexico's general elevation which causes Lois to have
altitude sickness, the bullring itself is actually the inversion of an elevated
spot, deep like a "wooden bowl" (9), ultimately providing the drain, the
link to the core of the earth and its energies. There is no tree, only that giant
Pepsi bottle, and there is no water, although McKee feels the potential for
such is there (15). There is one hero, along with 40,000 potential heroes.
Like all bullfighters, Morris's matador enacts a "parable of life" with
"allegorical elements" (31, 32). Dr. Lehmann revels in its special
properties, for here at the bullring "he saw it clearer . . . than anywhere else .
. . A transformation ... the commonplace miracle of everyday life"(75). In
short, the mythic properties and their transcendent potentials are
abundant.

Wright M orris uses two interesting allusions to describe and clarify what
happens in the bullring world navel. On one occasion, he describes the
young bullfighter as having "his eyes wide with the wine of astonishment"
(114), and on a later occasion he describes the "astonished" (199) look of
the bull who is just then piecing together what has happened to him.
Morris suggests here Psalms 60:3 - "Thou has shewed thy people hard
things: thou has made us to drink the wine of astonishment." 12 The
bullring, then, is the world navel, the mythic location where difficult
lessons are forced upon all true participants, and many times the
enlightenment is amazing. The second allusion Morris makes is to T.S.
Elliot's "Burnt Norton" (1943) and the poem's "still point" idea. 13 In the
bullring, Morris notes, the matador bravely stands fast as the bull circles,
"creating a vortex, a still point where he stood alone with himself" (1 1 1).
Some pages later Morris abstracts that image into the partly psychological
realm to describe "words wheeling around the still point, the dance, the
way the bull wheeled around the bullfighter, the way the mind wheeled
around the still point on the sand . . . "(193). The most obvious use of Elliot
comes in the same section just noted: "The bull could understand
movement but not its absence, the man could understand both movement
and its absence, and in controlling this impulse to move, the still point, he
dominated the bull. Except for the still point there would be no dance"
(192). The still point of the bullring is synonymous with the sanded navel,
the world navel, and all are part of the mythic locality. T.S. Elliot, Joseph
Campbell, and Wright Morris see this mythic location as one that

'The Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version, Eds. Herbert G. May and Bruce M.Met/ger
(New York: Oxford University Press, l%2).

"See lines 64-71 and 77-SO of the poem. Also. J.C. Wilson traces the "still point" images in "Wright
Morns and the Search for the 'Still Point'." in Prairie Schooner 49 (Summer 1975). 154-63.

produces, as the Psalmist observed, new awareness and understanding,
sans time and place in the usual sense, for time, including past and future,
converge for an ultimate experience in human understanding and
transformation. The bullring the world navel, the still point is the
place for the true hero to be shown reality, the place to experience the
astonishment of understanding.

The bullring, at one level the Minotaur's labyrinth, is the novel's central
mythic location, but there are others that qualify, at least to one degree or
another, as mythic location. These include Boyd's sandpit, as well as his
world of rainbarrels and clapboard houses (103); Paula Kahler's YMCA
room with its "eternal moment" ( 1 18-20); the summer sleeping porch of
Lois's earlier years (180-82); and Scanlon's Lone Tree community hotel
(217-24). In its own way, each of these places has special properties that
contribute to a symbolic meaning, even though it is not presented in a
sufficiently elaborate form to qualify as a still point for the novel as a
whole, as does the bullring.

Ideally the message of The Field of Vision provides for the reader such a
moment of new understanding. The message grows out of the labyrinth
that Wright Morris has constructed. After intricately weaving the story
together from the differing perspectives of his main characters, Morris
allows the reader to follow threads unifying mythic themes through
the maze of the novel to the heart of his ideas. The myth of the Minotaur
pursued in his labyrinth sheds light on the message, just as the use of
mythic location in general allows readers the opportunity to see the novel's
meaning growing organically from the central energy of the work. By using
these mythic elements, Wright Morris has brought light to illuminate the
labyrinth of his book. As readers step back from Morris's milky way, out
of which came The Field of Vision, they can only admire his evolving and
assembling of myth.

POPULATION CHANGE IN THE CHATTAHOOCHEE-
FLINT REGION OF GEORGIA

by Dick G. Winchell*

Many rural areas of the United States have experienced renewed growth
during the past decade, following years of population loss or stagnation.
Studies of this growth have focussed on County population data and leave
the impression that this growth is evenly distributed within rural areas.
Detailed analysis of Bureau of Census information can provide a clearer
picture of the patterns of population change in rural areas. This study
examines population change in the Chattahoochee-Flint (Chatt-Flint)
region of Northwest Georgia which includes Carroll, Coweta, Heard,
Meriwether and Troup counties (Figure 1). The prupose of this study is to
identify patterns of population change within the Chatt-Flint region,
emphasizing changes of population in and around cities and towns of the
region.

The Bureau of Census provides population data for a variety of census
units. The units selected for use in this study include: counties;
incorporated cities and Census Designated Places (CDPs); and Census
County Divisiosn (CCDs). County population is self-explanatory.
Incorporated cities are municipal units incorporated under state laws,
while CDPs are closely settled population centers without corporate
limits. The census identifies incorporated cities and CDPs as urbanized
areas if their population is greater than 1,000.' Although the use of this
terminology for many of the smaller communities within the study area
may be stretching the limits of urbanized areas, this census definition will
be utilized.

Georgia is one of twenty states to use CCDs. CCDs are areas that have
been designated by the Census Bureau working with state and local
officials. They include all urbanized areas within a county and the
surrounding rural lands for which those urbanized areas serve as trade
centers. 2 The use of CCD data makes possible a detailed analysis of
population change within counties, although direct comparison with
earlier census data (i.e., before 1970) is not possible. In addition to the 1980
CCD data, however, the 1980 Census Reports do provide an estimate of
subtracting the population of the city or CDP from the CCD, the changes
in the surrounding rural areas can be determined. This population will be
termed CCD rural portion.

* Assistant Professor of Geography, West Georgia College

'Bureau of Census. U.S. Census of Population, 1980, Number of Inhabitants: Georgia, Final Report
PC80-I-AI2, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1982, p. A-2.

-'Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1980, Number of Inhabitants: Georgia. Final Report
PC80-I-A-I2. Government Printing Office, Washington. 1982, p. A^l.

FIGURE MTHE CHATTAHOOCHEE
FLINT REGION

i """"~1

| VILLA RICA

. VII L. H RIV.M |

1

I TEMPLE

r
\

\

MOUNT ZION

_C ARROLLTON

BOWOON

CARROLL

WHITESBURG
ROOPVILLE

\

\

1

I

FRANKLIN,

\

\

HEARD

LAGRANGE

\ ^JNTVILLE

GREE NV/ILLE

MERIWETHER

; i_.

s

SCALE IN MILES

SOURCE : CHATT- FLINT A.PO.C

PREPARED BY: G. D. FRISBEE

County Population Change

The counties within the study area had an average growth rate of 6.8
percent from 1960 to 1970 and 17.9 percent from 1970 to 1980 (Table 1).
Carroll County had the highest and most persistant growth rate at over
twenty-four percent in each decade. Although Coweta County and Heard
County had slower rates of growth from 1960 to 1970, both had growth
rates exceeding twenty percent between 1970 and 1980. Population change
showed a dramatic turnaround in Meriwether and Troup Counties, both
of which lost population between 1960 and 1970 but gained approximately

10

ten percent from 1970 to 1980. The rapid and continued growth of Carroll
County, followed by Coweta and Heard Counties, may reflect, in part the
expansion of Atlanta and its associated urban development.

TABLE 1

Population Change for Chattahoochee-Flint Counties, 1960-1980

1960

% Change
1970 from 1960

% Change
1980 from 1970

Carroll County

36,451

45,404

24.6

56,346 24.1

Coweta County

28,893

32,310

11.8

39,268 21.5

Heard County

5,333

5,354

0.4

6,520 21.8

Meriwether County

19,756

19,461

(1.5)

21,229 9.1

Troup County

47,189

44,466

(5.8)

50,003 12.4

Total

137,622

146,995

6.8*

173,366 17.9*

Percent change for the total population.

SOURCE: Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1980, Number of Inhabitants:

Georgia, Final Report PC80-I-A12, Government Printing Ofc, Washington, 1982, Table 4.

Population Change in Urbanized Areas

Fourteen incorporated cities and census designated places are located in
the Chatt-Flint study area which meet the census definition of an
urbanized area. The average growth rate for these urbanized areas was 5.5
percent from 1960 to 1970 and only 3.7 percent from 1970 to 1980 (Table
2). These averages are less than County growth already described.

The urbanized areas of Carrollton, Mt. Zion, Whitesburg, Franklin and
Greenville were the group having the most rapid growth rates between
1960 and 1970, each with growth rates exceeding twenty percent. The
urbanized areas of Grantville, Newnan and LaGrange actually declined in
population during this period.

For the decade from 1970 to 1980 only Mt. Zion and Temple
experienced rapid population increases at rates exceeding seventy percent,
but these large percentage increases no doubt reflect their small initial
populations. Most urbanized areas during this decade experienced no
growth or only slight growth. Villa Rica lost population during this period,
declining 1 1 .7 percent, as did Grantville, Moreland, Senoia and Franklin,
each of which experienced a slight decline of less than two percent.
Urbanized areas within the study area essentially stopped growing at a
time when county populations were rapidly expanding.

11

TABLE 2
Population Change For Chatt-Flint Urbanized Areas, 1960-80

% Change

% Change

1960

1970

from 1960

1980

from 1970

Carroll County

Bowdon

1,548

1,753

13.2

1 ,743

0.6

Carrollton

10,973

13,520

23.2

14,078

4.1

Mt. Zion

211

264

25.1

445

68.6

Roopville

203

221

8.9

229

3.6

Temple

788

864

9.6

1,520

75.9

Villa Rica

3,301

3,837

16.2

3,389

(M.7)

Whitesburg

366

720

96.7

775

7.6

Coweta County

Grantville

1,158

1,128

(2.6)

1,110

(1.6)

Moreland

329

363

10.3

358

(1.4)

Newnan

12,169

1 1 ,205

(7.9)

1 1 ,449

2.2

Senoia

782

910

16.4

900

(I.I)

Heard County

Franklin

603

749

24.2

711

(5.1)

Meriwether County

Greenville

726

1,085

49.4

1,213

11.8

Troup County

LaG range

23,632

23,301

(1.4)

24,204

3.9

Total

56,789

59,920

5.5*

62,124

3.7*

* Percent change for the total urbanized area population.

SOURCE: Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population. 1980, Number of Inhabitants:
Georgia, Final Report PC80-I-AI2, Government Printing Oft. , Washington, 1982, Table 4.

Population Change in CCDs

The CCD populations in the study area had an average growth of
twenty percent from 1970 to 1980 (Table 3). Only the Grantville Division
lost population, while major city areas (Carrollton, Newnan and
LaGrange) all increased at more than twenty percent.

Change in population has varied within the study area for cities,
counties and CCD's. Perhaps the most useful data is the CCD rural
portion, which identifies the population in the rural areas immediately
adjoining the urbanized areas (Table 4). These CCD rural portions have
grown rapidly between 1970 and 1980, with a total growth rate of 38.2
percent. All but four CCD rural portions (Bowdon, Roopville, Grantville
and Greenville) experienced rates of population growth greater than
twenty-five percent.

12

TABLE 3
Population Change for Chatt-Flint Census County Divisions, 1970-80

1970 1980 % Change

Carroll County

7,180

7,948

Bowdon Division

7,180

7,948

10.7

Carrollton Division

23,004

28,672

24.6

Mt. Zion Division

2,786

4,068

46.0

Roopville Division

1,676

1,690

0.8

Roopville Division

1,676

1,690

0.8

Temple Division

2,590

3,891

50.2

Villa Rica Division

6,410

7,449

16.2

Whitesburg Division

1,758

2,075

18.0

Coweta County

Grantville Division

2,273

2,207

(2.9)

Moreland Division

1,452

1,847

27.2

Newnan Division

24,845

30,504

22.8

Senoia Divison

3,740

4,710

25.9

Heard County

Franklin Division

1,582

2,198

38.9

Meriwether County
Greenville Division 2,556 2,829 10.7

Troup County

LaGrange Division 31,810 36,307 14.1

Total 113,662 136,395 20.0*

* Percent change for the total CCD population

SOURCE: Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1980, Number of Inhabitants:
Georgia, Final Report PC80-I-AI2. Government Printing Ofc., Washington, l982,Table4.

TABLE 4
Population Change for Rural Portion of (CDs

1970 1980 % Change

Carroll County
Bowdon
Carrollton
Mt. Zion
Roopville
Temple
Villa Rica
Whitesburg

13

5,427

6,205

14.3

9,484

14,594

53.9

2,522

3,623

43.7

1,455

1,461

0.4

1,726

2,371

37.4

2,573

4,060

57.8

1,038

1,300

25.2

1,145

1,097

(4.2)

1,089

1,489

36.7

3,640

19,055

39.7

2,830

3,810

34.6

Coweta County
Grantville
Moreland
Newnan
Senoia

Heard County

Franklin 833 1,487 78.5

Meriwether County

Greenville 1,471 1,616 9.9

Troup County

LaGrange 8,509 12,103 42.2

Total Rural Area

Population 53,742 74,271 38.2*

* Percent change for total rural section of CCD

SOURCE: Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1980, Number of Inhabitants:
Georgia, Final Report PC80-I-AI2, Government Printing Ofc., Washington, !982,Table4.

Comparison of urbanized area growth with that of the CCD rural
portion demonstrates that the most rapid growth within the region is
clearly occuring in the adjoining rural areas. CCD rural portion
population has increased at almost forty percent, while urbanized area
populations with the exception of Mt. Zion and Temple have increased
only slowly or, in some cases, lost population.

The total new growth within the CCDs between 1970 and 1980 was not
divided equally among rural and urban areas. Growth in the urbanized
areas accounted for only 13.2 percent of all new growth in the CCDs, while
the growth of the rural portion accounted for 86.8 percent of the total CCD
population change (Table 5). All the rural areas except Roopville and
Temple grew at a faster rate than the urbanized areas. Those rural areas
surrounding the larger urbanized areas (Carrollton, Newnan, and
LaGrange) showed the greatest proportion of CCD rural growth
compared to urban growth. Here, the amounts of growth attributable to
CCD rural portion were 90. 1 percent, 96.0 percent, and 79.9 percent of the
total, respectively. In addition, CCD rural growth rates exceeded 90
percent of the total CCD growth in the smaller urbanized areas of
Bowdon, Whitesburg, Moreland, Senoia and Franklin.

Conclusion

This study has identified a more precise pattern of population growth in
the rural areas outside the large metropolitan areas of Georgia. Than new
growth is occuring most rapidly in rural, unincorporated portions of the
study area and not within urbanized areas in a phenomenon which has

14

TABLE 5
Comparison of Population Change Rates for

Incorporated

Cities and Censn

is County D

ivisions, 1970-1980

Percent

Urbanized

Rural

Change in Area Percent

Percent

Percent

Urbanized

of CCD

Change in

of CCD

Area

Change Rural AReas

Changes

Carroll County

Bowdon

0.6

(1.3)

14.3

101.3

Carrollton

4.1

9.8

53.9

90.2

Mt. Zion

68.6

14. 1

43.7

85.9

Roopville

3.6

57.1

0.4

42.9

Temple

75.9

50.4

37.4

49.6

Villa Rica

(11.7)

43.2

57.8

56.9

Whitesburg

7.6

5.8

25.2

94.2

Coweta County

Grantville

(1.6)

27.3

(4.2)

72.7

Moreland

(1.4)

(1.3)

36.7

101.3

Newnan

2.2

4.0

39.7

96.0

Senoia

(I.I)

1.0

34.6

101.0

Heard County

Franklin

(5.1)

6.2

78.5

106.2

Meriwether County

Greenville

(H.8)

46.9

9.9

53.1

Troup County

LaG range

3.9

20.1

42.2

79.9

Total

38.2

86.8

SOURCE: Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1980, Number of Inhabitants:
Georgia, Final Report PC80- 1 -A 12, Government Pringing Ofc., Washington. 1982, Table 4.

received little attention by planners and demographers who usually
concentrate on either rural, urban, or suburban fringes of metropolitan
areas. The growth of the rural portions surrounding smaller urbanized
areas may be attributable to the inability of those cities to expand their
boundaries through annexation, to the preferences of local residents for a
more rural life-style, or to fewer restrictions on building and development
in these areas. Additional research is needed to identify the reasons for this
concentration of growth in unincorporated areas and to evaluate the
impact of such growth upon the region.

1 would like to thank Dr. C. Gerald Sanders for his review and
comments during the preparation of this manuscript. Funding for a
portion of the research for this study was provided by a Faculty Research
Grant from West Georgia College.

15

MIND AS HOLOGRAPHIC PROCESS:
PSYCHIC DREAMS EXPLAINED

by David Rvback*

Telepathy as Holographic Transmission

According to Karl Pribram the best model for the brain as a frequency
analyzer is the storage of frequency information on photographic film as is
done in holography. 1 A hologram is different from a conventional
photograph in that a hologram contains all the information about the
visual picture on all parts of the film. A conventional photograph portrays
different parts of the picture on correspondingly different parts of the film.

Of paramount importance here is a clear understanding of the
holographic process. The following explanation by Pribram serves to
provide an excellent overview.

Implemented in the early 1960's, the hologram is an engineering device
based on a mathematical invention by Dennis Gabor, who wanted to
improve the resolution of electron microscopy. For this purpose, he
developed a new technique of storing on film what was not the intensity of
reflected light or transmitted light, but actually the square of the intensity
and the relationship of a particular beam with its neighbors. It is called the
complex conjugate of the intensity. If 1 drop a pebble into a pond, ripples
emanate out from the place where the pebble was dropped. If 1 drop two
pebbles, two sets of ripples form and these ripples interfere with each other.
If 1 throw in a whole handful, there are many such ripples, and the pond is
perturbed in a complex way that appears quite irregular. If I take a movie of
someone throwing pebbles into a pond, and then play the movie backwards,
I would find that 1 could reconstruct from this set of ripples the location and
the actual image of the pebbles as they entered the water. 2

You may need a computer to help you in this reconstruction, but by
analyzing the movie, an exact replication of all the pebbles and the exact
distances among them can be recreated. The intersecting ripples will look j
like a blurry meshing of lines and curves. These are known as interference i
waves. In order to see the image of the pebbles entering the water, the
information in the interference waves will be decoded and represented
through some conversion process.

The main points to remember are, first, that since the interference
pattern in spread out over the entire surface of the pond, any portion of the
pond surface will give us the necessary information and, second, that the

* Clinical Psychologist in private practice, Atlanta, Ga.

'Karl H. Pribram. "The Holographic Hypothesis of Brain Function." In S. Grol ( Ed.) Ancient Wisdom
and Modern Science. Albany. NY: SUNY, 1984. 167-179.

Tbid. pp. 169-170.

16

movie gives us information on all events occurring in all parts of that pond
at the moment the film was taken.

Point one can be described by referring to the information on the film as
being distributive, and point two by referring to the fact that a three-
dimensional account of events is captured on a two-dimensional film.

This second point can be seen more clearly if you imagine that at the
moment the pebbles were tossed in the water, a frightened fish lurched
away.

The waves created by the fish's movement also contribute to the
interference wave pattern on the film. And if one fish, why not two or three
or 83? So you can see that quite a complex 3-dimensional picture can be
obtained from a 2-dimensional film.

If the brain does function according to the holographic principles, as
Pribram suggests, then what significance does this haVe to the psychic
dream process? There are actually two points of significance here. The first
has to do with the nature of brain-to-brain transmission and the second has
to do with the potential of the brain to process information heretofore
considered unavailable to it.

First, if we accept the brain as functioning according to a frequency
modality, then it is reasonable to accept that it has the potential to function
as a radio transmitter-receiver. This would account for mental telepathy
except that the brain differs from an actual radio signal being transmitted
in that the brain lacks a powerful transmitter to beam its electromagnetic
signals.

Carl Jung, who wrote in highly mystical terms, explained psychic
dreams as occurring through the process of synchronicity, a form of
coincidence shared by individuals with close psychic ties (such as family
members). But that doesn't help us understand the process at the brain
level. And it is that more concrete, scientific level that we are interested in
explaining here. We want to know: What actually happens in the brain?

Even Sigmund Freud, author of the most respected tome on dream
interpretation, suggested the possibility of a stage of man's development
prior to the attainment of linguistic abilities when he was able to
communicate with his fellow man through some sort of telepathic brain-
to-brain process in the absence of language. As language developed, mused
Freud, this telepathic ability became overridden by speech. But it may be
the means by which telepathic and other psychic processes take place.
Certainly this psychic ability is not part of our culture at this point,
therefore making it difficult for those having such experiences to find
acceptance.

17

This conceptualization of modules in the brain which Eccles- 1 compares
to radio transmitter-receiver units is not mere idle speculation. In a
Stanford University laboratory, B. Bridgeman 4 , among others, has been
able to simulate the precise operation of such modules on computer. The
electrical currents produced by the firing of these modules in the brain are
the depolarizations and hyperpolarizations (more of the latter than the
former) that occur among the synaptic connections among hundreds of
neurons firing in a symphonic patterned array, according to Pibram. 5
Eccles refers to these as microstructures, while yet another researcher
(Szentagothai) has referred to them as integrated microcircuits of
electronics, only vastly more complicated. That these modules function as
described here, whether they are called microcircuits or microstructures,
has been demonstrated in the research laboratory by Rail 6 and Shepherd. 7

Not only has Pribram 8 made a convincing argument for such periodic
activity in the neuronal microstructure of the brain, but so have others
such as Campbell and Robson 9 who demonstrated how the eye analyzed
the periodic fluctuations of the intensity of light over space.

Precognition as Intra-Cerebral Holographic Reflection

So far we have explained the telepathic process in which brain-to-brain
transmission and reception has been considered. This helps us to
understand the process of psychic dreams of a telepathic nature. What
about the process of precognitive dreams? To explore this we will need to
change our focus for a while from brain neurophysiology to the physics of
time and space.

I'd like to begin this part of the discussion by quoting directly from
Fritjof Capra's book, The Tao of Physics.

According to relativity theory, space is not three-dimensional and time is not
a separate entity. Both are intimately connected and form a four-
dimensional continuum, 'space-time'. In relativity theory, therefore, we can
never talk about space without talking about time and vice versa.
Furthermore, there is no universal flow of time as in the Newtonian model. . .
All measurements involving space and time thus lose their absolute

'K. R. Popper & J. C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (NY: Springer-Verlag. 1977).

4 B. Bridgeman. "Metacontrast and Lateral Inhibition", Psychological Review, 78 (1971), 528-539.

5 KarI H. Pribram, Languages of the Brain, (Monterey. CA: Brooks/Cole. 1977, 2nd ed).

h W. Rail, "Dendritic Neuron Theory and Dendrodentritic Synapses in a Simple Cortical System", in
The Neurosciences Second Study Program (NY: Rockfellcr, 1970), 552-565.

7 G. W. Shepherd, The Synaptic Organization of the Brain: An Introduction (NY: Oxford University
Press, 1974).

"Karl H. Pribram, Languages of the flra//7,(Englewood, Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 1971. 1st ed). Chapter
8.

*F. W. Campbell and J. G. Robson, "Application of Fourier Analysis to the Visibility of Gratings"
Journal of Psysiology, 1 97 ( 1 968), 55 1 -566.

18

significance. I n relativity theory, the Newtonian concept of an absolute space
as the stage of physical phenomena is abandoned and so is the concept of an
absolute time. Both space and time become merely elements of the language
a particular observer uses for his description of the phenomena. 10

Now what is so interesting about this relativistic view of time is that it
gives birth to the possibility of viewing time as travelling in either a forward
or backward direction.

Recall the holographic movie of the toss of pebbles into the pond from
the First Section. Recall two other things as well: one, that an individual
sophisticated in such matters (or a computer) could read the "movie" of
squiggly lines and curves and read backwards in time to tell what had
preceded the event recorded in the "movie", i.e., how many pebbles, their
size and distance from one another.

Two, recall that even small fragments of the "picture" would provide
most of the information, although in a fuzzy manner. Hence, if at some
microscopic level, some particles traveled backwards in time in some way
originating from a holographic point of information (such as a frame from
the movie), then this information would be carried back in time if there
were a brain to recognize it at that earlier point in time.

A brain is in a state most receptive to this kind of information when
there are fewest competing stimuli, when the possessor of the brain is
asleep.

During sleep sensory input is minimal. The eyes are shut, the
surrounding noise level is usually low, and the body is moving very little.

At the cerebral cortex of the brain there is some activity, but less than in
the waking state. Some of this activity results in dreaming. I suggest two
sources of stimulation for dreams. One is the random firing of neurons in
the brain in the absence of external stimulation. Just as the muscles of the
body twitch occasionally during sleep, so will neurons and micro-circuits
in the brain discharge spontaneously from time to time.

The second source of stimulation for dreams comes from indications of
strong drive from various parts of the body during sleep. If you're very
hungry when you go to sleep, stomach contractions may be sufficiently
active to enter the brain's subconscious until a dream brings it into
consciousness. If you go to bed angry at your boss, the remaining tension
in your back and arms may similarly provide sufficient stimulation to enter
the subconscious until a dream brings it into consciousness. Ordinarily,
these are two areas of stimulation for dream content.

Rarely, however, a third source of stimulation may come into play. And
that is a holographic reflection traveling backwards in time. Since there are

'"Frit.jof Capra. The Tau of Physics, (Boulder. CO: Shambhala. 1975).

19

a good number of neurons and microcircuits in the brain discharging
spontaneously these microcircuits are unusually receptive to an
informational energy at that point of disposition to discharge. It is as if the
hammer of the gun is cocked and the trigger becomes extremely sensitive,
at times sufficiently sensitive to pick up minute bits of information from
holographic reflection travelling backwards in time.

Now a very important question is: What is the source of this holographic
reflection? What is its point of origin? If a person dreams of her husband's
sudden death 2,000 miles away a week before it happens, must the
informational energy make that 2,000 mile trip? In geographical distance
as well as time? How is it possible that such a small, fragile piece of
information can survive such a long trip?

The amazing answer is that the informational energy in question never
makes that geographical trip. It only makes the trip backwards in time, but
not in space. How is that possible? The answer is as simple as it has been
evasive up to this time.

The source of the informational energy is within the very brain that
receives it.

The woman learns of her husband's death at point B (let us say March
20, for example), when it actually occurs. This is such a blow to her that it
results in a great deal of emotional upset and nervous energy. Her mind or
brain is overwhelmed and she may even go into shock.

At this point the excess amount of nervous activity in her brain may
provide for an occasion for some information of a holographic nature
leaping backwards in time. It is as if the micro-circuits are overloaded (at
the exact moment she learns of his death) and it is at this moment that a
holographic reflection may take place.

The information travels backwards in time until point A (March 6) when
the woman experiences a dream of her husband's death exactly as it will
occur two weeks from the night of the precognitive dream.

Hence the holographic information travels backwards in time (2 weeks)
but no distance in space (it remains within the context of her brain,
possibly in the very same micro-circuits).

That would help me understand how it came about that I had a very sad
dream about my own father (about whom I very rarely dream) a few days
before I learned of his death. As well as I could recall, the feeling emanating
from my memory of the dream was extremely similar to my emotional
reaction upon hearing the sad news for the first time.

At the moment of learning of my father's death a holographic reflection
lurned information back in time, providing sufficient stimulation to affect
a dream a few days earlier. Those bits of information travelling backwards

20

in time may have remained stationary in space, perhaps within a particular
micro-circuit of neurons, or configuration of micro-circuits.

The implication here is that the particular micro-circuit or neuronal
configuration in question has the capability of receiving information from
future or past events in unlimited fashion. Even more dramatic and
incredible is the corollary that any neuronal configuration of micro-
circuits within the brain has that potential. This is not a novel
consideration. In the 17th century, the man who discovered integral
calculus, Leibnitz, proposed such a function in what he referred to as
"monads", which were elemental aspects of nature which contained
incorporated information about all of the universe. Like the tiny human
cell, which incorporates genetic information about the whole body of
which it is part within its even tinier nucleus, the monad contains within it
the characteristic information of the universe of which it is part. This
concept is an integral part of the holographic model.

The micro-circuit or configuration of micro-circuits is monad-like in
that it is the smallest configuration of neurons/ microcircuits which can
still contain the information comprising a percept, a complex stimulation
of the brain leading to a recognized, meaningful mental experience of
awareness. Any less information than that might provide a feeling or an
unclear hunch about something, but not a recognized percept.

On occasion, a "perceptual monad" or cerebral configuration,
sufficiently organized to provide meaningful informtion can span the
barriers of time by capturing a holographic reflection travelling backwards
in time, within its own structure. Although this precognitive process is
often characterized as mystical, that is only because there is no
understanding of the underlying process. There is no currently accepted
model of precognition within the culture of science. As Pribram puts it:

If we get ESP or paranormal phenomena or nuclear phenomena in
physics it simply means that we are reading out of some other dimension
at that time. In our ordinary way, we can't understand that."

The explanation of psychic dreams in terms of the holographic process is
decidedly a pioneering effort at this point. It is, in fact, in violoation of
both our common sense and our conventional understanding of the laws of
j physics. But it stretches our imagination to allow us to explore the
unfamiliar aspects of our world and to widen the scope of possibilities of
our understanding.

As Professor Charles Tart of the University of California remarked on a
nationally broadcast documentary on ESP,

'Marilyn Kcrguson. "Karl Pribram's Changing Reality". Human Behavior, (May. 1978). 31.

21

The majority of the scientific community doesn't believe in the existence of
psychic phenomena. . . The exciting thing about Psi is that, while it appears
to violate some of our known physical laws. . . it. . . will mean we'll have a
greatly expanded and more effective understanding of the ordinary physical
universe. That's the challenge. That's what really is exciting. 12

'^Charles Tart, interviewed on NOVA. PBS. January 17. I9K4.

22

SYMBOLS AS DELIRIOUS PHENOMENA':
A SHORT PHENOMENOLOGY OF SYMBOL USE

By Marc J. LaFountain*

We dwell in what is currently referred to as the
"information/ communication age." We know that in these times
information and knowledge are intimately related to freedom
(opportunity, possibility) and to power. We also know we are symbol
users, and that symbols are central to information, knowledge,
communication and interaction. In our typical, routine assumptionsabout
ourselves as symbol users, however, we tend to forget or gloss over a
variety of problems and paradoxes inherent in their use. What follows is a
description/ inventory of some essential features of symbols in the life-
world. 1

On the surface, most of us realize certain problems with symbols. For
instance, all of us have experienced the difficulty of creating or choosing
the appropriate symbols to express ourselves, whether they be words for a
sentence, names for an organization, or a gift for another. And likewise, we
have all encountered the problems of interpreting the meanings of
another's expressions. And especially in an information-based society,
where "scientific" studies of others" attitudes and feelings abound, many of
us have grappled with the problem of "objectively" understanding other
people. For example, what do the Nielson Ratings actually say? What can
statistics really say about emotions? What does one product's being
"significantly more effective" than another product really mean?

Beyond the surface lies another realm of more obscure and perhaps even
more profound features of symbols and their use. In fact, one could say the
surface problems mentioned above are constituted, in one way oranother,
by the inventory that follows. There is no particular significance to the
order of the presentation. Discussed are 1) the tendency of symbols
simultaneously to express and hide phenomena, 2) an inherent distortion

* Associate Professor of Sociology. West Georgia College

'The "lite-world" (l.ebenswell) is a central concept in phenomenology, which concerns itself with
desci ihing and understanding! the features and life ol consciousness, the lived-body, and human existence
in general. In the natural attitude ol everyday life the lollowing are taken for granted without question:
a.) the corporeal existence ol others.

h.) that these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially similar to my own.
c.) thai the things in the outei world included in m\ en\ irons and that ol others are the same lor us and have
lundamcnlally the same meanings.

d.) that I can enter into interrelationships and reciprocal actions with others,
e.) that I can make myscll understood to them.

I.) that a stratified social and cultural world is historically pregiven as a frame of reference for me and
others, indeed in a manner as taken for granted as the "natural world", and

g.) that therefore the situation in w Inch I find myscll at any moment is only to a small extent purely created
by mc. ( The Structure of the Life- World. A. Schut/and I . I uckmann. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press. I97.V p.5l.

23

or "falseness" in symbolic communication, 3) the essential incompleteness
of symbolic constructions, 4) the tendency of symbols to "turn into each
other" in what Salvador Dali referred to as the "delirium of
interpretation", and 5) a tendency of symbolic systems to "de-center"
subjectivity by dispersing it throughout the structure of that system.

First, symbols possess the unique and paradoxical feature of both
expressing and hiding that which they seek to display. (The latter does not
refer to intentional efforts to conceal.) Symbols are intended to be vessels
that transport or threads that string together meanings, and by so doing,
give us a glimpse of the things they represent. They are taken to be
translucent, even in their most complex forms. They are also opaque.
Aspects of the phenomenon symbolized seep through the symbol, as if
substances being transferred across a semi-permeable membrane. Yet to
look back through the symbol to the phenomenon itself is to find that one
surface of the window obscures one's vision.

Hiding and expressing exist in a dialectical relationship. For instance, in
reading a literary text, such as Hamlet, or a social text (i.e., treating social
reality as a text to be interpreted), such as the VietNam War, one perceives
the existence of an array of meanings that become clearer with each
reading. Beholding one's national flag summons a sense of community,
nationalism, and belonging, but it also shadows immoralities and
atrocities. Literary, art, and social criticism all acknowledge that texts are
constituted by various levels of meaning. They take as their task
establishing the basic and most abstract system which, through a series of
transformations (whose workings often are not at all obvious), generates
the text as it presents itself.

It is often said that reality and life possess an "essential" ambiguity and
unintelligibility. The latter stem from a realization that existence is
synonymous with expression, which sediments layer upon layer of
signification, leaving consciousness/ perception always open to a variety
of interpretations of different layers of meaning. Nevertheless, and quite to
the contrary, lived-experience, in its very breathing and moving, is
poignantly and vividly clear. It is our processing of lived-experience that
introduces haze and indeterminancy. Too often we confuse the clarity of
the mystery of life with the obfuscations of thought.

Closely related to the dialectic of concealing and revealing is the "false"
nature of symbols. In that symbols are designed to embody experiences or
meanings, they are treated as incarnations of invisible, intangible realities.
Ironically though, those same experiences and meanings, as they are lived
out by individuals in the moments of their lives, are actually the
incarnations. Symbols are merely representations of them. The gap
between what is lived and what symbolizes it necessarily engenders a
falseness. Rather than representations, symbols are misrepresentations.

24

For instance, when I tell you that I feel "joy" or that "I love you", the
symbol and the experience can not be treated as isomorphic. And it is
important to realize this is not simply a matter of the fact that each of us
possesses a unique set of sedimented experiences. Symbols in a way may be
the flesh of the invisble, but they inhabit a realm quite different from what
is lived.

In sociology, symbolic interaction theory suggests that interaction is a
process in which individuals display themselves to each other as symbols.
Of course, as we encounter each other face-to-face we concretely
experience each others' bodies, movements, utterances, etc., and we tend
to take these as the "reality" of the situation. While in the natural attitude
we treat appearances as synonymous with reality, symbolic interactionists
point out such appearances are in fact the external style of inner life. The
late Erving Goffman made a career of illuminating the "con-artist" in each
of us. He exposed not just the side of us that incessantly intends,
consciously or unconsciously, to influence others, but more basically, that
in using symbols we are moving between private, internal, and
intersubjective, external realities, and in so doing, our communications are
essentially "false". It is not as if we have a choice to be otherwise - as symbol
users it is our fate. Is it any wonder misunderstanding is perhaps a (the?)
dominant feature of our interactions, or that being misunderstood is one of
our greatest fears? When we observe another's symbols, what are we really
seeing?

Ever so intimately related to shrouding/ exposing and to falseness,
symbolic constructions exhibit an "essential incompleteness". An insight
into this notion was suggested by Martin Heidegger, who noted that being
is time, i.e., whoever is, is in the process of becoming. All efforts at
capturing "what is" in symbolic form must necessarily also be incomplete.
Furthermore, Gabriel Marcel noted that our status as beings is grounded
in a "mystery". By this he meant that any efforts we make at understanding
ourselves always remain problematic, for we are caught up in what we
want to understand, we are dependent upon and are "in" what we want to
know. This being so, we cannot place ourselves outside or before ourselves
to gain a vantage point for viewing ourselves.

This is dramatically illustrated in a relatively new perspective in
sociology known as ethnomethodology. Among other things,
ethnomethodologists point out that each particular aspect of a situation is
dependent upon its context for meaning, but the context that gives
meaning to the particular is, in part, formulated by that particular. Indeed,
this is a circular motion, but it is more. It is also an awareness that what we
know presupposes a more fundamental stratum of knowing already there.
As we strive symbolically to represent what is already there, it inevitably
recedes, and the symbol catches only a glimpse or moment of that thing.

25

There is always an "inexhaustible more", an "infinity of the unsaid". A set
of symbols never fully manifests a world. Rather, it makes visible its own
incompleteness.

As instances of the above we may consider our common use of such
phrases as "et cetera" or "you know what I mean". The et cetera principle
openly acknowledges there is more, and that it would be futile to continue
to add more, for not only would it not be practical, it would never be done!
In fact, ethnomethodologists have noted an interesting feature about rules,
formal or informal, linguistic or social. While on the one hand rules are
necessary, on the other, there can be no rules for all situations, and any
efforts to provide them tend only to magnify the senselessness of the
situation. Consider the notion of "law and order" and its incessant
generation of loopholes and additional deviance. Or consider a simple
statement we make to each other, "How are you feeling today"? Aside from
our typical responses, which are as much an effort not to answer the
question as they are one to answer it, think how long it would really take to
answer that question. Symbols are incorrigibly incomplete.

Thus far, we have seen in a variety of ways that symbols are not clearly
defined, discrete phenomena that always correspond to an objective
reality. Were we to continue to assume so, as is typical at the surface level
referred to earlier, we would be haunted by the ideas of Freud and the
images of Salvador Dali. It is on Dali that we focus now, particularly one
of his major contributions to surrealism - - the paranoiac-critical method.
Succinctly, this approach commences with a feature of paranoiac reality,
the tendency to see multiple images ("delirious phenomena") in discrete
images. Dali points out, however, that he is not mad, and that by
developing the critical-paranoiac method as an experimental technique,
one is able to enter a "delirium of interpretation" where one gains
knowledge by interpreting/ articulating "delirious phenomena". The latter
are spontaneous, irrational associations of objects and meanings. The
critical-paranoiac method subjects outer reality ("natural necessity") to the
inner necessity (mental) experienced by the artist (viewer).

Surrealists generally stressed the inner representation of the image
present in the mind. They turned objective reality inside out. While in our
typical daily activities we do not do so intentionally, nevertheless we do
frequently experience the delirium of interpretation and a variety of
delirious phenomena. Symbols are delirious phenomena. They are objects
that rather than yielding a single discrete image/ interpretation, instead are
delirious in that they often readily "turn into" other symbols. This is not
just to say that symbols have different meanings. It is more. It is to
recognize that a single symbol often becomes many things. The delirium of
interpretation generated by delirious phenomena replaces the taken-for-
granted-world-out-there-for everyone with spontaneous, irrational

26

associations of possibilities and variations at the level of the "lived
imagination".

Symbols are delirious phenomena, thus they are not just objects whose
meanings are open and transformable, but more basically, objects whose
very natures are mutable. Of course, it is the mind's grasp of or interpretive
(spontaneous, irrational) association of objects that contributes to the
delirium (what Dali referred to as the 'paranoiac ability' of the author), but
the fact remains it is the reality of the object that is mutable. The significant
insight is that objective reality is not discrete and determinate, and that a
certain frenzy inheres in the mind's use of symbols.

As instances we may contemplate the following: are skyscrapers Liberal
Capitalism's monuments to its ego? its Towers of Babel? Are exercise and
fitness television programs, where attractive young men and women
(usually women) gyrate and sweat in revealling apparel, a true interest in
fitness, and/ or is it institutionalized eroticism? Are the water towers that
everywhere dot the horizon functional objects, and/ or are they unwanted
intruders (as were the towering machines in H.G. Wells' "War of the
Worlds") from the negative side of Industrialism, who, wherever they
appear, bring with them the degredation of Nature? Or what of this
interesting comment, heard over the solemn silence at the scene of a
terrible automobile accident, where there were numerous onlookers,
police, towing trucks alnd ambulances: "You know, everytime I'm in one of
these situations, I feel those ambulances are vehicles ordered by Death to
collect its offerings".

As a closing observation on symbols, we may consider an irony,
thematized most clearly in an approach referred to as "semiotics (eg.,
writers such as Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, and Althusser). The irony that
this perspective reveals is that that authors symbols and their meanings
(i.e., subjectivity, consciousness) in the first place subsequently must
search for the meanings it intended by looking through what it created so it
can find them! The essence of the irony is the production of subjectivity
and meaning by structure. By this is meant that consciousness or
subjectivity, rather than being the source of meanings, is "de-centered" or
diffused throughout a symbol (sign) system such that it is the structure that
possesses the meanings. Writing and language are not simply a
reproduction of an objective reality, but rather are the production of a new
and different reality. Subjectivity then is not a predicating subjectivity, but
rather is constituted by the signifying or structuring activity of the symbol
system ( i.e., structure). Subjectivity thus is no longer a center, and meaning
lies outside of subjectivity. This "outside" continually produces what that
subjectivity thinks it means.

This idea becomes clearer if we consider such notions as alienation,
estrangement and meaninglessness, which have become prevalent

27

concepts in the past 100 years. At their core is the recognition that the
complex system or structure of symbols and signs that is the world we
inhabit is something we indeed created (and recreate individually in our
daily lives), but it is also something that confronts us. We must search
through it to find the meanings we identify as the realities of our lives. For
example, many of us acknowledge money to be an important resource (as
opposed to goal), but how do we determine our priorities if by not looking
at what we have become and then deciding what we think we want to
become? In becoming successful or accomplished, i.e., "arriving", we must
often stop and ask, "what is the meaning of this? just where have I arrived '7
What is the meaning of a planetary civilization that had developed the
ability to obliterate itself? Do our identities lie inside us or somewhere out
and around us? Do we read them from the text that is society, and like the
meaning scattered through the pages of a novel, not ever quite certain of
their sense until the pages have passed by? These are not simply
dichotomus questions of whether or not society creates me or I it, but ones
concerning the contingent and changing nature of who and what I am as I
am dispersed in the "out-there" in which I participate. We, as subjects, are
decentered, positioned in a text that has no certainty, only movement and
continual revelation. Symbols are all around, taking their meaning from
each other and from their contingent positioning, and we are in them.

What we have considered in this brief piece is the nature of symbols and
their use. We have seen that beyond what we take for granted, symbols are
indeed intriguing, often mysterious phenomena. But then again, this is
perhaps true of anything once we pass beyond the shroud of the routine.

28

SUPPORT GROUPS FOR GRIEVING PERSONS
by Pick Conner*

Support groups for grieving persons are relatively new, but they are
being organized all over the country. Many are local chapters of national
organizations, like the four Atlanta area chapters of the Compassionate
Friends, which has its national headquarters in Oak Park, Illinois. Some
are simply local responses to a tragic event, which is also the way
Compassionate Friends started.

A support group is a small group in which the members provide support
to each other, usually in the face of a chronic or severe problem. The
support groups referred to here will be even more specialized in definition.
They are groups in which the members support, encourage, and assist each
other in learning to deal effectively with their grief.

A distinction is made between "self-help" groups and support groups.
"Self-help" groups (i.e. Alcoholics Anonymous or Parents Anonymous)
have the primary purpose of trying to change the dysfunctional behavior of
members. The support group's primary purpose is to provide support,
encouragement, and assistance to each of its members in learning to cope
with the problem or situation they all share.

Support groups have existed since the beginning of human history. The
first support group was probably the tribe or clan in which members

il shared food and shelter, as well as everything else that belonged to the
tribe. Later, individual families formed their own support units, providing

I those kinds of support not offered by the tribe or larger society. Natural

| support systems include families (both nuclear and extended), friends, and
sometimes neighbors and co-workers. It is obvious that human beings

I could not exist without support, that support groups are part of what
makes us a human society. As our society grows more and more complex,
so does the need for support in our efforts to deal with this complexity. As
our lives become more stressful, there is an increased need to find more

| successful ways to cope with the ever-increasing stress of our environment.

lit is in this context that people have begun to recognize the need for more

[support groups to help them deal with specific shared problems or needs.

What does a support group do? How does it help individuals to cope

with the stress of a family member who is chronically or terminally ill?

How does it help a person in his/her day-to-day functioning as the adult

hild of an aging parent? How does it help a person to face the loss of those

who are dying or to recover from the loss of one who has died? There are

* Associate Professor of Sociology, West Georgia College

29

some functions that most support groups have in common (i.e. they all do
certain things). Members of a support group:

validate each other's experience

console and comfort each other

support each other

encourage each other by example of successful coping

educate each other by sharing their individual experiences

accept each other as fellow human beings with similar problems

protect each other, sometimes, from well-meaning others who often
inflict pain without realizing it.

There is considerable evidence that support groups also alleviate stress
among members and that membership in a support group enables
members to cope with greater stress that they otherwise might.

The information detailed herein will provide some idea about the need
for support groups and how to go about organizing such groups. There are
some basic, very simple guidelines for organizing such a group:
(1) Members must share a common interest, problem, need, or life
situation. This common interest does not have to be too narrowly defined
at first, but it may have to be narrowed later. In this case, the common
interest/ problem is grief. (2) The group should grow out of an
individually expressed need, expressed by a person with the problem. It is
not enough for a social worker to recognize the need and start to organize a
group. If the group is to be independent and continue to function on its
own, it should originate with an individually felt need. (3) Decision-
making is the group's function and not the function of the social worker.
Any and all decisions should be made by the group from the beginning.
(4) Usually a social worker serves in a consulting function, not as a fully
functioning member of the group. However, if the social worker also
shares the common problem of the group members, he/ she may become a
full-fledged member of the group. The problem, then for the social worker
is which hat to wear consultant or group member.

Grief groups may be appropriate for working with any or all of the
following:

terminally ill persons, who need to grieve over their own impending
death

divorced persons the loss of a marriage, of a valued role, and often, of
children is sometimes overwhelming

parents of a handicapped child often accompanied by sense of loss,
frustration, of dreams unfulfilled

30

person who has lost a lover loss of valued and needed relationship

women who have given up a child for adoption a loss which the
person may not be able to understand or express.

All of these may be thought of as needing some help with their grieving,
with understanding and expressing their feelings or loss. However, the
primary concern here is with the grief of those who have lost a significant
other (spouse, parent, close friend, or relative, etc.) and who, for whatever
reason, do not feel they have resolved (or are resolving) their grief
satisfactorily.

Grief occurs when human beings suffer loss. As a general rule, the
greater the loss, the more intense the grief. When a human being with
whom we are involved dies, we must grieve over our loss. The closer the
relationship, the more intense our grief.

Some people fail to grieve appropriately or to grieve adequately when
they suffer a significant loss, such as the death of a parent, or a close friend,
or a child. For whatever reason perhaps they feel it is not consistent with
their religious beliefs, or their role in the family (as husband, father, wife,
mother), or other professional role (as minister, doctor, nurse, funeral
director), they do not achieve the therapeutic effects of grief. Because it is
natural for people to grieve and because grieving is a natural process, a
healthy grief relieves much of the stress felt by survivors.

The high mortality rate and the high incidence of illness, both physical
and emotional, occuring among recently widowed persons demonstrate
the costs of unresolved grief. Unrelieved stress has been shown to be
related to the onset of a wide variety of illnesses and disabilities.

"High grief" deaths are generally more stressful than "low-grief' deaths.
Sudden deaths, death by accident or violence, or the death of a young
person by any means, are usually "high grief" deaths. The family members
are seldom prepared and often have to deal with their previous denial that
such a possibility existed. The shock of the death is often so traumatic that
some survivors have not worked past the first stage in the grief process.
This has an effect on their behavior at home and at work, and often a
negative effect on their health. Those persons who have lost a spouse, a
parent, or a child need to grieve in proportion to the extend their lives were
involved with the deceased person.

The grieving process is a healing process which takes time to complete,
even when it is allowed to progress naturally. If the process is deliberately
avoided, blocked or prolonged, the time involved may be increased and a
deliberate and continuous effort may be required to complete the process.
The person who experiences a loss will grieve, must grieve, regardless of
how long it takes. In a natural healthy grieving process, the tasks of
grieving are accomplished with the help of others in the supportive

31

network. When this process is interfered with, the grieving person may
ignore the needs of others or may hurt others, especially those who are
dependent on him/her, such as small children. He/she may neglect others
who are in his/ her care or may neglect him/ herself. It is for this reason that
grief support groups may be helpful.

Some of the benefits members can expect to derive from belonging to
such groups a 1 . The group provides "permission to grieve"; says it's O. K.
to have feelings, no matter how intense, that grieving is natural, a human

response to the pain or loss.

2. The interaction with other group members will help to expose myths
and fears about death that interfere with healthy, normal grieving.
Once the myths are exposed, once the fears are brought out, the
individual can work on them and overcome them with the support of
the group.

3. Any group, to be effective, must provide a supportive, non-threatening
atmosphere in which the individual can feel free to talk about emotions
and problems of a private, personal nature if he/she wishes. Members
of the group will provide support for each other in trying to work
through their grief feelings. The group leader can encourage this by
assuring members of confidentiality, and encouraging them to respect
each other's feelings.

4. The social worker will encourage members to involve persons of their
own supportive networks (family, close friends, pastors, counselors,
others) in working on their problems. The group leader will himself
serve as a temporary member of that support network, providing the
transition from group to network for those who need it. Where
appropriate and necessary, the group leader will help individual
members strengthen their supportive networks and involve significant
others in working through the grief process.

After the group of five-ten persons has been selected, the first group
sesson will be scheduled at the convenience of the members (evenings are
usually more convenient). The process might be as follows:

Step One - Introductions establish trust (exercise), explanation of the
group process (ground rules), contracting, and plans for future
meetings.

Step Two - First working group meeting (not more than one week after the
initial meeting). Each person tells what grief work he/she has to do, or
in some way gives some of the history of his/ her loss. Discussion centers
on feelings, understanding the loss, etc. The social worker uses support,
reassurance, insight, and encourages members to participate in offering
support, insights, and reassurance to fellow members.

32

Step Three - Regular group meetings, weekly for 8-10 weeks, 2 hour
sessions.

Step Four - Termination. Depending on the wishes of the group, this may
be a social event, planned by group members and away from the regular
meeting place (possibly a member's home).

Step Five - Individual sessions may be scheduled with those members seen
as needing further help. In such sessions, referrals may be made, plans
for continuing counseling, or plans for continued self-help.

It is important that the group leader have a clear understanding of the
basic concerns of grief work, and that he/she has worked on his/her own
reactions to grief and loss and his/ her own fears of death which may be
brought to the surface during the group process. The group leader in this
process does not function in the role of expert, but as an enabler,
supporter, encourager, and when the occasion demands it, taskmaster.
He/she uses skills in empathy, clarification, reassurance, and occasionally
confrontation. He/she is accepting, non-judgmental, and supportive. In
addition, to be an effective group leader, he/she must have a working
knowledge of group dynamics.

For persons who are already experienced in therapy/ counseling/
casework with individuals, but not in groups, additional reading and
perhaps training in group dynamics/ group work will be needed. For the
person who does not have experience in working with grief and loss, or
who still has a significant loss (such as a divorce) to work through,
additional training will probably be needed. Ideally, such training will take
place in a group setting by participating in a grief group or by participating
in a seminar/ study group with professional colleagues (peers). In any case,
the group should be structured loosely enough to permit free expression of
feelings, and should also include work with a competent group leader.

It is anticipated that most of the persons with multiple problems or
major psychological problems other than grief will be screened out
through the group process. However, other stresses may develop during
the course of the group's life which cause the participant additional
problems and which may require specialized professional help. Or, a group
member may have other problems not specifically associated with the
grieving process which he/she may uncover during grief work, and which
are of a more long-term nature. Since the group leader is usually not
engaged in individual therapy, he/ she should not attempt to deal with this
person on an individual basis, but should refer him/her to a competent
professional counselor/ therapist/ clinical social worker.

For this reason, the social group worker should maintain a file of such
professionals, with appropriate information, such as fees, office hours,
specialty or orientation, location, and credentials. Such information may

33

be provided to the client when making such a referral, but only if the client
requests the referral. In no case should the client be referred to the group
leader's own private practice. To do so would be clearly unethical.

Many people are not prepared for the strength of their grief or the depth
of the emotions that need expression during the grief process. Support
from others who are experiencing (or have experienced) grief themselves
may be most effective during this very stressful period. Social workers and
others can organize support groups to assist grieving persons in coping
with the loss of a significant other, but such group leaders need special
training or experience in grief work and group work. Support groups have
been shown to be effective in helping people work through grief and in
relieving the stress of the grief process.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

'Abel, Charles M. and Carter, Irl "Self-help Groups for the Terminally III", Social Work and
Thanatology. Edited by Ben A. Orcutt, et al. New York: Arno Press, 1980

2 Albercht, Terrance L. Irey, Karen V.and Mundy, Ann K. "Integration in a Communication Network as
a Mediator of Stress", Social Work. vol. 27. No. 3 May, 1982. pp. 229-234

'Collins, Alice H. and Pancoast, Diane L. Natural Helping Networks: A Strategy for Prevention.
Washington: NASW 1976

4 Engel, G. L. "Grief and Grieving", American Journal of Nursing. 64: 93-98. Sep. 64

5 Katz, Alfred H. and Bender, Eugene I. The Strength in Us. New York: New Viewpoints, 1976

'Kropotkin, Petr. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 1955.

'Nelsen, Judith C. "Support: A Necessary Condition for Change", Social Work, Vol. 25

"Powell, Thomas J. "Impact of Social Networks on Help-seeking Behavior", Social Work. Vol. 26. #4,
July, 1981. pp. 335-337

"Silverman, Phyllis R. "The Widow-to-Widow Program", Mental Hygene. Vol. 53, 1969, pp. 333-337

'"Silverman, Phyllis R. Mutual Support Groups. Beverly Hills: Sage 1980

"Silverman, Phyllis R. Helping Women Cope With Grief. Beverly Hills. Sage Publications, 1981.

l2 Switzer, D. K. The Dynamics of Grief. New York: 1970. Abingdon Press

l3 Toseland, Ronald W. and Hacker, Lynda "Self-help Groups and Professional Involvement", Social
Work Vol. 27, No. 4, July, 1982, pp 341-347

l4 Toth, Andre and Toth, Susan "Group Work with Widows", Social Work. Vol. Jan. 1980, pp. 63-65.

"Wilson, Stephen, Informal Groups: an Introduction, Engle Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1978.

'*Worden, J. William, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1982.

->4

UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE OF

HUMAN EXPERIENCE:

CONTRASTING APPROACHES

by J. J. Barrell*

Studies of human experience can include a variety of target areas. Such
areas can range from thoughts and feelings to the perception of others, the
world, etc. Experiential and phenomenological approaches attempt to
understand the structures of experiences across this broad range. In the
following work, we shall first explore the structure of human experience in
general and then contrast both these approaches by way of example. The
example which has been selected for study is active anxiety.

The Structure of Experience

Our lives consist of a steady flow of experiences, one after the other. Let
us attempt to slow this flow for the purpose of studying the structure of a
single experience. Structure suggests that a single human experience
includes "parts" which are to be distinguished from physical parts of a
machine or body. Rather the term here refers to psychological aspects of
an experience. These parts are embedded in the experience. Although these
"parts" are inseparable from an experience, they can however, be separable
in the sense that they could be found in other experiences.

Let us take the example of desire as a "part" of experience. To want is to
want something. However, although this desire always aims toward a
target, it is also separable from that target. For example, if I am thirsty and
reach for a glass of water, it is clear to me that my desire (urge) "belongs to
me" and the water is "out there" in the world. I want what I do not have.
Although desire requires a target, it is also separable from that target
because it has its own meaning and does not require any specific target. I
must want something, but it could be anything. Desire does not depend on
any specific target and can be found in many different experiences with
different targets. Desire is, therefore, inseparable from a target, but
separable from a specific target.

Is there a quantitative dimension in direct experience? Certainly most of
us have had the experience of disappointment related to a previous desire
and expectation of success. Upon reflection, we can verify how one
experience can influence the other. For example, the higher our desire and
expectation for a successful outcome, the greater our later disappointment
should we not achieve it. Although this quantitative relationship is not
given in any single experience, it is obviously present when reflecting on the
relationship of both experiences.

Associate Professor of Psychology, West Georgia College

35

Even in the case of a single experience, quantity can be implied, For
example, the experience of desire is directly related to intensity. In fact, the
meaning of desire refers to intensity. However, it is a desire within a certain
range of significance. For example, if a goal loses some of its significance to
us, we may still like to have it but no longer want it. In contrast, should
significance increase, a want could become a need. All experiences, such as
"I must," "1 should," "I need," "I want," "I like" can be understood on an
intensity continuum of significance rather than being treated separately. It
is certainly true that there is a qualitative distinction between such
experiences as "I have to" and "I want to;" however, this distinction can
also be treated quantitatively. Therefore, the "parts" of experience can be
treated both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Phenomenological and Experiential Approaches

At this point, we can suggest that a given experience is made up of
separable and necessary "parts" that are (1) embedded in the structure of
that experience and are (2) quantifiable at least in an ordinal sense. Next,
experiential and phenomenological approaches for the purpose of
discovery of these necessary "parts" will be contrasted.

A study of active anxiety will provide a basis for this contrast. First of
all, description is important for both phenomenological and experiential
approaches. The following is an example of a description of active anxiety:

I feel tense. A fluttering in my stomach appears. 1 tell myself to calm down. 1
picture myself failing people laughing at me. My hands feel clammy. Can I
do it? I don't know.

Using these kinds of descriptions and a phenomenological approach, we
would wish to create an accurate picture of the experience, to describe
what it is like to be in the experience of active anxiety. 4 Such an approach
focuses on capturing the aesthetic, the richness of experience. The account
is to include the necessary "parts" of an experience, but their
embeddedness in experience argues against separating them out of their
context. The following is an example of a phenomenological analysis of
the above description. It is meant to go from the single instance to the
general description.

A threat to my way of being emerges on the horizon of my experience. The
threat appears to demand a response. I feel I must respond or be
overwhelmed by this threat. Although my world appears fragmented, part of
this fragmentation includes bits and pieces of possibilities. Possible
alternative actions emerge. The correct choice of action is uncertain. This
uncertainty brings body tension a shaky, unsteady tension. There is
neither a surrendering to the situation nor the awareness of a single clear
course of action.

*Giorgi, A., Psychology as a Human Science: A Phenomenologically Based Approach. Harperand Row
Publishing, New York, 1970.

36

In contrast, the aim of an experiential approach is to discover and clarify
the necessary and sufficient "parts" of a specific experience 1 , 3 . With an
experiential approach, the emphasis is on clarification. It is not that
accuracy or faithfulness to the "lived" experience is not important; rather,
this approach suggests that clarification must go beyond accuracy to a
level that is practical. It must give one the ability to increase the incidence
of positive experiences and decrease those that are negative. This is why
clarification is the aim. The following is a hypothetical listing of the
necessary "parts" of active anxiety. Similar to the phenomenological
paragraph, these listed "parts" must be implicit or explicit in the single
instance; and are intended to capture the general experience of active
anxiety, that is, to apply to all experiences of active anxiety. In other
words, they represent an attempt to discover the common core of this
experience. The "I" statements are not meant to refer to only a single
person but to facilitate a process whereby each person tests the conclusions
within his or her own experiences.

1. 1 feel that I must act (could be an internal preparation, attitude, etc.) to
avoid a negative consequence.

2. 1 feel uncertain about the appropriate action to avoid this negative
consequence.

* As an aside, if 1 feel certain about the only thing that can be done now or
feel certain that 1 cannot do anything to affect the outcome, no anxiety
results. In the case of passive anxiety, the uncertainty is directed toward
consequences rather than one's action. An example would be watching
your favorite football team on a fourth down on the one yard line with a
chance to win or lose on the last play of the game.

These two "parts" represent an attempt to discover necessary and
sufficient conditions of active anxiety, that is to suggest if only these two
"parts" are experienced then active anxiety will naturally occur.
Conversely, the removal of one or both of these "parts" abolishes the
anxiety. Each of these "parts" is necessary and together sufficient to
consciously or unconsciously create the experiential structure of active
anxiety. Although active anxiety which includes the generalizable
description, autonomic responses, etc., is more than the sum of these two
"parts", the aim here is simply to discover the most fundamental "parts"
required to elicit the experience. This simplicity and clarity is particularly
useful for those persons interested in (I) taking responsibility for
transforming their own lives, and (2) facilitating an integration of the
personal growth process with the social sciences.

'Barrell. J. .1. and Barrell. J. E.. "A Self Directed Approach fora Science of Human Experience,"/ of
Phenomenological Psychology. 1975. Fall, pp.63-73.

'Price. D. D. and Barrell. J. J.. "An Experiential Approach with Quantitative Methods: A Research
Paradigm."/ oj Humanistic Psychology, Summer. 1980, 20, (3), pp. 75-95.

37

Summary

Each human experience has a structure. This structure includes "parts"
which make up the whole of that experience. Some of these "parts"
represent the necessary conditions for that particular experience to occur.
These necessary "parts"can also be found in other experiences. In this way,
each of these "parts" can be independent of as well as dependent upon an
experience as a whole. For example, the two different experiences of envy
and jealousy both possess the following necessary "part": the perception or
imagination of someone having an experience that I desire 2 . This "part" is
independent of a specific experience but depends on some experience for
its existence.

The structure of any given experience can include quantitative as well as
qualitative dimensions. In fact, the quantitative can be found in such direct
experiences as that of wanting something. Wanting or desire involves
intensity which can be represented as a measurable dimension. Therefore,
the relationship of "parts" within experience can be stated quantitatively.

Finally, there are two possible aims for understanding the structure of
human experience: (1) a desire to discover an accurate picture of the
experience, and (2) a desire to discover the necessary and sufficient
conditions of that experience. Some phenomenologists stop at the first
while an experiential approach includes both, with the emphasis on the
second aim.

-'Barrell, J. J. and Richards, A, "Overcoming Jealousy: An Experiential Analysis of Common Factors,"
The Personnel and Guidance Journal, 1982, 61, (I), pp. 40-47.

38

ABSTRACTS OF MASTER'S THESES AND
SPECIALIST IN EDUCATON PROJECTS

AN ANALYSIS OF THE RECREATIONAL READING PRACTICES

OF FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH GRADE STUDENTS AT

SWAIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Carolyn S. Allen
(EdS, Middle Grades Education and Reading, August, 1983)

This study was designed to evaluate the voluntary, recreational reading
practices of students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades at W. L. Swain
Elementary School in Gordon County, Georgia and was completed in
conjunction with a literature program (Project L.l.T.) being conducted in
the school. Student reading participation was analyzed based on sex,
ownership or non-ownership of video games, and by fiction or non-fiction
book selections by the participants.

The subjects of this study were students in grades four through six at W.
L. Swain Elementary School during the school year 1982-83. Two hundred
sixty-four students participated in the study.

Weekly record sheets of recreational reading were completed by the
students to determine fiction or non-fiction book choices, student attitudes
toward books, and number of book completions. At the end of the study,
students and parents completed questionnaires. Student questionnaires
provided the following information: a) student estimate of frequency of
reading, b) reasons for book choices, c) ownership or non-ownership of
video games, and d) student's favorite author and book. Parent
questionnaires provided insight as to their general feeling toward the
reading practices for their children.

Data from the students' weekly record sheets were compiled. An
analysis was computed by the West Georgia computer center for each
hypothesis.

Hypothesis one stated that there would be no significant difference in
the number of fiction and non-fiction books chosen by the students when
compared with the actual book collection of the school library (43% fiction
and 57% non-fiction). The factor of chance was ruled out by a high rate of
check-out of fiction books. Null hypothesis one was rejected with a chi
square value of x 2 =24.80, d.f. (1), at the .05 level of significance.

Hypothesis two stated that there would be no significant difference in
the number of books read by students who did or did not own a video
game. The computed t ratios for the fiction and non-fiction groups were

39

not significantly different from chance and it appears that ownership or
non-ownership of video games does not influence the check-out rate of
books in either category. Null hypothesis two was not rejected.

Hypothesis three stated that there would be no significant difference in
the number of books read by boys and the number read by girls. Computed
t ratios for the fiction and non-fiction categories indicated that girls did
read significantly more than boys. Boys read significantly more non-
fiction books while girls tended to choose more fiction books.

It appears that sex was a determining factor in the process of selection of
books, as well as the frequency of reading books. The ownership or non-
ownership of video games had no influence on the number of books being
read. On the whole, more fiction books are being chosen from the school
library which contains 43% fiction and 57% non-fiction books.

A STUDY OF THE CORRESPONDENCE OF COLOR SELECTION
AND MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR RESULTS

Robert Glenn Allisat
(MA, Psychology, December, 1983)

This thesis attempted to determine whether or not color selection is
capable of reflecting psychological typology as proposed by Jung. Subjects
selected two out of a number of colors (the colors used were taken from
source materials which phemenologically paralleled Jung's theoretical
constructs). Each color had a predicted typological value (for example:
blue = introverted sensation; red = extraverted feeling; etc.). The type
predicted by color selection was compared to results on the Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator (MBTI) a personality inventory widely held to measure
Jung's typology. No correspondence was observed between selection
among the colors in this study and results on the MBTI. Further
investigation was suggested.

A STUDY OF TEACHER LEVEL OF CERTIFICATION AND ITS

EFFECT ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT ON THE GEORGIA

BASIC SKILLS TEST

Carolyn P. Amburn
(EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1983)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether significant
relationships exist between student's scores in the reported areas of total
score, concept, component, and problem solving on the Georgia Basic
Skills Mathematics Test and the following four factors: level and area of
the teacher's certification, experience of the teacher, mathematics
background of the student, and sex of the student. One school system in

40

the Atlanta metropolitan area provided information by completing a
questionnaire designed for the study. Four four-way analyses of variance
were used to interpret the data. Two factors were significantly related to
the student's score on the mathematics section of the BST: teacher level
and area of certification (p=.014) and mathematics background of the
student (p=.001).

The teacher level and area of certification and the mathematics
background of the student area significant factors on student scores on the
Georgia Basic Skills Test. The mathematics courses which a student elects
at the high school level and the teacher's level and area (mathematics) of
certification appear to relate positively to student scores. The sex of the
student and the teaching experience of the teacher do not seem to relate
significantly to scores on the mathematics portion of the BST.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FIRST - GRADE
REPEATERS AND FIRST - GRADE NON - REPEATERS

Mary Alice Ballard
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1983)

This study was designed to investigate promotion and retention of first-
grade students by comparing the students in terms of mean scores on a
reading readiness test and in terms of reading achievement levels, family
background, and personal habits and attitudes to determine if there were
any significant differences between first-grade repeaters and first-grade
non-repeaters in relation to their academic and personal development. The
students in the study were from 17 elementary schools in a large
metropolitan area school system. The student sample consisted of 3 1 6 non-
repeaters and 56 repeaters.

The t test for determining the significance of the difference between two
independent means was used to test the difference in the mean scores on the
reading readiness test of the two groups. A two-way analysis of variance
was used to locate mean differences on test scores when divided by sex. Chi
Square was used to test the remaining data which was in the form of
frequency counts occurring in two or more mutually exclusive categories.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the
mean scores of repeaters versus non-repeaters in the areas of visual
discrimination and relationships and on the classification factor. The
study also showed that there was a significant difference between first-
grade repeaters and first-grade non-repeaters on the measures of: exhibits
self-confidence, uses good listening skills, completes work on time, and is
quiet and well-behaved. All other variables were not significant at the .05
level.

41

LIGHT AND ELECTRON MICROSCOPIC OBSERVATIONS OF
IN VITRO MAINTAINED NERVE-MUSCLE CELLS IN A
CHEMICALLY DEFINED MEDIUM AND ON DEFINED

SUBSTANCES

Arthur Chandler Beall (MS, Biology, March, 1984)

Primary cultures of dissociated chick 1 1 -day embryonic pectoral muscle
and 4-day embryonic spinal cord were established in a chemically defined
medium and on defined substrates: polystyrene and solid fluorocarbons.
This chemically defined serum-albumin free (SAF) medium consisted of 1:1
Ham's F-12 medium/ Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium supplemented
with 20 ug/ml bovine insulin, 17 ug/ml putrescine, and 5 ug/ml human
transferrin. This SAF medium supported neuronal cultures for 2-3 weeks
and differentiated muscle cultures for 4-7 days. Moderately-high density
muscle cultures maintained in SAF medium containing 10- 5 M
arabinofuranosylcytosine (ara-C) produced low-density muscle cultures,
virtually devoid of fibroblasts, which survived for 3-4 weeks. Four-day
embryonic spinal cord neurons were plated on five day ara-C treated
muscle cultures and maintained in SAF medium containing ara-C for 3-4
weeks. Transmission electron microscopic observation of nerve-muscle
cocultures revealed primitive neuromuscular junctions comparable to
those grown in undefined serum-supplemented media. The solid
fluorocarbon-coated glass slides not only provided a suitable substratum
for cellular adhesion, but also aided in the separation of epoxy embedded
specimens from these glass slides to produce thin plastic wafers of the
monolayer cultures.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE BACKGROUND VARIABLES

OF BELOW-GRADE LEVEL READERS AND ON-GRADE LEVEL

READERS IN THE SECOND GRADE

Alice Evelyn Black
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, December, 1983)

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship among
certain factors of children's family backgrounds and their reading levels.
These factors included whether or not parents read to their children, the
amount of time spent reading to children, parents modeling reading
behavior, parents' education levels, children's sex, the amount of time
children spent reading independently, and parents' and/ or children's
memberships to book clubs or subscriptions to magazines.

The population for the study consisted of students attending a public
elementary school, kindergarten through grade five, in a suburban
community located in the northwestern portion of Georgia. The school
was located in a middle-income, mainly white collar neighborhood. The

42

sampling consisted of 69 second grade students. Thirty-seven of the
subjects were male and 32 of the subjects were female.

A questionnaire was sent to the parents of each second grade student in
May of 1983. The survey form was devised for the sole use of this study and
was written in an objective format. The parents were asked to respond to
questions which related to their child's reading background at home. The
Chi square statistical analysis was used to test each hypothesis. The level of
significance for rejection of the null hypotheses was .05.

The results of the data from this study have shown that there was a
relationship between some factors of children's family background and
their reading levels. Those factors which appeared to affect the children's
reading levels included the parents'educational level, the parents'
membership to book clubs or subscriptions to magazines, whether or not
children enjoyed reading, the frequency of children's readig at home, and
the amount of tiem spent by children reading at home. The children's
reading level did not appear to be affected by their sex, the frequency of the
parents' reading, the children's subscription to a magazine or membership
to book clubs, the amount of time parents spent each week reading to their
child, or the frequency with which parents read to their child weekly.

PROJECT LIT:

THE EFFECTS OF STUDENTS' READING ATTITUDES AND

READING ACHIEVEMENT OF A SCHOOL-WIDE PROJECT TO

PROMOTE READING AND LITERATURE

Sharon Blakenship
(EdS, Reading, August, 1983)

This study was undertaken to ascertain the effectiveness of a special
reading/ literature program called Project LIT which was conducted at W.
L. Swain Elementary School in Gordon County during the school term
1982-1983. The problem of the study was to determine the effect the
program had on students' reading attitude and reading achievement. Data
from a total of 287 students from grades two through six were analyzed.
This data consisted of pretest and posttest scores on A Reading Attitude
Inventory for Elementary School Pupils by Lewis and pretest and posttest
scores on the reading test of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests. The
reading/ literature program called Project LIT consisted of nine months of
special school-wide reading activities which were designed to present
reading as an enjoyable activity which should be indulged in for the
pleasure derived from it. Students were encouraged to read independently
and share what they read in various ways. They participated in TV video
workshops, puppetry, dramatics, Balloon Launch Day, Character Dress-
up Day, and listened to visiting authors. They were treated to special

43

reading centers that were arranged in various locations in the library. The
results of this study, tested at the .05 level of significance, indicated that a
small but significant difference existed between posttest and pretest
reading attitude inventory scores. There was also a significant difference
between scores of the posttest reading achievement test and pretest scores.
These findings indicate that a program of varied and interesting reading
activities will significantly improve reading attitude and achievement of
students.

A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE TITLE I MATHEMATICS

PROGRAM ON THE ACADEMIC PROGRESS AND

REMEDIATION OF STUDENTS AT THE EASTBROOK MIDDLE

SCHOOL DRUING THE 1980-81 SCHOOL YEAR

Priscilla Sample Bonner
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1983)

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a significant
difference between pretest and posttest mean achievement scores in
mathematics with respect to sixth- and seventh-grade Title I Students at
Eastbrook Middle School during the 1980-81 school year.

Methods and Procedures

This study was conducted at the Eastbrook Middle School in Whitfield
County. There were 26 sixth grade students and 7 seventh grade students
served in the Title I mathematics program. The program was conducted by
one professionally certified teacher and one teacher aide.

During the fall of the 1 980-8 1 school year, students were selected for the
program on the basis of criteria developed at the system level. The SRA
Achievement Series, levels C and D, was administered to the students as a
pretest. Using data from CRT results and pretest scores, individual student
needs were assessed and programs of instruction were designed to meet the
needs of each student. The actual instruction time covered in seven months
of the school term. The same level SRA Achievement test was
administered in the spring as a posttest to measure the level of achievement
or student progress in mathematics. The t test was the method used to test
the null hypothesis to determine whether there was a significant difference
in the pretest and posttest mean scores for each group.

Results

Findings of the study were:

1. There was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest
mean scores for sixth graders beyond the .01 level.

2. There was a significant difference between th pretest and posttest
mean scores for seventh graders beyond the .05 level.

44

Conclusions

Based on analysis of the data it was concluded that:

1 . The academic progress and remediation of sixth grade students in the
Title I mathematics program was positively affected by instruction in the
program.

2. The academic progress and remediation of seventh grade students in
the Title I mathematics program was positively affected by instruction in
the program.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ACHIEVEMENT IN

SUBSEQUENT MATHEMATICS BETWEEN STUDENTS WHO

STUDIED ALGEBRA I IN THE EIGHTH GRADE AND THOSE

WHO STUDIED ALGEBRA I IN THE NINTH GRADE

Barbara A. Bookhardt
(EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1983)

The point of this study was to determine whether there is a difference in
achievement in the subsequent mathematics courses taken by those
students having the first year of algebra in the eighth grade as compared to
the achievement in subsequent mathematics courses taken by those
students having the first year of algebra in the ninth grade.

It was hypothesized that there would be no significant difference
between students who took Algebra I in the eighth grade and those who
took Algebra 1 in the ninth grade with respect to their subsequent
achievement in (a) Geometry A, (b) Geometry B, (c) Geometry C, (d)
Algebra II A, (e) Algebra II B, (f) Algebra II C, (g) Trigonometry, (h)
Advanced Mathematics Concepts, and (i) Analytical Geometry. It was
further hypothesized that there would be no difference between girls and
boys with respect to their subsequent achievement in the above courses and
that there would be no interaction between the grade in which Algebra I
was taken and the sex of the student with respect to their subsequent
achievement in the above courses. To test these null hypotheses, the 28
ninth graders who had Algebra I in the eighth grade and the 146 tenth
graders who had Algebra I in the ninth grade, both groups of whom were
enrolled in Geometry A for fall quarter of 1979, were chosen as the
subjects.

The data collected were the final numerical averages recorded for the
students at the end of each quarter for each subsequent mathematics
course taken. These data determined the measure of achievement in each
of the subsequent mathematics courses. A multi-factor analysis of variance
was used to analyze the numerical data from each of the subsequent
mathematics courses using the sex of the student and the grade in which
Algebra I was taken as independent variances.

45

The findings revealed that the students who took Algebra I in the eighth
grade scored significantly higher in each subsequent mathematics course
than did those students who took Algebra I in the ninth grade. The findings
also revealed that females scored significantly better than did males except
in Geometry C.

Therefore, based on the findings, the conclusion of the study was that
those students chosen to take Algebra I in the eighth grade scored
significantly higher in subsequent mathematics courses than did those
students who took Algebra I in the ninth grade.

It is recommended that further studies be done with a much larger group
of students and more than one high school.

USING BIBLIOTHERAPY AS AN AID IN IMPROVING
SELF-CONCEPT IN THIRD GRADERS

Snow B. Brehm
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, December, 1983)

The purpose of the study was to determine if there was a significant
difference between the mean score of third grade students receiving
bibliography and the mean score of third grade students not receiving
bibliotherapy as measured by the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept
Scale.

The population for the study consisted of approximately 250 students in
kindergarten through sixth grade. The school has been identified as a
middle- to Lower-income school located in a rural area of northwest
Georgia. The subjects used in the study were a group of third grade
students who varied in academic ability and accomplishments. The
students were divided into two heterogenous classes with 25 students in
each class. Both classes were administered the Piers-Harris Children's Self
Concept Scale as a pretest and posttest.

The treatment group completed a six-weeks bibliotherapy program
during which the teacher read and led discussions concerning selected
books and stories which would help the students attain a better insight into
themselves and their environment. The control group continued in their
regularly scheduled activities.

Analysis of covariance was used to test the null hypothesis. The null
hypothesis was rejected at the .001 level of significance. The results of the
study showed that there was a significant difference between th mean score
of pupils receiving bibliotherapy and the mean score of pupils not receiving
bibliography as measured by the Piers-Harril Self Concept Scale.

46

THE IDENTIFICATION OF INSTRUMENTS USED FOR

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL ASSESSMENT OF BEHAVIORALLY

DISORDERED CHILDREN IN SELECTED RURAL SCHOOLS IN

WEST GEORGIA AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE

ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS

Betty Boone Buice
(EdS, Special Education, August, 1983)

This study was conducted as a survey of special education teachers of
behaviorally disordered students in the West Georgia CESA area. An
original questionnaire identified the social/emotional assessment
instruments used by special education teachers to evaluate students who
had been referred to them for suspected behavior disorders. The efficacy of
the assessment tools that were identified was also examined. Statistics
compiled from the eighty schools included in the study revealed that the
frequency of students identified as behaviorally disordered was 1.48% of
the total enrollment. Of the eighty teachers surveyed, 73.75% (59 teachers)
returned the questionnaires with information concerning tests used to
identify students with behavior disorders. Tables depict the specific
behavior checklists and rating scales most widely used in primary, middle,
and secondary schools, and their effectiveness. The criteria for identifying
behaviorally disordered students were cited by the special education
teachers who responded to the questionnaires.

DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN THE

CREATIVE WRITING PROCESS:

KEYS TO BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE MODEL

FOR THE PRIMARY CLASSROOM

Patricia W. Carter
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, June, 1983)

This study was concerned with the processes involved in becomming an
effective model for the teaching of creative writing skills to first graders at
Maple Street School, Carrollton, Georgia.

To accomplish this goal, recent related literature was reviewed to
provide a background of understanding about the developmental stages
necessary for this creative skill and to provide information concerning the
philosophies of teaching creative writing. The research shown depicted
those methods deemed most valuable in working toward that end.

Research of the related literature on creative writing noted that to bean
effective model for creative writing, the teacher must have experienced
those stages involved in the production of creative writing from conception
to finished product. To fulfill that requirement of experience this study
presented six original short stories written by this author. These stories

47

afforded the author the opportunity to participate in the creative writing
process and, in turn, share that gained knowledge with primary students.

THE EFFECTS OF PEER EVALUATION ON ENGLISH
COMPOSITION FOR EIGHTH-GRADE GIFTED STUDENTS

Ellis E. Couch, III
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, December, 1983)

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of teacher
evaluation and peer evaluation on writing achievement and apprehension
toward writing. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant
difference between the effect of peer evaluation and that of teacher
evaluation on either the student's writing achievement or apprehension
toward writing. A secondary hypothesis stated that there would be no
significant difference between the sexes with respect to writing
achievement or apprehension. It was further hypothesized that there
would be no significant interaction between the sex of the student and the
type of evaluation with respect to writing achievement or apprehension.

The experimental population of thirty-three gifted eighth-grade
students was randomly scheduled by the computer into two writing classes.
During a twelve-week period, both groups were presented the same course
content; however, teacher evaluation of student papers was used in the
control group while peer evaluation was also used in the experimental
group.

Two writing samples were taken at the beginning of the experimental
period and two at the end. These were assessed by trained raters using the
Diederich Rating Scale. The Miller and Daly Apprehension Survey was
given at the end of the experimental period to both groups, and the results
were compared to determine the effects of the two methods on student
apprehension. The data from the four writing samples and the
apprehension survey were analyzed at the West Georgia Computer Center.
For rejection of the null hypothesis, the .05 confidence level was used.
Based on the analysis of the data, none of the null hypotheses were rejected
at the .05 confidence level.

Conclusions drawn from the analysis of the writing sample data indicate
that peer evaluation is at least as effective as teacher evaluation as a
method of teaching writing to eighth-grade gifted students. The data from
the Miller and Daly Survey indicated that the peer evaluation group did
not differ significantly from the teacher evaluation group with respect to
apprehension toward writing; therefore, neither can be said to.be superior
in reducing writing apprehension.

48

A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE EARLY CHILDHOOD

GRADUATE EDUCATION PROGRAM AT WEST GEORGIA

COLLEGE ON GRADUATES IN THE TEACHING PROFESSION

Victoria R. Cribb
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1983)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Graduate
Education Program of the Early Childhood Education Department at
West Georgia College had positive effects on graduates in the teaching
profession. The study involved 112 graduates who earned a Master of
Education degree in Early Childhood Education and 10 graduates who
earned the degree of Specialist in Education in Early Childhood Education
at West Georgia College from January 1981 through March 1983. These
graduates and their supervisors completed and returned questionnaires
which had been designed by the Early Childhood Education Department.

The hypothesis stated in Chapter I was supported by the positive results
obtained from the completed questionnaires. These results were presented
by using raw scores, percentages, and mean scores. From a comparative
analysis of the data, the study indicated that the Graduate Education
Program of the Early Childhood Education Department had positive
effects on graduates in the teaching profession.

A PLAN FOR THE UTILIZATION OF VOLUNTEERS AS

PARAPROFESSIONALS AT W. L. SWAIN ELEMENTARY

SCHOOL IN GORDON COUNTY, GEORGIA

Carol Davis
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1983)

The media has severely criticized educators for graduating students who
did not learn skills that should have been mastered in public schools. It is
obvious, that in many cases, students' individual needs have not been met.
For a variety of reasons, classroom teachers can no longer adequately meet
each child's needs without having additional help. Due to the economy,
funds have been drastically reduced and the additional trained help such as
aides, that teachers once had at their disposal, are no longer available.
There is an emphasis, at the state level, for implementing individualized
instruction and remediation in order to increase academic achievement.

Funds in Gordon County, Georgia have been drastically reduced, thus
an alternative to increasing the number of paid professionals needs to be
considered. The purpose of this study was to develop a plan for the
utilization of volunteers as paraprofessionals at W. L. Swain Elementary
School in Gordon County, Georgia.

49

A questionnaire was developed to be distributed among the faculty at
W. L. Swain Elementary School in order to ascertain the teachers' needs. A
handbook was designed for teachers in order to familiarize them with
effective methods of recruiting and instructing volunteers and in order to
familiarize them with methods of giving recognition to volunteers who
work in the program.

Another handbook was designed for the volunteer. The purpose of this
handbook was to allay any fears a volunteer might have in regard to
qualifications for the job. The handbook also attempted to answer many of
the questions that a volunteer might ask.

A STUDY TO DETERMINE THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE

CURRICULUM OPINIONS HELD BY YOUNG ADULTS

CONCERNING HANDWRITING INSTRUCTION TO EACH OF

THE VARIABLES OF SEX, EDUCATIONAL LEVEL

AND OCCUPATION

Faye Davis
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1983)

Handwriting is one of the most important means of communication.
Since it is a tool that is useful throughout life, perhaps more emphasis
should be placed on handwriting instruction in the schools. The purpose of
this study was to determine the relationship of the curriculum opinions
held by young adults concerning handwriting instruction in the elementary
school to each of the variables of sex, educational level and occupation.

The population for this study was comprised of graduates of Chattooga
County High School in Summerville, Georgia. The sample included 200
young adults who graduated in June, 1973. A questionnaire using a Likert
Scale was devised and mailed with a letter explaining the project. The
participants were asked to circle the responses which most accurately
reflected their opinions and to return the questionnaire in a pre-addressed,
stamped envelope which had been included. There were 89 questionnaires
returned.

Results of the study indicated that:

1. There was no significant difference between young male and female
adults and their curriculum opinions concerning handwriting,

2. There were no significant differences among the educational levels of
young adults and their curriculum opinions concerning handwriting
instruction, and

3. There were no significant differences among the occupations of
young adults and their curriculum opinions concerning handwriting
instruction.

50

Results also indicated that the respondents were of the opinion that
formal handwriting programs should be included in the elementary school
curriculum and that both cursive and manuscript should be taught, with an
emphasis placed on cursive writing.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF READING ACHIEVEMENT OF

FIFTH AND SIXTH GRADE STUDENTS USING THE

REMEDIAL READING PROGRAM IN ADDITION TO THE

BASAL READING PROGRAM AND THOSE USING ONLY

THE BASAL READING PROGRAM

Phyllis H. Davidson
(EdS, Reading, June, 1983)

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of total reading
achievement as a result of students receiving supportive instruction in a
reading resource room. Forty fifth and sixth grade students from West
Haralson Elementary School were selected to participate in the study. The
experimental group and control group consisted of subjects who had
scored a minimum of one grade below grade level on the California
Reading Achievement Test. Both groups were placed in Level 12 of the
basal reading program according to their scores on the Hold Basal
Reading Placement Test. Twenty subjects in the experimental group
received assistance in reading instruction in a reading resource room in
addition to their regular reading instruction. Twenty subjects in the
control group received instruction in their regular reading class only.

The California Reading Achievement Test was administered before and
after a period of fifteen weeks to both groups, and served as pretests and
posttests. The Analysis of Covariance was the procedure used to ascertain
any significant statistical difference between the total reading achievement
of the two groups. According to the statistical computation used to
evaluate the null hypothesis, there was no significant difference in total
reading achievement at the .05 level of significance. Therefore, the
following null hypothesis was not rejected:

There will be no significant difference between the posttest scores of the
experimental group and the posttest scores of the control group (after
adjustment for pretest differences).

51

A CORRELATION STUDY OF GRADE POINT AVERAGES,

NATIONAL TEACHER EXAMINATIONS SCORES, AND

GEORGIA TEACHER CERTIFICATION TEST SCORES FOR

UNDERGRADUATES AT WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE FROM

NOVEMBER, 1980 THROUGH MAY, 1982

Janice Haynes Dixon
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, June, 1983)

The purpose of this study was to correlate the grade point averages and
the scores of West Georgia College undergraduates on three instruments:
the National Teacher Common Examination, the National Teacher Area
Examination in Early Childhood Education and the Georgia Teacher
Certification Test.

The hypothesis tested stated that there would be no significant
correlation between the grade point averages and the scores of West
Georgia College undergraduates who took the National Teacher Common
Examination, the Georgia Teacher Examination in Early Childhood
Education, and the Georgia Teacher Certification Test in Early Childhood
Education. A four-variable correlation coefficient analysis statistical
procedure was used in determining the correlation coefficients. All
coefficients were statistically significant at the .001 level. The study was
limited to the time period between November 1980 and May 1982.

The results of this study indicated that there is a correlation between
each of the variables of National Teacher Common Examination score,
National Teacher Examination in Early Childhood Education score,
Georgia Teacher Certification Test score in Early Childhood Education,
and grade point average. However, there was considerable variation in the
coefficients of the variables, with those of the National Teacher Common
Examination score and the Georgia Teacher Certification test score in
Early Childhood Education being moderately high while the coefficient of
the National Teacher Area Examination in Early Childhood Education
was in the low (but significant) range. The null hypothesis was rejected in
each case. It was concluded that the grade point average of a student can be
employed in the prediction of his/her score on the National Teacher
Common Examination, National Teacher Area Examination in Early
Childhood Education and the Georgia Teacher Certification Test in Early
Childhood Education.

The recommendation was made to replicate this study using new data
and to correlate the scores on the Georgia Teacher Performance
Assessment Instruments (TPAI) with the grade point average and scores
on the Georgia Teacher Certification Test.

52

A HISTORIC STUDY OF GEORGIA HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

Kenneth Leroy Dodd
(EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1983)

This is a three part study of the Cherokee Indians in Georgia. The first
part, consisting of chapters 2-13, is a history of the Cherokee Indians in
Georgia. It begins with the earliest accounts of the Cherokee in the area of
present day Georgia, and includes the profound changes wrought on
Cherokee society by the steadily intensified contact with the white man's
culture.

The tragedy of the Cherokee involvement in the Revolutionary War and
their futile attempts at reconciliation with the whites through their costly
involvement in the Creek Indian War of 1813 is discussed. This is followed
by an account of the agitation by Georgia politians to have them removed
from Georgia.

The history of the Cherokee in Georgia began to close with the discovery
of gold and the election of President Andrew Jackson. The desperate
struggle of the Cherokee to remain in Georgia is discussed along with the
efforts of Georgia politicians to have them removed. The narrative
includes several tragic scenes that occurred while the Cherokee were being
removed from Georgia.

The second part of this study, consisting of chapter 14, is a survey of the
manner in which the Cherokee Indians have been treated in Georgia
history textbooks. Fifteen textbooks used from 1900 to 1977 were chosen.
Each reference to the Cherokee is noted and compared to the historical
record for accuracy and "Cracker Bias." Included is a chart (pp. 148-150)
which indicates the number of paragraphs in each textbook that specific
topics on Cherokee history are discussed.

The third part of the study, consisting of chapter 15, is the conclusion. In
it are suggestions for improvingGeorgia history curriculum to help abolish
the "Cracker Bias" against the Cherokee Indians.

AN ANALYSIS OF BASIC SKILLS TEST

MATHEMATICS SCORES OF ATLANTA-AREA SCHOOLS

WITH RESPECT TO PREPARATION MODELS AND

OTHER SELECTED SCHOOL FACTORS

Dorothy Robison Fielder
(EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1983)

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine whether significant
relationships exist between the school mean score on the Georgia Basic
Skills Mathematics Test and the following six school factors: remediation

53

course model, educational certification of the teacher, school
socioeconomic level, racial composition, size, and classification of the
demographic area served by the school.

Procedures

Seventy-six of the 97 high schools in the Atlanta metropolitan area
elected to provide information via questionnaires. Two three-way analyses
of variance were used, with a .05 level of significance.

Results

Two school factors were significantly related to school mean
mathematics score on the BST: remediation course model at .036 and
classification of demographic area at .003.

Conclusions

Suburban schools seem to have little difficulty preparing mathematics
students for the Georgia Basic Skills Test. The most effective models for
remediation in all schools appear to involve individual or small group
work. Other school factors do not seem to be significantly related to
school's success on the mathematics portion of the BST.

THE EFFECTS OF A UNIT ON TEST-TAKING SKILLS ON

READING COMPREHENSION SCORES OF EIGHTH-GRADE

STUDENTS AT CARTERSVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL

D. Virginia Garrison
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, December 1983)

This study was designed to determine the results of exposure to a unit
relative to test-taking skills on reading comprehension scores of eighth-
grade students.

Subjects for the study were eighth-grade students at Cartersville Middle
School. The subjects were randomly selected from the entire eighth-grade
population. The control group was composed of 31 students, and the
experimental group was composed of 34 students.

The study was conducted over a 10-day period with the Stanford
Diagnostic Reading Test administered as the pre- and post-tests. The mean
gain scores were analyzed using t-tests for independent means.

The results indicated a significant difference at the .05 level for two of the
groups compared. The mean gain of the total experimental group was
significant when compared to the total control group, and the mean gain of
the black experimental group was significant when compared to the white
experimental group. The outcome of the analyses of the data resulted in
the rejection of two of the five hypotheses.

Recommendations and implications of the study are discussed in
Chapter V.

54

THE EFFECTS OF STUDENT TEAMS-ACHIEVEMENT

DIVISIONS OF THE SELF-CONCEPT ACADEMIC

ACHIEVEMENT, AND CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR OF

BEHAVIORALLY DISORDERED JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

STUDENTS

Dianne C. Green
(EdS, Special Education, December, 1983)

This study assessed the effects of Student Teams-Achievement Divisions
(STAD) on the off-task behavior, self-concept, and mathematics
achievement of behaviorally disordered junior high students in a junior
high school in Peachtree City, Georgia. Twenty-one students were
randomly placed in the control group (N=9) or the experimental group
(N= 1 2). Prior to treatment, baseline data for off-task behavior was charted
for each student. The students also completed the Piers-Harris Childrens'
Self-Concept Scale and the Mathematics Subtest of the Peabody
Individual Achievement Tests, which served as pretest scores. The
treatments consisted of a traditional teacher-centered class for the control
group and the STAD technique for the experimental group. Analysis of
the posttest data yielded the following results: the mean off-task behavior
was highly significant at the .001 level in favor of the experimental group;
the overall posttest data was not significantly different between the two
groups on self-concept even though the mean total was higher in four of the
six factors of the Piers-Harril Children's Self Concept Scale for the
experimental group; and the posttest data were significant at the .005 level
in favor of the experimental group in mathematics achievement. The study
concluded that the STAD technique may be more successful in decreasing
off-task behavior and in increasing academic achievement than traditional
teacher-centered strategies.

A HANDBOOK OF LEARNING ACTIVITIES
FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Sandra McAfee Hall
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1983)

The purpose of this study as to prepare a handbook of learning activities
for parents to use with preschoolers. Literature on early child development
was reviewed to strengthen background of understanding and to
substantiate a reason for developing the handbook.

The handbook included learning activities and experiences in the areas
of language development, listening skills, motor skills, self-help skills and
number skills. The activities and experiences were selected to promote the
social, emotional, personal and academic growth and development of the
young child.

55

THE RELATIONSHIP OF SELECTED JOB-RELATED FACTORS
WITH JOB SATISFACTION AMONG TEACHERS ENROLLED
IN GRADUATE PROGRAMS AT WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

Joanne B. Harwell
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1983)

The subjects involved in this study were graduate students enrolled in
courses at West Georgia College during the spring quarter, 1983. During
the month of April, 165 students completed the Job Satisfaction Inventory
and questionnaire; 106 students completed a Teacher Weekly Diary of
time spent on clerical duties and non-instructional tasks.

Eight null hypotheses were stated:

1. There will be no significant correlation between time spent daily in
clerical duties and the total score on the Job Satisfaction Inventory (JSI).

2. There will be no significant correlation between time spent daily in
non-instructional tasks and the total JSI score.

3. There will be no significant correlation between the combined time of
clerical duties/ non-instructional tasks and the total JSI score.

4. There will be no significant correlation between the years of teaching
experience and the total JSI score.

5. There will be no significant difference in the total JSI score among
teachers who hold different kinds of teacher certificates.

6. There will be no significant difference in the total JSI score of male
and female teachers.

7. There will be no significant difference in the total JSI score among
teachers who teach one to nineteen pupils per week, twenty to thirty-nine
pupils per week, forty to seventy-nine pupils per week, and above eighty
pupils per week.

8. There will be no significant difference in the total JSI score among
the five age classifications of teachers listed on the questionnaire.

Results of the study indicated a low negative correlation between time
spent daily on clerical duties and the total JSI score; a low negative
correlation between time spent daily on non-instructional tasks and the
total JSI score; a low negative correlation between the combined time of
clerical duties/ non-instructional tasks and the total JSI score; and no
significant correlatioin between the years of teaching experience and the
total JSI score. The study also indicated no significant difference in the
total JSI score among teachers who hold different kinds of teacher
certificates; no significant difference in the total JSI score of male and
female teachers; no significant difference between the total JSI score
among teachers who teach one to nineteen pupils per week, twenty to

56

thirty-nine pupils per week, forty to seventy-nine pupils per week, and
above eighty pupils per week; no significant difference in the total JSI
score among the five age classifications of teachers listed on the
questionnaire.

While the study showed that as clerical duties and non-instructional
tasks increase, job satisfaction decreases, further research is needed to
determine the job satisfaction of a more representative teacher population.

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THE GROWTH OF
DEPENDENCY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND

ECONOMY

Julie Hastings (MA, History, December, 1983)

The subject matter of this master's thesis is an analysis of dependency
theory as originally expounded by Prebisch (1950) and Frank (1967)
among others, and its particular relevance when applied to Northern
Ireland with regard to the influx and subsequent withdrawal of the
multinational corporation. The thesis is of a theoretical nature, using
secondary data, as it was impossible to carry out such a piece of work using
first hand information when studying so many miles from Northern
Ireland.

In this thesis, I have chosen to concentrate on industry in Northern
Ireland, which prospered after World War II, but has severely declined
since 1970, and as a result, unemployment has hit record levels in the
United Kingdom. These changes in the Northern Ireland economy can
only be seen in the context of the influx of the multinational corporation
worldwide, for example, the New International Division of Labour,
discussed in chapter 2, which refers to the way the division of labour within
a firm has been increasingly extended over international boundaries, and
the historical changes in the Northern Ireland state. The
internationalization of capital and labour after 1945, signified by the
growth of the multinational corporation and branch plant economy has
drawn the Irish periphery into the orbit of metropolitan capital. Now, the
growth centres of Irish industry are foreign-owned and orientated for
export. The Irish factory is merely a staging post within an
underproductive system. Because of this, I wish to examine how Northern
Ireland fits into Prebisch's 'centre and periphery' analysis of the world
economy, because I believe the Northern Irish economy has remained on
the periphery, subject to the changes in the centre (England) and in world
capitalistic enterprises.

Furthermore, since the 1970's, Northern Ireland has been gripped by a
severe crisis. I have set out to examine the effect the unstable political
situation has had on industry, and if this has led to further dependence on

57

Britain. Factories have been forced to close, and now foreign investment is
at a low ebb. At times of recession, it is usually those firms on the periphery
which are the first to close, and Northern Ireland has been no exception.
Contributing to this situation, the armed conflict in cities such as Belfast
and Londonderry has tempted many multinationals to shift location to the
Irish Republic or mainland Britain. Thus, the Northern Ireland economy
has remained peripheral. This has led I will try to show, not only to mass
unemployment, but to the reinforcing of sectarian division, with
discrimination still taking place against Catholics, shown also by
government policy to locate incoming firms in the mainly Protestant
eastern half of the Province, and most importantly to a much greater
dependency on the British Government. The British state has now assumed
absolute economic and political centrality in the Northern Ireland
economy, and the decisions affecting it. It provides incentives to attract
more firms, and unemployment benefit to those out. of work. These are the
major hypotheses I have set out to test in this thesis.

I feel such a study is important because Northern Ireland is not a unique
country, but this dependence goes on throughout the third world.
Dependency theory stressed the fact that industrialization did not bring
with it expected development benefits, but instead the developing
countries have become even more dependent on the industrialized
countries of the 'centre', and on the multinational corporation. It is
possible to generalize trends in the third world and in Northern Ireland as
identical, as conditions differ greatly, for example, with wages and the size
of the labour force involved, it is still of importance to me to compare and
contrast the two.

Finally, I give an overview of industrial relations in domestic and foreign
firms, and compare Britain and Northern Ireland. It is interesting to note
that strikes and walk-outs are much less prevalent in the multinational
corporation. It seems apparent that the movement of Northern Ireland
into the dominance of world capitalism can only be to its disadvantage,
with most of the benefits flowing to the 'core' countries, and the overall
strategy of the multinational corporation can only be seen to have ill effects
on the governments and workforce of both third world countries, and
countries of 'peripheral' Europe such as Northern Ireland.

THE EFFECTS OF CLASSROOM DISCUSSION UPON MORAL
JUDGMENT IN FIRST YEAR CHILDREN

Elaine Jocobi
(EdS, Early Childhood Education, June, 1983)

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an attempt to
develop the first-year child's moral reasoning ability through the use of

58

Piaget-type classroom discussions. The Piaget-type measure was used to
determine if there was a difference in the change in moral reasoning
between the experimental and the control groups as reflected by an
increase in the number of intentional responses from the pretest to the
posttest.

Methods and Procedures

The study was conducted in an elementary public school during the
1982-1983 school year. The sample included 28 first-year subjects who
attended the public school. There were two heterogenous groups. The
experimental group was 14 subjects who discussed 70 problem stories. The
control group was the 14 subjects who did not participate in the discussions
of problem stories.

Following a procedure suggested by Piaget's theory, the subjects were
interviewed using Piaget's clinical method. The pretest and posttest
experiment was designed to test the salience of intentions and
consequences on the subjects' moral judgments in Piagetian tasks. For
comparison, the pretest score was used. This provided the initial level of
moral development in the area of intentionality. At the termination of 70
discussions of moral dilemmas a posttest was administered to determin the
percentage of preference for considering the intentions of the story
character rather than a preference for consideration of consequences of
actions.

Results

Findings of the study were:

1. The control group's percentage of growth represented an
improvement of 26% between pretest and posttest results.

2. The experimental group made a 28% increase in intentional moral
judgment responses.

Conclusions

Based on analysis of the data it was concluded that:

1 . Although the training of the two groups differed significantly, there
was no appreciable difference between the two groups in their
development of a preference for intentional judgments on the Piaget-type
posttest.

2. The null hypothesis was not rejected.

59

SELF-DECEPTION PRACTICED BY INTELLECTUAL MISFITS
IN FOUR FLANNERY O'CONNOR STORIES

Linda Jean Watson Kaufman
(MA, English, August, 1983)

After giving a brief review of four Flannery O'Connor short stories:
"Good Country People," "The Enduring Chill," "Everything That Rises
Must Converge," and "The Comforts of Home," this paper attempts to
deal with the concepts of deception, self-deception, and the importance of
the eternal search for truth. In each story, the reader discovers that the
forms to which the protagonists pay homage education, art,
materialism, and comfort cannot sustain them. Furthermore, a tension
between faith and the grotesque exists in O'Connor's works. Because
O'Connor's concern is always for spiritual gain and because her works
developed as her theological understanding grew, the reader sees a
glimmer of hope even in her most despairing short story. Finally, the
movement in this paper is from the comic to the tragic. It also shows a
movement from the loss of limb to the loss of life. Always the concern is for
truth and for the characters to discover themselves LIKE 1 AM.

THE EFFICACY OF TEACHING GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
TO FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Klaus Langkilde (EdS, Middle Grades Education, March, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine if a specifically designed unit
developing selected factors about global perspectives would have an
influence on fifth-grade students' attitudes toward global perspectives.

The subjects who participated in this study were from one fifth-grade
class at Bill Arp Elementary Schol in Douglasville, Georgia. A Global
Attitude Scale designed by the investigator measuring acceptance,
ethnocentrism, attitudes towards foreign nations and ethnic groups, and
attitudes towards international relations and co-operation was
administered to students before and after the treatment to measure a
possible change of attitudes towards a global perspective.

Pre-test and posttest scores were compared for the entire group, for the
boys, and for the girls. A significant decline occurred in the mean negative
score on the inventory over the treatment period for both the boys and the
total group. There was no significant increase in the mean positive score
for the total group or any of the subgroups.

It is recommended that more material regarding global perspectives
should be produced and incorporated into the already existing curriculum.
Also, more research on the effect of long term educational programs
emphasizing a global perspective must be conducted.

60

THE MALE ARTIST'S TREATMENT OF
TWO FEMALE STEREOTYPES

Debra Newell Martin (MA, English, August, 1983)

Male artists have displayed an ambivalent attitude toward two common
female stereotypes of their own making, the sensuous woman and the
virtuous woman. These artists are attracted to the vibrant, sensuous
woman, yet uphold the virtuous woman on moral grounds.

This thesis examines the origin and validity of these two stereotypes and
their development from works of Greek literature to the novels of
Hawthrone, Thackeray, and Hardy in the nineteenth century. In the works
of Greek literature, women are categorized as monsters, sensuous women
who take life and embody evil, and mothers, who represent virtue. The
concept of the dark temptress and fair angel is evident in the works of
Hawthorne. While his dark woman is far more talented and successful
than the pale, fair woman, the dark one is destroyed a situation which
recurs in novels as these male artists attempt to end their works in
accordance with traditional values. Hardy's dark women are vain and
crafty, and his fair ones are simple and natural. While Hardy categorizes
his female characters in terms of weak and strong, appearances do not
always reveal reality, for the strong have weaknesses, and the weak have
fundamental strengths. Thackeray's female characters seem to be judged
by different standards; Thackeray regards the inability to love as a serious
character flaw. His strong women are often appealing in many respectes
character flaw. His strong women are often appealing in many respects but
lack the need to be truly loved and the willingness to give love which
characterize the weaker females in is novels.

Although these stereotypes do not present complete and sometimes even
accurate portrayals of feminine character, they remain valid and worthy of
study because of the truths they reveal about the male artists who create
them and their ambivalent attitudes toward these stereotypes.

HERE AND NOW: ESSAYS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION

Bruce Linwood Mills (MA, Psychology, August, 1983)

Religious man embodies questioning. As a questioner this man asks:
what am I? W ho am 1? Through his sciences man may determine to answer
the prior question with excellence. It is the latter question which concerns
us herein, however. In man's quest for God, his instinctive journey toward
meaningfulness, he seeks to discover and sustain meaning for his subjective
presence in existence: the 'who' of his own, personal being. This process is
his religion. He seeks to know, and his reason delivers him to the threshold
of faith where science can find no agreement, no objection. If, in the god
around which the religion of this man annulates, there is meaning, then this

61

is a task of man's reason. In his personal quest for blessedness, forr
authenticity, for individuation, for eternal life, man finds meaning. Here
we address religious man for it is he who truly concerns himself with the
questions most deeply rooted in history: who am 1? What am 1?

CONTEMPORARY THEORY AND METHODOLOGY IN THREE
BODY-CENTERED, EXPERIENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPIES

Eric G. Rosen (MA, Psychology, August, 1983)

The field of body-centered, experiential psychotherapies has developed
over the last fifty years through a wide range of disciplines. This field
originated as an alternative to the psychological mainstream formed by the
psychoanalytic and behaviorist traditions; its existence can be seen as part
of a general paradigm shift occurring on all levels of society. A new
generation of therapies has evolved which have synthesized elements of
earlier disciplines with recent innovations and new information. These
contemporary approaches are exemplified by the psychotherapies
developed by Albert Pesso (Psychomotor Therapy), Eugene T. Gendlin
(Experiential Psychotherapy) and Ron Kurtz (Hakomi Method). The
discussion of these works will focus on the theoretical principles common
to all three and the specific methodology of each. A research study by the
author will demonstrate the connections between five emotional states and
their corresponding patterns of somatic expression. A case study by the
author will demonstrate the practical application of the Hakomi Method.

CUSTOMS OF BLACKS IN TROUP COUNTY, GEORGIA, FROM
1900 TO 1950: AN ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

Louis H. Russell (EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1983)

This study was undertaken to collect factual historical data of the
customs of Blacks in Troup County, Georgia, from 1900 to 1950. The
study was also undertaken to substantiate the fact that oral history is an
invaluable instrument for gathering actual historical data and preserving
the historical data for future generations.

A list of questions which were relevant to the subject to be studied was
devised. The interviewees were selected and interviewed by the researcher.
Eight of the ten taped interviews were transcribed, and the remaining two
tapes were summarized.

The data collected were examined for accuracy. The data appear to be
historically accurate. This study supports the contention that oral history
is an invaluable instrument for collecting and perserving factual historical
data.

62

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AN ALGEBRA CLASS TAUGHT
FROM A NON-TECHNICAL PRACTICE-ORIENTED TEXT

Edward R. Sears, Jr. (EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1983)

This study was designed to determine what effect, if any, the use of a
non-technical practice-oriented text would have on the mathematical
achievement of first-year algebra students.

Subjects used in this study were 28 ninth graders at Mount Zion High
School in Mount Zion, Georgia. The students were assigned randomly to
one of two algebra classes. The only difference in the treatment of the two
classes was that they used different texts. The control group used Algebra:
Its Elements and Structure, Book /, by Sobel and Banks, while the
experimental group used Algebra 1, An Incremental Development, by
Saxon.

The Cooperative Algebra I Test was used in the study as both the pretest
and the posttest. The pretest was given to both groups at the beginning of
the 1982-1983 school year. The experimental process lasted for the entire
school year. During the last week the posttest was given. At the end of the
experiment, mean scores for the posttest were computed.

An analysis of covariance procedure was used to test for difference in
mean gain scores between the experimental and control groups in subject
matter knowledge. The null hypothesis was rejected at the .10 level of
significance.

It was concluded in this study that the use of a non-technical practice-
oriented text does significantly improve the knowledge of subject matter
for first-year algebra students as measured by test scores. Due to the small
number of students in this study, it is recommended that further studies be
made in this area to determine if the findings hold true.

THE STUDY OF STUDENT AND SUPERVISOR ASSESSMENTS

OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MIDDLE GRADES

EDUCATION (ELEMENTARY EDUCATION) SPECIALIST IN

EDUCATION DEGREE PROGRAM IN THE SCHOOL OF

EDUCATION AT WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE FROM

1972 THROUGH 1980

Joyce Anne Steelmon (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1983)

Since its inception in 1971, the Specialist in Education degree program
in Middle Grades (Elementary) Education at West Georgia College had
not been formally evaluated as to effectiveness by its graduates. By 1980,
96 students had completed the program, a sufficient number of degree
recipients for a follow-up evaluation to be attempted.

63

Two questionnaires were utilized, each having seven items whicl
corresponded to the seven program objectives/ components. On
questionnaire was used to assess the graduates'opinions of program
effectiveness, while the other was used to assess professional supervisors
opinions of progrm effectiveness with respect to graduates' jol
performance. Subjects were asked to choose one of five scaled responses t<
each item; in addition, they were invited to record any comments the;
wished on the reverse side of the questionnaires.

Statistical analysis of the data revealed that supervisors, in eight of tei;
instances, rated the program significantly higher than did degrei!
recipients. In three of ten instances, graduate responses and supervisor
responses proved to have statistically significant correlation coefficients j

Response tabulation disclosed that both program graduates and thei
professional supervisors maintained that the program was effective ill
achieving its stated objectives, individually and overall. Examination o
comments, however, did not consistently support the findings of th<
statistical analysis or the tabulation of questionnaire responses.

A COMPARISION OF CAREER AWARENESS BETWEEN BOYS

AND GIRLS IN THE FOURTH GRADE AS DETERMINED BY THE

GEORGIA CRITERION REFERENCED TEST

Sharon Dianne Tatum (EdS, Middle Grades Education, March 1984)

This study was a comparison between fourth year boys and girls as to
whom would be more career aware. The 1981 Georgia Criterion-
Referenced Test on Career Development was used as the measurement for]
the study.

The hypothesis was that there would be no difference in the achievement
of the twenty objectives and the total of these objectives in four areas
between boys and girls. The statistical analysis used for the comparisom]
was chi square with a .05 level of rejection of the hypothesis.

It was determined that there was no statistical difference in thirteen of
the objectives. There was a slight statistical difference on the remaining)
seven. Boys scored slightly higher on two of the seven, girls scored slightly;
higher on five of the seven. Boys scored significantly higher on one area of
Form I. Girls scored significantly higher on three areas on Form II. There
was no significant difference on the remaining areas.

Girls at the fourth year tend to have a clearer view of the world of work-
and their place in it.

64

rHE EFFECTS OF A SELF-CLAIMED PSYCHIC HEALER ON THE
ROOT GROWTH OF CORN SEEDS

Joseph Michael Wallack (MA, Psychology, August, 1983)

A self-claimed "psychic healer" was studied in three experiments for the
possibility of a healing effect on plants by the "laying on of hands." The
lealer treated a sealed petrie dish containing germinating root growth-
etarded corn seeds. The first experiment pre-soaked randomly drawn
:orn seeds for twelve hours in a 2% NaCl solution. The seeds were then
andomly assigned to three treatment groups in prepared petrie dishes:
lealing, control and a control for the temperature of the healer's hands,
loot growth was measured after 96 hours. The second experiment tested
or a possible transitory healing effect following the same procedures as
:xperiment one but measuring the roots after 48 hours. The third
fxperiment reduced the pre-soaking period of the corn seeds to 8 hours to
[est the possibility that the 12 hour pre-soaking period was too severe to
dlow a "healing effect" to manifest. The roots were measured after 96
liours. Using a Kruskal-Wallis (Non-Parametric) One Way Analysis of
Variance allp values were found to be greater than .05. Implications for
urther research suggest further studies are needed to avoid a Type II error
- ruling out any possibility of a healing effect on plants by the laying on of
iands. For the present set of experiments the null hypothesis remains

tact. '

THE EFFECTS OF PEER EVALUATION ON ENGLISH
COMPOSITION FOR REGULAR EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS

udie Nix Witherow (EdS, Middle Grades Education, December, 1983)

. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of peer evaluation
nd teacher evaluation on the writing achievement and apprehension
)ward writing of regular eighth-grade students. It was hypothesized that
fiere would be no significant difference betwen the effect of peer
Valuation and that of teacher evaluation on either the student's writing
chievement or apprehension toward writing. A secondary hypothesis
ated that there would be no significant difference between the sexes with
aspect to writing achievement or apprehension. It was further
iypothesized that there would be no significant interaction betwen the sex
If the student and the type of evaluation with respect to writing
chievement or apprehension.

The forty-six students involved in the study were randomly scheduled by
Dmputer into two composition classes of twenty-three students each,
uring the twelve-week course both groups were presented the same
ourse content with the exception that peer evaluation was used with the
tperimental group and teacher evaluation was used with the control

65

group. Two writing samples were taken at the beginning of the study and
two at the end. The four writing samples, coded with student numbers,
were mixed before they were evaluated by a team of trained raters who
used the Diederich Rating Scale. Also, the M iller and Daly Apprehension
Survey was used to measure writing apprehension.

Based on the analysis of the data, the experimental (peer evaluation)
group showed a highly significant gain (p=.002) in writing achievement
over the control (teacher evaluation) group; therefore, the corresponding
null hypothesis was rejected. Other data relative to apprehension toward
writing, the sex variable, and the interaction effect showed no significant
difference between the two groups; therefore, the remaining null
hypotheses were accepted.

Conclusions from this study indicate that for regular eighth-grade
students peer evaluation is superior to teacher evaluation as a
methodology for the teaching of writing since the students in the
experimental (peer evaluation) group improved their writing achievement
significantly more than did the control (teacher evaluation) group and
showed no significant difference in apprehension toward writing. A
recommendation ased on this study is that a similar study be conducted on
other grade levels. It is also recommended that a similar study be
conducted involving students of varying abilities and learning styles.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF READING ACHIEVEMENT IN
FIRST GRADE USING MASTERY LEARNING AND NON-
MASTERY LEARNING

Kathy B. Young (EdS, Early Childhood Education, June, 1983)

The purpose of this study was to compare the reading achievement of
first-grade students in ECRI (Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction)
mastery learning classrooms to first-grade students in non-ECRI
classrooms in terms of the following:

1. total reading achievement

2. phonic analysis

3. vocabulary

4. comprehension

5. language expression

The population of this study consisted of first-grade students attending
Maple Street School during the 1982-1983 school year. Students enrolled
in first grade were randomly assigned to classes in equal allotments by sex
and race. The sample was randomly drawn from the population using the
same strata of sex and race. The experimental group consisted of 30
students from ECRI classrooms taught by mastery-trained teachers. The

66

control group consisted of 30 students from non-ECRI classrooms taught
by teachers having no mastery training.

The California Achievement Test, Level C, Form 1 1 was used to collect
data for testing the null hypotheses, the statistic used to test the null
hypotheses was the analysis of covariance. The level at which the null
hypotheses would be rejected was set at .05. None of the null hypotheses
were rejected.

The results of the data from this study have shown that ECRI students
scored higher in each subtest and total reading score. The differences were
not statistically significant, however, chance probability levels were low
enough to indicate a strong possibility that the difference might have been
significant had the sample been greater.

67

u

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

REVIEW

Published by

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

A Unit of the University System pf/S^Ptgui

CARROLLTON, GEOR^GM C^V^T'

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WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

Volume XVII

May, 1985

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WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

REVIEW

Volume XVII May, 1985

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

THE ANN /MAR: A Mannersit Archeological
Anthropological Art Exhibition
Dorothy Joiner 1

Atlantans and Halley's Comet

B.E. Powell 5

The Great Transformation of Rural Landscapes:

Changes of Form and Community in Rural America

Dick G. Winehell 11

Status and Social Distance in the Faculty Office:
A Replication
Carole L. Seyfrit and Jacqueline P. Martin 21

Abstracts of Master's Theses and Specialist

in Education Projects 28

Annual Bibliography of West Georgia College

Faculty as of January 1 , 1 985 62

Copyright 1985, West Georgia College
Printed in U.S.A.

Published by
WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

Maurice K. Townsend, President
John T. Lewis, III, Vice President and Dean of Faculties

Learning Resources Committee
George McNinch, Chairman

Sherry Alexander
Charles Beard
Ozzie Binion
James Gay
Richard Guynn

Wayne Kirk

Marc LaFountain

Lewis Larson

Joe Mann

Elmo Roberds

Charles Scudder

Jimmy C. Stokes, Editor
Martha A. Saunders, Associate Editor
Mark J. LaFountain, Assistant Editor

The purpose of this publication is to provide encouragement for faculty
research and to make available results of such activity. The Review,
published annually, accepts original scholarly work and creative writing.
West Georgia College assumes no responsibility for contributor's views.
The style guide is MLA Handbook, Second Edition. Although the
Review is primarily a medium for the faculty of West Georgia College,
other sources are invited.

An annual Bibliography includes doctoral dissertations, major recitals
and major exhibits. Theses and articles in progress or accepted are not
listed. A faculty member's initial listing is comprehensive and appears in
the issue of the year of his employment. The abstracts of all master's theses
and educational specialist's projects written at West Georgia College are
included as they are awarded.

THE ANNIMAR: A MANNERIST ARCHEOLOGICAL-

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ART EXHIBITION

"/ can escape despair only through imagination. "

-Camoes

by Dorothy Joiner*

Any art exhibition genuinely novel in theme and form spurs the observer
to search for kindred antecedents in the tradition. This quest for parallels
between contemporary art and works from the past, moreover, is not mere
intellectual dilettantism. On the contrary, understanding modern art in the
light of earlier works serves to illuminate the meaning and the style of both.
Such an endeavor reinforces our sense of tradition, reminding us that our
cultural legacy is still developing. As T.S. Eliot has said, each new work
modifies in some way the entire heritage. With these considerations in
mind, 1 will outline several stylistic parallels between Mannerism, a 16th-
century European movement in the visual arts, and Bruce Bobick's lastest
exhibition entitled The Annimar: Recently Unearthed Artifacts from an
Imaginary North American Pre-Columbian Culture.

As an art movement, Mannerism is generally defined as that period
between the apogee of the Renaissance at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were working, and
the advent of the Baroque period characterized by the style of Bernini and
Rubens. During this time frame in Europe from about 1520 to 1600
artists deliberately violated the esthetic canons of their predecessors during
the Renaissance, rejecting their scrupulously cultivated classical principles
of harmony, clarity, and simplicity. The Renaissance artist had for the
most part accepted the discipline of objective reality, aiming at
compositions that imitated the ways things actually looked. His human
figures were correctly proportioned and placed in natural, graceful poses;
the illusion of space created in his pictures convincing reproduced a corner
of the world as it is generally experienced; and the scale of the objects he
depicted was similar to that of nature. In short, the Renaissance artist
worked in a realistic though beautiful style.

The realism of Renaissance art, laboriously acquired during the course
of the fifteenth century, however, was purposively inverted by the
Mannerist, who, though he often continued to employ the forms of the
Renaissance, delighted in thwarting the expectations of his viewer. He
freely distorted the proportions of his figures, often twisting them into
exaggerated and contorted poses; he constructed irrational and sometimes
disturbing space; and he ignored realistic scale.

A closer look at the term "mannerism" offers greater insight into this
provocative period. The Italian word maniera, meaning manner or style,

* Associate Professor of Languages, West Georgia College

1

from which Mannerism derives, is borrowed from the world of human
deportment. It connotes a savoir-faire , an ease and polish of speech and
conduct. Said to be demanded by Lorenzo di Medici in his women,
maniera refers to courtly sophistication antipodal to rustic boorishness
and naivete. First applied to the art of his contemporaries by the sixteenth-
century artist and commentator, Vasari, maniera meant the characteristic
manner of an individual artist or of a national or historical style. But, more
importantly, for Vasari, maniera referred to that essential quality whereby
art provided an ideal imitation of nature.

In Vasari's view, great art was created not by copying reality as it
appears to the eye but rather by imitating an Idea of perfection born in the
mind of the artist. Following contemporary Neoplatonic thinking, Vasari
believed that a metaphysical ideal rather than the objects that one sees
must determine artistic forms. For Vasari, the artist must saturate his mind
with only the most beautiful elements, hands, heads, bodies, legs; and from
this study he might then create figures which are more beautiful since
more ideal than any found in nature.

Vasari's conception of art often seems loftier than many of the works his
century actually produced. Whereas some Mannerist works reveal a
seriousness of purpose, even an anguished sensibility, many others now
seem somewhat frivolous to the modern taste, as, for example, Cellini's
elaborate gold and ceramic salt cellar, made for Francis I of France. The
ornate oval base of the cellar does indeed support containers for salt and
pepper, but the object's function as a dispenser of seasonings is secondary
to its playful symbolic complexity. Because it is derived from the sea, salt is
stored in a boat-shaped container under the aegis of Neptune, who lounges
in lanquid ease appropriate to a god. Coming from the land. Pepper, is
kept in a miniature triumphal arch, with a personification of earth nearby.
The bent leg of each figure represents mountains and the straight leg
plains.

Both the Mannerist anguish as well as its paradoxical frivolity, however,
are understandable in view of the century's Neo-Platonic, world-denying
mindset. The Mannerist unreined his imagination in a cavalier stance
toward objective reality because he considered the ideal, a creation of his
own mind, to be beyond the level of common experience. And because he
devalued reality as it is usually lived, he took pleasure in causing his
observer to question what is normally thought to be solid and actual. To
this end he cultivated ambiguity and illusion. This inganno (illusion) and
disinganno (disillusion) became fundamental to the Mannerist esthetic.

What then is the similarity between the courtly, abstracted art of
Mannerism and Bruce Bobick's Annimar exhibition? Though seemingly
disparate and distanced from each other in time, these works are much

alike in their relationship toward the real and the ideal and this kinship of
mind manifests itself in analogous techniques.

Bobick's unusual collection of art works consists of objects and
fragments said to derive from a Pre-Columbian white culture centered in
the Upper Ohio River Valley. Actually, however, the artist has created
these "artifacts" himself. From handmade paper he has made a series of
pouches, turtle skulls, shells and vertebrae, pot fragments, layered
garments, a surgical dome, and what he terms a "broken plevis icon." He
has carved symbolic writing as yet undeciphered onto several granite
"petroglyphs." And one of the most striking works of the exhibition, the
"Wrapped Ceremonial Blade Form," is a long wooden pole, which he has
partially covered with human hair and has carved into a blade at its lower
end. The artist uses these simulated "artifacts" as points of departure for a
detailed anthropological account of the Annimar culture, its beliefs and
practices.

Pivotal to the enjoyment of this exhibition is its whimsical "sleight of
hand." The viewer is presented with what seem to be the "real" remains of
an ancient civilization. The pot shard, for instance, is "cracked" to look
authentic. The granite pieces have been buried in the ground to make them
look old. Many of the "artifacts," futhermore, are displayed in plexiglas
cases much like those of a museum. In his commentary, moreover, the
artist asserts that the Annimar had a special process for preserving paper
(now lost, of course), thus explaining why this normally fragile material
has survived in its present excellent condition. To enhance verisimilitude
even further, the artist locates the center of the Annimar culture in what is
now Pennsylvania, citing specific locations, such as "Two Lick Creek"and
"Dixon Run," as former Annimar strongholds. He describes the
complex divorce procedures of the Annimarand even their ritual food, the
royal turtle soup. And with pseudo-scientific exactitude, he employs Latin
terms like Tsuga Canadensis for Eastern Hemlock. This wealth of detail
concerning the Annimar people and their lifestyle serves to persuade the
viewer that what he sees is authentic.

That this elaborate fabrication seems genuine was confirmed by the
query of the printers who typeset the exhibiton catalog. They wanted to know how
the artist knew so much about the Annimar without being able to read
their language.

Together with his solicitude for the appearance of reality, however, the
artist at the same time teases the viewer, including hints often
humorous- of his dissembling. In the title, he uses the word "imaginary."
He also parodies the titles of scholarly publications: The Art Bulletin
becomes "The Bulletin of Art." And the names of authorities cited are
often scramble versions of real ones. Lars Loosen, an archeologist

mentioned, for instance, is suspiciously like Lew Larson of the WGC
faculty. The viewer who initially accepts this masterful counterfeit and
then perceives the hoax is forced in Emily Dickinson's phrase to "earn.
. . [his] own surprise."

Bobick's playful cultivation of an illusion that almost simultaneously
dissolves into disillusion recalls the Mannerist inganno and disinganno,
which I mentioned earlier. The Mannerist took great delight in creating
ambiguous natural and artificial forms. One 16th-century master of
illusion, Bernard Palissy, constructed outdoordiningareas termed topiary
cabinets, which imitated solid architecture made of wood and stone.
Beside his sculptured greenery, Palissy placed deceptively detailed animals
fashioned of faience. His ideal garden included a pool with ceramic fish in
bold relief. When the water stirred, the fish seemed to move. The artist
boasted of the exactitude with which he imitated the scales and fins of
aquatic creatures. This predilection for ambiguity and its correlative
surprise stem from the Mannerists' highly subjective, often whimsical
attitude toward outer reality.

And is not Bobick's playful parody of modern archeology and
anthropology also analogous to the Mannerist's free distortion of nature
and of classical forms? Just as the Mannerist contorted the human figure to
conform to his personal ideal, so too, does Bobick "twist" scientific
commentary to convey his own perception of desirable human behavior.
His Annimar are a benevolent people who have overcome not only their
own violence but that of their enemies as well. They do not kill an intruder
but rather ensnare him on one of their elaborate traps. Retaining the
invader's bellicose spirit in a special pouch, the Annimar thereby render
him peace-loving. They then send the converted warrior home with a gift of
maize seeds, symbolizing his new pacifism.

These fundamental characteristics common to Bobick's Annimar
exhibition and to sixteenth-century Mannerist art suggest analogous
sensibilities. It is generally agreed that the Mannerist contortion of
classical principles and forms was evidence of haunting anxieties. Their
rejection of the world stemmed from fear and consequent unease. Their
seemingly playful whimsy was the paradoxical obverse of deep
disquietude. Similarly, just beneath the Annimar exhibition's drollery lies
a painful questioning of human violence and evil. The exhibition
represents the artist's imaginative solution to this most fundamental
problem of human existence.

The parallels which 1 have discerned between Bobick's Annimar
exhibition and Mannerist art their cultivation of illusion together with
surprise at its dissipation, their fanciful turning of forms from their
original intent, and their underlying disquietude might all be more fully
elaborated. I have merely suggested an outline for further speculation.

ATLANTANS AND HALLEY'S
COMET IN 1910

by B.E. Powell*

Georgians are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Halley's comet in 1986. A
few people who saw it in 1910 are still living and may have an opportunity
to see Halley's comet in two successive appearances. Many other people
recall their parents or grandparents telling about the comet.

Large numbers of comets probably exist in the fringes of the solar
system. A comet has a nucleus (which is only a few miles in diameter) made
of a mixture of frozen gases and solid particles. If a comet comes
sufficiently close to the sun, some of the frozen gases will melt to form a
diffuse envelope (known as the coma) about the nucleus. If the comet
comes even closer to the sun, the solar wind (high speed particles which
have escaped from the sun) blows some of the vaporized particles to form a
tail, which always points away from the sun. The tail of a comet may be
millions of miles long, and the head (coma and nucleus) may be thousands
of miles across when a comet is near the sun.

At least a dozen comets are seen each year by astronomers using
telescopes. Some of these comets are periodic and are seen at regular
intervals. Others are seen for the first time as a newly discovered periodic
comet or one which is making its only journey through the inner part of the
solar system. Perhaps one comet per decade is bright enough to be seen
easily with the unaided eye. Halley's comet is probably the best known of
these celestial visitors.

It is necessary to know some of the history of the study of comets to
understand public reaction to Halley's comet in 1910. Comets had been
considered to be messengers of disaster for thousands of years.
Earthquakes, deaths of rulers, diseases, and military defeats were
associated with comets. People were frequently terrified when they saw a
comet.

These ancient fears should have been eliminated in the seventeenth
century when additional scientific information about the nature of comets
was acquired. Edmond Halley saw a bright comet in 1682 and began to
study comets. His searches of old records revealed that a similar bright comet
had been seen at intervals of about 75 years. Halley also used the recent work
of Isaac Newton to calculate orbits of comets to demonstrate that periodic
comets revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits. He predicted that the
I comet he saw in 1682 would return in 1758. The reappearance of the comet in
1758 confirmed Halley's model of comet orbits.

* Professor of Physics, West Georgia College

5

Halley's work indicated comets were members of the solar system and
should not be feared any more than a planet, moon, or asteroid. However,
the ancient superstitions were believed by many people, even as more
scientific studies were conducted on comets.

By the twentieth century, advances had been made in astronomical
instrumentation. Telescopes had been improved and accessories had been
developed. Cameras and spectrographs, for example, could be attached to
telescopes to photograph and determine the composition of comets.

In 1910, two recent scientific discoveries probably contributed to some
concern about the imminent passage of Halley's comet. The orbit
calculated from the position of the comet on photographs made in August,
1909, indicated the earth might be sufficiently close to the comet on May
18, 1910, to pass through the tail of the comet. Secondly, early
spectroscopic studies detected cyanogen gas in the tail of the comet. These
discoveries reinforced the beliefs of poorly informed and superstitious
people that the comet would surely destroy life on the earth.

The comet was observed in the Atlanta area for several weeks in 1910. It
was visible in the eastern sky before sunrise from late April until May 18.
It was then visible in the western sky after sunset until June.

The Atlanta Constitution printed much information about Halley's
comet in 1910. Reports of scientific studies from astronomical
observatories, suggestions about observing the comet, and reactions of
people to the comet were featured in these articles. Even though this
coverage was extensive, some things which were featured in other
newspapers were not printed. The Constitution did not publish
photographs of Halley's comet made at major observatories in May, 1910,
or illustrations showing the position of the comet against the background
stars. Only one drawing, showing the orbits of the earth and the comet, was
included in the Constitution's coverage.

Some of the first coverage on the celestial visitor consisted of general
information. Mrs. CJ. Haden presented a "brilliant paper on the subject
of Halley's comet" to a meeting of the Atlanta Woman's Club (/, 2). A
series of articles entitled "Halley's Comet" by Frederic Campbell, President
of the Department of Astronomy at the Brooklyn Institute, described
comets, the current study of Halley's comet, and the history and legends
associated with the famous comet (2).

In early May, 1910, several other people described the comet. Using the
headlines " Have You Seen the Comet? How the Sky Tramp Looks", a
reporter stated he had seen the comet at 3: 1 5 a.m. He described the comet's
tail as being hazy (even on a clear morning) and not as big as a cart wheel.
He also said people in the same neighborhood were having "comet parties"

by awaking to sec and discuss the celestial visitor (3, 5). Such comet parties
continued over a number of days, as people in many sections of Atlanta
were "busy setting their alarm clocks." W.L. Fain described his
observations of the comet very precisely in a letter to the editor. He
indicated how close the comet was to the morning star (Venus), its height
above the horizon, and the length of its tail. "Those who wish to see it will
be well repaid for their trouble in rising early and looking toward the
eastern horizon" (4, 3).

As more people became aware of Halley's comet, the "sky tramp" was
blamed (at least jokingly, in some instances) for many mishaps during the
viewing season of 1910. The comet was said to be responsible for the record
cold weather in late April, for soft-shelled eggs being laid by hens, and for
the failure of cotton seeds to germinate properly. Romances were spoiled by
the comet, and one marriage ceremony was delayed until after the comet's
closest approach on May 18. An oculist suggested the comet was
responsible for increases in the number of people needing glasses.
Similarly, physicians blamed the comet for patients' ills that could not be
disgnosed as gout, heart failure, or other disorders. Trains were said to run
late because of the comet (5, 4).

Despite additional assurances from the astronomers that the world
would not be harmed by the comet (<5, I), people thought otherwise.
Hundreds of Atlanta Negroes refused to work during the week of May 18.
("What's the use of working, if the comet is going to do things to us?")
Special church service with prayers for deliverance from the comet were
held. These fears may have been reinforced by unusually cool weather
which might have suggested the comet was affecting the earth (7,1).

Weather forecaster Von Herrmann stated emphatically that "comet or
no comet, the weather would be the same." He was credited with the
following remarks: "Halley's comet has been charged with a good many
sins, but the man who blames Atlanta's weather upon the wayfarer of the
skies is almost as heartless as the man who waylaid the babe on the way to
Sunday school and robbed it of its contribution penny at the point of a
piece of lead pipe"(5,4).

On May 18, readers of the Constitution were informed that Atlanta
would be "saved" by clouds. Weather forecaster Mr. Von Herrmann
predicted that the sky would be cloudy when the earth was passing through
the tail of the comet. Observers would be deprived of seeing any unusual
effects. For the concerned people, this had even more meaning the clouds
would serve as a blanket to prevent the tail of the comet from touching the
earth (9, I).

Comet stories were told on the day of the closest approach. City
Councilman Harrison's facetious resolution inviting Halley's comet to
visit Atlanta was tabled. Likewise, the parents of a newly-born baby
rejected a suggestion to name the infant "Comet." The mayor's executive
secretary, Harvey Johnson, said that if things became too serious that
night "a fellow might take four fingers of rye and trust to the Lord. "Other
city officials had additional stories of people being afraid the comet would
set the world on fire, praying and sitting in the "amen corner" at church
services, using money to have a good time instead of paying rent due before
the world might end, and worrying about having suitable clothing for
burial (10, 3).

One well-known Atlanta businessman who was also a member of the
city park board used the comet as an excuse for not going to work on May

1 8. He sent the following note to his office. "Dear , If I come to work at

all today it will be late. Nervous members of my family insist that I stay at
home until the comet danger has passed. Yours, " (//, 7).

Reactions to the comet on the city, state, national, and international
levels were reported on May 19. On the local level, the headlines were
"COMET CAME! BUT THAT'S ALL!" The article continued, "The
comet has come and gone, and nothing more serious has happened than a
spell of bad weather, if that can be charged up to the celestial wanderer.
With all the fears and misgivings the comet has caused, he left us as he
found us, and we are still doing business at the same old stand . . . And
when Halley's comet passed, and neither the heavens fell nor the earth was
rent in twain nor any other hair-raising phenomena of similar dire
character was exhibited, the somewhat skeptical and pessimistic
inhabitants of this mundane sphere breathed a long, sweet sigh of relief
and then went back to sleep and dreams ... It was the tail of the thing that
interested Atlantans, just as it will be the tale of the thing that will interest
coming generations when the oldest inhabitant brazenly declares that he
saw the comet itself and had his hair singed while diving into the coal bin or
the storm cellar" (//, 7).

Many comet parties had been held on May 18. "In fact, it is very
doubtful if any appreciable degree of the population slept any at all until it
was apparent that there would be nothing more doing in the way of a comet
for the next 75 years. People stood on housetops and in the streets and
watched the heavens for hours . . ." (J I, 7).

Pranks were played on participants at some of the comet parties. Youths
released balloons attached to burning materials. "Carousing comet parties
Wednesday evening and Thursday morning were temporarily suspended
and petrified, as to speak, by the spectacle of flaming bodies sailing blithely

8

through the heavens. It is said that in the neighborhood of deeper Decatur
Street a few of the more susceptible brethern have not yet returned to
their homes" (12, 5).

Atlantans were also encouraged to see the comet in the northwestern sky
during late May. A table of viewing times was given (13, 1).

Some advertisements tried to capitalize on the comet. One such ad was
printed in the personal section. "Halley's comet visible at Five's, corner of
Marietta and Spring Streets (14, B9). Hastings' on Mitchell Street
advertised while the comet was visible before sunrise: "SEEING THE
COMET is the latest thing in early moring stunts. If you get up to see the
comet, why not stay up and finish the plantings in that unfinished garden
that you began a couple of months ago?" (15, 10). Finally, a "COMET
WEEK SALE" was used by one Atlanta store (16, Dl).

Humor was also featured in the newspaper reports. Some cartoons were
printed depicting the comet and interactions with the comet in various
forms. For example, a cartoon with the caption "Never Touched Her!"
showed Mother Faith (wearing a dress and an old gray bonnet) saying
"Well! It's past and I'm still here!" as the comet was shown receding in the
background. Short, witty remarks were frequently given in an editorial
column. For example. "The comet has the big head, but no tail of woe"and
"The comet has made the noisy alarm clock popular" described the rising
of Atlantans in early May to see the celestial visitor (15, 8). "The
astronomers would have us believe the comet is sort of a celestial gas trust"
(16, 6). The editor's concern about the mishaps blamed on the comet was
reflected in the question "Who will be the goat after the comet disappears"
( 18, 4)7 The entire experience with the comet was summarized in two final
remarks. "Cheer up! It will be seventy-five years before you'll have to rise
at 2:30 a.m. to witness the return of Halley's comet. The comet made the
whole world the rising generation" (19, 6).

This is the way it was 75 years ago. In a few months, the current
generation will have its opportunity to see Halley's comet. During this
apparition, the famous comet will be studied more extensively than ever by
astronomers. Since 1910, optical telescopes and accessories have been
improved. New tvpes of telescopes, such as radio and infrared,
have been developed. For the first time, space probes will be sent out to
studv the comet. Hopefully, inhabitants of the earth will not feel the same
fear and dread that was experienced by some people during the last visit.
Although the conditions for seeing Halley's comet in 1986 will not be as
favorable as in 1910, impressions will be formed to pass on to children and
grandchildren.

WORKS CITED

1. "Paper on Halley's Comet Read by Mrs. C.J. Haden." Atlanta Constitution, 13 March

1910:2.

2. Frederick Campbell. "Halley's Comet." A tlanta Constitution. I April 1910:10:3 April

I9I0M7; 5 April 1910:7; and 6 April 1910:7.

3. "Have you seen the Comet?" Atlanta Constitution, I 1 May 1910:5.

4. "Comet Parties Are Quile the 1'hing These Mornings." Atlanta Constitution. 14 May

1910:3.

5. Tom Bryson. "Luckless Comet the 'Goat' of Season's Many Mishaps." Atlanta
Const it ui ion. 15 Ma\ 1910: 4.

6. "Comet Will Hit I his Old World. Hut Do No Harm." Atlanta Constitution. 16 Mas.

1910:1.

7. "Negroes Refuse to Stas at Work." Atlanta Constitution, 17 May 1910: I.
.X "Denies the Cornel Is Responsible ." Atlanta Constitution, 17 May 1910: 4.
9. "Atlanta Sa\ed b\ the Clouds." Atlanta Constitution, 18 May. 1910: I.

10 "Some Comet Stones that Are Being I old." Atlanta Constitution. IS May 1910: 3.

11. "Comet tame. But I hat's All." Atlanta Constitution. 19 May 1910: 1.7.

12. "loll ol Comet Humor I xaeted bs Sk\ r ra m p." A tlanta Constitution, 22 May 1910:5.

13. "Cornel Came. Bui Dial's AW." Atlanta Constitution. 19 May 1910: I.

14. Atlanta Constitution, < May 1910: B9.

15. Atlanta Constitution. 12 May 1910: H. 10.

16. Atlanta Constitution. 15 May 1910: 6. Dl.

17. "Ncvci touched Her." Atlanta Constitution. 19 May 1910: I.
IS. Atlanta Constitution. 16 Mas 1910: 4.

19. Atlanta Constitution. IS Mav 1910:6.

10

THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL TOWNSCAPES:
CHANGES OF FORM AND COMMUNITY IN RURAL GEORGIA

by Dick G. Winchell*

American rural townscapes have traditionally been dominated by
unique visual imagery associated with community form and design.
Architects, planners, builders and craftsmen created buildings and spaces
with distinct identities. Although styles were often copied from one place
to another, their modification, combination and relation to the unique site
of each town created visually distinct rural communities.

The focus of this pleasant townscape was the Central Business District
(CBD). The initial hub of commercial activity has gone through radical
change in recent decades, however, and for commercial land a totally
different land use pattern has evolved. There has been a transformation in
land use from commercial facilities located in concentrated town centers to
locations along auto-oriented strips or in shopping centers. Although the
downtowns or CBD's of most small towns remain, the visual imagery of
rural America is now influenced as much by McDonald's arches and
convenience market signs as it is by Victorian facades.

This is the great transformation of rural townscapes from the pedestrian
oriented town centers at the turn of the century to today's auto dominated
strips and shopping centers. This paper traces two themes in the
transformation of commercial lands. The first theme is the result of
innovations which initially occurred in construction to make the old
CBD's possible, and later innovation and use of the automobile as the
major mode of transportation in rural communities. The second theme is
the transformation in investment strategy and control of finances in rural
communities from local control to a dominance of metropolitan interests
and influences. The result is a radical change in the physical form of rural
communities, and a change in rural values and sense of community. After
describing the transformation to a new form of rural town, this paper will
examine the impact of change on the social fabric of the community and
will assess the implications of such change for the future.

Background

Initial settlement of the rural South and most of rural America is a
Nineteenth Century phenomenon. Its design was essentially Victorian, and
Maas suggests:

Nineteenth century Victoria, USA, had no unity of
architectural style but it was a pleasant and successful ensemble
of warmth, color, dignity and good cheer, quite as good in its

* Assistant Professor of Geography, West Georgia College

11

own way as Old World towns. The business blocks were
remarkably well integrated; their storefronts did not clash with
the nearby homes and the beautifully lettered signs enlivened
Main Street facades (139-140).

Victorian architecture came about from the invention of the balloon-
frame system of construction which eliminated the need for heavy
timbered frameworks and skilled carpentry. Prior to the 1870's multi-
stories construction required heavy timbers which had to be pre-cut and
connected with wooden dowells in pre-drilled holes. Extreme skill in
engineering and construction was required, and multi-storied buildings
were extremely expensive. The balloon-frame was dependent upon the
introduction of cheap, factory-made iron nails, and required little in the
way of construction skills for multi-storied buildings and facades. This
offered small towns the opportunity to construct large, attractive buildings
which could copy the designs of Europe without the capital investment.
The result was the Victorian era small town CBD. which typifies rural
Georgia. Construction of these CBD buildings date from 1870 to 1910
(Mass 140).

Economics also contributed to the construction of attractive Victorian
CBD's. Cotton production in the rural South led to "gin towns" and "mill
towns" which were at first self-sufficient rural communities which
produced goods for exchange with other parts of the country. As in other
rural regions, local financing was established and greatly contributed to
the unique designs of rural communities. Small town banks were formed
by successful farmers and industrialists, speculators, or patrons with
money who moved into the areas. Successful initial development created a
pool of capital which was reinvested into the local economy through the
construction of commercial businesses, industry and homes, but especially
businesses in the CBD. These decisions to make major investments and
to emphasize the attractive design of buildings were made by local
businessmen.

The evolution of unique townscapes was the result of the plans or
concepts for development held by these local businessmen or proposed by
prospective entrepreneurs. Loan requests for different types of businesses
and different building designs were reviewed by loan committees based on
local needs and desires. The regional availability of building materials and
local skills of builders were also considered in financing decisions.
Generally each town had some initial townsite plan, centered around a
town square or main street and a few initial buildings. Infill and expansion
were based upon expediency of merchant loan requests and whatever
business leaders felt was needed for their community. All of the initial
financial decisions were controlled bv local businessmen, and extensive

12

capital investment was made not simply for profit, but to create a unique
and impressive town center for the community.

Southern agricultural economies quickly became dependent upon a
crop lien tenancy system in which farmers were advanced funding for the
next year's crops by local banks, which led to increasing dependency upon
the region's cash crop, cotton (McLaurin 4). In some cases outside capital
was borrowed from Northern investors to establish businesses and
maintain Southern banks. This began a system of exporting profits being
produced in the South through an increasing reliance upon outside capital.
Although Northern interests soon dominated the timber industry.
Southern investors maintained control of textiles and agriculture
(McLaurin 5). The "heyday" of Victorian CBD's in the rural South was
limited to a short period of successful cotton expansion

between initial settlement and the collapse of the cotton industry by the
1920s. Southern townscapes were restricted by the influence of outside
Northern capital and a regional dependency following the war unlike rural
areas in other parts of the country (McLaurin II). Local financial
institutions remained important to the development of downtowns and to
the expansion of the local economy and the built environment, but were
limited by available capital.

The Great Transformation of Rural Townscapes

The advent of the automobile to the rural American landscape brought
about the greatest changes in land uses, and in the South exacerbated the
failure of cotton based agricultural communities. Land use changed not
only internally within towns to accommodate the new machines, but also
radically altered the regional framework within which rural communities
had evolved, .lust as Karl Polanyi identified the great transformation from
national economies to a new order of multi-national corporations which
dominate world capital and world order (Polyani). so too can we identify
the great transformation of relatively autonomous rural economies into
regionally dependent extensions of metropolitan centered investment
capital.

The automobile made transportation between rural and urban centers
easy and led to a concentration of capital and a flow of goods from rural
areas to metropolitan centers. Combined with crop failures and "push"
factors forcing people to leave rural communities, the attractions of city
life and urban employment caused large scale migration and resultant
large scale investment which was concentrated in urban centers. Many
rural areas of the South experienced population decline or stagnation
beginning in the 1920's. The only exceptions were towns which had some
unique linkage to urban centers or served as regional markets for goods.

13

Just as the automobile promoted initial expansion of urban centers, its
increased use led to congestion and the eventual desire to escape from the
city to areas adjoining urban centers. The result was a large scale exodus
from cities and the "suburbanization" of the population. In these suburban [
settlements individuals could own their home and a small plot of land away
from city congestion, yet be within a short commute to urban workplaces
and activities. The auto first led to concentration of capital investment in
urban centers, and then to its reinvestment on the urban fringe.

Suburban investments featured the conversion of agricultural lands to
urban land uses and were tremendously profitable. It was this profitability,
the demand for increasing markets, and the potential for low risk
investment that made suburban development attractive for investment in
the late 50s and 60s. These forces created new forms of commercial land
uses. Highway strips of commercial facilities grew along major highways.
Each business had access by automobile and the replication of successful
businesses through franchise stores, especially fast food and convenience
markets, took place throughout suburbia. These facilities emphasized auto
access and convenience. Shopping centers which provided major
department store shopping with easy auto access were also built and
flourished. The development of highway strips and shopping centers was
unique from a design standpoint because there was no precedent for design
of human values and place. Instead, utility and concerns of the auto
overshadowed any concern for human beings. The only concern in dealing
with people in this new landscape was attracting them to the businesses,
generally accomplished with large signs along the street and the assurance
of maximum speed and efficiency in the delivery of goods and services.

The success of these strips and shopping centers in suburban
communities led to an examination of rural environments as potential
investment areas. The same features that led to suburban investment in
prior decades, notably the demand for increasing markets and the
influence of mass media advertising by franchise businesses, combined
with the relative lack of investment in rural America and the
underdevelopment of rural economies and led to a new boom of invest-
ment in rural communities in the 70's and 80's.

The recent resurgence in rural development is in part a
response from metropolitan-centered capital to recognize the investment
or market potential of rural areas. Urban land values increased
dramatically during the 50's, 60's, and 70's, making relatively low-cost
rural lands attractive to urban investors. The rural areas as marketplaces
were also underdeveloped as a result of limited capital investment prior to
the 60"s. Metropolitan-centered capital investments were made to capture

14

these markets by financing fast food establishments, fast service
^convenience" markets, and small shopping centers. National advertising
and marketing stimulated patronage of these "franchise" stores in rural
communities. The careful marketing, proven product lines and service of
these franchise operations nearly guaranteed successful return on
investment. Local financial institutions responded by financing their own
franchise or local "convenience" facilities. Traditional rural forms of
investment in unique buildings and shops, expansion or redevelopment of
downtowns, and maintenance oi unique districts became a less viable,
more risky investment. The result of these investment strategies is the
financing of suburban and urban based franchise commercial businesses
along highway strips or in shopping centers in rural communities. This has
created a great transformation of the physical form of the rural landscape.

1 he Human Impact of the Great Transformation

These newly transformed landscapes have resulted in a loss of a unique
sense of place, since the emphasis of the new designs is on standardized
buildings for auto convenience and service efficiency. Each franchise store,
both from the outside and from the inside, looks more or less alike. There is
no unique visual identity for persons driving by or using such stores. Yi-
Eu-Tuan suggests that "When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has
become place (73), and it is this unique sense of place which dominated the
CBD's of rural America. The transformation of the rural townscape
removes this unique sense of place, substituting mass-culture artifacts for
unique or distinct buildings. Especially transformed is the role of small
towns as a "homeland", which Tuan identifies as having landmarks of high
visibility and public significance which "serve to enhance people's sense of
identity and encourage awareness and loyalty to place" (159).

Peet suggests that loss of place is "creating increasingly homogeneous
adherents to an American based 'ultraculture' out of the previous mosaic
of regional and local consciousness" (1 10). Steele in The Sense of Place
says:

In many instances, modern society is tending to destroy the rich
variety of places, replacing them with homogenized "efficient "
settings that have no variety, surprise, or traces of their own
history or development. They may indeed be efficient for
certain tasks .... but they offer minimal returns compared with
the traditional impact of places as providers of many levels of
meaning and experience (8).

The transformed rural landscape produces changes in the culture and
community toward a portrayal of ourselves as members of ultra-cultures.

15

This great transformation of the rural landscape has critical
implications for town planners and rural citizens who might ask "Is there a
place for architecture and design within this transformed landscape?" and
if so, "What should the role of planners and architects be?"The infusion of
capital investment into highway oriented strip commerical or shopping
center facilities provides little opportunity for planners to create more than
minor site variations in standardized designs. The context for such
development beyond an individual parcel of land is extremely limited, and
planning regulations beyond minor streetscapingand auto access concerns
are unlikely. As strips and shopping centers expand, the imagery of rural
America becomes more and more standardized.

Academicians suggest that problems may exist with the development of
ultra-culture and the great transformation of rural towns. Steele states:

When people are unaware or unappreciative of the ways in
which place experiences affect their lives, for better or worse,
the places tend not to have much conscious influence on the
nature of the experience. People seem to he willing to overlook
a poor setting . . . Yet the actual human costs to us of bad place
experience can be enormous when accumulated over a lifetime
(4).

What planners and citizens need to seek, yet what the current trend in
rural development is moving away from, is the creation of unique and
identifiable townscapes. As Tuan states:

Place is an organized world of meaning. It is essentially a static
concept. If we see the world as a process, constantly changing,
we should not be able to develop any sense of place (179).

Traditional rural townscapes have been static, not changing in nearly a
century. The introduction of change alone detracts from this sense of
place, and leads toward placelessness, or landscapes which fail to create
any unique identity (Relph, Place and Placelessness). This placelessness in
our rural landscape may simply be the result of our transformed image of
reality where through the influence of television we can bring images into
our homes from anywhere in the world, and where our imagery and values
are in constant flux. Why not have change within the visual images of rural
communities to reflect such realities?

Modern rural landscapes, like their urban and suburban counterparts, "are
the result of a fusion of technical methods of analysis and construction
with philosophies which promote improvements in the efficiency and
material conditions of life" (Relph, Rational Landscapes 15-16). People
become less than human in such a context, and are simply a means to an
end profit. Relph describes this process succinctly:

16

/// the exclusive newness of suburban development, leisure
(enters, fast-food outlets, shopping malls, international
airports, and geometric office blocks, people are treated less as
autonomous beings than as pets they are housed, exercised,
fed, cajoled, moved and used. All this, needless to say, is for
their own welfare (Relph, Rational Landscapes 16).

The efficiency of last food and convenience markets in rural communities
is traded lor the visual quality of the built environment.

I he modern rural landscape reflects a change in values, but also a
change in regional economic models. of the transformation of rural

America is that regional metropolitan interests rather than local capital
now dominates the types of development which occur. Change or
development in small towns is dependent upon the initial resources of
CBD structures and the influence and extent of metropolitan based capital
in local economy. As new development increases in rural areas there is
additional pressure tor auto oriented convenience facilities. Relph states:

So modern landscapes, as probably all former ones, are a
dynamic and constantly changing expression of competing
interests following more or less conventional strategies which
are governed by limiting rules. Modern landscapes are above
all an expression of the growing authority of those who hold
the largest stakes, namely governments and large corporations.
Individuals and communities are allowed only a minor role
(Relph, Rational Landscapes 57).

This is the contemporary setting for planning in rural America. The
strategies for action are limited and are most dependent upon a critical
understanding of the problem.

Assessing the Impact of Change

To understand the impact of this change and the potential role of
planners and local citizens in dealing with change, the framework within
which development occurs must be examined. Maxine Greene suggests:

There must be critical understanding of the post-industrial
society, run as it is by technical men and women "committed to
functional rationality and technocratic modes of operations. "
Individuals must be equipped to reflect upon the knowledge
structures we provide, to identify themselves with respect to
them, to penetrate their mystiques. They must be equipped as
well to reflect upon the erosion of community in this society
(122).

One new approach to design taken by Venturi is to redefine what is
pleasant or interesting about a landscape from people's popular notions

17

rather than to apply specific criterion imposed by designers. As Denise
Scott Brown writes in her forward to the second edition of Learning from
Las Vegas:

. . . (architects should) reassess the role of symbolism in
architecture, and, in the process, learn a new receptivity to the
tastes and values of other people and a new modesty in our
designs and in our perception of our role as architects in
society. Architecture for the last quarter of our century should
be socially less coercive and aesthetically more vital than the
striving and bombastic buildings of our recent past (Venturi
XVII).

Such a redefining of values according to function may lead to
a continuation in the process of constructing more and more efficient
buildings without really considering the humanity of the people being
designed for. Relph states that such an approach has some benefits in that

it:

. . . also encourages the development of a greater sensitivity to
our visual surroundings, and can offer design proposals to
enhance and make more attractive existing landscapes by
means consistent with what is there now. Not avenues of trees
along commercial strips, but better designs for fast-food outlets
and shopping malls and service stations (Rational Landscapes
52).
This seems to be the direction taken by rural planners and communities.

Such an approach may salve the conscience of planners, but leaves their

designs and the future of rural America placeless.

Relph suggests a further alternative to the Venturi approach, that of
adopting an attitude of environmental humility. Environmental humility
is a way of thinking and doing that which respects what exists in the world
without denying its essential character or right (Rational Landscapes 19).

Environmental humility is marked by a concern for the
individuality of places, and this requires a careful and
compassionate way of seeing that can grasp landscapes as
subtle and changing, and as the expression of the efforts and
hopes of the people who made them. To learn this way of seeing
we must allow ourselves to be appropriated by environments
and situations (Relph, Rational Landscapes 20).

Such an effort would have planners and community members become
sensitized to localism and regionalism of the built environment.

18

. . . it is necessary to teach ourselves to look at what is local and

often commonplace before allowing ourselves to become

infatuated with exceptional landscapes and grand proposals for

their reconstruction. We need to be able to see in detail what

people have made of their lives here, and how this has been

claimed as a distinctive place (Relph, Rational Landscapes 195).

To embrace environmental humility in rural communities means an

acceptance of the transformed landscape for w hut it is, an important part

of the form and function or rural life. This is not.an unvalued acceptance,

however, and within the context of each rural community, designers and

citizens must go beyond the landscape of ultra-culture and convenience in

an effort to create unique places and community identity as part of

development and redevelopment.

Conclusions

Rural communities are in a great transformation. A unique rural sense
of place is to some degree being lost, but rural traditions and values are also
changing. All citizens have a stake in determining the extent to which we
maintain a unique rural identity through the built environment, and to
what degree we maintain senses of place in our daily lives. How to preserve
or even create this sense of place for the future is not clear. To do this
within our modern "ultra-culture" where rural areas are influenced by
mass media and franchise development will be difficult. The metropolitan-
satellite dominance of urban capital and the influence of mass media
creates little room for places, yet when places have been created or
preserved they are hailed as the epitome of planning. Somehow the rural
American townscape needs to represent the preservation of unique places,
not as museums or historical artifacts, but as symbols of our own identity.
Even within "ultra-culture" we remain human, linked to only a limited
spatial realm, tied but lor a short time to places and experiences which may
or may not make our lives worth living.

The incorporation of new images and the maintenance of old in creating
place represents the relationship between change and changelessness in the
rural landscape. Rural America has gone through many changes in form
and function, yet it has maintained unique institutions and symbols of
place. The great transformation of the rural townscape poses a threat to
the unique visual experiences and values of each rural community.
Designers, architects and planners as well as the general public must
recognize the impact of this transformation and do more than simply build
new spaces without a unique identity. We must instead recognize the
importance of space which becomes place when it is expressed locally in
commonplace forms. Only an attitude of environmental humility can lead
to a unique and significant role for rural America in forming the values and
symbols of our future.

19

/ would like to thank Miss Charlotte Entrekin for her assistance in the preparation of this
manuscript.

WORKS CITED

Maas. John. The Gingerbread Age: A View of Victoria America. New York: Rinehart and
Company. Inc., 1957.

McLaurin, Melton A. and Michael V. Thompson. The Image of Progress: Alabama
Photographs, 1872-1917. University, Alabama: I he University of Alabama Press, 1980.

Polanyi. Karl. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. 1957.

Yi-Fu-Tuan. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1977.

Peet, Richard. "Introduction: The Global Geography of Contemporary Capitalism."
Economic Geography 59.2 (1983): 1 10.

Steele, Fritz. The Sense of Place. Boston: CBI Publishing Company, 1981.

Relph. Edward. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion, Ltd. 1976.

Relph. Edward. Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography. London: Croom Helen
Ltd.. 1981.

Greene. Maxine. Landscapes of Learning, 1978. with quotation from Daniel Bell, The
Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Venturi. Robert. Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The
Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge. Ma: The Mil Press, 1977.

20

STATUS AND SOCIAL DISTANCE IN THE
FACULTY OFFICE: A REPLICATION

by Carole L. Seyfrit* and Jacquelyn P. Martin**

A recent study, by Zweigenhaft, concerning personal space in
faculty offices used faculty member's choice of desk placement as an
indicator of social distance in the faculty-student interaction. Conducted
at a small private school, the study indicated that, regardless of sex,
professors with higher status (measured by academic rank) would be more
likely to create social distance between themselves and their students. The
purpose of this study was to partially replicate Zweigenhaft 's work using as
subjects the faculty of a larger state school and using the variable tenure
status in addition to some of those used by Zweigenhaft (529-532).

Although classroom environments have been the focus of
experimentation and discussion, little attention has been given to the
faculty office environment. Zweigenhaft argued that the type of student-
faculty interaction which takes place on a one-to-one basis can be
influenced by the environment provided in the faculty office. It is by
definition home territory for the professor and alien territory for the
student.

According to Sommer and Ball, architectural barriers in the social
environment can promote or impede human interaction. Some physical
barriers are used as territorial boundaries and indicators of status and
power. Korda's examination of the power indicators in the executive office
environment suggested that the desk is the ultimate indicator of social
distance (36-44). The size, design, and placement of an executive's desk is a
broad indicator of prestige, power, and status.

Zweigenhaft indicated that such associations of power and status can be
applied to the faculty office as well. Specifically, he hypothesized that
faculty members who placed their desk between themselves and their
students, thus creating social distance, would be more distant from their
students in other ways such as age and status.

Zweigenhaft 's study was conducted at a small, private school. Data were
collected by asking the 74 faculty members to make sketches of the way
they arranged the furniture in their offices. This resulted in an 85 percent
response rate. The other 1 5 percent were eventually sketched by a research
assistant. After omitting those faculty members who shared offices, those
whose offices doubled as classrooms and those sketches in which desk
placement was indecipherable, analysis was conducted on diagrams from

* Instructor of Sociology, West Georgia College

** Undergraduate student in Sociology, West Georgia College

21

63 faculty offices. These diagrams were coded based on where the faculty
member's desk was placed in relation to the professor's chair and student's
chair(s), i.e., either between the teacher and student chairs or not between
the teacher and student chairs.

The two groups (desk-between, desk-nut-between) were compared
across five variables: age, sex, department, status, and student evaluations.
No differences in desk placement were found for sex or department, but
significant differences were found for status and age. The older professors
with higher status (based on academic rank) were more likely to use the
desk-between design in their offices. However, faculty members using the
desk-not-between design were generally evaluated more highly by students
than those using the desk-between design.

Based on the social distance and territoriality literature and the results of
Zweigenhaft's work, it was hypothesized that this study, using a larger
sample, would produce similar findings. That is, the higher one's status
(measured by academic rank and tenure status) the more likely one is to
create social distance (as determined by desk placement) in the student-
faculty interaction. Comparisons by sex, race, department, school, and
whether or not one shared an office were made, but differences in desk
placement were not hypothesized.

Method

The 244 full-time faculty members of academic departments ( I ) at West
Georgia College were contacted by letter through campus mail. This letter,
from the senior author, explained that a study concerning the use of space
in faculty offices was being conducted by sociology students and requested
the faculty's cooperation. Professors were told that a student researcher (2)
would visit them in their offices during scheduled office hours to ask
permission to make a diagram of the office furniture placement. During
the following two weeks visits were made to each faculty office where, with
permission, a diagram was sketched and researchers noted the sex and race
of each professor.

Using Zweigenhaft's procedure, professors were divided into two groups
depending on the desk placement in relationship to teacher and student
chairs in the diagram. A diagram showing the professor's chair and
student's chair separated by the professor's desk was coded
as "desk-between". A sketch indicating the desk placed so the student's
chair was adjacent to the professor's chair was coded as "desk-not-
between." In addition, the variables of sex, race, department, school
(Business, Education, Arts and Sciences), tenure status (tenured, not
tenured), academic rank (instructor, assistant, associate, or full professor),
and number of people sharing the office were coded for each professor.

22

Of the 244 lull-time faculty members included in this project, 199 were
successfully contacted and sketches made of their offices. Five faculty
members declined participation and forty were not contacted after four
attempts. One professor was dropped from the analysis because there was
no desk in the office. This left a final sample of 1 98 or eighty-one percent of
the original 244 faculty members.

Results

The sample contained two few minorities to draw any conclusions based
on race. No significant differences were found for schools (Business,
Education, Arts and Sciences) or departments. Those sharing offices were
less likely to use the desk-between arrangement, probably due to space
restrictions. However, significant differences in the sharing of offices were
not found across department, rank, or tenure status. Therefore, although
Zweigenhaft excluded office shaftrs from his study, they were included in
this analysis.

Significant differences were found based on both status variables.
Professors with higher academic rank were more likely to use the desk-
between arrangement. Table I indicates that nearly half of the full
professors put their desks between themselves and their students while
significantly fewer associate professors, assistant professors, and
instructors did so. The difference is also striking when based on tenure
status. As shown in Table 2, thirty-seven percent of tenured faculty as
opposed to less than eleven percent of nontenured faculty used the desk-
between arrangement.

Although both tenure status and academic rank produced significant
differences in desk placement. Tables 3 and 4 indicate that these results
held only for males. Higher ranking and tenured male professors were
more likely to arrange their offices in the desk-between style than were
lower ranking and nontenured male professors. However, for female
professors, there were no significant differences in desk placement based
on academic rank or tenure status.

Discussion

It was hypothesized that the higher one's status, the more likely one
would be to create social distance between oneself and one's students.
Social distance was measured by placement of the desk in the faculty
office. Placing the desk between the faculty and student chairs connoted
more social distance than placing the desk to allow the chairs to be
adjacent to each other. As predicted, those with higher academic rank and
those with tenure were more likely than lower ranking, nontenured faculty
members to place a physical barrier, the desk, between themselves and
their students, thus creating greater social distance when interacting within
the territory of the faculty office. Although physical features of an office

23

such as the location of doors, windows, and telephones, may affect
decisions about desk placement, the diagrams indicated a random
distribution of such features. Therefore, as Zweigenhaft concluded, there
is some relationship, although not necessarily a causal one, between
faculty members' status and the furniture arrangement in their offices.

In opposition to Zweigenhaft's finding of no sex differences in this
relationship, this study showed clear differences. Status of female faculty
members was unrelated to desk placement. Regardless of status, the
overwhelming majority of female professors, like the lower ranking and
nontenured male professors, used office arrangements that did not
indicate the creation of social distance in student-faculty interactions.
Although the status variables in this study were related to faculty status,
i.e., academic rank and tenure status, status in our society is also assigned
on the basis of sex, i.e., women are accorded lower status than men
(Stockard and Johnson).

According to Richardson, people interact with a woman in ways that
make this lower status more salient than any higher status she may have
such as academic rank or tenure. Studies of nonverbal behavior focusing
on the use of space consistently find that women occupy less space in terms
of body space, territory, and personal space (Frieze and Ramsey 133-141,
Henley). Women may internalize societal cues and, by the way they occupy
space, unconsciously communicate low status in social interactions ( Frieze
et al.

In an effort to understand the sex differences found in this study, the
sketches which were coded as desk-not-between were reexamined.
Although the> clearly lit Zweigenhaft's criterion ol allowing adjacent
interaction between professor and student, the desk-not-between sketches
fell into two distinct groups. The arrangement in the majority of the
diagrams showed the desk flush to the wall creating no barrier at all
between faculty member and student. However, thirty-three professors
arranged their desks in such a way that they gave some indication of a
barrier, but the chairs were still arranged to allow adjacent interaction.
That is, the desks were either perpendicular to the wall or pulled
completely away from it so the faculty chair was behind the desk.
However, the student chair was still to the side of the desk and therefore fit
Zweigenhaft's definition of desk-not-between.

Twenty-three of the professors with this arrangement were men (15.4
percent of the men in the sample) and ten were women (20.4 percent of the
women in the sample). The striking characteristic about these ten women
was that seven of them (or 70 percent) were associate or full professors
while only nine (or 39 percent) of the twenty-three men were of the same
ranks.

24

As a means of interpreting these findings, informal conversations were
conducted with several female professors. After first denying there was any
"reason" for their particular arrangement of office furniture, most of the
women began talking about how they perceived themselves and how they
were perceived by students. One woman summed up the most common
sentiment by saying that she did not want to act like the stereotypical, high-
status male by sitting behind her desk, but that she wished students would
not treat her quite so casually. Another felt students were apt to describe
female professors who set themselves apart from their students as more
rigid and intolerant than men who did so, and that this prejudice was
apparent in student evaluations. Several professors noted that they were
less likely to be addressed as "Doctor" or "Professor" by their students
than were their male colleagues, even those without doctorates. One said
when it comes to deciding how to address professors, students are more
likely to assume males have doctorates and assume females do not. Many
of the women contacted told stories of sitting in their offices (with their
doors clearly labeled) and having students ask if they were the
departmental secretary. One women reported feeling "damned if she did
and damned il she didn't." If she took a more assertive, more distant stance
with her students she was seen as "bitchy", but if she were less assertive and
distant she was treated as less competent.

Women in academia, like women in other male dominated professions,
are faced with the conflict of not wanting to take on the aggressive, status-
oriented stereotypes of successful males, but, if they do not, are treated in
terms of their femaleness and not their accomplishments. The number of
higher ranking female professors using a desk arrangement which allows
them to sit behind their desks, while still allowing adjacent interaction with
students, may indicate an effort, be it conscious or unconscious, to resolve
this conflict.

In summary, males with higher academic rank or tenure communicate
their status by creating greater social distance from students when
interacting in the faculty office. However, for women, tenured professors
and those with associate or full professor rank may reinforce their lower
"female" status by the way they arrange their office furniture.

This study makes no conclusions about the quality of interaction based
on desk placement. However, it is clear that higher status is related to
social distance between professors and students in the faculty office for
males and not for females.

25

Table 1. Desk Placement by Academic Rank

Academic Rank

Full

Associate

Assistant

Instructor

Professor

Professor

Professor

Desk Placement

X

X

X

X

Desk Between

48.3

24.0

12.7

20.0

Desk Not Between

51.7

76.0

87.3

80.0

Total

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

(N)

(35)

(55)

(50)

(35)

Chi Square (df=3)-19.97

p<.001

Table 2. Desk Placement by Tenure Status

Tenure

Status

Tenured

Not Tenured

Desk Placement

%

X

Desk Between

37.1

10.8

Desk Not Between

62.9

89.2

Total

100.0

100.0

(N)

(124)

(74)

Chi Square (df-l)-14.84

p-.OOOl

Table 3. Desk Placement by Academic Rank Controlling for Sex

Academic Rank

Males
Full Assoc, Ass't. Inst.
Prof. Prof. Prof.

Females
Full Assoc. Ass't Inst.
Prof. Prof. Prof.

Desk Placement

X
55.1

Desk Between

Desk Not Between 44.9

X X

30.0 15.4
70.0 84.6

X
23.8
76.2

Total
(N)

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
(49) (40) (39) (21)

X X % %

11.1 6.2 14.3 :

89.9 100.0 93.8 85.7

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

(9) (10) (16) (14)

Chi Square (df-3)-17.10
p<.001

Chi Square (df=3)-1.77
n.s.

26

Table 4. Desk Placement by Tenure Status Controlling for Sex

Tenure

Status

Tenured

Males

Not Tenured

Females
Tenured Not Tenured

Desk Placement

%

%

%

%

Desk Between

41.7

15.2

14.3

3.6

Desk Not Between

58.3

84.8

85.7

96.4

Total
(N)

100.0
(103)

100.0
(46)

100.0
(21)

100.0
(28)

Chi Square (df=l)=
p<.01

8.88

Chi Sqi

aare (df=l)=.69
n.s.

NOTES

(1) Administrators, part-time faculty, and faculty not listed in academic
departments (e.g. librarians) were not included in this study because it was
felt that interaction between these faculty members and students would
differ in both frequency and type.

(2) In addition to the second author, student researchers working on this
project included M. Wade Holland, Samantha J. Thomoson, and Veleta
P. Porter.

WORKS CITED

Ball, Donald W. Microecology: Social Situations and Intimate Space. New York: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1973.

Henley, Nancy M. Body Politics: Power, Sex, and Nonverbal Communiction. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977.

Korda, Michael. "Office Power-You Are Where You Sit." New York, 8 (1975): 36-44.

Frie/e, Irene H. and Sheila J. Ramsey. "Nonverbal Maintenance of Traditional Sex Roles."
Journal of Social Issues. 32( 1 976): 133-141.

Frie/e, Irene H., Jacquelynne E. Parsons, Paula B. Johnson, Diane N. Ruble, and Gail L.
Zellman. Women and Sex Roles: A Social Psychological Perspective, New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978.

Richardson, laurel Walum. The Dynamics of Sex and Gender: A Sociological Perspective.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, 2nd ed.

Sommer, Robert. Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design. Englewood Cliffs, N.J:
Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Stockard, Jean and Miriam M. Johnson. Sex Roles: Sex Inequality and Sex Role
Development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1980.

Zweigenhaft, Richard L. "Personal Space in the Faculty Office: Desk Placement and the
Student-Faculty Interaction," Journal of Applied Psychology, 6I( 1976):529-532.

27

ABSTRACTS OF MASTERS THESES AND
SPECIALIST IN EDUCATION PROJECTS

THE EFFECTS OF MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT ON ACADEMIC
ACHIEVEMENT OF FIFTH AND SIXTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Mary Jean G. Adams (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

The study was conducted to ascertain any effects of maternal
employment on achievement of fifth and sixth-grade students at Alabama
Street School in Carrollton, Georgia. Five hypotheses were proposed.
Data regarding race, sex, achievement score, and maternal employment
status for 408 students were analyzed using the Analysis of Variance.

No significant differences in achievement were found for the total
population whose mothers were employed as compared to the total
population whose mothers were not employed. Futhermore, no significant
differences in achievement were found when comparing white students,
male students, or female students in terms of their mothers' employment
status. The only significance revealed was for black students. Black
students whose mothers were employed achieved significantly higher than
black students whose mothers were not employed.

THE EFFECTS OF TEACHING PROBLEM-SOLVING

STRATEGIES IN CONJUNCTION WITH CALCULATOR USE ON

THE MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM-SOLVING ABILITY OF

FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Debbie B. Alexander (EdS, Middle Grades Education, December, 1984)

The purpose of the study was to determine if there is a significant
difference between the problem-solving ability of students taught
problem-solving strategies in conjunction with calculator use as compared
to students taught problem-solving strategies without calculator use and
students receiving no specific instruction in problem solving.

The subjects of this study consisted of the entire fourth grade at White
Elementary School in Bartow County. The treatment consisted of a six-
week period during which the treatment group was taught specific
problem-solving strategies while using calculators during their instruction
and practice. The control group was taught the same strategies, but
without calculator use. The comparison group was given no specific
instruction in problem solving.

The Metropolitan Mathematics Test was administered to all subjects as
both the pretest and posttest. Scores from the problem-solving and

28

computation sections were analyzed. The level at which the null
hypotheses would be rejected was set at .05. Both the first null hypothesis,
which dealt with problem-solving ability, and the second null hypothesis,
which dealt with computational ability, were rejected.

The results of the data from this study indicated that specific problem-
solving strategies taught in conjunction with calculator use did result in
gain scores that were significantly higher when compared to the gain scores
of students only given regular classroom instruction with no emphasis on
problem solving. Even though those students who were taught specific
strategies had higher gain scores than those given no instruction in
problem solving, and those students who used calculators in their
instruction has higher gain scores than those taught only the strategies, it
was the combination of calculator use and the teaching of specific
problem-solving strategies that made the significant difference.

THE EFFECTS OF A PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGY UNIT

ON THE PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS OF

FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Judy Gaulding Anderson (EdS, Middle Grades Education,
December, 1984)

This study was designed to determine the results of exposure to a unit
relative to problem-solving strategies on the problem-solving skills of
fourth-grade students.

Subjects for the study were fourth-grade students at Cartersville
Elementary School. The subjects were grouped according to their reading
levels and considered to be nearly equivalent in their reading levels. The
experimental group was composed of 25 students and the control group
was composed of 25 students.

The study was conducted over a four week period. The test designed by
the mathematical Problem Solving Project constructed at Indiana
University was administered as a pretest and posttest. The mean scores
were analyzed by analysis of variance.

The results indicated a significant difference at .001 level for the two
groups compared. The mean of the total experimental group was
significantly higher than then mean of the total control group. The mean of
the correct responses in the experimental group was significantly higher
than the mean of the correct responses in the control group. The outcome
of the analyses of the data resulted in the rejection of both of th
hypotheses.

29

A COURSE OUTLINE FOR THE TEACHING OF MODERN

RUSSIAN HISTORY AND COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY FOR

SECONDARY STUDENTS

Barbara Baldwin (EdS, Secondary Education, June, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to write, and to give supporting evidence
that a need exists for the development of a one quarter course outline for
teaching recent Russian history and Communist ideology.

Following a research of the literature dealing with recent Russian
history, course content for a one quarter elective course on recent Russian
history for social studies students on a secondary level was researched and
developed. Preceding the content section is a list of specific objectives.
Following the content area is a suggested vocabulary and suggested
activities.

Data were gathered to compare the opinions of teachers, parents, and
students by asking them to respond to ten statements concerning various
aspects of Russian history and Communist ideology on their level of
agreement or disagreement with the statements.

Chi squares were computed to determine whether or not actual
differences existed among the ratings of the three groups. The results
revealed that significant differences existed in the ratings among all these
groups in nine of the statements.

Conclusions reached as a result of this study indicated that: ( I ) although
there were significant differences in the manner that each of the three
groups responded to the ten statements, no definite pattern was found in
these responses, (2) the inconsistency and differences in the responses of
the three groups to the ten statements concerning modern Russian history
and Communist ideology probably indicated a lack of definite knowledge
in this area, (3) a guide was needed, and was developed, for a one quarter
course in modern Russian history and Communist ideology.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF COMPREHENSION

ACHIEVEMENT OF THIRD-GRADE STUDENTS TAUGHT

THROUGH A LEARNING MODALITIES APPRAOCH VERSUS

A TRADITIONAL APPROACH

Hellen J. Brown (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

This study was conducted to determine differences in reading
comprehension achievement between a group of students taught through
individual learning modalities. Group 1 was the control group and Group
II was the experimental group. The students were taught the skills of cause
and effect and drawing conclusions for a period of two weeks.

30

The students were given a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest to
determine the amount of achievement. The t-test for independent means
was used to analyze the results of the posttest and delayed posttest. The
results of the comparisons revealed that there was no significant difference
at the .05 level of the two groups. The null hypotheses were not rejected.

THE INCLUSION OF FINE ARTS IN THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Y. Davis Broun (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

Fine arts are considered to be a valuable portion of an educational
program. The problem of this study was to display the importance of the
inclusion of the many facets of a fine arts program in the middle school.
The study includes a review of the literature and a video tape which
displays examples of using the arts to aid a middle school student in
interrelating the academics, new-found skills, and interests with the
development of self.

The subjects of this study were the four-year fine arts program in Purks
School, Cedartown. Georgia; and in an expanded two-year program
sponsored by the Cedartown Civic Arts Commission. The program existed
for six years. 1976 through 1982.

The experience of the Purks Fine Arts Program and thcCedartwon Fine
Arts Program were used in creating a video tape to encourage, inspire, and
give ideas to those interested in including the fine arts in the middle school
curriculum.

A COMPARISON OF SEVERLY DISTURBED ADOLESCENTS'

CONCEPTION OF THE "PERFECT MOTHER" VERSUS THEIR

CONCEPTION OF THEIR ACTUAL MOTHER

Joan A. Fuhro (EdS, Special Education, June. 1984)

This study determined if sevcrly disturbed adolescents in a psycho-
educational center showed significant difference in their conception of the
perfect mother when compared to their conception of their actual mother.
Seventeen subjects, ages 14 to 18, from the Burwell Adolescent Program
at Central High School. Carrollton, Georgia, were administered the Elias
Family Opinion Survey (Elias, 1952), an instrument which measures
attitudes towards family. The subtest from the Elias Family Opinion
Survey ( Elias. 1952) "Attitudes Towards Mother" was used to determine if
there was a significant difference. The instrument was administered twice.
The first time the subjects were asked to respond in a manner which
reflected their idea of the perfect family. The second time the subjects were
asked to respond in a manner which described their actual family. Only the

31

subtest "Attitudes Towards Mother" was scored. A t-test was used to
determine if there was a significant difference in the subjects conception of
the perfect mother when compared to their conception of their actual
mother.

Analysis of the data revealed that severly disturbed adolescents in a
psychoeducational center showed no significant difference in their
conception of the perfect mother when compared to their conception of
their actual mother.

A SURVEY OF ATTITUDES OF SECONDARY REGULAR

CLASSROOM TEACHERS TOWARD MAINSTREAMED

HEARING IMPAIRED STUDENTS

Jane Ford Chapman (EdS, Special Education, June, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes of secondary
regular classroom teachers concerning the mainstreaming of hearing
impaired students into their classrooms, and to analyze the attitude score
of the regular secondary teachers surveyed with respect to type of school
program, subject area tuaght, age, sex, number of special education classes
taken, degree level obtained, perceived success with hearing impaired
students, and perceived availability of support services.

A questionnaire was developed to measure the attitudes of regular
secondary classroom teachers toward mainstreamed hearing impaired
students. The instrument was in three parts: background information, 20
Likert-type questions related to teachers' attitudes toward mainstreaming
hearing impaired students, and additional comments or concerns to the 20
questions. The respondents indicated their response on a scale from
"strongly agree, agree, uncertain, disagree, strongly disagree." The
questionnaire was sent out to 105 regular secondary teachers.

Sixty-six percent of the questionnaires were completed and returned.
The results of the study indicated a positive attitude on behalf of the
regular secondary classroom teachers toward mainstreaming of hearing
impaired students into regular classrooms. There was no significant
difference indicated in the teachers' attitude scores with respect to type of
program, subject area taught, age, sex, number of special education classes
taken, degree level obtained. However, significant differences with respect
to perceived success with hearing impaired students and perceived
availability of support services were revealed. This indicated that the
higher the perceived success with hearing impaired students and/or
perceived availability of support services, the more positive the attitude.

32

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MATHEMATICS

ACHIEVEMENTS FOR SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS

ENROLLED IN INDIVIDUALIZED AND TRADITIONAL

MATHEMATICS CLASSES AT WESTSIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL

Patricia M. Chenard (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to compare the mathematics
achievements of seventh-grade students in an individualized mathematics
program to seventh-grade students in a traditional mathematics program.

The population of this study consisted of the seventh-grade students
attending Westside Middle School during the 1983-84 school year. The
subjects of the study were the 83 nontransfer students from the four
average and high-average mathematics classrooms. There were 48 students
in the individualized group and 35 students in the traditional group. The
teachers with similar experience and background each taught a class using
the traditional style and one using the individualized program.

The Scott Foresman Achievement Test, Level II, Form A, 1 980 edition,
was used as the covariate for the analysis of covariance. The Scott
Foresman Achievement Test, Level 12. Form A. 1980 edition, was used to
collect the data to test the null hypotheses. The level at which the null
hypotheses would be rejected was set at .05. The first null hypothesis which
deals with methods of instruction was not rejected. The second null
hypothesis which deals with instructional preference style was rejected.

The results of the data from this study indicate that there is no significant
difference in achievement between students who are in an individualized
mathematics program and students who are in a traditional mathematics
program. The results sis indicate, however, that students who were placed
in the type of program that they prefer, either individualized or traditional,
had significantly higher achievement test scores. This seems to indicate a
strong possibility for improv ing achievement by matching students to the
program style that they prefer.

A COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF MATHEMATICS GRADE

EQUIVALENT SCORES ON THE PIAT AND WRAT OBTAINED

BY ELEMENTARY LEARNING DISABLED STUDENTS

Barbara Griffin C lemons (EdS, Special Education, June, 1984)

This study compared mathematics grade equivalent scores to the
Peabody Individual Achievement lest (PIAT) and the Wide Range
Achievement 1 est (WRAT) obtained by 32 learning disabled students in a
public school setting in grades four through eight. Subjects ranged in age
from 10-0 to 15-8 with a mean age of 13-0. WISC-R Full Scale IQ scores
ranged from 75 to III with a mean IQ of 90.

33

Differences in the means (X = 2.1) of the two subtest scores were
computed (PI AT X = 6.2; WRAT X-4.1). At test for nonindependent
samples was employed to test the significance of the differences (t = 7.32. p
< .05). The null hypothesis was rejected since scores on the PI A 1 were
significantly higher than scores on the WRAT. A Pearson product
moment correlation coefficient (Pearson r) was calculated to determine the
correlation between the two subtests scores(r = + .50. p - .05). Even though
the correlation met statistical requirements of significance at the .05 level
of confidence, it was not high enough to meet the requirements of
prediction.

In view of the findings of this study, it was concluded that there is a
significant difference in the PI AT and WRAT mathematics subtests scores
among learning disabled students at the elementary level. Even though the
correlation of the two tests was statistically significant, the correlation was
not high enough for prediction: therefore, it was also concluded that the
mathematics subtest scores of the PI A I and WRAT at these grade levels
should not be used interchangeably.

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT,

COGNITIVE SKILLS, AND SELF-CONCEPT OF HANDICAPPED

AND NONHANDICAPPED THIRD AND FIFTH GRADERS

Ann Coughlan-Ruote (EdS, Special Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were a significant
relationship between self-concept and four specific areas of academic
achievement: ( I ) reading. (2) spelling. (3) language, and (4) mathematics. A
second purpose was to determine if there were a significant relationship
between self-concept and four specific areas of cognitive skills: (I)
sequence, (2) memory. (3) analogies, and (4) verbal reasoning. A third
purpose was to determine the degree of relationship between all areas, each
with the other.

The sample consisted of 42 third grade students and 26 fifith grade
students. There were 21 handicapped and 21 non-handicapped third
graders; 13 handicapped and 13 nonhandicapped fifth graders. The
handicapped students had been identified and placed in the least restrictiv e
environment by the school system.

In order to measure academic achievement, all students were
administered the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (McGraw-Hill.
1981). The Test of Cognitive Skills(McGraw-Hill, 1981) was administered
to measure cognitive skills. All students were administered the Piers-
Harris Children's Self Concept Scale (Piers & Harris, 1969) to measure
self-concept.

34

Data was analyzed with analyses of variance and Pearson coefficient
correlations. Data indicated significant relationships between self-concept
and all academic achievement areas and only the cognitive skill of
analogies for nonhandicapped third graders. No significant relationships
between self-concept and any area for handicapped third graders,
nonhandicapped or handicapped fifth graders were found.

A STUDY COMPARING ACHIEVEMENT AND RETENTION

OF LAB AND NONLAB STUDENTS IN A POSTSECONDARY

AREA VOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL SCHOOL

Michael ./. Coition (EdS, Secondary Education, March, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of
developmental studies on academically disadvantaged students who
majored in a business occupation program at a postsecondary area
vocational technical school during 1977-1982 academic sessions. Two
major questions were asked in the analysis of data:

1 . How do business education majors' English grades differ in
percentage rankings for lab students compared with those of
nonlab students?

2. How do business education major lab students compare with
nonlab students in percentages of students completing their
business occupation programs?

A total of 710 students was included in the study with lab students
accounting for 13 percent of the population and nonlab students
accounting for 87 percent. The grades for all students who took English A
and English B were gathered and arranged according to groups. An
analysis of the grades was made on the basis of percentages receiving
grades A, B, C, D, and F. In addition, a comparison was made of the
percentage of each group receiving a grade of Cor better. Finally, totals of
completers and noncompleters were calculated for lab and nonlab
students, converted to percentages, and compared.

Analysis of the data indicated that nonlab students tend to attain higher
grades as a group than do the lab students but that the lab students tended
to pass their English courses at rates comparable to those of nonlab
students. Analysis of completion data indicated that lab students
completed regular programs at rates comparable to those of nonlab
students.

Conclusions drawn from the analysis of the data suggest that
developmental education is effective in helping the academically
disadvantaged student achieve educational goals, i.e., completion of
regular occupational programs. Although as a group their grades may not

35

be as high as those of nonlab students, lab students pass English courses at
high rates and come within a few percentage points of achieving the same
completion rates as those of nonlab students.

HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AS APPLIED IN THE LIFE
OF THE CHURCH

John F. Cox (MA, Psychology, August, 1984)

The question arises today, are the different components of life ready for
Humanistic Psychology and all that implies, or how well is the humanistic
approach assimilated into education, business, Christianity, social
services, other psychologies, etc?

I will show Humanistic Psychology at work within the framework of my
parish. My own expansion in thought, religious ideals, and good human
relationships hopefully will be evident in this paper. The acceptance of my
humanistic appraoch will be determined by the evaluation of the parish
response. My thesis will show that Humanistic Psychology can be
effectively lived and used in the life of the church, but possibly not without
resistance. Even if resistance is encountered, I cannot evade what I'm
perceiving as personal development and a good educational, spiritual
model for others.

CASE STUDIES OF GIFTED EARLY READERS: A SEARCH FOR

COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL

CHARACTERISTICS WITHIN THE INDIVIDUAL

AND THE GROUP

Nancy Chesser Cr icier (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to identify cognitive, affective, and
environmental charactersitics of a group of students who were certified to
be preschool readers and who have also been identified as being gifted.
Eight students were interviewed. Their classroom interactions were
analyzed by sociograms. They were given test to rate their behavior
profiles, personality types, and their attitudes toward reading. Their
parents were interviewed to find out what effect their parents had on their
learning to read. The family structures, family interactions and parental
opinions of the gifted early reader's attitudes, abilities and behaviors
were ascertained by both interview and written questionnaire.

The study showed that most of the children had common traits, but
there were exceptions to every trend. Some particularly outstanding
findings were: ( I) all of the children were read to starting at an early age. (2)
the mother was the family member most influential in the child's

36

acquistion of reading skills, (3) all of the children had appropriate reading
materials available at an early age, and (4) siblings reared in similar
environments did not acquire reading skills early.

A CORRELATIONAL STUDY OF SELECTED FACTORS
RELATED TO BIOLOGY GRADES

John D. Dunn (EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1984)

Screening of students for an advanced Biology I course is a current
problem at Central High School in Nevvnan, Georgia. This study is an
attempt to identify those factors in a student's record which will make it
possible to predict his chances of success in a Biology 1 course for
accelerated students. The subjects are 101 Biology 1 students in Central
i High School in the Coweta County School System during the spring
semester of 1984. The Biology 1 semester grades of students were
correlated with five selected factors. These were the eighth grade
mathematics grade, eighth grade science grade, the mathematics and
verbal scores on the eighth grade Georgia Criterion Referenced Test, and
the score on the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test. The null hypothesis
stated that there would be no significant correlation between each factor
and the Biology I grades. The factors were correlated with the subjects'
Biology I grades using a six variable multicorrelational analysis. The level
of significance at which the null hypothesis would be rejected was
established at the .05 level. The correlation coefficient at which the
correlation was considered useful for predictive purposes was established
at .4.

The null hypotheses were rejected in two cases. The eighth grade science
grade and the eighth grade mathematics grade were found to be
significantly correlated for science was .5467 at p = .001. The eighth grade
mathematics grade had a coefficient of correlation of .4499 at p = .001.

An analysis of variance was computed for the mathematics and science
grades by the Biology I grades using the intelligence scores as a covariate.
This showed significant relationship between the variation in mathematics
and science grades in the eighth grade and variations in the Biology I
grades.

A multiple classification analysis showed that the mathematics grade
accounted for 239? and the science grade accounted for 33% of the Biology
I grade.

For this sample, the eighth grade science and mathematics course grades
were found to be useful predictors for determining the scores of students in
a high school Biology I course.

37

EVALUATION OF A PROGRAM TO CHANGE NONHANDI-

CAPPED FOURTH GRADE STUDENTS' ATTITUDE TOWARD

THE HANDICAPPED

Cynthia M. Estes (EdS, Special Education, June, I9H4)

This study assessed the effectiveness of the program. Understanding
Handicaps, in changing the attitudes of nonhandicapped fourth grade
students toward their handicapped peers. Eighty-three students in Troup
County Georgia schools participated in the study. Prior to treatment,
students were administed the Peer Attitudes Toward the Handicapped
Scale (PATHS). Students then participated in the program.
Understanding Handicaps, developed by the investigator. Following three
weeks of treatment, students were again administed PATHS. Analysis of
the posttest scores yielded the following results: attitude measures toward
students with physical handicaps increased to the ,000 level of significance;
change in attitude toward students with behavioral problems was
significant to the .039 level; and the increase in total test scores was
significant to the .003 level of significance. The study concluded that
the program Understanding Handicaps may be used with students to bring
about more positive attitudes toward their handicapped peers.

RESTRICTIVE-UNRESTRICTIVE
AN IDENTIFICATION OF SELF

Gregory C. Gurley (MA, Psychology, December, 1984)

Questions have arisen regarding the ambiguity of the usage of the term
Energy within this paper. It has been suggested that I be more specific in
my defining of this word Energy. Energy has the capacity for a number of
diversified functions, e.g., mechanical, physical, emotional, biological,
philosophical, and spiritual, etc., but the term Energy can not be seen
particularly as any one of these. Energy as a concept can only be
understood in terms of what it is not, in terms of the undefined. Perhaps, as
study develops, we of the western world can find better terminology to
suit our concepts, but until that time I am at a loss regarding the
redefinition of the concept behind my usage of the term Energy. It is best
suited for this attempted description of the process of creativity. When
reading this work your reading may be facilitated by substitutingthe word
Energy with the following terms which I consider to be synonymous with
Energy; Self and Essence.

38

A COMPARISON STUDY OF THE FORMAL DEDUCTIVE AND

GUIDED DISCOVERY METHODS OF INSTRUCTION FOR HIGH

SCHOOL GEOMETRY

Frank Hall (EdS, Secondary Education, June, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a difference
in achievement of students being taught geometry by the formal deductive
method as compated to the guided discovery method.

It was hypothesized that students taught by the discovery method would
achieve at the same level as would students taught by the formal deductive
method.

The subjects for this study were the two intact geometry classes at
Fairmount High School. These classes included 27 tenth graders and 14
eleventh graders. The only difference in the treatment of the two classes
was that one was taught by the formal deductive method, while the other
was taught by the guided discovery method.

The Comprehensive Assessment Program, High School Subject Tests,
Geometry was used in the study as both the pretest and the posttest. The
posttest data were analyzed using the analysis of covariance to test the null
hypothesis. The null hypothesis was not rejected at the .05 level of
significance.

It was concluded in this study that geometry students would achieve at
the same level using either the formal deductive method or the guided
discovery method.

THE EFFECTS OF TWO TEACHER DELIVERY MODELS IN THE

READING AND MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT OF MIDDLE

GRADE REMEDIAL STUDENTS

Phyllis Hart (EdS, Special Education, August, 1984)

This study compared the effects of two teacher delivery models, (I)
team-teaching and (2) resource room, on the reading and mathematics
achievement of middle grade remedial students.

Four groups of fifth and sixth grade remedial reading or remedial
mathematics students (90 students in all) from a rural area in mid-western
Georgia were the subjects. The study extended over a three-year period.
The first year all subjects were given remedial instruction using the team-
teaching delivery model. The second and third years all subjects were
taught using the resource room delivery model. A reading or mathematics
achievement test administered at the beginning of each school year as a
pretest and again at the end of each school year as a posttest. The pretest
and posttest scores of all students were subtracted to determine

39

achievement for each school year. The achievement scores of all students
under the two delivery models were compared using the t-test, analysis of
paired variates.

The results of the study indicated that reading achievement was not
significantly affected by delivery model. Mathematics achievement was
significantly improved for one group and approached significance for the
other group. When delivery model remained constant, no significant
difference in achievement was noted.

THE EFFECTS OF ECRI GRAMMAR TECHNIQUES ON THE

NUMBER OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADE BY

ELEMENTARY STUDENTS

Charlotte R. Hester (EdS, Reading, December, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine if elementary students at
College Street SChool who were taught grammar for five minutes a day
using Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction(ECRI) techniques made
fewer grammatical errors in creative writing than did elementary students
who were taught grammar by conventional methods for 15 minutes daily.

The treatment variable in this study had two levels, the control and the
experimental. A pretest and posttest, each consisting of a 20 minute period
of time in which every student did creative writing on a topic of his choice,
was administered to all students involved in the study.

The control group was taught grammar using conventional methods in a
time frame of 15 minutes of instruction daily. ECRI grammar techniques
were used with the experimental group in a time frame of five minutes of
instruction daily.

Two dependent variables (capitalization and end-of-sentence
punctuation) contributed to the total errors which served as the third
dependent variable. Then 15 t-tests were computed on the dependent
variables for the control group and experimental group. The purpose of
the t-tests was to determine whether there were or were not significant
differences between the percentages gain between pre-test and posttest
errors for the two different groups. The t-tests also compared the
experimental groups boys with the control group boys, the experimental
group girls with the control group girls, the experimental group black
students with the control group black students, and the experimental
group white students with the control group white students.

The results showed that there are significant differences between some of
the dependent variables of the experimental group and the control group.
Overall, the experimental group made a significantly greater percentage of
errors in the areas of punctuation and total scores than did the control

40

group. Specifically, the experimental group (boys) made a significantly
greater percentage of errors in the areas of punctuation and total scores
than did the control group (boys). The experimental group (white
students) made a significantly greater percentage of errors in the areas of
punctuation and total scores than did the control group (boys). The
punctuation and total scores than did the control group (white students),
and were the only group to show significance in the area of capitalization.
The experimental group (white students) made a greater percentage of
capitalization errors than did the control group (white students).

Based on the .05 level of significance, six of the 15 hypotheses were
rejected. The hypotheses for percentage gain in errors in punctuation and
total scores for the experimental group, the experimental group (boys),
and the experimental (white students) were significantly higher than they
were lor the corresponding control groups. The percentage gain in errors
for capitalization and total scores for the experimental group (white
students) was significantly higher than it was for the corresponding control
group. Further studies in this area are strongly recommended.

AN ATTITIDINAL STUDY MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF

TEAMS-GAMES-TOURNAMENTS AT THE FIFTH GRADE

LEVEL UPON STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN AND INTEREST

TOWARD THE SOCIAL STUDIES

Jo Ann H. Huggins (EclS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

This study was designed to determine the effect, if any, the Teams-
Games-Tournaments appraoch would have on social studies achievement
and attitude.

Subjects used in this study were two heterogeneous fifth-grade classes in
Chatsworth. Georgia. During the two-month instructional period, the
experimental group was taught social studies using the TGT appraoch,
while the control group was taught social studies using the traditional
method only. The treatment period was 45 minutes each school day for
both classes. Each group comprised 28 students giving a total of 56
participants completing the experiment.

The pretest and posttest for social studies achievement was the fifth
grade standardized test from the text. The United States and the Other
Americas. The pretest and posttest for social studies attitude were written
by the investigator based on the Dutton Scale (Stright's Modification).
The acheivement testing for the experimental group was administered by
the investigator, while the testing for the control group was administered
by the control group teacher. The social studies attitude test was
administered to the two groups by the assistant principal.

41

The Analysis of Covariance was used to analyze the data for the
achievement test while the Analysis of Variance was calculated between
the two groups in order to determine the difference in attitude. Two null
hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. Both were rejected
by data collected in this study. The significance of the F ratio in social
studies achievement and attitude did indicate a significant difference, with
the experimental group having a higher mean.

From this study it was concluded that Teams-Games-Tournaments is a
valuable new approach worthy of consideration by educators.

It was recommended that further research be conducted using TGT
under varying conditions to see if the same relationships exist.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
IMPLICATIONS OF VICTIMIZATION BY AIDS

Don R. Hughey (MA, Psychology, June, 1984)

The phenomenological experience of being victimized by acquired
immune deficiency syndrome was investigated. It was hypothesized that
victimization of AIDS patients is a labeling and not necessarily a lived
experience of the individual's eigenwelt (own world body experience).
Subjects were selected on the basis of volunteer referral from AIDS-help
groups in the United States (San Francisco/ Atlanta). All subjects were
Caucasian homosexual males between the ages of 23 and 30, held mean
incomes of $18,000/year prior to AIDS, reported average of 700
anonymous sexual contacts prior to diagnosis, and had been aware of their
immunodeficient condition from 2 weeks to 3 years. One
immunosuppressive patient was included as a control measure of "the
before." Their world experience was determined by means of the
phenomenological qualitative analysis of contextualized clinical
interviews, which lasted about an hour and a half, and were condcuted in a
Rogerian-like reflective milieu. Data were interpreted following the
general outlines for phenomenological empirical research as described by
Giorgi (1975) and Wertz (1983). It was found that "secondary
victimization" in AIDS patients is the result of an outside
agency/ community and not an accepted world of their eigenwelt. Three
basic types of AIDS patients were distinguished, namely the "AIDS-
apathy", "AlDS-eager", and "AlDS-defensive", existing in a hierarchical
paradigm of adaptivity. Most notable was the observation that sex is
perceived as the predominate agency of victimization by AIDS patients
from this group and that a thematic unawareness predominates their
coping strategies. It was also observed that AIDS patients have an
extended and lengthy retreat phase in their coping response to terminality.
The theoritical implications of these data were also discussed.

42

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PERSONALITY PROFILES OF

A SAMPLE OF ADULT PRACTICAL NURSING STUDENTS

VERSUS A SAMPLE OF ADULT COSMETOLOGY STUDENTS

Stephen J. Jennings (EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1984)

Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire was administered to
25 licensed practical nursing students and 22 cosmetology students
enrolled at Carroll County Area Vocational Technical School during
spring quarter, 1984, to determine whether differences in personality
profile exist between adult students enrolled in the respective occupational
programs. Literature revealed the belief that personality is a changing
phenomenon and that maturation and other life processes affect changes
in personality. Consequently, in order to determine whether differences in
personality profile exist between younger and older students, the total
sample was divided into a group of students over 29 years of age (n = 19)
and a group of students under 29 years of age (n = 28). Multivariate
analysis with group as independent variable and each of the sixteen
personality factors as dependent variables was utilized to statistically
analyze the data in each instance.

Findings indicated that the practical nursing students were significnatly
more self-sufficient than were the cosmetology students and that younger
students were significantly more conscientious, were less self-sufficient,
and had less undisciplined self-conflict than did their older school mates.

A STUDY OF THE PERSONALITY DISTRIBUTION OF

LEARNING DISABLED STUDENTS AT PEPPERELL

HIGH SCHOOL

Charles Wallace Kelley (EdS, Special Education, August, 1984)

This study was conducted in order to determine if there was a significant
difference in the personality distribution of the learning disabled students
and the regular students of Pepperell High School. The personality factor
strength of each group was determined by administering the Junior-Senior
High School Personality Questionnaire, commonly referred to as the 16
P.F. Personality Inventory. Fourteen factor scores were interpreted and
evaluated in accordance with established procedures using sten score
averages and individual profile sheets. There were 57 subjects involved; 29
learning disabled and 28 regular students. The results showed that while
the study group averaged just below the normal group, the scores were not
in the significance level defined by the test itself. The below average scores
may be correlated to certain substandard behavioral tendencies but not at
the level which distinguishes them from the normal student.

43

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTIONS OF
SELECTED EDUCATORS FROM FIVE COUNTIES OF WEST

CENTRAL GEORGIA TOWARD THE ROLES AND
RESPONSIBLITIES OF THE RESOURCE ROOM TEACHER

Alice Wilkinson Kirby (EdS, Special Education. August, 1984)

This study was conducted to determine the perceptions of principals,
classroom teachers, and resource room teachers from elementary schools
in the West Georgia CESA area toward the roles and responsibilities of the
resource room teacher. An original questionnaire containing 25
statements regarding the duties and responsibilities of the resource teacher
was mailed to 52 principals, 52 resource room teachers, and 1 56 classroom
teachers. Forty principals, 33 resource room teachers, and 103 classroom
teachers completed and returned the questionnaire. The results were
analyzed by an ANOVA analysis of variance to determine if a significant
difference existed in the perceptions of the three groups of slelected
educators. Results indicate that significant difference exists in perceptions
toward six of the 25 stated duties of the resource room teacher. These
duties pertained to the functions of referral and placement, assessment and
evaluation, and communication.

A COMPARISON USING CLOZE PROCEDURES AND

TRADITIONAL TEACHING METHOD WITH

FOURTH GRADE SCIENCE STUDENTS

Linda Dukes Kiser (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, J 984)

The two-fold purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship
existed between measured science achievement and two instructional
systems for delivering science concepts and to determine the readability of
the science textbook by the students using it.

It was hypothesized there would be no significant difference between the
science posttest scores of those students taught science using the cloze
procedures with discussion and those scores of students taught by the
traditional method. It was hypothesized there would be no significant
difference between the science posttest scores of those students at the
frustrational level in the experimental group and the scores of those
students at the frustrational level in the control group. It was hypothesized
there would be no significant difference between the science posttest scores
of those students at the instructional level in the experimental group and
those scores of students at the instructional level in the control group. It
was further hypothesized there would be no significant difference between
the posttest scores of the female students in the experimental group and
control group nor would there be any difference in the posttest scores of
the male students in the experimental group and control group.

44

The sample used in the study consisted of 43 fourth-grade science
students randomly selected for two fourth-grade baseroom classes for the
1983-1984 school year. The subjects were divided into a control group
receiving science instruction by the traditional method, and an
experimental group receiving science instruction by the use of cloze
procedure with discussion.

The data gathering instruments were a pre-posttest, a cloze test
constructed from a passage from the students'science textbook and a cloze
test battery. The t-test for independent means was used to test the posited
hypotheses. The .05 level of significance was used as the criterion for
testing all hypotheses.

The analysis of the data from the experiment which generated five
hypotheses using the cloze procedure yielded the following results. Two
hypotheses were not rejected. There was no significant difference between
the science posttest scores of those students reading their textbook at the
frustrational level in the experimental group and those of the students at
the frustrational level in the control group. There was no significant
difference between the posttest scores of the male students in the
experimental group and those of the male students in the control group.

Three hypotheses were rejected. There was a significant difference
between the science posttest scores of the students in the experimental
group and those of the students in the control group. There was a
significant difference between the science posttest scores of those students
at the instructional level in the experimental group and those of the
instructional level in the control group. There was a significant difference
between the posttest scores of the female students in the experimental
group and those of the female students in the control group.

It appeared that a negative relationship existed between the use of the
cloze procedure for science instruction and measured achievement gain in
science for the sample used in the study.

IDENTIFICATION AND PREVALENCE OF SECONDARY

HANDICAPPING CONDITIONS OF RUBELLA-DEAFENED

YOUTH AND NON-RUBELLA DEAFENED YOUTH IN THE

COBB COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM

Gail Bennett Meacham (EdS, Special Education, June, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the secondary handicapping
conditions of rubella-deafened youth and non-rubella-deafened youth in
the Cobb County School System.

A questionnaire was sent to parents and teachers of the 126 hearing
impaired students enrolled in the Cobb County School System's Imapired

45

Hearing Program requesting information regarding cuase of deafness and
any secondary handicaps that might accompany the diagnosed hearing
impairment. A study of each student's case history was also completed to
determine the cause of deafness and any accompanying handicaps. The
data were determined by a Chi-square analysis of the frequency of the
occurrence of additional disorders in the rubella-deafened subjects versus
the non-rubella-deafened subjects. The probability of .05 was utilized as
being significant.

The results of the study indicated that the presence of secondary
handicapping conditions in rubella-deafened youngsters was found to be
significant in emotional disturbance, visual problems, physical problems
and other miscellaneous problems. Secondary handicapping conditions
did not appear to be significant in regard to rubella-deafened subjects in
the areas of behavioral disorders, mental retardation, learning disabilities
and blindness.

It can be concluded from the study that secondary handicapping
conditions occurred more frequently in rubella-deafened subjects in four
of the disabilities investigated. Further analysis of the data would be
necessary to determine implications regarding severity of the secondary
hanicaps and the significance of the additional handicap(s) on educational
achievement and daily living skills.

THE EFFECT OF A THERAPEUTIC HORSEBACK RIDING

PROGRAM ON THE SELF-CONCEPT OF FEMALE

ADOLESCENTS WHO ARE MODERATELY

MENTALLY RETARDED

Susan Michael (EdS, Special Education, December, 1984)

This study was conducted in order to determine the effect of a
therapeutic horseback riding program on the self-concept of moderately
mentally retarded, female adolescents. There were 20 subjects in the study.
The ten subjects in the treatment group received therapeutic horseback
riding instruction. The ten subjects in the control group received no
instruction. Self-concept was measured by administering the Piers-Harris
Children's Self-Concept Scale and the Primary Self-Concept Inventory.
The data was analyzed and interpreted through an analysis of covariance.
No significant difference was found in self-concept between the control
group and the treatment group was measured by the Piers-Harris
Children's Self-Concept Scale. A significant difference was found in self-
concept between the control group and the treatment group as measured
by the Primary Self-Concept Inventory.

46

A STUDY OF THE IMPACT MADE BY EARLY EDUCATIONAL

INTERVENTION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG

CHILDREN

Ellen Marie Moore (EdS, Early Childhood Education, December, 1984)

The Preschool Development Program is operated by the Dade County
School System of Dade County, Georgia, for children from birth to five
years of age and their parents. The program serves both average and
handicapped children in this school system of twenty-three hundred
students. The handicapped children receive one home visit a week and
come to the Parent-Child Center if possible. The average children come
with their parents to the center once a week. A demonstration lesson is
provided and parents after evaluating their child choose the lesson they
will teach their child during the week.

In this study the children who participated in the Preschool
Development Program were the experimental group. The control group
was a random sample of children in the school system's kindergarten, first,
and second grades who were not in the program. The instruments used in
the study were the M EM PH IS Comprehensive Development Scale used as
pre and post test for children in the Preschool Development Program, the
Denver Developmental Screening Test as the pre kindergarten assessment,
the Georgia Kindergarten Criterion Reference Test as the post
kindergarten evaluation, and the Georgia First and Second Grade
Criterion Reference Tests for post evaluations.

The study had four purposes: first, to investigate the effect of Preschool
Development Program has on reducing the number of children that
qualify for the Improvement Program (remedial program in
Reading Language Arts and Mathematics); second, to research the effect
the Preschool Development Program has on the readiness of children to
enter kindergarten at an adequate developmental level; third, to study the
gains made by the children in the Preschool Development Program to
determine if the gains are sustained through kindergarten, first and second
grades; and fourth, to compare the development of the children entering
the Preschool Development Program at one month to thirty months of age
compared to the children entering at thirty-one to sixty months of age.

Descriptive analysis showed that the control group (children not
attending the Preschool Development Program) required significantly
more remediation in the area of mathematics compared to the
experimental group (children who attended the Preschool Development
Program). In the Denver Developmental Screening Test the experimental
group had significantly fewer developmental delays in the areas of
personal-social, line motor, language, and gross motor skills than the
control group. The children in the experimental group obtained a

47

significantly greater number of objectives on the Georgia Kindergarten
Criterion Reference Test compared to the children in the control group in
the areas of speaking, reading, writing, and numbers and numeration. In
the Georgia First Grade Criterion Reference Test the experimental group
obtained significantly more objectives in both reading and mathematics
than the control group. The number of objectives obtained in reading on
the Georgia Second Grade Criterion Reference Test was significantly
greater for the experimental group entering the Preschool Development
Program between the ages of one month to thirty months did not show
significantly greater developmental gains than those experimental children
entering the program between thirty-one to sixty months of age.

The educational leaders of today in the fast changing stage of
"schooling" should be knowledgeable about the impact made by the early
intervention with parents and children in the positive development of
young children. Curriculum should be developed, teachers trained and
environments planned to provide experiences where children and their
parents can develop to their greatest potential. Further research is
recommended to investigate three areas: first, the effect the program has
on the parents; second, the extension of the longitudinal study; and third,
the effects of early entry into preschool programs using standardized
instruments administered by the teacher.

THOMAS HARDY: MUSIC IN THE MAN AND HIS NOVELS

Bonnie W. Nipper (MA, English, June, 1984)

Thomas Hardy was a writer whose lifelong appreciation of music
enriched not only his life but found an expression in his major novels as
well. References to music of all types, from the ballads of his native
Dorchester to Italian operas, were used extensively in his novels. Musical
terminology was employed frequently to describe characters, nature, and
even to establish moods. Hardy's expert knowledge of instruments was
illustrated in each of the seven novels studied and used not only as a means
of description, but also as a very real part of the Wessex culture which
provide the novel's setting.

A study was done of his life through several biographies and other
references to his musicianship to establish the extent of Hardy's musical
background. The musical references in each novel were catalogued to
discover how Hardy used music to enrich his novels. Novels used in this
study included Under the Greenwood Tree ( 1 872), Far From the Madding
Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of
Casterbridge (1885), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles
(1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

48

HH

Following is the plan of my thesis:

1. The importance of music in Thomas Hardy's life

2. His use of musical terms in describing the physical appearance of
Wessex

3. His use of the musical culture of Wessex

4. His use of musical terms in the characterization of his major
and minor characters

THE EFFECTS OF AUDITORY AND VISUAL LEARNING STYLES

OF HEARING IMPAIRED CHILDREN ON VOCABULARY

ACQUISITION

Gayle Couch Owen (EdS, Special Education, June, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of auditory and visual
learning styles of hearing impaired children on vacabulary acquisition.

Nine hearing impaired students from the Total Communication
Impaired Hearing Program of the DeKalb County School System
participated in the study. Selection criteria for the subjects included: (I)
Presence of a hearing loss which interferes with the acquisition or
maintenance of auditory skills necessary for the development of speech,
language, and academe achievement (Georgia Department of Education,
1983). (2) A hearing loss which was congenital. (3) Chronological age
between 9.0 years and 14.0 years (4) Visual acuity in the normal range of
functioning. (5) No evidence of previous consideration (including testing)
of student's preferred learning style in reference to instruction.

A Self-Inventory and Teacher Observation Checklist were used to assess
the auditory or visual learning style of each subject. The subjects were
given a pre-test for word meaning and word usage of ten vocabulary
words, given instruction on these words using visual methods, and given a
post-test at the completion of the instruction. The procedure was repeated
using auditory methods of instruction. The gains in word usage and word
meaning for each method of instruction were compared to the assessed
learning style of each subject to determine if the subjects acquired
vocabulary more efficiently through instruction matched to their assessed
learning style.

An analysis of the study revealed that 50% of the auditory learners did
acquire vocabulary more efficiently through auditory instruction, and 30%
of the visual learners acquired vocabulary more efficiently through visual
instruction. The results pointed to the necessity for individual assessment
for hearing impaired students. Instruments need to be developed which
will accurately assess the preferred learning style of young hearing
impaired children. Teacher training programs and inservice programs

49

must take the responsibility for making teachers aware of the importance
of individual assessment and program planning.

THE EFFECT OF COMPUTER BASED INSTRUCTION WITH

TEACHER-MADE SOFTWARE VERSUS TRADITIONAL

METHODS OF EDUCATION ON THE ACADEMIC

ACHIEVEMENT OF SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS

Martha P. Ramsey (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

This study was designed to determine if computer based instruction with
teacher-made software would produce significantly higher test scores on
post tests by special needs students. A comparison was made between
students utilizing the computer and students being taught by the
traditional method of pencil and paper.

Subjects used in this study were fifth and sixth-grade special needs
students from the self-contained remedial class of Fayetteville Elementary
School. The 24 students were divided into two groups. The two groups
were assumed to be equivalent in regard to race, sex, age and
socioeconomic background. All 24 students were achieving one or more
years below grade level.

The first group of special needs students received the first three units of
instruction concerning "Universe and Greek Myths" utilizing computer
and teacher-made software. The second group receives the exact same
lessons through the traditional method of pencil and paper. The two
groups were swapped for the last three units of instruction. Group one then
received instruction by pencil and paper while group two used computer.
Each of the six units was followed by a 10 question post test with multiple
choice answers.

The mean score was determined for each unit of instruction, for the total
of units I, 2 and 3 as well as the total of units 4, 5, and 6 for each of the two
groups. The t-test was used to analyze the data. The null hypothesis was
tested using the .05 level of significance. No significant difference was
found in favor of computer based instruction. However, the mean scores of
six of the eight results showed computer based instruction to have been
more effective for special needs students than the traditional method of
instruction.

AGE AS A RELATIVE FACTOR IN MASLOWS CONCEPT
OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION

Harold Restein (MA, Psychology, March, 1985)

An ex post facto research study was carried out in South Africa during
1982 utilizing the Shostrom Personality Inventory (P.O.I.) to determine

50

the self-actualizing tendencies of Doctors and Pharmacists.

100 Doctors and 100 Pharmacists were requested to complete the
Shostrom Personality Orientation Inventory (P.O.I.) to determine their
degree of self-actualization.

58 Doctors and 47 Pharmacists completed the questionnaire, and the
results were analysed using the BMDP (6R) computer package.

The age categories of the responding Doctors and Pharmacists were
classified into

(a) Under 30 years old

(b) 5 year groupings between 30 and 64 years old

(c) Over 64 years old

Since the Inner Directed (I) score of the P.O.I, is considered by
Shostrom and shown by Damn to be the best predictors of an overall
measure of self-actualizing tendencies, the above age categories were
tabulated against the mean Inner Directed (I) scores of the respondents.
This analysis revealed an anomaly in that, as the Doctors age increased
their (1) scores decreased, while in the case of the Pharmacists, as their age
increased, so did their (I) score.

This result is not consistent with Maslow's stated view that self-
actualizing should be confined "very definitely to older people." It is
suggested that perhaps what is meant by full maturity does not necessarily
depend on chronological age, but that one can be seen to mature in
differing environmental roles at differing times.

This conclusion tends to support Mischel and the lnteractionist view of
personality, that is is more important to relate environmental changes to
behavioural changes than it is to attempt to establish general rules that will
apply to all circumstances.

THE EXPERIENCE OF INCEST: CHILDHOOD VICTIMS
IN LATER LIFE

Ruth B. Skaggs (MA, Psychology, December, 1984)

Incestous sexual activities are not a new social phenomenon, but it is
only within the last decade that they have begun to receive widespread
attention. State reporting laws have contributed to greater disclosure by
victims. At any rate, as the secrets come out ot hiding, we are beginning to
realize that incest is, and has been, occurring at alarming rates. Previous
estimates of incidence are now considered by most to be highly
underestimated. The Child Assault Prevention Project of Women Against
Rape ( 1 983) estimates that one out of every four girls and one out of every
seven to eleven boys are sexually assualted at least once before the age of

51

18. Of these assaults 75% of the victims are attacked by someone they know
and trust.

A study carried out by Rosenfeld (1979) among 18 female psychiaric
patients disclosed incest history in one-third of the patients. Forward and
Buck ( 1978) report a 1969 study showing one in every 10 women victims of
incestuous molestations. This is based on reported cases. It is believed by
most researchers that underreporting has kept the estimates lower than
actual numbers of incidence.

It can no longer be denied that incest is a major problem in
contemporary society. This study is not an attempt to prove rate of
incidence, other studies have documented the statistics; rather, this
research is designed to explore the experience of incest as it is lived by its
victims, to elucidate the experience, to determine the meanings from the
experience itself. Such a study is needed precisely because it is this
perspective that has been neglected by traditional research. "Little
empirical research has been conducted to determine the psychosocial
effects of incest or to elucidate treatment models for women who were
incestuously abused as children/adolescents" (Buskirk & Cole, 1983, p.
503). The authors of that statement recognize the need for research on
women who were incest victims; however, they express the need as being
from the perspective of the observer. This study is designed to explore
incest from the perspective of the primary victim. How was it for her? How
did she experience her world of incestuous abuse?

The subjects for the study are women in midlife who were victimized by
incest as children and who had not reported it or sought treatment until
now. Thus, it contributes to the meaning of the experience of incest at the
time that it was being lived, and it follows through by extracting the
essential meaning of the experience as lived by the subjects many years
after the abuse.

In studying the experience it seems important to arrive at an
understanding of what incest is. Webster defines it as "sexual intercourse
between persons too closely related to marry legally." That definition,
however, is thought by many researchers and therapists to be too narrow.
Other forms of sexual activity are defined as incest, such as genital fondling
(Rosenfeld, 1979; Herman & Hirschman, 1981). Herman and Hirschman
(1981) also include masturbation and oral genital contact in their
definition of incest. For this study incest is defined as sexual contact
between a child/adolescent and another member of her family of close
relatives.

The purpose of this study is to explore the women's experiences as felt by
them, in the hope that it will provide meaning for all incest victims, for the

52

individual primary victim, for the family constellation which is a victim,
and for the constellation of the family of man. For if we are to accept the
growing belief that all living organisms are inextricably linked, then we
must accept the possibility that victimization which occurs to the one
occurs to the whole of us.

ADVENTURES IN BECOMING

Sharon Solfvin (MA, Psychology, June, 1984)

The title of this thesis is Adventures in Becoming. It is comprised of two
main sections entitled, "Adventures in Becoming" and "Jamie: Adventures
in the Land of Becoming". The former is a philosophical, theoretical
discussion encompassing many stages of growth while the latter is an
illustrated book for adults and children depicting early developmental
issues in philosophical and psychological growth. A third minor bridging
section clarifies the relationship between the two main sections.

Section I, "Adventures in Becoming", is based on readings in
philosophy, therapeutic and experimental psychology, religion, and
anthropology. The topics covered are authenticity, relevancy, the Self,
action, differences, and the relational. Time and its experience are a
continual theme in both sections. Section II, "Jamie: Adventures in the
Land of Becoming", explores through color, movement, symbols, and
characterization the journey of Self-discovery, not only for the individual,
but also potentially for the collective.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF FORMAL

REASONING ABILITY TO GENERAL INTELLIGENCE SCORES

AND ACHIEVEMENT TEST SCORES OF HIGH SCHOOL

CHEMISTRY STUDENTS

Melissa W. Smith (EdS, Secondary Education, March, 1985)

This study was designed to investigate whether there is a significant
positive correlation between achievement in a high school chemistry
course and abstract reasoning ability as measured by Piagetian-styled
formal operational reasoning tasks. Chemistry, as taught today, contains
many abstract concepts which require the use of formal operational
reasoning skills. A strong positive correlation would indicate that students
who have not made the transition to the formal operational reasoning level
cannot be expected to succeed in chemistry courses as they are taught
today.

The study also included an investigation to determine whether there is a
significant positive correlation between intelligence test scores and

53

abstract reasoning skills as measured by Piagetian-styled formal
operational reasoning skills and the NSTA 1983 Chemistry Exam did not
require abstract reasoning to arrive at solution without explanations.
Piagetian-styled tasks require abstract reasoning to arrive at solutions and
explanations of those solutions.

The study was conducted at Temple High School, Carroll County,
Georgia. The subjects were 33 eleventh- and twelfth-grade students in an
introductory high school chemistry class during the school year 1983-84.
The study was conducted in May, 1984.

Three test instruments were administered to the subjects during the time
of the study by the same teacher: (1) the National Science Teachers
Association Form 1983 Examination in High School Chemistry (NSTA
1983 Chemistry Exam), (2) the Otis-Lennon Advanced Level Mental
Ability Test, and (3) Piagetian-styled tasks of formal operational
reasoning skills. Pearson correlation coefficients were determined. The .05
level of significance was established for acceptance of positive correlations.

Results indicated a significant positive correlation between scores on ( I )
formal operational reasoning skills and the NSTA 1983 Chemistry Exam
(Pearson coefficient = .3973), (2) formal operational reasoning skills and
the Otis-Lennon Advanced Level Mental Ability Test (Pearson coefficient
= .4814), and (3) the NSTA 1983 Chemistry Exam and the Otis-Lennon
Advanced Level Mental Ability Test (Pearson coefficient = .6980).
However, only the Pearson coefficient of the NSTA 1983 Chemistry Exam
and the Otis-Lennon Advanced Level Mental Ability Test met the .50 or
greater level necessary to be used for group predictive purposes.

These results imply that students with high intelligence scores also score
higher on subject matter achievement tests than their peers with low
intelligence scores. Although the Pearson coefficient of .3973 of the formal
operational reasoning skills and the NSTA 1983 Chemistry Exam sis not
meet the .50 or greater level to be used for group predictive purposes,
implications of this study suggest that the regular classroom teacher may
need to adapt his/her teaching strategies and approaches to the subject
matter to accommodate the reasoning levels of some of his/ her students.

CARROLL COUNTY, GEORGIA: RESOURCES FOR
TEACHING LOCAL HISTORY

Jody Elizabeth Talley (EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to identify and selectively compile
resources for the teachers of Central Primary School, Carrollton, Georgia
to use in preparing a unit of instruction on the history of Carroll County.
Specific purposes which contributed to the achievement of the primary

54

goal were (a) to describe historical sites located in Carroll County, (b) to
describe depositories of information about Carroll County, (c) to list
available resource people who are knowledgeable about various areas of
County history, (d) to record an audio tapes interviews with selected
resource people and make these tapes available at Central Primary School
and Neva Lomason Library in Carrollton, and (e) to create and make
available a slide presentation about Carroll County and its history.

A list of historically significant sites located in Carroll County was
compiled after the researcher read available printed information about
Carroll County and spoke with members of the communities in the
County. Selected sites were visited and available authorities were
interviewed.

Slides were made of those historic sites that were determined to be
visually and historically interesting. An audio tape describing the sites was
made to enhance the slide presentation.

The researcher visited or telephoned persons in places in the County that
contained information about the history of Carroll County. Questions
about available information were asked of employees and elected officials.
Any printed material was obtained and read by the researcher.

After corresponding with and interviewing leaders in each County
community, the researcher compiled a list of persons having useful
information about Carroll County history. The names were listed by areas
of expertise after permission to use each individual's name was obtained.

From the list of resource individuals, persons were selected to be
interviewed on audio tape. A list of questions was prepared taking into
account the individual's area of expertise. The interviews were conducted,
taped, and then summarized for this project.

A STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A READING LAB
APPROACH IN TEACHING SECONDARY READING SKILLS

Ramona R. Teal (EdS, Reading, June, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not an
individualized reading lab approach to teaching reading skills to
secondary students was effective. Significant differences between the
posttest scores oh vocabulary, comprehension and rate of reading as
measured by the Nelson-Denny Reading Test were investigated.
Additionally, any differences in the scores of boys and girls were analyzed.
One hundred fifty-nine students in the tenth grade acted as subjects.

A factorial analysis of covariance was used on the data. Rate of reading
did show significant differences after the treatment (P.K. Yonge Reading

55

Lab participation); however, vocabulary, comprehension and the
difference in the sexes did not show a significant difference after treatment.

Reading rate can be increased significantly when secondary students are
exposed to rate technique.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF READING REGRESSION OR

GAIN OF THIRD-GRADE STUDENTS AND THEIR LEARNING

EXPERIENCES SUCCEEDING A SUMMER BREAK

Trudy Wages (EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a regression or
gain of students' reading achievement scores over an intervening summer
with its related experiences. Reading test scores were obtained in May and
compared to those reading test scores in September. Specifically, this
study sought to determine if there was a significant relationship between
the degree of regression and/ or gain in reading and the types of learning
activities experienced by the students during the summer break.

The sample involved in this study included children of various socio-
economic backgrounds. The study sample consisted of students attending
a public elementary school, kindergarten through grade six, in a
metropolitan area located approximately 15 miles from a large inner city.
The housing included single family dwellings, both owned and rented, and
multi-family complexes.

The children were tested with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills the first week
of May. A questionnaire was constructed and sent home to the parents of
each child in the third-grade group. The parents were asked to record their
child's activities on the questionnaire. At the beginning of the following
year, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills was given ans the scores were compared
to the spring scores. Finally, all data which were obtained through testings
and questionnaires were categorized and mean score differences were
calculated using the t test comparison for independent means. The level of
significance for rejection of the generated null hypotheses was .05.

The results of the t tests showed that there was a significant difference
between the mean scores between the spring and fall testings of third-grade
students as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The students were
inclined to gain in reading achievement over the summer. However, the
study did show that there was no significant difference between reading
gain scores based upon the number of books read, the number of hours
spent watching television per week, the number of trips made to the public

56

library or bookmobile, the number of books bought or received through
book clubs, the number of educational magazines received, the number of
books read to child, whether or not they attended Vacation Bible School,
whether or not they attended a Summer Library Program, or whether or
not they experienced an educational trip over the summer break.

THE EFFECTS OF LABELING UPON ACCEPTANCE FOR

SOCIAL INTERACTION OF MENTALLY RETARDED

ADOLESCENTS BY NONHANDICAPPED ADOLESCENT

PEERS IN A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Sandra E. Whit more (EdS, Special Education, August, 1984)

The effects of the label "mentally retarded" upon the acceptance for
social interaction of mentally retarded adolescents by nonhandicapped
adolescents were reviewed in this study. Two hundred middle-to-low
socio-economic level, 12 to 14 year old adolescents from the seventh grade
1983-84 class of Murray County Junior High School in North Georgia
were divided into four groups of 50 with each group consisting of 25 males
and 25 females. Each respondent was asked to read a description of either
an hypothetical, labeled or nonlabeled, mentally retarded female and
decide if they would attend a sporting event with that subject. Data were
analyzed using a Chi square to determine a .05 level of significance.
Significant differences in response were evidenced by the female
respondents toward both the labeled and nonlabeled male and female
subjects. A significant difference in response was also evidenced by the
male respondents toward the labeled and nonlabeled female subject, but
no significant difference in their response to the labeled and nonlabeled
male subject was noted. Conclusions imply that labeling a retarded female
adolescent was detrimental to her acceptance for social interaction by
nonhandicapped adolescents of both genders. Retarded male adolescents
appeared to have benefited from the label when being considered for social
interaction by nonhandicapped females. Retarded males were not
significantly advantaged or disadvantaged by the label assignment when
being considered for social interaction by nonhandicapped male peers.

A COMPARISON OF THE SELF-CONCEPTS OF BEHAVIORALLY

DISORDERED AND REGULAR CLASS MIDDLE SCHOOL

STUDENTS IN WHITFIELD COUNTY SCHOOLS

Donna Wilburn (EdS, Special Education, June, 1984)

An important factor in any student's educational experience is their self-
concept. The purpose of this study was to compare the self-concepts of
behaviorally disordered and regular class middle school students in

57

Whitfield County Schools. The null hypothesis tested stated that there
would be no significant difference between behaviorally disordered
students and regular classroom students in terms of self-concept as
measured by the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale.

The subjects in the study were a group of 20 behaviorally disordered and
20 regular class middle school students. The regular class students were
matched to the behaviorally disordered students on the basis of sex and
age. All subjects were administered the Piers-Harris Children's Self-
Concept Scale in groups of five. A t-test was used to determine if the two
groups differed significantly on total raw scores as well as any of the six
factors derived from the items on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept
Scale.

Highly significant differences, at the .001 level, were obtained between
mean scores for the behaviorally disordered group and the regular class
group on total raw scores, as well as on cluster scores, for Factor 1,
Behavior, and Factor 2, Intellectual and School Status. Significant
differences at the .0 1 level were obtained on Factor 3, Physical Appearance
and Attributes, and Factor 6, Happiness and Satisfaction. No significant
differences were found on Factor 4 Anxiety, and Factor 5, Popularity, but
the behaviorally disordered group did continue to demonstrate lower
mean scores. The t-values from the total raw scores, as well as the scores on
Factors, 1 ,2, 3, and 6 indicated that the null hypothesis should be rejected.

A SURVEY OF THE ROLE OF COMPUTERS IN MATHEMATICS

CLASSES AND IN CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION IN STATE

SCHOOLS FOR THE DEAF

Linda Meyers Williams (EdS, Special Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this paper was to survey the role of computers in
mathematics classes and in classroom instruction in state schools for the
deaf. Computers can be the object of instruction or the vehicle for
instruction. Computers offer job opportunities for deaf young people that
are current and viable. A Survey of Computer Usage in State Schools for
the Deaf form was sent to 106 independent public programs serving the
hearing impaired. A total of 69 surveys were returned, of which 55 were
from state supported schools to be included in the survey. Data were
collected to show the types of usage of computer equipment by schools, the
percentage of faculty trained for computer usage in each program, the
types of computer hardware available at each location, and the location of
computers for mathematics classes at each facility. Schools for the deaf
need to place more emphasis on computer skills if graduates are to be
competitive in the job market. More software needs to be developed for
hearing impaired students, and more classroom teachers need training in
the use of computers for classroom instruction.

58

A COMPARISON OF ATTITUDES TOWARDS MATHEMATICS

BETWEEN MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS IN AN
INDIVIDUALIZED SETTING AND A TRADITIONAL SETTING

Melanie S. Wilson (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine if a more positive attitude
exists in students in an individualized setting or in a traditional setting. The
relationship of attitudes toward mathematics in relation to sex and grade
level was also evaluated.

The population of the study consisted of the regular education
mathematics students at Westside Middle School during the 1983-1984
school year. The only regular education mathematics students not
included in the study were those in the eighth-grade algebra class.

The test used to collect the data for the study was the Dutton Scale
(Stright's modification) attitude test. The statistic used to test the null
hypotheses was the analysis of variance. The level at which the null
hypotheses would be rejected was set at .05.

The results from the data showed a significant difference in favor of the
students in the individualized setting as opposed to those in the traditional
setting. There was also a significant difference in favor of the females' 1
attitude when compared to the males' attitude. The two-way interaction
between grade level and class setting revealed that sixth-grade students in
an individualized setting had significantly more positive attitudes toward
mathematics than any other group of students.

THE EFFECTS OF INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION IN

MATHEMATICS ON ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTITUDE

OF FIFTH-YEAR STUDENTS

Annie Louise Winton (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1984)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the individualized
method of instruction in mathematics at the fifth-grade level resulted in
greater achievement than the traditional whole-class method of instruction
and whether mode of instruction significantly affected attitude towards
mathematics.

The subjects for this study were two fifth-grade classes in an elementary
school in a large metropolitan county known for its excellence in
education. The classes were presumed equivalent in sex and initial
mathematics achievement. Twenty-five students in each group completed
the experiment.

The experimental group received individualized instruction and the
control group received traditional whole-class instruction. Both groups

59

were taught Level 1 6 of the county methematics skills program for a period
of 12 weeks. The county Mathematics Criterion Referenced Test and an
attitude test were administered as a pretest before the experiment and
again as a posttest upon completion of the experiment.

A M ultifactor Analysis of Variance was used to test the null hypotheses
at the .05 level of significance. No significance differences in achievement
or attitude were found with regard to sex or mode of instruction.

It is recommended that similar studies be conducted in other elementary
schools to see whether the results are similar.

THE REASON BEHIND PARENTAL CHOICE OF
PRIVATE EDUCATION

Susan D. Wood (EdS, Middle Grades Education, March, 1985)

The study was designed to explore the reasons which motivate parents to
send a child or children to private school. The study sought to determine if
superior social climate and academics were the najor reasons parents cited
for choosing a private school as research indicates, and if parents with a
higher level of education would differ in their reason for choosing a private
school from parents with a lower level of education.

The participants of the study were 1 5 1 families with a child or children
enrolled in Oak Mountain Academy, a private non-sectarian school in
Carrollton, Georgia.

Information for the study was gathered through a survey. The survey
information included the number of children in private school and their
grade levels, the educational level of the parents, and a list of eight reasons
for sending a child to private school, which the parents ranked in order of
importance. The surveys and a letter of explanation were taken home by
the oldest child in each family and then returned in an attached enevelope
to the homeroom teacher. This survey was administered in early May over
a one week period of time.

Data from the surveys were compiled by computer. A rank order of the
reasons for sending a child to private school was tabulated for the
population as a whole and for the two groups with different educational
levels.

Hypothesis one stated that parents would consider academics and social
climate as the two most important reasons for sending a child to private
school. The rank order of choices for the total population supported the
idea of academics as the number one reason parents cited, but social
climate was not ranked second in importance. Parents viewed class size
and individualization as the second most important reason for choosing a
private school. On the whole, parents ranked social climate fifth in order of
importance.

60

m\

A rank order for the two educational levels was obtained. The rank
order supported the second hypothesis. Parents with a bachelor's degree or
more and parents with less than a bachelor's degree agreed when ranking
reasons for choosing a private school.

The third hypothesis stated that for each reason to be ranked, the
parents would view the reason as either a high priority concern or a low
priority concern with no even distribution over high priority and low
priority on any item. Chi square was used as the test at a level of .05
significance. The hypothesis proved true for six out of the eight choices on
the survey. Academics had a chi square value ofX 2 = 1 02, d.f. (1), class size
and individualization has a chi square value of X 2 = 74.02, d.f. (1),
integration had a chi square value of X 2 = 65.6, d.f. ( 1 ), parents educated
privately had a chi square value of X 2 = 9 1 .34, d.f. ( I ), parental involvement
had a chi square value of X 2 = 44.75, d.f. (1), and student interest and
achievement had a chi square value of X 2 = 15.72, d.f. (I). All of these
reasons were significant at a level of .05. However, social climate had a chi
square value of X 2 = 16, d.f. ( 1 ), and faculty had a chi square value of X 2 =
1 .58, d.f. ( I ). These two items were not significant at the .05 level. Thus the
hypothesis was rejected. Parents did not view every reason on the survey as
being a high priority or a low priority item. There existed some mixed
feeling on two of the choices.

From the study, it appears that parents have definite reasons for sending
a child or children to private school, and basically agree on which reasons
are of major importance. The educational level of the parents did not seem
to affect the rank order of reasons for school choice. However, for this
population, there was not a wide range in educational level as there may be
with a larger sample. Parents held some items such as academics and class
size as high priority concerns, whereas integration held a very low priority
of concern. On items such as faculty and social climate, parents had mixed
levels of concern. As long as private education continues to be a part of the
education framework in America, the question of why parents choose to
pay for a service that is otherwise free will continue to be asked.

61

JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN
Publications: Books

Goldstein, Jonathan. Philadelphia and the China Trade, 1682-1846.
Commercial, Cultural, and Attitudinal Effects. University Park and
London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978.

Goldstein, Jonathan. The China Trade from Philadelphia, 1682-1846: A
Study of Interregional Commerce and Cultural Interaction. Ann Arbor:
University Microfilms, 1974.

Goldstein, Jonathan, ed. Philadelphia's China Trade. Catalogue of
Loan Exhibition, University Hospital Antiques Show, Philadelphia,
1972.

Goldstein, Jonathan, ed. "Georgia's East Asian Connection, 1733-1983,"
vol. 22 of West Georgia College Studies in the Social Sciences.

Other Scholarly Publications

Goldstein, Jonathan. "Early Amerian Image of the Chinese Through
Artifacts and Chinoiserie." Asian Culture Quarterly (Taipei), 9, No. 1
(Spring, 1981), 1-5. Article abstracted in: Society for Historians of
American Foreign Relations Newsletter, 11 (1980): 22-23.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "A Romantic Vision of Cathay: The Decorative Arts
of the Old China Trade and Their Influence in America up to 1850."
American Studies (Academ\ca Sinica, Taipei), 10.3 ( 1980): 1-13. Article
abstracted in: Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Newsletter, 10.1 (1979): 43-44.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "The Decorative Arts of the Old China Trade
and Their Influence in America up to 1850." Bulletin of the Chinese
Historical Society of America, 14.7 (1979): 2-6.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "Resources on Early Sino-American Relations in
Philadelphia's Stephen Girard Collection and the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania." Committee on East Asian Libraries Bulletin, 60
(1979): 16-23; Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i (Journal of the Society for Ch'ing
Dynasty Studies), 4.3 (1980): 114-129. Article abstracted in: Society
for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter, 10.4 (1979):
23-24.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "The Continuing Romance of Old Cathay and Early
America." Old China, 4.4 (1979): 20-24.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "Chinese Art Comes to Washington." Korea Focus,
4.1 (1975): 60-63.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "The China Trade From Philadelphia." Dissertation
Abstracts International, 34.12 (1974): 7675.

62

inBHHnHH

Goldstein, Jonathan. "The China Trade From Philadelphia," Ch'ing-shih
wen-t '/(Journal of the Society for Ch'ing Dynasty Studies), 2. 10 ( 1973):
60-62.

Pre-publication reviews of: Robert F. Oaks' Merchants and Politics: The
Revolutionary Movement in Philadelphia, 1765-1776; Norman
Pendered's Edward Teach- Master Pirate; and Donald Adams Jr,'s
Stephen Girard, Banker.

Peters, Gayle; Goldstein, Jonathan; and Kirk, Merlin. "Historical
Documents Relating to Asian-Americans and to East Asia in the
Atlanta Regional Archives Branch." West Georgia College Studies
in the Social Sciences, 22 ( 1983): 3-12. Article abstractes as: Checklist
of Records Available for Research on the Far East. East Point, Georgia:
Atlanta Regional Archives Branch, 1984.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "Indochina War on Campus: The Summit/ Spice-
rack Controversy at the University of Pennsylvania, 1965-67." A nnals
of the Association for Asian Studies, 5 (1983): 78-99. Article abstracted
in Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 14.4
(1983): 27-28.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "Vietnam Research on Campus: The Summit/
Spicerack Controversy at the University of Pennsylvania, 1965-67."
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 15.4 (1983): 26-38.

Goldstein, Jonathan. Review of Curtis Henson, Commissioners and
Commodores: The East India Squadron and American Diplomacy in
China, in The Journal of American History 69.3 (1982): 702-03.

Pre-publication review of John McKay, Bennett Hill, and John Buckler's
A History of World Society.

Goldstein, Jonathan. "Philadelphia's China Trade." American
Philosophical Society Year Book (1977): 235.

63

BE. POWELL

Publications

"Nonlinear Elastic Effects in Bismuth Whiskers," B.E. Powell and M.J.
Skove. Journal of Applied Physics 54 ( 1983): 1636.

"Linear and Volume Compressibilities and Isothermal Third-Order
Elastic Constants," B.E. Powell and M.J. Skove, Journal of Applied
Physics, 56 (1984): 1548.

"Photometric Changes and Spot Motion in Lambda Andromedae,"
B.E. Powell et al.. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 139 (1985): 25.

"The Application of Eibonacci Numbers to Spiral Galaxies," C.A.
Hallman and B.E. Powell, Georgia Journal of Science, 41 (1983): 30.

"Photometric Studies of Stars with Extended Atmospheres." D.M.
Edwards and B.E. Powell, Georgia Journal of Science, 41 (1983): 30.

"An Introduction to a General Astronomy Course Using Slides," B.E.
Powell, Jerry Mock, and Martha Boone, Georgia Journal of Science,
41 (1983): 30.

"H alley's Comet and Georgians in 19 10," Doug Nunnally and B.E.
Powell, Georgia Journal of Science, 41 (1983): 39.

Bridgman's Pressure Measurements and Third-Order Elastic Constants,"
B.E. Powell and M.J. Skove, Bulletin of the Southeastern Section of the
American Physical Society, 15 (1984).

64

1/

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

REVIEW

Published by

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

A Unit of the University System of Georgia
CARROLLTON, GEORGIA

WEST CEORCIA COLLEGE

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Volume XVIII C( \ ' .

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May, 1986

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WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

REVIEW

J Volume XVIII May, 1986

I TABLE OF CONTENTS

In Search of Happier Times: Horton Foote's
"The Trip to Bountiful"
by Glenn D. Novak 1

[The Expansion of Metropolitan Area in Georgia

by Gerald Sanders and Dick G. Winehell 11

Is Secular Humanism a Religion Again?

by David J. Higgins 17

Taxation in the Developing World and the International
Group Effort The Case of Chile
by Lisa Martin and Bill Schaniel 23

Critical Viewing Skills: Educating About
Television and Through Television
by Charles F. Aust , 31

The Death of Man and the Birth of Writing

by John Micheal Crafton 39

Pragmatism, Argumentation, and the Post-
Philosophic Culture
by Steven Meredith Garmon 46

Abstracts of Master's Theses and Specialist

in Education Projects 52

Annual Biography of West Georgia College

Faculty as of January 1 , 1986 69

Copyright 1986, West Georgia College
Printed in the USA

Published by
WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

Maurice K. Townsend, President
John T. Lewis III, Vice President and Dean of Faculties

Learning Resources Committee
George McNinch, Chairman

Charles Beard Richard Guynn

Joe Doldan Spencer Hamada

Leticia Ekhaml Lewis Larson

Mary Erickson Fred Parsons

James Gay Elmo Roberds

Jimmy. C. Stokes, Editor
Martha A. Saunders, Associate Editor
Marc J. LaFountain, Assistant Editor

The purpose of this publication is to provide encouragement for faculty
research and to make available results of such activity. The Review,
published annually, accepts original scholarly work and creative writing.
West Georgia College assumes no responsibility for contributor's views.
The style guide is MLA Handbook, Second Edition. Although the Review
is primarily a medium for the faculty of West Georgia College, other
sources are invited.

An annual Bibliography includes doctoral dissertations, major recitals
and major exhibits. Theses and articles in progress or accepted are not /
listed. A faculty member's intitial listing is comprehensive and appears in \
the issue of the year of his employment. The abstracts of all master's theses !
and educational specialists projects written at West Georgia College are
included as they are awarded.

IN SEARCH OF HAPPIER TIMES:
HORTON FOOTE'S THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL

by Glenn D. Novak*

At the awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences held on March 24, 1986, Geraldine Page accepted her Oscar for
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. That role was Mrs.
Watts, and the film was The Trip to Bountiful. Ms. Page's acceptance
speech was emotional, which is common; it was also brief, which is not.
Yet, several times she expressed gratitude to a man whose name is not
widely known outside of television and film circles. It was the name of a
man who, more than thirty years earlier, had written the lines that Mrs.
Watts would say to her confused and frustrated family. Ms. Page
praised and thanked Horton Foote, the author of The Trip to
Bountiful.

This paper will discuss live television drama of the early 1950's with
special focus on Horton Foote's simple and perceptive teleplay, The Trip
to Bountiful. It will look at the author, his original play, and its live
performance on television in 1953. No attempt is made to compare the
original teleplay with its modern film descendant, but only to provide a
critical and historical context to assist today's filmgoer in assessing the
merits of the story, and the impact of the characters.

Live Television Drama

Much has been written concerning the "Golden Age" of television
drama, that luminous period from about 1952 to 1957 during which some
of the most inspired and memorable short plays were written and produced
on live network television. Their names and authors are well-known:
Requiem for a Heavyweight, Patterns, and Noon on Doomsday by Rod
Serling; Marty, Bachelor Party, and The Mother by Paddy Chayefsky;
Thunder on Sycamore Street and Twelve Angy Men by Reginald Rose;
Visit to a Small Planet by Gore Vidal. The familiarity of these author's
names today is due both to the quality of their early television writing and
to the fact that many of them received later recognition in other artistic
endeavors, namely television series, novels, Broadway, and motion
pictures. To a great many Americans today, Rod Serling means Twilight
Zone or Night Gallery, Chayefsky 's "claim to fame" is his screenplay for
Network, and Gore Vidal was William Buckley's opponent in a hostile
television discussion almost two decades ago.

The 1950's, of course, produced other fine television writers, less active
or less conspicuous in later years than their afore-mentioned colleagues,
but nonetheless well-known and well-respected in their time. These are the

*Assistant Professor of Mass Communication, West Georgia College

1

men who, along with Chayefsky, comprised Fred Coe's fine stable of
writers, making NBC's Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse the most
popular live television dramatic program in its first four seasons on the air
("Grownups' Playhouse"). These writers include David Shaw {Native
Dancer), N. Richard Nash ( The Joker), Robert Alan Aurthur {Spring
Reunion), Tad Mosel {The Lawn Party), and Horton Foote.

A "Texas Chekhov"

Horton Foote was born on March 14, 1916, in the small town of
Wharton, Texas. A fifth-generation Texan, Foote felt a strong affinity for
the land and the people in and around his hometown. He later created the
imaginary towns of Harrison and Bountiful, modeling them closely after
the characteristics and people of Wharton. Foote has written:

From the beginning, most of my plays have taken place in the
imaginary town of Harrison, Texas, and it seems to me a more
unlikely subject could not be found in these days of Broadway and
world theatre, than this attempt of mine to recreate a small Southern
town and its people. But I did not choose this task, this place, or these
people to write about so much as they chose me, and 1 try to write of
them with honesty. ("Foote" 210)

Educated at the Pasadena Playhouse (1933-35) and the Tamara
Darkarhovna Theatre School (1937-39), Horton Foote began his
theatrical career as an actor, appearing in minor roles on Broadway
through 1942. He operated Productions, Inc., in Washington, D.C., where
he taught play writing and acting and managed a semi-professional theatre.
Like the majority of the new talent soon to enter television writers,
actors, directors Foote first gained considerable experience in legitimate
theatre.

Foote had written two stage plays before turning his attention to
television: Only the Heart { 1 944) and The Chase { 1 952). H is first television
play, The Travelers, was produced on NBC in 1952. This was followed by
The Trip to Bountiful, A Young Lady of Property, John Turner Davis,
The Tears of My Sister, The Death of the Old Man, Expectant Relations,
and The Midnight Caller, all produced in 1953 on either the Philco-
Goodyear Playhouse or the Gulf Playhouse. Foote's The Dancers and The
Shadow of Willie Greer were produced by NBC in 1954; Flight by NBC in
1956; Members of the Family by CBS in 1957; The Shape of the River by
CBS in 1960; and The Gambling Heart by NBC in 1964.

Foote has described a devise he uses in the writing of his television play;
I keep a journal of each play's progress as I work, with the problems I
feel need to be worked out, but when I finish the play, I can't bear to
read or study any of these notes. Partly, 1 suppose it is because I will
be reminded of many things 1 failed to do that my talent and
technique were not ready to do. (Burack 148)

Apparently, Foote felt that his talent and technique were becoming well-
suited for motion pictures. He wrote several screenplays, among them
Storm Fear (United Artists, 1956), To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal,
1962), \ The Chase (Columbia, 1965), Baby, the Rain Must Fall (Columbia,
1965 ), 2 Hurry Sundown (Paramount, 1966), The Stalking Moon (Warner
Brothers, 1968), and Tomorrow (Filmgroup, 1971).

In the preface to his anthology of eight television plays, entitled
Harrison, Texas, Foote identifies several characteristics common to his
plays: (1) they share the same general locale; (2) the central characters are
almost always either very young or very old; (3) one of two common
themes are explored in varying ways, "an acceptance of life or a preparation
for death" (viii). The Trip to Bountiful is an excellent example of Foote's
writing that clearly demonstrates all these characteristics.

Foote's ability to depict the inner turmoil and deep motivations of
common, ordinary people has led critic Henry Hewes to call him a "Texas
Chekhov" ("Trips, Pleasant and Unpleasant" 49), a term especially
appropriate to the rural-urban dichotomy expressed in The Trip to
Bountiful. Sturcken sees Foote as the rural counterpart of Paddy
Chayefsky, dealing with the middle-class citizens of the typical, small
Southern town rather than the congested neighborhoods of the Bronx or
Brooklyn (144). Foote's emphasis is always on character over plot; the
characters are interesting, fully developed, and always human, while the
plots are typically simple and often sentimental. NBC Playhouse producer
Fred Coe explained in 1954: "If anyone else used one of Horton's plots, he
would probably come out with a soap opera. But he writes with great craft
and know-how, especially about problems of youth and old age ("Bright
Galaxy").

Bus Ride to the Past

The problem of old age is evident in The Trip to Bountiful. Act One
establishes the unhappiness of the elderly central character, Mrs. Carrie
Watts, who, forced by economic necessities to live with her son and
daughter-in-law in a cramped, two-room apartment in downtown
Houston, longs for the day when she can return to the open air and the
spacious farmhouse she grew up in years ago in the town of Bountiful.
Making life more difficult for her is the daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae, a
"denatured specimen of the humanity which the city produces"(Clurman).
She is a vain, selfish woman with an insatiable appetite for Coca-Colas,
movie fan magazines, and beauty parlors, apparently paid for with Mrs.
Watts' pension check, confiscated each month by Jessie Mae. The old lady
conceals the check this month and proceeds to purchase a bus ticket to
Bountiful to realize an old dream. Later, Jessie Mae and her husband,
Ludie, "a failure who is torn between two loyalties" ("Trip to Bountiful"
Newsweek), arrive at the bus depot, unsuccessful in their attempt to track

down Mrs. Watts. The bus pulls away as Jessie Mae, angry and militant,
shouts out her intention to call the police.

Act Two is an excellent example of skillful expository writing. The
audience thus far is aware only of Jessie Mae's badgering personality and
the awesome determination of Mrs. Watts to reach her goal. The
conversation on the bus between Mrs. Watts and a young lady named
Thelma provides the audience with the necessary understanding of why
Bountiful is so important to the old lady. Edgar Willis praises this scene as
a natural and motivated presentation of facts, facts essential to the
understanding of the play:

The conversation that takes place between the two is a completely
natural one. Utter strangers are constantly meeting and talking in
bus stations, and the fact that Thelma is a stranger means that she
does not know what is going on. As she finds out what is happening,
so does the eavesdropping audience. It is also completely natural for
Mrs. Watts to pour out her heart to Thelma during the bus ride, for
we often find it easier to talk to strangers about intimate matters than
we do to close friends. By means of this scene Foote lets us know the
intensity of Mrs. Watts' desire to return to Bountiful, a feeling we
must understand to appreciate her desperate struggle to reach it.
(145)

At the end of the act, M rs. Watts has reached the town of Harrison, close to
Bountiful. As she sits alone in the bus depot, hoping to get a ride in the
morning to Bountiful, she learns from the sheriff that Ludie and Jessie
Mae are on their way to retrieve her, and she experiences a fainting spell.

Marya Mannes said in 1954 that "television is the place for the poet, the
master of mood and of word. It is the place for implication, for simplicity,
even for silence." Implication and mood play a large role in Act Three,
which opens on Mrs. Watts standing on the front porch of her dilapidated
old home. She seems at peace, contented with the world and with herself.
The brief visit "gives her back the sense of personal dignity which Jessie
Mae had trampled upon"(Wyatt). Her happiness is interrupted, however,
by the arrival of Ludie and Jessie Mae. Ripping up her pension check in
front of her disbelieving daughter-in-law, Mrs. Watts seems to be renewed
and invigorated, willing to return to Houston with her son, but equipped
with her dignity and her strength: "I've had my trip. That's more than
enough to keep me happy the rest of my life" (Foote 262). It is an emotional
ending to a play which explores the theme of what happens to people who
lose a sense of their roots in the transition to an industrialized, over-
crowded society. Such a transition is especially difficult for the old, and for
Mrs. Watts it is poignant and painful. Richard Hayes states that "Mr.
Foote conveys the sure, genuine emotion of his theme not by coldly

4

parading disaster, but by permitting life slowly to accumulate until at the
last cleanly and with great strength symapthy takes us prisoner."

Anatomy of a Coke Drinker

Horton Foote is a writer with a fine ability to delineate and express
character. As such, it is not difficult to see why he would fit in well with the
NBC Playhouse, whose philosophy was discussed in 1954 by its guiding
force, producer Fred Coe: "The TV approach, as opposed to the theatre or
movies or radio, is an approach to the understanding of character rather
than to the complication of the story line"(30). Virtually all of the criticism
concerning the television drama of Horton Foote makes mention of his
outstanding knack for characterization. Jack Gould of the New York
Times stated that Foote's The Old Beginning "easily ranks as one of his
better works because he delved much more deeply into the motivation of
his characters and came to grips with them as people." Another writer
stated that "there is still no substitute for well-defined characterizations;
fictional people should bring a story alive through their personalities,
traits, and actions. Some television dramas observe this fundamental;
others don't" ("Television in Review"). Foote's Expectant Relations, the
same writer affirms, is a good example of one that does. And, regarding
77?? Trip to Bountiful, Hewes has stated that the various events of the
actual plot are not terribly exciting in themselves, but "most of the drama
comes from the conflagrations that burn silently within the characters"
("Trips" 48).

The character of Jessie Mae Watts is a case in point: she is an excellent
example of Foote's skill in careful, detailed, and consistent
characterization. She is a character whom we feel we know as well as
Chayefsky's Marty or Serling's Mountain McClintock, though we
certainly like her less. Jessie Mae is, in the words of Wolcott Gibbs, "a
ferocious summing up of all the idle, discontented, and empty-headed
women the Coke drinkers, double-feature addicts, and juke-box
enthusiasts who are so often alleged to make up most of the female
population of the desolate South" (75).

Edgar Willis uses the character of Jessie Mae in his textbook analysis of
repeating character qualities. Foote describes Jessie Mae briefly in his
production directions to The Trip to Bountiful: she is an obviously vain
woman who is hard, self-centered, and domineering (221). Her vanity is
impressed upon us through a series of encounters that show the audience
that she is addicted to the reading of movie magazines and that she even
fancies that she might be successful in Hollywood. As Willis says, "the
impression of her vanity is further developed by the revelation that she
spends long hours in beauty parlors" (131). Her selfishness is portrayed
again and again as the play progresses. She expects to be waited on hand

and foot, a trait revealed in the opening scene when she asks Mrs. Watts to
go into the kitchen and get her a coke. Later we learn that the old lady
prepares all the meals in the house. Whatever concern Jessie Mae might
have for her mother-in-law is shown to be motivated entirely by greed and
selfishness. If anything happens to Mrs. Watts, it will immediately cut off
the pension check. She seems afraid that Mrs. Watts may die of excitement
once she arrives in Bountiful, but this concern becomes transparent as she
bemoans in the next breath the expense involved in bringing the body back
to Houston. And, in the final confrontation between the two women in
Bountiful, Jessie Mae's first action is to grab ferociously for the old
woman's pension check.

Foote skillfully develops Jessie Mae in other related ways, and the
overall portrait is that of a woman very difficult to like. Early in the play,
she squelches Mrs. Watts' singing because, she claims, it gets on h&r nerves.
To Thelma, a complete stranger at the bus depot, she describes Mrs. Watts
as "crazy" and "spoiled rotten." Despite her husband's objections, she
brings the police into the situation, hoping to teach the old woman a
lesson. Although she is certainly aware of what Bountiful means to her
mother-in-law, she delights.in characterizing it right to her face as an ugly
old swamp. At the end of the play, she even denies Mrs. Watts a few
moments of solitide and peace on the porch of her crumbling home by
honking the car horn rudely and impatiently. As Willis concludes from
these carefully chosen situations and conversations:

Jessie Mae does and says different things as the play progresses, but
each action confirms over and over gain her basic traits of selfishness
and callous unconcern for other people's feelings. The range of the
character is actually fairly limited, as it must be in a play that has to
deal with one problem at a time, but the repeated revelation of these
two basic traits gives an impression of character, depth and richness.
(132).

A Break with Tradition

The NBC Playhouse had a tradition of casting competent but relatively
unknown stage actors into the roles of its television plays. Through moving
performances in one or more of the better dramas produced by Coe, these
actors began to make names for themselves, later broadening their careers
into motion pictures. Actors and actresses like Joanne Woodward, Rod
Steiger, Kim Stanley, and others were thrust from relative obscurity into
national popularity through fine performances in live television drama
(Coe 31). Big Hollywood names were avoided, for reasons discussed by
Associate Producer Gordon Duff in an interview in April, 1953: "If you
have an expensive Hollywood name, more people would tune in, but I'm
not sure more people would like the show. A name's great, but we're not in
the business to keep the press agent happy" ("Grownups' Playhouse").

6

The Trip to Bountiful represented a break with this tradition. The part
of Mrs. Watts was played by Lillian Gish, 57 years old at the time. Her
performance was hailed by many critics as one of the finest, if the the
finest, of her entire dramatic career. 3 Foote dedicated the play to Ms. Gish,
and it is so noted on the title page of the play as it appears in the anthology,
Harrison, Texas.

A complete list of the cast of The Trip to Bountiful, presented on the
Goodyear Television Playhouse at 9:00 PM, EST, on March 1, 1953,
follows:

Mrs. Watts: Lillian Gish

Jessie Mae Watts: Eileen Heckart

Ludie Watts: John Beal

Thelma: Eva Marie Saint

Ticket Man (railway station): Dennis Cross

Bus Driver: Charles Sladen

Ticket Man (bus station): Will Hare

Attendant: Larry Bolton

Sheriff: Frank Overton

Ticket Man (second bus station): William Hansen
The director of the production was Vincent Donehue. Fred Coe was
producer and Gordon Duff was associate producer.

The Trip to Broadway

Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful is especially significant because it
marked a reversal of the common trend during the earliest days of live
television drama the reliance on successful Broadway plays as material
for television. Not only was The Trip to Bountiful an original play
specifically written for television (a common practice by 1953), but it
became the first television play ever produced on Broadway (Sturcken
143). Time magazine commented on this unusual situation soon after the
play opened: "While seeming to throttle stage and screen with one hand,
television generously offering help with the other" ("Friend and Foe"').
The stage play opened on November 3, 1953, at the Henry Miller Theatre,
and enjoyed a run of about a month. The producer and director were
unchanged from the television broadcast, and Ms. Gish continued in her
role as Mrs. Watts. Ludie was played by Gene Lyons, and Jo Van Fleet
(who would turn in a powerful performance two years later in East of
Eden) replaced Eileen Heckart as Jessie Mae. The play marked Eva Marie
Saint's first appearance on Broadway, as she re-created the role of Thelma
("Trip to Bountiful" Theatre Arts). The reviews of the stage play were
mixed, but the majority of negative comments seemed to concentrate more
on acting and sets than on the situations or dialogue. Eric Bentley's
criticism in the New Republic, however, did raise an interesting question
regarding Foote's characterization of Ludie Watts: "The plot, the theme,

the exigencies of theatre all demand that he speak, that he explain himself,
but he is maddeningly and fatally silent, pleading some fifth amendment of
the dramatic constitution." Critics were in general agreement, though,
concerning the moving performance of Gish, Van Fleet, and Saint, and
more than one expressed surprise and sadness at the fact that the play had
such a brief run.

Unfolding the Human Spirit

The television writing of Horton Foote can best be described as the
careful and sensitive exploration of the human mind and spirit. In The Trip
to Bountiful he endeavors to portray that quality in all of us which spurs us
on to an important goal, the attainment of which will satisfy an intense
longing. In The Tears of My Sister, a short teleplay using the novel device
of "camera -as-character," 4 Foote tells the story of a young girl forced to
marry a much older and unwanted man in order to provide for her mother
and sister. A Young Lady of Property, in which Kim Stanley gave what
was generally considered at the time to be the best television performance
to date (Hewes "Six Authors"), is a poignant vignette about a teen-age
girl's dreams, loneliness, and growing pains in a small Southern town in
1925. Throughout his many other plays, dealing as they do with the young
or with the old, we see always the craft of a fine writer coming to terms with
the problems and anxieties that are a part of life. And because life is
unpredictable and uncertain, so are Horton Foote's characters uncertain
and anxious, responding in ways that resist prediction or even rational
explanation. He has consistently eschewed a formulaic approach to his
depiction of the human condition. Erik Barnouw's discussion of the
decline of live anthology drama might explain the obsolescence of
perceptive character studies in which Foote specialized:

It was especially catastrophic for the future of the medium that the
"anthology series" seemed in danger of disappearing. A series of this
sort, exemplified by Philco-Goodyear Playhouse, invites writer
contributions without specification of required character, locale, or
formula. The play is the thing. It is cast according to its needs. . .
Writers responded to the open invitation of these series in a way that
gave television for some years the initiative among dramatic media
and made it the mecca of young writers and a major source for other
media ... Now the door apparently was being closed on most of such
activity. Instead came series that did not say to the writer, "Write us a

play." They said, "Write us a vehicle for in the

role of a private eye named Final act should

have strong action sequence. Study our formula before making
submissions. Submit outlines through recognized agents." (35-36)

In view of such confining demands, it is not difficult to see why a writer like
Horton Foote, always more interested in character and theme than in plot

8

or "strong action sequences," would gradually disappear from the
television scene and turn his attention elsewhere. Like so many others of
his time, he turned it toward Hollywood. On March 24, 1986, by awarding
Geraldine Page an Oscar for Best Actress, Hollywood and a watching
world turned its attention toward Horton Foote.

NOTES

'Horton Foote received an Academy Award for the best screenplay based on material
from another medium for To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. He also received an award from the
Writers Guild of America for the same screenplay.

2 The screenplay for Baby, the Rain Must Fall was based on Foote's own play entitled
The Traveling Lady.

'See John Mason Brown's article, "The Trip to Bountiful," in Saturday Review
(December 12, 1953): 46^47. See also E.V. Wyatt, "The Trip to Bountiful," in The Cathloic
World (January, 1958): 308.

4 With this technique, the central character is never seen by the audience. All of the action
of the play is seen through the eyes of this character, who becomes, in essence, the camera.
Other characters speak directly to this person by addressing the camera, and the audience
hears the voice only as this person replies. Also, the thoughts of this central character are
heard by the audience while the other characters, of course, are oblivious to them. Foote was
not the first to use this device. Rod Steiger was the camera's voice for the first time in a play by
Robert Alan Aurthur entitled Cafe Society. See Variety (July 18, 1953): 35.

WORKS CITED

Barnouw, Erik. The Television Writer. New York: Hill and Wang, 1962.

Bentley, Erik. "New Dramatists." New Republic 30 (November, 1953): 21.

"Bright Galaxy of Playwrights." Life (October 25, 1954): 82.

Burack, A.S.. ed. Television Plays for Writers. Boston: The Writer, Inc., 1957.

Clurman, Harold. "Theatre." The Nation (November 21, 1953): 433.

Coe, Fred. "TV Drama's Declaration of Independence." Theatre Arts (June, 1954): 29-311.

Foote, Horton. Harrison, Texas. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1956.

. The Trip to Bountiful. Harrison, Texas. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,

1956. 221-163.

"Foote, Horton." Contemporary Authors vol. 73 1978.

"Friend and Foe." Time (November 16. 1953): 94.

Gibbs, Wolcott. The New Yorker (November 14, 1953): 73-75.

Gould, Jack. "Radio and Television." New York Times (November 26, 1952), natl. ed.: 31.

"Grownups' Playhouse." Newsweek (April 20, 1953): 74.

Hayes, Richard. "The Trip to Bountiful." Commonweal (December II, 1953): 257.

Hewes, Henry. "Six Authors in Search of a Sponsor." Saturday Review (August 14, 1954):
22-23.

. "Trips, Pleasant and Unpleasant." Saturday Review (November 21. 1953): 48-50.

Marines, Marya. "TV and the Dramatist." The Reporter (February 2, 1954): 39.

Sturcken, F.W. "An Historical Analysis of Live Network Television Drama from 1 938-
1958." Diss. University of Minnesota, I960.

"Television in Review." New York Times (June 24, 1953), natl. ed: 35.

"The Trip to Bountiful." Newsweek (November 16, 1953): 61.

"The Trip to Bountiful." Theatre Arts (January 1954): 23.

Willis, Edgar E. Writing Television and Radio Programs. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc., 1967.

Wyatt, E.V. "The Trip to Bountiful." The Catholic World (January, 1954): 308.

10

THE EXPANSION OF METROPOLITAN AREA IN GEORGIA

by C. Gerald Sanders* and Dick G. Winchell**

Introduction

Georgia has recently experienced two phenomena associated with
population growth: a 'turn around' in non-metropolitan growth and an
expansion of metropolitan area. Non-metropolitan 'turn around' began
after 1970, during which time rural counties, which had previously been
declining in population, 'turned around' and began to gain population.
Metropolitan expansion is the urbanization of previously rural counties
adjoining urban centers and has been occuring since 1950. This study will
examine metropolitan growth and its impact upon the fringes of urban
areas.

Metropolitan Areas Defined

In 1940, the Bureau of Census recognized a need for establishing a data
base for assessing the growth of population in and around certain large
urban centers. In the decades that followed, criteria for defining those
areas within which such growth was occuring have been developed,
revised, and refined. Designations for those areas have been revised as
well: in 1950 the designation in use was the Standard Metropolitan Area
(SMA); in 1960, the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA):
and, currently, the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) [U.S.
Department of Commerce, 1953, p. xi; 1961, p. xii; 1971, p. A-4; 1982,
p. A-4]. In addition to the MSA, the Office of Management and Budget
created, by way of definition, the Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical
Area (CMSA) and the Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA)
[U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984, p. 2]. Examples of the latter two
designations are the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale FL CMSA, and the PMSAs of
Ft. Lauderdale Hollywood Pompano Beach and Miami-Hialeah. The
Atlanta metropolitan area is an example of an MSA. According to the
Bureau of Census,

The general concept of an MSA is one of a large population nucleus
together with adjacent communities which have a high degree of
economic and social integration with the nucleus. CMSA's are large
metropolitan complexes within which individual components,
designated as PMSA's, have been defined. MSA's, CMSA's, and
PMSA's are defined by the Office of Management and Budget as a
standard for Federal agencies in the preparation and publication of
statistics relating to metropolitan areas. The new terms MSA,
CMSA, and PMSA went into effect June 30, 1983, replacing the

"Associate Professor of Geography, West Georgia College
"Assistant Professor of Geography, West Georgia College

11

previous terms SMS A (standard metropolitan statistical area) and
SCSA (standard consolidated statistical area). [U. S. Bureau of the
Census, 1984, p. 2]

All of the territory of the United States is classified as eithei
metropolitan (within an MSA, CMSA, or PMSA) or non-metropolitar
(outside those designated areas). With the exception of New England,
where city and town units are used, all metropolitan areas are defined by
entire county units. MS As consist of at least one central city with a
population greater than 50,000 and surrounding central counties which
have close economic and social relationships with the neighboring outlying
counties.

MSA Regions of Georgia

Georgia has no CMSAs or PMSAs but does have six MSAs with the
metropolitan region. These towns include Marietta, Doraville, Forest
area includes Georgia counties, therefore, has seven MSA regions within
its borders (Figure 1). As one would expect, the Atlanta MSA has the
largest population and the largest percentage change since 1 980 (Table I &
Figure 2). Two of the MSA central cities (Augusta and Columbus) have
expanded urban influence into their respective out-of-state neighboring
counties. One out-of-state central city (Chattanooga) has expanded its
urban influence into northwestern Georgia. Chattanooga's MSA,
however, is the only MSA region in Georgia to have shown a decline in
population, attributed to a decline in the population of the Georgia
counties of Dade (-6.0%) and Walker ( 1.8%) and to a decrease in the
"inside central city" population of Chattanooga (-3.1%).

Georgia's Rapid-growth Counties

Georgia has some of the most rapidly growing counties in the nation
(Table 2). Gwinnett County ranks 5th in the nation with a 38.0% increase
in population since 1984. Fayette is not far behind (ranking 20th) with an
increase of 36.0%. Two counties, Camden and Long, are not among
Georgia's MSAs currently, but both have growth rates exceeding 20%
since 1980. Cobb, the third most populous county of Georgia, is among the
most rapidly growing counties in Georgia with a growth rate of 19%
between 1980 and 1984, missing the Census Bureau's listing of cities with
growth rates of 20% or more by only one percentage point (Table 3).
Nationally, Georgia counties do not rank very high in terms of population,
but Georgia has ten counties with populations exceeding 100,000.

Growth & Expansion of Georgia MSAs

In Georgia, the number of MSA counties has increased from nine in
1950 to thirty-eight in 1984 (Figure 3). The greatest growth has been within
the Atlanta MSA counties whose numbers increased from five in 1950 to
eighteen in 1 984. The fact that Athens (Clarke) has become an independent

12

MSA as of 1970 creates a barrier of sorts preventing further eastward
encroachment of the Atlanta MSA which now includes (as of 1984)
Barrow County. Currently, Atlanta's MSA counties of Barrow and
Walton are contiguous to Athens' MSA counties to Oconee, Clark, and
Jackson. Counties located along the north-west-south crescent (the so-
called 'fringe' counties) of the Atlanta MSA are likely to become classified
as part of the Atlanta MSA in the near future (Figure 4). It is likely that
Hall County, with its 385-connector and other economic ties to Atlanta,
will ultimately be included as part of the Atlanta MSA.

METROPOLITAN
COUNTIES

Figure 1

13

RANK OF GEORGIA METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREAS
BY PERCENTAGE CHANGE: 1980-34

GA Rank
1

US

Rank
40

2

99

3

115

4

129

5

170

6

203

7

245

Atlanta, GA
Augusta, GA-SC
Savannah, GA
Athens, GA
Albany, GA
Columbus, GA-AL
(Chattanooga, TN)-GA

1984 Pop(est)

2,380,000
368,300
232,900
136,000
116,700
244,500
422,500

Change

5.6
5.1
3.8
2.1
-0.9

(Source: U.S. Dept. o-f Commerce, Patterns o-f Metropolitan Area and County Population
Growth: 1980 to 1984 , pp. 48-51)

Georgia MSA Population 1984

1 S Atlanta GA

2 Augusta GA-SC

3 Savannah GA

4 Athens GA

5 Albany GA

8 Columbus GA-AL

7 ( Chattanooga TN ) - GA

Figure 2

RANK OF GEORGIA

Table 2.
COUNTIES GAINING

20+ PERCENT

1980-84

GA Rank

US Rank

15
20
43
65
84
97

County

MSA 1

'84 Pop(est)

230,300
39,500
16,800
49,500
62,800
5,400

'/. Chanoe

1
2
3
4
5
6

Gw i n n e 1 1

Fayette

Camden

Col umbi a

Cherokee

Long

(Atlanta)
(Atlanta)
( - )
(Augusta)
(Atlanta)
( - )

38.0
36.0
25.8
23.3

21.4
20.4

(Source: U.S.

Dept. of
to 1984 .

Co
PP

nmerce, Patt

ems o-f Metropol

tan Area and

Coun

ty Population

Growth: 1980

. 52)

Table 3

RANK

OF GEORGIA

COUNTIES POPULATION EXCEEDING 100

000

1984

GA Rar

k

US Ra

69

nk

County

1984

1980

Number
24,900

'/. Chanoe
4.2

1

Ful ton

614,800

589,904

2

93

DeKalb

501 ,900

483,024

18,800

3.9

3

130

Cobb

354,300

297,718

56,600

19.0

4

200

Gwi nne 1 1

230,300

166,815

63,500

33 .

5

218

Chatham

212,400

202,226

10,200

5.0

6

240

Richmond

187,600

181 ,629

5,900

3.3

7

251

Muscogee

175,700

170,108

5,600

3.3

8

276

CI ayton

162,600

150,357

12,300

8.2

9

290

Bibb

156,800

150,256

6,600

4.4

10

420

Dougher ty

103,100

100,710

2,300

2.3

(Source

U.S

1980

. Dept. o-f
to 1984 .

Commerce ,
pp. 53-56)

Patterns o-f

1e tropol

tan Area anc

County Pocula

1 1 on

Growth :

Hi

MSA Counties in

Georgia

m

- 1

1

1 II

1

1 I

1

1

H

m m

1

1

H

H

1 M m

Figure 3

The expanding Atlanta MSA refelcts the extension of Metro Atlanta's
influence. Freeways have reduced travel time from cities and towns
surrounding Atlanta, encouraging people to work in Atlanta to commute
to the city from greater distances. Development at the fringe of Atlanta has
engulfed towns that once were separate cities, but are now part of the
metropolitan region. These towns include Marietta, Doraville, Forest
Park, Douglasville, and others. Continued growth at the edges of the
metropolitan area further expands the urban area boundary, bringing the
city closer to previously rural communities. Proximity to metropolitan
areas, increases in the number of persons who commuting to those areas,
and expansion of urban development types (e.g:, subdivisions, shopping
malls, office parks) into rural areas are factors which demonstrate the
rapid expansion of urban influence on nearby rural counties. These

15

developments are accurately reflected by the Census Bureau's
redesignation of these previously rural counties into Metropolitan
Statistical Areas.

Findings

Georgia's MSAs have expanded to outlying counties and, no doubt, will
continue to do so. These urban areas are exerting great influence upon the
economics and activities of adjoining rural counties, especially those
surrounding Atlanta. Four new counties have been designated as part of
MSA populations since 1980, and additional rural counties adjoining
MSAs will more than likely be incorporated into those regional census
categories in the future. Residents of non-MSA counties and towns,
including Carroll County and Carrollton, should recognize the continuing
expansion of urban influences and prepare for the economic benefits and
liabilities which accrue as a result of qualifying for the designation of
Metropolitan Statistical Area.

[Acknowledgements: The authors express their appreciation to Randy
Manino, geography major, for cartographic assistance and to the Learning
Resources Center and Chuck Ormsbee for assistance in graphics
development.]

WORKS CITED

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-25, No. 976. Patterns
of Metropolitan Area and County Population Growth: 1980 to 1984. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office. 1985.

Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1985. (105th Edition). Washington. D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office. 1984.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. City and County Data Book, 1952.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1953.

General Population Characteristics. United States Summary. PC (I) IB. U.S. Government
Printing Office. 1961.

U.S. Census of Housing: I960. Georgia. HC (1)-12. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office. 1961.

1970 Census of Population. General Population Characteristics. Georgia. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office. 1971.

1980 Census of Population. General Population Characteristics. Georgia. (PC80-1-B12).
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1982.

16

IS SECULAR HUMANISM A RELIGION AGAIN?

by David J. Higgins*

As social groups move from the idealism of their beginnings into the
main fabric of political life self-definition becomes a critical issue. For
example, the early Christians would have eased into the Roman Empire
with scarcely a frayed thread had they been willing to define themselves as
a Jewish sect. The Jews were exempt from the presciptions to worship the
emperors; Christians were martyred because they would neither worship
nor accept self-definition as Jewish.

In our own time Secular Humanism is experiencing an analogous
fraying. The issue is whether or not Secular Humanism defines itself as a
religion. Class action suits are being brought in at least two states, Texas
and Alabama, against school boards in an attempt to prevent the teaching
of tenets of Secular Humanism in the public schools. If Secular Humanism
is a religion, it cannot be taught. This essay highlights the inconsistencies in
Secular Humanism's self-definition across time. Further progress for
Secular Humanism in the political order depends on facing these
inconsistencies and either re-defining itself or accepting the modern
equivalent of martyrdom exile from the schools and loss of federal
funding. Thus the question: "Is Secular Humanism a religion again?"
Again!

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

"Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view as old
as human civilization itself." So does Paul Kurtz begin his presentation of
two working papers entitled: Humanist Manifestos: I and II.

The first manifesto appeared in 1933 and was signed by 34 prominent
inquirers of whom Lester Mondale and John Dewey were the most
memorable from today's perspective. They made fifteen affirmations "so
that religious humanism may be better understood." They "regard the
universe as self-existent and not created." Modern science is said to make
"unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values"
(HM I 7).

Eight of the fifteen propositions specifically refer to the words "religion"
and "religious." Two others address worship and deism.

No one reading Manifesto I could miss the point that it is a religious
document dealing with religious issues. It sees the modern world as having
created a situation which "requires a new statement of the means and
purposes of religion." The focal points in the restructuring of religion

*Professor of Philosophy, West Georgia College

17

consist of creation, the supernatural, the grounding of morals in anything
other than human experience, prayer and worship. A debt to traditional
religion is acknowledged but what is needed for that present day is a
vital, frank and fearless religion which can be a synthesizing and dynamic
force for today. It will also be characterized by creativity, joy and hope.
"To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present. "Such is the
purpose which grounds the affirmations of Humanist Manifesto I (8).

IS NOW
Humanist Manifesto II appeared in 1973. It was signed, and continues
to be signed, by many people whose names are in the media. It too deals
with specifically religious issues; it eschews "faith in a prayer hearing God"
(HM II 13); it can "discover no divine purpose or providence for the
human species" (HM II 16). Traditional religions are now seen as an
obstacle (HM II 17) and a source of intolerant attitudes (HM II 18).

Based on HM II, there is no longer an explicit recognition that
humanists are asserting themselves from a perspective that is itself
religious. The interest in establishing a religion has disappeared. In its
place are many proposals in the direction of world community, freedom of
discourse, education, and the rights of the disadvantaged not including
the unborn. A survey of bio briefs indicates that the authors of
humanistically oriented articles are often involved in programs which are
reconstructing society with recognizable allegiance to the ideals of
Manifesto II.

Humanists seem not quite sure whether these Manifestos are to be
quoted by their opponents as representative of Secular Humanists
generally. In later exchanges, religious writers who disagree with the
Secular Humanists are somehow diminished because they have taken the
Manifestos as a source. That is unfortunate, for what is needed at the very
beginning of fruitful dialogue is clarity and that the Manifestos certainly
have. They are concise and available as well. No one expects that any
adherent to any set of propositions would affirm each without
qualification. Clarity facilitates dialogue, whereas with even the best of
good will, obscurantism is an unfortunate block to dialogue.

In retrospect it is possible to locate a precise event in time wherein
Secular Humanism made the transition from an idea to be discussed and
advocated to a movement to be confronted with countervailing political
power. Dialogue became politicized with the Conlan amendment to the
National Defense Education Act of 1976. "No grant, contract, or support
is authorized under this Act for any educational program, curriculum
research and development, administrator-teacher orientation, or any
project involving one or more students or teacher-administrator involving
any aspect of the religion of secular humanism" (Cong. Rec. 13531).
Conlan referred to the 1961 Supreme Court decision (Torcaso vs.

18

Watkins): "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would
generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism,
Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others" (13532).

This clear identification of Secular Humanism as a religion stands
behind current Moral Majority efforts to control public school teaching.
Again, if Secular Humanism is a religion, it cannot be taught in the public
schools. In spite of their founding statements, Secular Humanists quickly
denied such a narrow interpretation of the meaning of religion. "The
attack on humanism as a secular religion infiltrating the schools in
defiance of the First Amendment has no rational justification whatsoever"
(Hook 7). Further, there was no possibility of establishing Secular
Humanism as a religion: ". . . the organizational activities of secular
humanists have no role in the schools; hence they are in no way leading to
the establishment of a religion (Kurtz 1976, 5).

In 1980 Paul Kurtz and others promulgated A Secular Humanist
Declaration. Democratic secular humanism is defined in contrast to
religion. Although religion is acknowledged to have a value for private
individuals and to make some contribution to social welfare, and although
religious believers who share a belief in many secular humanist and
democratic values are welcome to join in the defense of those ideals( 10)
for the most part references to religion are either skeptical (17) or
pejorative: ". . . religious activists not only are responsible for much of the
terror and violence in the world today but stand in the way of solutions to
the world's most serious problems" (9).

Nevertheless, free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties; the right
to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations is
acknowledged (11). It is to be noted that this is just what Fundamentalists
today are doing, to the consternation of Secular Humanists who are
encouraging each other to themselves organize into political action
groups, subscribe to sympathetic journals, and monetarily support their
own ideals.

Though we may tolerate contrasting points of view, this does not
mean that they are immune to critical scrutiny. The guiding premise
of those who believe in free inquiry is that truth is more likely to be
discovered if the opportunity exists for the free exchange of opposing
opinions. . . .(II)

In 1982, Maxine Negri urged the support of humanism as a nontheistic
religion: "If humanismasa philosophy orasa nontheistic religion is ever to
be understood by the public at large, it will have to be achieved by the
efforts and money of humanists themselves" (46). Later in the article
occurs the traditional religious directive:

19

We should remember that tithing has been and is the grass-root
support of church wealth. If you wish to spread and shed the 'light' of
humanism to the far reaches of the world as the religion or
philosophy you live by, you must realize that this cannot be achieved
without adequate financial backing. (47)

I have quoted Negri as typical of the source from which current dilemmas
stem: that is, even when it is unnecessary to do so, Secular Humanism
presents itself as a religion and urges typically religious acts such as tithing
and proselytizing. Certainly one could ask for money without such urging
were there a merely accidental or allusive connection between Secular
Humanism and religion. What I suggest is that the connection is really and
effectively intrinsic. The Supreme Court of 1961 seems to have described
things the way they were to turn out to be (Torcaso vs. Watkins, above).

The most provocative assertions, subsequently quoted and widely
distributed in anonymous fundamentalist literature, came from John
Dunphy in 1983:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged
and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly
perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of
humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians
call divinity in every human being. (26)

Other Secular Humanists subsequently disassociated themselves from
Dunphy's extremism; they merely acknowledge his right to express
himself.

The force and urgency in the discussion of whether Secular Humanism is
a religion or not is centered on this issue of education, especially public
education and the effect of political policies on it. In contrast, many other
issues raised by Secular Humanists are of much more interest from a
merely intellectual viewpoint for example, the grounding of morals,
the ideal of free inquiry, the hope for a world community none of these
are stirring up the fuss. Even in discussions of abortion and population
control, religious positions are critiqued without the issue of whether
secular humanism is itself a religion being raised.

Some humanists have suggested letting all religions have their day in the
public classrooms expecting that students so educated would see the
truth for themselves. That might be an acceptable proposal, if advocacy
were prohibited and the pressures from grades and teachers as role models
were obviated. U nfortunately, religion and church have become associated
in most of the American experience; just as the church must be kept
separate from the endeavors of the state, so too must religion. American
pluralism has more to lose than to gain if it ever rejects Jefferson's "wall of

20

separation." Granted that there should be a separation, what is to be on
either side?

The problem might be highlighted by pointing out that there are groups
of people who also refuse to be identified with religion, who follow what
they call the WAY, who regard abortion and contraception as immoral,
who care for their neighbor and engage in free, creative dialogue with
whosoever wishes. If Secular Humanism with its values clarification is not
a religion, and so may be taught as the basis for learning in the public
schools then can not also the WAY with its clear and demanding morals
also be taught? For it also is not a religion, and somewhat more
consistently than Secular Humanism, does not alternately claim to be and
then not to be a religion.

AND EVER SHALL BE

"But through all changes religion itself remains constant in its quest for
abiding values, an inseparable feature of human life" (HM I 7).

To end on a rather quixotic note: In my professional lives, whether 1 am
with secular humanists or with religious conservatives, my experience is
much the same. In the journals of either 1 am invited to adjust my will so as
to help carry on the work of enlightenment after I die. In either I am invited
to subscribe my name to a list of members or supporters, to witness to my
experience, to proselytize by writing letters and subscribing my friends to
journals, and to tithe.

In personal meetings the topics of discussion are the same: God,
foundation of values, individual rights, the community of man, resistance
to authoritarianism, hang-ups about how one was raised. There is even an
association with eating unleavened bread in one case, a sesame seed bun
in the other. The difference in the here and now everyday world is beyond
perception, transcendent. Transcendent also of the politics and polemics
of creatures. As St. Paul indicated to the Epicurean and Stoic Athenians,
we live within a transcendent God playing peekaboo not far from any one
of us.

Whether such casual dialogue, important as it is for both democracy and
truth, can be made part of public education within the Constitution,
remains to be seen.

NOTES

Kurt?, Paul. Humanist Manifestos: I and II. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1973. (Cited
henceforth as HM I or HM II page).

21

WORKS CITED

Cong. Rec. 12 May 1976: 13531-3

Doerr, Edd. Director of Communications, Americans United for Separation of Church and
State. The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 1976: 15.

Dunphy, John J. "A Religion for a New Age." The Humanist Jan. -Feb. 1983: 23-26.

Hook, Sidney. "Is Secular Humanism a Religion?" The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 1976: 5-7.

Kurtz, Paul. "The Attack on Secular Humanism." The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 1976: 4-5.

Kurtz, Paul. Endorsed by others. A Secular Humanist Declaration. Buffalo: Prometheus
Books, 1980.

Mondale, Lester. "Reaffirming Manifesto 1." The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 1983: 33-34.

Negri, Maxine. The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 1982: 46^*7.

22

TAXATION IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD AND THE

INTERNATIONAL GROUP EFFORT

THE CASE OF CHILE

by Lisa Martin* and Bill Schaniel**

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into selected aspects of
social change in Chile. For the past thirty years, the changes have been
influenced by both external and internal forces. In the sixties, the emphasis
was on a redistribution of wealth within countries. In the more recent past,
the external pressures for change have come from new international
ideologies of wealth equalization between nations and a concurrent
restructuring of trade relations.

As a result of the "New International Economic Order" and the
"General System of Preferences" under the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade that has been in effect for almost a decade, granting a wide range
of manufactured goods imported from Third-World countries duty-free
status, the interaction of the United States with the developing world has
been greatly intensified. A major portion of manufactured goods
consumed in the United States today are now produced in developing
countries. American businesses are investing in the Third World not only
to supply the foreign, regional markets, but also to fill the demand at
home. The natural resources which the developing world possesses are
now increasingly processed in the foreign countries. Yet for the remainder
of this century, the International Labor Office (1977) has predicted that
unemployment problems would be severe in the developing world, and
many countries in Latin America, including Chile have provided evidence
of this situation.

The International Community and Chile

The relations between the United States and Chile have been active for
decades. The country is rich in natural resources, especially copper, iron,
fissionable, and other minerals. During the socialist regime of Salvador
Allende ( 1970-1973), a considerable portion of its one billion dollar foreign
investment, three-fourth of which was held by US companies, was
nationalized. This nationalization of foreign assets inhibited further
foreign investment. After the overthrow of the socialist regime and under
the successor rule of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, foreign companies
slowly regained confidence in the country's political stability. Mining of
most minerals, including fissionable materials, was opened up to foreign
exploration and now accounts for the bulk of foreign investments, which
amounted to 3.4 billion dollars at the end of the last decade (BIC, 1981).

* Assistant Professor of Accounting, West Georgia College
** Assistant Professor of Economics, West Georgia College

23

Restrictions exist only in the mining of potassium and rare earth minerals.
United States businesses still hold the majority share of the foreign
investment.

Chile is of particular research interest because it has been responsive to
the outside influence of international groups and technical assistance
teams from the United States. As a result, the tax system has been closely
aligned with that of the developed world. Today, the tax burden represents
approximately one fourth of Chile's gross domestic product (GDP) and is
among the heaviest in Latin America. It impacts upon the economy in a
major way (Foxley, 1982; Pinto, 1982; Ro, 1981). But in studying the
evolution of this system, an important point emerges: changes were often
implemented too rapidly, and this has contributed in a significant manner
to major socio-economic disturbances in Chile.

During a brief interlude of five years immediately preceeding Allende,
tax burdens rose from 14.6% of GDP in 1964 to a 19.7% share in 1969
(French-Davis, 1975). This represented a 35% increase overall. Theefforts
of income redistribution through tax or fiscal policies and other economic
measures were also noticeably increased during the administration of
Eduardo Frey (1965-1970), culminating in the agricultural reform. The
political and ultimately economic implications of sharply increasing tax
burdens and a sensitization of the population to inequities of wealth
distribution because of greatly intensified activities to induce equalization
became apparent when Chile transformed itself into a socialist state in
1970. The momentum was built under international pressure in the years
preceding Allende. It is interesting to note the initial resistance among
Chilean government officials to the agrarian reform and the fact that
today, ironically, most of the peasants who had received land in the reform
have already sold it. They did not have the required skills to use the land
efficiently and gainfully under the intense foreign competition. Jointly
with the agrarian reform, an extensive training program for the farmers
would have been required, but Chile could ill afford the expenditure at the
time, the redistribution of the land itself consituting an already costly
effort.

Third-World Needs

Technical assistance programs should be sensitive to vulnerabilities,
special needs, and particularly the different value system of small
developing nations, which tend to overreact to the economic or social crisis
that appear to arise with relative frequency. American universities, too,
have an awesome responsibility as they educate students from the
developing world. These students are exposed to our complex economic,
fiscal, tax, and management policies, but special courses that would
reintegrate the sophisticated tools and methods with their own countries'
needs are seldom offered. This is a serious shortcoming of the American

24

.

university system. Foreign governments respect US education. Informed
sources in Chile say that Pinochet, not being an expert in economics
himself, relied totally on the quality of US Education when he appointed
economists who, in this generation, were educated at the University of
Chicago because of an exchange program between that school and the
University of Chile. Chileans wonder whether this was simply a historical
accident or whether the exchange program was arranged deliberately to
expose the future government leaders to the ideas of unimpeded free
markets of Milton Friedman (Ro, 1981). Because of institutional rigidities,
a less extremist view is often more appropriate.

It would probably be desirable for businesses that operate in foreign
environments to take a more active role in the economic policy
formulations of their host governments. As businesses provide a large
number of jobs, they contribute to society in an important way, and a
business leader's advice is on the whole respected. Business managers also
tend to be more pragmatic and less dogmatic than economists,
sociologists, missionaries, or other professionals who get involved with
Third-World problems. The latter tend to develop ways of producing
social change in the foreign countries, whereas the business manager seeks
to operate in harmony with the environment. By being sensitive to foreign
value systems, managers have the best chance of protecting their
investments and thus tend to support economic, fiscal, and tax policies
that are not likely to interrupt the harmony. The stability within the
foreign country is dear to business people who invest abroad. In light if
recent developments in Latin America, Africa, and the Near East, the goal
of helping to preserve the social stability in a foreign country may be the
noblest goal of all. Ultimately, a society tends to reject those measures
which do not reflect its indigenous value system. The defeat of theagrarian
reform might serve as an example of such a happening.

The Painful Restructuring of the Chilean Economy

From the time the military junta of Augusto Pinochet assumed the
reigns of the country in 1973 and until 1981, economic growth was
generally good. Trade was liberalized, the borders were opened, duties
were lowered from the 100% range to 10% overall, and inflation was
reduced from the 500%-600% range to only 10% in 1981. But the price paid
for these rapid changes, especially the dramatic lowering of tariffs within a
short five-year time span, was high. An unemployment rate that topped at
over 25% and the presence of a disturbingly large number of
underemployed people have represented the most urgent economic
problem of the country in the recent past. A pegged exchange rate made
Chilean goods dear abroad and foreign imports inexpensive in Chile. This
coupled with the rapid lowering of import duties caused grave
disturbances in the balances of trade and payment. The vast number of

25

businesses that failed may be forever lost to the country, as new foreign
investments re-enter Chile at a considerably slower pace. Since mid-1982,
the peso floats freely against a small group of European, Japanese, and
North American currencies, and this has brought some relief (Martin,
1982). Additionally, tariffs were raised more recently, and this helped
alleviate some of the problems of unemployment.

Overall, the economic policies adopted by Chile in the last decade
contained several aspects that appeared to be incongruent with the
Pinochet Administration's publicly announced goals of enhancing the
quality of life of the common citizens of Chile without converting them to
western-style consumers. By tis emphasis on unrestricted free trade and its
abstinence from all supports to indigenous agriculture and industry, it
tended to promote indiscriminate consumption rather than to preserve the
quality of consumption and working life, which would have been more
enhanced if some barriers to non-priority consumption as of luxury
goods, automobiles, or highly processed foods had remained in place
while priority needs were still unsatisfied. Ultimately, it is the quality of
life, not the quantity of material things of the individual citizens of a
country that determines the level of wellbeing of a people. The traditional
measures of a country's socio-economic progress, GN P growth rate or rate
of increase of per-capita income, are poor surrogates for a primary quality-
of-life measure.

Some laudable efforts have been made to develop quality-of-life indices
capable of measuring the social progress of a country. The majority of
these indices, however, still tend to reflect Western-World value systems to
the detriment of indigenous values. Some suggested indices are too
difficult to construct to be of practical value. There might be a real need to
design suitable country-, region-, or culture-specific quality of life indices,
in which health, nutrition, and the happiness of the citzenry should
probably play an important role, aside from caloric consumption, child
mortality, average life expectancy, literacy rates, or similar data. If such an
index esixted, it could be employed to assess the effectiveness of a country's
socio-economic programs, including its fiscal and tax policies. But absent
such a tool, the traditional measures of socio-economic welfare are
employed to assess social progress.

The Modernization of Chile's System of Taxation

The evolution of the Chilean tax structure was largely determined by
two major reforms: those of 1964 and 1975. Both reforms were ambitious
and pervasive. They brought in their wake considerable socio-economic
disturbances, but they also resulted in a modern, rational system. Tax
revenues come from three major sources: from direct, indirect, and
external levies. Direct tax burdens, as in income and property taxation, fall
upon specific taxpayers. Indirect taxes, as the production, excise, sales, or

26

value-added taxes, tall upon activities and are generally passed forward to
the consumer in prices. External taxes on imports and on selected exports,
which are often included with indirect taxes, are collected for the Treasury
by the Customs Service rather than by the Internal Revenue. The effects of
duty rates on the Chilean economic structure should not be
underestimated. The protective tariffs of past administrations served to
promote the industrilization of the country's economy. The all too rapid
dismantling of the tax barriers in the recent past has been the primary
cause of an agonizingly painful process: the restructuring of the Chilean
economy, which caused endless numbers of labor-using businesses to falter
and fail.

The major portion of the Chilean tax revenue today comes from indirect
taxation with a mostly proportional rate structure. Over time, the relative
importance of each tax source has fluctuated. When inflation increased,
real yield from direct taxation generally declined due to the fact that there
were no provisions for indexation in the tax laws (Ffrench-Davis, 1975).

Chile's direct taxes today consist of a tax on the First Category, which is
assessed on income ffrom investments in stocks or bonds, on business
income from industry or trade, including a surcharge on the distributable
income of corporations, a tax on small investments and on other business
income; and a tax on the Second Category, which applies on wages,
salaries, and professional fees. Both types of taxes bear proportional rates.
A supplementary tax, the "Global Complementario" (an overall
complementary tax), makes no distinction between the sources of income
ans is applied at progressive rates to the total of a person's income in excess
of a minimum. The Global Complementario was designed to correct
inequities that stemmed from proportional taxation. It complies with the
vertical equity principle which requires that the tax burden increase
progressively with ability to pay (Ministerio de Hacienda, 1977).

The income tax is an ill-appreciated and politically inexpedient tax,
although its progressive rate structure has much theoretical appeal as a
powerful redistributive mechanism of society's income. But it may not
promote horizontal equity (equal treatment of taxpayers with equal
income) because of various forms of tax avoidance through tax shelters,
and it may have detrimental effects on propensity to save by making the
financial rewards of current consumption more attractive to the taxpayer
than the postponement of that consumption. For these and other reasons,
the income tax in Chile ranks lower in revenue yield than the value-added-
tax (VAT). But since Chile collects a greater proportion of total taxes in
relation to its gross national product than do other countries in Latin
America, the burden of the tax on the taxpayers is not insignificant. ("Los
Impuestos," 1979).

27

In order to correct for possible omissions in payments under the Second
Category tax, an "impuesto adicional" (additional tax) is charged those
workers with wages or salaries from more than one firm and on foreign-
company income that is repatriated. Altogether, income taxes account for
about a fourth of all tax revenues. Property taxes furnish less than ten
percent, the value-added tax (VAT) approximately 55%, and other
indirect taxes account for the remaining 10%-15% of total tax revenues
(S1I, 1984).

Property taxes are raised, as in the United States, on real estate,
automobile licenses, gifts, and inheritances. The inheritance tax accounts
for only one tenth of one percent of all taxes collected. The theoretical
justification for this tax can be found in the argument that wealth creates
economic power (as the power to obtain credit); thus wealth bestows
potential benefits upon the owner that are greater than the monetary
income which the wealth produces or the sum of the previously taxed
income constituting that wealth. Additionally, the taxation of property is
presumed to increase the efficiency of its utilization. The taxation of farm
land presumably provides incentives for more efficient agricultural
production; the high tax on urban land provides incentives for
construction.

The VAT is levied at an overall rate of 20% and is neutral between
imported and locally produced goods. The absolute monetary amount,
however, that was added to the goods which entered Chile with foreign
government subsidies at unfairly low prices when import duties were only
10%, was smaller than the amount of VAT added to locally produced
goods. In this sense, then, VAT was not neutral, since it charged the same
basic good with different nominal amounts of tax depending on its source.
The 20% rate is relatively high when compared to rates in effect in other
countries that have introduced VAT, and the same 20% rate is charged
(with very few exceptions) on practically all goods and services, whether
produced locally or outside the country. Foodstuffs, medicine, or other
basic necessities are not excluded from VAT nor do they command lower
rates, as they sometimes do in other countries that have adopted VAT.
Other indirect taxes, as those on judicial acts the stamp tax and
automobile or real estate transfer fees are important from a revenue-
raising standpoint only; they have no special function. ("Los Impuestos",
1979).

External taxes, on the other hand, in particular the import tax, have
played an important role in Chile practically from independence, but their
function has changed considerably over time. To the Great Depression of
1930, import duties provided the major portion of fiscal resources, thus
were mainly a revenue-raising tool. Later they were used as the basic
protective barrier against competition from abroad. The basic rate of duty

28

charged on imported goods was only 10% of their C1F (cost, insurance,
and freight) value in the early part of this decade, and this situation led to a
considerable increase in the volume of imports. After 1982, tariffs were
slowly raised. They peaked at 35% in September of 1984 and are being
slowly lowered to a target rate of 25% (BIC, 1985, p. 19).

The tax reform of 1975, through its simplification of the tax system, has
resulted in more expeditious judicial handling of tax cases. Improved
information processing techniques also enhanced the tax-administrative
and collection procedures. The government estimates that at the end of the
last decade approximately 15% of the real increase in revenues came from
the control of evasion (S1I, 1981).

Concluding Remarks

Until the first tax reform in 1964, the system was unwieldy and
inflexible; it also contained many loopholes. The income tax consisted of
six proportional-rate categories, which were reduced to two in 1964: the
First and Second Category. Numerous specific taxes existed that were
fixed in nominal terms and did not increase with inflation, and the reform
of 1964, while it represented a considerable technical improvement of the
tax system, included no provision to prevent the drop in real tax yeild in an
inflationary setting. The deficit spending that had plagued earlier periods
continued to be financed through foreign borrowings. But the tax reform
did substantially simplify the system, and it also converted the State into
an active agent in the economic development of the country (Ffrench-
Davis, 1975). Before 1964, the tax system was mainly a revenue-raising
tool, but the new program included a system for the redistribution of
power, wealth, and income. The government hoped that the stabilization
of prices would be achieved gradually, as the structural causes of inflation
were to be removed. The aim was two-fold: on the revenue side, to provide
economic incentives to the wealthier classes for increases in savings and
investments; and (b) on the expenditure side, to increase fiscal spending on
education, health, public works, housing for the poor, agrarian reform,
and other public investments (Zahler, 1978, p. 208). But unfortunately, the
conflicts that existed between the necessity of providing stimuli for private
saving or investment on one hand and the need to redistribute income and
wealth on the other were not reconciled. This was partly the fault of the
international groups, such as the Alliance for Progress, the Inter-
American Bank, the Organization of American States, and the Economic
Commission for Latin America; their overwhelming emphasis on the
redistribution of wealth was too dogmatic and probably could not
realistically be reconciled with the need to foster the growth of the
country's economy. A similiar mistake was repeated in the tax reform of
1975, when Chile gave into the international pressure to lower its import

29

duties. A more gradual opening of borders would have been less painful
and therefore more appropriate for a small, vulnerable nation such as
Chile.

WORKS CITED

BIC. Bussiness International Corporation. Investing, Licensing, and Trading Conditions
Abroad. Chile. New York: BIC, 1981, 1985.

Ffrench-Davis, R. Politieas Economicas en Chile 1952-1970. CEPLAN. Santiago:
Universidad Catolica de Chile, 1975.

Foxley, A. "Chile-Perspectives Economicas." M ensaje 301 (August 1982): 411-415.

1LO. International Labor Office Employment, Growth, and Basic Needs: A One-World
Problem. New York: Praeger, 1977.

"Los Impuestos". Informe Economico (March, 1972): 9-16.

Martin, E.G. "Frayed Miracle." The Wall Street Journal (January 18, 1982): 1 & 19.

Ministerio de Hacienda. Reforma Tributaria. Santoago: 1977.

Morris, M.D. Measuring the Condition of the World's Poor. New York: Pergamon Press,
1979.

Pinto, A. "Razones y Sinrazones de la Recesion." Mensaje 307 (March, 1982): 120-124.

Ro, W. "Chicago en Santiago-El Poder Invisible." Mensaje 301 (August, 1981): 416-419.

Sll. Servico de Impuestos Internos (1975-1984). Informes Tributarios.

Zahler, R. (ed.) Chile: Treiinta y Cinco Anon de Discontinuidad Economtca, 1940-1975.
Santiago: lnstituto Chileno de Estudios Humanisticos, 1978.

30

CRITICAL VIEWING SKILLS: EDUCATING ABOUT TELEVISION
AND THROUGH TELEVISION

by Charles F. Aust*

From the time of its arrival on the American scene, television has been
the object of scrutiny, criticism and concern by parents, teachers,
government officials and the television industry itself. Individuals and
groups have tried with some success and some failure to change the content
of television offerings.

Others, while agreeing with this approach, also wish to exert an
influence on the consumers of this pervasive medium, especially children.
That influence comes in the form of instructing the television viewer about
effective and conscientious use of television based on adequate
understanding of how television functions, what it offers, and the possible
healthy and unhealthy impact it mightbe having. The following report will
examine and encourage efforts to foster such instructions, particularly
among children and educators. These instructions are commonly referred
to as critical viewing skills (CVS).

Do Children Need Critical Viewing Skills?

Children acclimate to a visual world quickly, possibly as early as five
months into life. They recognize photographs and drawings of people and
objects. (Dirks and Gibson 124).

Aimee Dorr reports in a review of literature about children's cognitions,
that as early as infancy, children "learn to recognize two-dimensional
representations of their three-dimensional world." (Whitney and Abeles
194).

Watching television, a two-dimensional visual experience, seems to
come naturally. Television also uses natural language skills. It can, without
exhibiting a single printed letter, inform the viewer about feelings, values,
motives and outcomes. To view television requires no print literacy skills.
(Ploghoft and Anderson). It requires only the ability to hear sound, see
images and understand verbally spoken words.

Yet voices are calling for education to teach children skills with which to
watch television. Horace Newcomb, critic of television and professor of
English at the University of Texas, argues:

We should be educating children to deal critically with television ... 1
think we should have television taught in public schools, K through
12, not on a year-long basis, but maybe four weeks here or six weeks
there. Let's look at some shows, let's look at some ads, here's what's
done, this is the kind of thing that's done with the camera . . . and to

* Instructor of Mass Communication, West Georgia College

31

get the kids involved with (television) ... as they deal with literature.
Be critical about what you see, be knowledgeable, 1 suppose, is the
best word . . . (Himmelstein 106).

Do traditional skills that are taught in American schools help students
deal with television? The superintendent of schools in Idaho Falls, Idaho,
thinks not. Dr. James F. Parsley, Jr., oversaw a special project in his
district to foster critical viewing skills in elementary grades. He suggests
that educators and parents have falsely assumed schools equip students to
use television content effectively. He states that "schools today are doing
little, if anything, to equip students to be discerning consumers of televised
communications or to develop critical thinking skills in general" (p. 29).

In addition, he says, parents and teachers are realizing that television is
"the most powerful medium of communication and that school may
actually be of secondary importance in influencing the lives of young
people" (p. 28). In one self-report, teenagers ranked as most influential on
them, the following sources: peers, parents, television and then teachers
(Boyer 549).

Statistics are available which illustrate a pervasiveness of television in
the lives of children in our current television era. Here is a sample:

Young children aged 2-5 view an average of 27.5 hours a week.
Children aged 6-1 1 view an average of 24.5 hours a week. Teenagers
aged 12-17 view an average of 22 hours a week. The average high
school graduate has spent 13,000 hours in school and 18,000 hours
watching television. In the course of one typical year, the average
child will have seen 25,000 commercials. (Van Dyck and Robbins 22)

Some critics of the education system and people with sincere concerns
for children put heavy demands on the schools to reform maladjusted
children and shape well-adjusted, optimally functioning children. Gerald
Lesser, Harvard professor of education and developmental psychology,
who has served as chairperson of the advisory board of Children's
Television Workshop, the producers of "Sesame Street," makes a lucid
rebuttal to such demands and suggests an approach:

Educators cannot solve all the emotional problems of students. They
cannot remedy the injustices to minorities in our society or create
new life styles or new communities to replace deteriorating ones . . .
Education should, however, be asked to teach children to understand
symbols to read, to calculate, to write, to communicate and to
use these symbols to reason logically and to solve problems. It might
also be asked to convey some useful knowledge about what the world
is like and how things operate within it. (p. 6-7)

And within the child's world, television holds a prominent spot. It would
seem to make sense to equip children with the skills necessary to make

32

intelligent sense and use of this medium. Visual literacy of television is an
important educational task, perhaps as vital to the development of human
intelligence as the traditional curriculum. (Dondis 50)

Critical Viewing Skills Defined

The Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation
Center, under the direction of Professors Dorthy and Jerome Singer, has
defined critical viewing skills (CVS) to include the following goals:

1 . To understand the different types of television programs, such as
news, documentaries, variety, game shows, situation comedies,
drama, etc.

2. To understand that programs are created by writers, producers,
and directors, and utilize actors and actresses as well as scenery and
props.

3. To understand how television works in terms of simple
electronics.

4. To learn what aspects of a program are real, and how fantasy or
pretend elements are created on programs or commercials through
camera techniques and special effects.

5. To learn about commercials, their purpose and what kinds there
are, such as public service announcements or political ads.

6. To understand how television influences our feelings, ideas, self-
concept and identification.

7. To become aware of television as a source of information about
other people, countries, occupations, and how politics, stereotypes
are presented.

8. To examine violence on television with a view toward taking out
false glamour. To become aware that we rarely see someone
recovering slowly from an act of violence on television, or see the
aggressor punished.

9. To encourage children to be aware of what they watch and how
they can control their viewing habits, and how they can influence
networks, producers, and local television stations. (VanDyck 38).

These goals for K-6 grade level would be expanded and elaborated upon
for higher grades. It is evident that to maximize use and desired impact of
television requires skills. Watching television in optimal ways requires
attention to visual and/ or audio elements of the message and requires
higher levels of attention to effectively attend to the combined elements of
visual, aural, and other non-verbal elements. (Ploghoft and Anderson 7).

The nature of viewing skills is "basic to the total language development
of the individual. In fact the traditional skills of language arts are served
quite well by educational activities designed to enhance viewing skills"
(Ploghoft and Anderson 7).

33

CVS are meant to help the student use television in a critical, active and
discriminating manner. They are not meant to decrease television viewing
and increase reading. CVS lead to a personal, individualized response to
the medium of television. This idea of personal management implies an
active receiver involved in the communication process, who effectively
uses the television medium. (Ploghoft and Anderson 8).

As part of its latest comprehensive investigation of television in
America, the National Institute of Mental Health concluded that
education of children about CVS "needs to be continued, expanded and
evaluated" (Pearl 91).

Critical Viewing Skills in School Curricula

On the basis of these arguments it seems quite sensible to integrate CVS
into a language arts curriculum. Message comprehension is a goal of both
traditional language arts programs and CVS instruction. Language skills
are not restricted to print media alone, but extend to the television
medium. One important consideration is compatibility between the new
curricular elements and the existing curriculum. Approaching the task of
teaching CVS from the perspective of language arts might be one way to
link these topics in a compatible way.

Another approach might be to teach CVS in conjunction with teaching
of critical thinking skills. One such approach uses media topics within
established subject areas, such as English. The teaching units examine
issues such as:

advertising appeals targeting on specific audiences and using
specific persuasion devices

objectivity versus bias in news sources

media portrayals of groups, such as minorities, social classes or
the sexes

conservative versus liberal media coverage

current issues in media, such as terrorism (Lewis 53).

In one specific instance, an English instructor at a university teaches a
critical thinking course title "The Impact of Media" (Downs 16).

An early use of CVS occured in 1976 when the Baltimore (Maryland)
Teachers Association and the Baltimore County Parent-Teacher
Association (PTA) proposed to and convinced the board of education to
make television viewing skills part of the school curriculum (Witherow
56GS).

Federal funds became available in the late 1970s for the development of
CVS materials, curricula and workshops on four educational levels;
elementary, middle school, high school and post-secondary. The U.S.

34

Office of Education (now the Department of Education) granted $1.6
million for this purpose (Witherow 56GC).

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) developed
materials for elementary-school-age students which includes such aids as
tour guides and road maps to television, interesting side trips and exercises
to highlight viewing experiences, such as heavy regular viewing of one
program. SEDL also designed a teacher's guide to help them incorporate
television into coursework as an educational resource. Materials were
developed to suggest applications in language arts, math, geography,
history, science, health and social studies (Witherow 56GS).

WNET, a public television station in New York City, with nine years of
research, testing and revision of CVS materials under its belt, developed a
curriculum for middle grades. Using an already-developed department of
critical viewing skills at the station, WNET brought in program producers,
teachers, school administrators and parents for planning consultation.
Workshop materials were designed to show teachers and parents how to
use the curriculum tools in school and at home.

A high school curriculum was developed by Far West Laboratory for
Educational Research and Development in conjunction with Boston
television station WGBH's Office of Radio and TV for Learning. A text
was produced called Inside TV; A Guide to Critical Viewing. The intent
was to provide a one-semester elective using seven units that can be taught
as a package or on a stand-alone basis. The four stated goals of the package
were:

evaluate and manage one's own television viewing behavior

question the reality of television programs

recognize the arguments employed on television and be able to
counter-argue

recognize effects of television on one's own life (Witherow 56GS).

The U.S. Department of Education added a fifth goal of enhancing
family communication through activities at home including viewing logs,
quizzes and values clarification exercises to discuss opinions and attitudes.

Boston University's School of Public Communication designed and
produced a critical television viewing skills curriculum for adults and post-
secondary students. The four major subject areas included: television and
literacy, persuasive programming, entertainment programming and
informational programming.

The National Council for Children and Television provided the
following rationale for involving adults in CVS:

Adult viewers, especially young members of our first Television
Generation, have been given no method, no 'lexicon' for interpreting

35

the subtle visual and aural messages presented through television
entertainment, news and advertising. In order for these viewers to
become more responsible television program gatekeepers for their
students or their children, they must be given a method for acquiring
a better understanding of their own responses to telelvision
messages. They must develop critical viewing skills and visual
literacy skills as crucial in this age of mass electronic media as verbal
literacy was a century ago (Dondis 49).

Involvement of the Television Industry

The television industry has supported CVS both in and out of school
settings. In March of 1978 CBS announced that it would join the national
PTA to raise funds for a new PTA television initiative, "the production of a
school curriculum for teaching television viewing skills to children "
("Strange Bedfellows").

The curriculum would include lesson plans, discussion questions,
instructions for script development, videotapes and background material
about the history of television. Plans were made to disseminate the
package through the National Association of School Boards and School
Administrators, the National Education Association and the National
PTA.

Gene Jankowski, president of CBS/ Broadcast Group, issued a related
statement saying:

The American people should know more about television, both as an
art form and as an industry. They should know the good and the bad
and how to tell the difference. They should bring to television the
same sense of understanding and criticism that they bring to
other forms of communication ("Stange Bedfellows").

NBC and a group called Teachers Guides to Television (TGT) sponsored
a series of workshops called "Parent Participation TV Workshops"
involving schools, PTAs, church and community groups, colleges and
universities in major cities across the nation. At the workshops, parents,
teachers and discussion leaders discuss programs and share guidance
about the use of television to help their children with such skills as
decision-making, handling conflict and developing responsibility. TGT
works in partnership with the Television Information Office, an
organization of the National Association of Broadcasters ("Teachers
Guides").

By June of 1980 ABC had already donated $350,000 to the Yale Family
Television Research and Consultation Center of Professors Dorothy and
Jerome Singer. The money was intended to support the development of a
curriculum to teach elementary school children to become more
"discriminating television viewers" ("ABC Sticking with . . . ").

36

Conclusion

Previously cited statistics indicate that children are typically heavy
viewers of television. It should not be assumed that adults are
knowledgeable about and teach their children CVS. Educators have been
and could continue to be instrumental in educating children about their
world, including the part of the world called television, by fostering
understanding of the television medium and relating the content of this
window on the world to any of the multitude of curriculum topics taught to
America's school children. With assistance of various available resources
described in this review, and compatible applications to existing curricular
topics, students can learn essential knowledge traditionally taught in
school and at the same time, learn about the most pervasive and highly
influential medium in their lives.

WORKS CITED

"ABC sticking with research on children as television viewers." Broadcasting (June 22, 1980)

47.

Boyer, Ernest L. "College with connections." Curriculum Planning: A New Approach. Ed.
Glen Hass. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1983. 549.

Dirks, J. and Gibson, E. "Infants' perception of similarity between live people and their
photographs." Child Development 48 (1977): 124-130.

Dondis, Donis. "Critical television viewing skills for adults." Television and Children
(Summer 1980): 49-50.

Downs, Judy Rollins. "The impact of the media arid today's classroom." Delta Kappa
Gamma Bulletin 52-2 (1986): 14-17.

Himmelstein, Hal. On The Small Screen. New York: Praeger, 1981.

Lesser, Gerald S. Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street. New York: Vintage
Books/ Random House, 1975.

Lewis, Lorraine J. "Developing critical thinking through media study." English Journal 73
(1984): 52-53.

Parsley, James F. "In support of teaching critical thinking and critical televiewing in schools."
Television and Children (Summer 1980): 28-29.

Pearl, David. Television and Behavior: Ten Years of Scientific Progress and Implications
for the Eighties (Vol. 1: Summary Report). Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental
Health, 1982.

Ploghoft, Milton E. and Anderson, James A. Teaching Critical Television Viewing Skills:
An Integrated Approach. Springfield, 1L: Thomas Publishers, 1982.

"Strange bedfellows CBS agrees to help PTA raise funds for project to educate
schoolchildren about television." Broadcasting (March 6, 1978): 79.

"Teachers Guides backs sessions with parents." Broadcasting (October 10, 1977): 66.

VanDyck, Nicolas. "Learning with television and learning about television: An NCCT
Symposium Report." Television and Children (Fall 1980): 38.

VanDyck, Nicolas and Robbins, Marsha P. "Profiles of children in the United States."
Television and Children (Winter 1979): 22.

37

Witherow, Frank B. "Why we need critical viewing skills." Today's Education (September-
October, 1980): 56GS.

Withey, Stephen B. and Abeles, Ronald P. Television and Social Behavior: Beyond Violence
and Children. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1980.

ADDITIONAL READING

Baran, Stanley J. The Viewer's Television Book: A Personal Guide to Understanding
Television and Its Influence. Cleveland: Penrith Publishing Co., 1980.

Brown, Les and Walker, Savannah Waring. Fast Forward: The New Television and
American Society. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1983.

Brown, Ray. Children and Television. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976.

Masterman, Len. Teaching About Television. London: Macmillan Press, 1980.

38

THE DEATH OF MAN AND THE BIRTH OF WRITING

by John Micheal Craft on*

Finally, if 1 am to rouse you to indignation that, after so many
centuries of religious hypocrisy and philosophical bravado, nothing
valid has yet been articulated on what links metaphor to the question
of being and metonymy to its lack, there must be an object there to
answer to that indignation both as its provocator and its victim: it is
humanistic man andthe credit, affirmed beyond reparation, which he
has drawn on his intentions.

Jacques Lacan, "The Insistence of the
Letter in the Unconscious'"

Humanistic man has indeed been drawing on his credit for some time in
theories of writing and reading or, as it is termed now in one word,
textuality. He has been drawing now with little collateral and his stock has
been emptied in the massive projects of divestiture operating from the
French banks, left as always, especially those under the name of
poststructuralism. He has been drawing and doodling for his credit, to
establish his credentials, and to manifest his credo, in the watery sands of
discourse and caught too often embarassed at his own gouging, searching
for an essence that would at best be a mirror of his own gouging.
Paradoxically, of course, the image would be reversed and thus, for a
humanism of an orthodox variety, wrong, the going and coming of the
stylus eradicating each other in a reflection that by its nature and definition
ends progress. As even a child after groping too long for the other in the
mirror drops his hand in frustration and leaves this primal scene of writing
for another form of constructive activity, that being of course play, so also
must we in composition theory give up the mirror and get back to the issue
of play. 1

'Play is a complicated term in modern textural theory. One finds it
or something very similar to it in the works of nearly every
poststructuralist. While we must allow the term its ambiguity, if we
are to appreciate the serpentine nature of poststructuralist
philosophy, a few often used definitions are as follows: ( 1 ) dramatism
or plays within plays (2) movement, tolerance, freedom from friction
(3) nonseriousness (4) role playing (5) substitution, pretending, standing
in, metaphor (6) deferral, teasing (7) foreplay to pleasures of
textuality.

Before staging any playful pursuits in this essay, however, the gates to
the scene must be established. These gates situate themselves on the
question of the role of metaphor and being, but more colloquially on the

*Assistant Professor of English, West Georgia College

39

role of being in the pedagogy of composition. In composition theory being
often serves as a metonym for the self or subject which is a useful center for
attaining totalization. The self totalizes its discourse, it controls or owns it,
just as the concept of being as presence or logos also totalizes the field of
existence or meaning (Derrida, Grammatology 27-73). American theorists
of the sixties were the most notorious in asserting that the self is inviolable,
free and, if left alone, basically creative. Thus from this ethos in
composition studies teachers were given methodologies of free writing,
truthful writing, biographical, expressive, poetic, democratic and various
other sorts of "honest" writing. These theories managed to indulge in a
great deal of playing around in the forms of role playing and meditating
but all in the service of "serious introspection." Very often teachers
demanded that their students' texts represent a true and/ or real self.
Although teaching from truth, these instructors watched the level of literacy
gradually decline. Yet little guilt was felt in pedagody because the theory
rested on the bedrock of the self, founding a theory without play, firm and

"true."
Poststructuralist theory (here I'm principally concerned with Derrida

and Lacan) wants to insert the element of play into this discourse about

discourse because it finds no center on which or by which play can be

resisted. It finds no center because what has been considered the center in

composition studies, the consolidated self, Subject, or ego, has all but

evaporated in recent semiotically inspired thinking. This recent thinking

boldly announces the death of the self, the subject and the author. Again,

Lacan:

For a long time thinkers, searchers, and inventors who were
concerned with the question of the mind, have over the years put
forward the idea of unity as the most important and characteristic
trait of structure . . . The idea of the unifying unity of the human
condition has always had on me the effect of a scandalous lie
[partly because] the unconsciousness has nothing to do with instinct
or primitive knowledge or preparation of [unified] thought in some
underground. It is a thinking with words, with thoughts that escape
your vigilance, your state of watchfulness. ("Of Structure" 189-190)

The speaking subject, if he seems to be thus a slave of language, is all
the more so of a discourse in the universal moment of which he finds
himself at birth, even if only by dint of his proper name . . . for the
primary reason that language and its structure exist prior to the
moment at which each individual at a certain point in his mental
development makes his entry into it. ("Letter" 289)

Man's meaning or "signification is a function of a certain language

[parole], which is and isn't the language of the subject he receives this

language ready-made, he is a relay for it" (Lecan, Le seminaire Livre II

[ 1 978] cited in Racevskis 33). This order determining man's meaning, what

40

Lacan calls the Symbolic, in turn creates a second order, the Imaginary,
"the order in which the subject develops a consciousness centered in itself"
(Racevskis 33). The third and final order is the Real and of which "there is
no direct apprehension" (Gallop 70). If the subject is resituated according
to decentering philosophy in the structure of language or a language-like
unconsciousness, then why does it die?

Derrida in his simplest formulations explains that language is structure
without center and without totalization.

Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by
definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure
which governs the structure, while escaping structurally. This is
why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center
is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is to
the totality (is not a part of the totality), the totality has its center
elsewhere. The center is not the center . . . The concept of centered
structure is in fact the concept of a freeplay based on a fundamental
ground, a freeplay which is constituted upon a fundamental
immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself beyond the
reach of the freeplay. If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is
not because the infinity of a field cannot be covered by a finite glance
or a finite discourse, but because the nature of the field that is,
language and a finite language excludes totalization. This field is in
fact that of freeplay, that is to say, a field of infinite substitutions in
the closure of a finite ensemble. This field permits these infinite
substitutions only because it is finite, that is to say, because instead of
being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical hypothesis, instead of
being too large, there is something missing from it: a center which
arrests and founds the freeplay of substitutions. ("Structure, Sign
and Play" 248, 260)

Lacan reworks this same problematic by re-inscribing the center within a
revision of Freud's concept of the unconscious, which Lacan calls the
discourse of the Other. This discourse produces the Subject and thus
neccessarily implies its transindividual reality.

Where this decentered Subject and freeplay lead us in composition
theory is a movement back to classical rhetoric and away from the quasi-
Romantic pedagogy of the inviolable or consolidated self, a reversal which
in turn creates a mirror image of the parodic paradigm of sixties pedagogy
mentioned earlier. Thus, the reversed picture the mirror image is of a
stricter, perhaps more austere, version of methodologies but with a flexible
and play-centered theory.

The notion of playful theories should not evoke an image of drunken
Parisians speculating about their various axioms of Bacchic behavior, but
rather should return us to an understanding of theory at once pragmatic

41

and artistic. Play is necessary in language as it is in machines and
organisms. It allows movement or growth and thus reduces friction. If the
Subject is an effect of language and thus of freeplay, its governing notions
will be made slippery by the same lubricant. Our most proud abstractions
are at bottom metaphorical, figures of disclosure that hide as much as they
reveal (Derrida, "White Mythology"). Even the word theory shares its
etymology with the sign for theater (Greek theasthai "to observe"). Each
play is itself a paradigm, a lexical group, some more effective than others,
only one winning the prize, but not necessarily more true. Aristotle's
formulation of rhetoric is based upon the spectacle of orations he
witnessed created by the dramatists and the Sophists, and as such they
emphasize the theatrical element also, orations being drarnatic events. The
self or transcendental truth had nothing to do with it, only the effectiveness
of the presentations in a particular instance. The knowledge used in these
instances was phronetic, that is, useful in winning the prize. Likewise, the
transcendental Subject was of little interest here. Aristotle's famous ethical
appeal resides not in the speaker but in the language he uses. He asserts in
Book I of the Rhetoric, "The character [ethos] of the speaker is a cause of
persuasion when the speech is so uttered as to make him worthy of belief"
(8). The language must create an image for that audience of what it would
consider to be the best image in that particular instance. So Aristotle
locates his desciption of rhetorical acts without any founding concept of
truth and Subject, following in one sense his predecessor Gorgias, whose
founding concept, you will remember, was that nothing exists. 2

2 Textual evidence suggests that Aristotle most likely did not
compose his book on rhetoric, but rather is was compiled from
student lecture notes. Since Aristotle sees rhetoric as existing in an
interaction between dialectic and poetics, he perhaps did not
consider a book of rhetoric even possible.

Aristotle knew, as did Shakespeare that the play is everything and thus
asserts the truth of dramatism for composition classes. They cannot be
viewed as classes of subject matter in which a teacher lectures on the truths of
the subject. According to some modern composition theorists, "there is
simply nothing to lecture about"(Knoblauch and Brannon 102). There are
only performances and techniques to be mastered as they are needed.
While utilizing more play, these classes should be more rigorous in day-to-
day activity because the techniques of basic acceptable dialect and
rudimentary logic must be well polished, and there should be much
practice. The basic writing class if working from a death of Subject
philosophy must operate as an ongoing play staged in a classroom which
can be rearranged slightly and with characters who play their roles as
students who want to write but who cannot and one who plays the teacher,
functioning as both a limited actor and limited director. The arche-play
generally follows a pattern wherein he is the master, shaman, king who

42

possesses, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, the phallus of total signification.
Those who would speak must then kill off the father/ king and gain their
own phallus. However, in the death of man school, the phallus of
signification, has already been removed and there is no control of
signification, all controls or centers have been always already decentered.
The initiates then must develop from their naive stance of waiting for
totalization to accepting the absence of the phallus. They must alter their
desire to possess signification or their mauvais foi of already possessing it
but being unrecognized to an awareness that it is signification that
possesses them, that creates them, and that is the only avenue to writing.

The role of this kind of father is that of the Lacanian psychoanalyst who
does not believe in a cure or even Freud's "talking cure" (Schneiderman 49-
64). My view is that the teacher/ psychoanalyst will try to effect a "writing
cure" (both meaning a cure for writing and a cure for students) by being
made aware of the importance of both the sex and death drives of the
psyche. Freud's concept of Thanatos not only includes our failures and will
do damage ourselves along with others but also a recognizable state of
adult consciousness, the desire for peace and nirvana, "a drive to reduce
stimulation/tension to zero"(Gallop 180). Both the will to tear and to sew
are tied in with the death drive. The desire for death can be effectively
maintained only by sewing, or by putting it off, creating a greater moment of
consummation. Accordingly, writing is one of the supreme ways of
engaging in the death drive because as the words fall to the page, much as
dead cells, they remind us of life force falling out and moving us more
rapidly to the bottom of the page and downward into darkness. The
dissemination of words is connected with death just as the dissemination of
semen has been (le petit mort). Since the fear of death has to be overcome
in order to engage in healthy sexuality, it follows that this fear must be
removed for those who would write. Acceptance of the desire for death is
therefore a necessary prelude to composition. What better father could
there be to educate the novitiates than the anti-father of a Lacanian who
believes that we are to a certain symbolic extent already dead anyway. The
"writing cure" involves the King's handing the blade to Hamlet and making
him thrust yet only to reveal that both knife and King are stage props or
reflections in the order of the Imaginary.

One last note on this method or spectacle of teaching composition is that
Lacan specifies that although his psychoanalysis is not about "curing"
there being no such thing really it is about talking and giving in to
language. For Lacan this involves persuading the analyis and to accept the
Symbolic order as the basis for the Imaginary. This Imaginary order is
created in the child by what Lacan calls the mirror stage.

The Imaginary leads us to think that we are in direct touch with
reality, that we are in full possession of our knowledge, and that we

43

can grasp the truth of our Selves. This truth is no more than a lure,
of course, since we find it in a mirror: the identity that we gain in the
Imaginary is given to us by others, it is an objectification centered
upon the evidence of a conscious that is inevitably subject to a
network of determinants already in place. The self is thus a mirage
and its relation to the world in which it sees itself reflected is
constantly undermined by uncertainty ... An awareness of the
Symbolic order can therefore be seen as a corrective, because it
promulgates notions of exchange and reciprocity; it introduces
relativity and reversibility in value systems that have solidified in the
Imaginary; and it founds the subject's existence in the context of a
relation with the Other, not the name of truth. (Racevskis 34, 37)

Lacan's writings contain an implicit ethical imperative to break the
mirror, an imperative to disrupt the imaginary in order to reach "the
symbolic" which for Lacan is the register of language, social
exchange, and radical intersubjectivity would be the locus of
dialogue. (Gallop 59-60)

The writing cure likewise moves the student through a process of what I
call de-individuation, in a revision of Jung, of putting the Imaginary order
apart to lay bare the filaments of linguistic existence which give the Subject
the ostensible order that it has. Thus, untying some of these knots to
allow more freeplay within that order of consciousness by removing
some of the constraints that the Imaginary imposes on creativity. Perhaps
the case of the humanist gouging in the sand is hopeless, but the child can
be made to pass behind the mirror and be made to enjoy the play of writing
while in the play of life and, in the movement toward death and the
activities forestalling it, learn that his writing when seeking for or while
subscribing to a transcendental truth is less effective than when it merely
strives to make his fellows laugh or cry or stop gouging around in the sand.

WORKS CITED

Aristotle. The Rhetoric of Aristotle. Trans. Lane Cooper. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, I960.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1974.

. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." Macksey and
Donato 247-272.

. "White Mythology." Trans. F.C.T. Moore. NLH 6 (1974): 7-74.

Gallop, Jane. Reading Leacan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Knoblauch, C.H., and Lil Brannon. Rhetorical Tradition and the Teaching of Writing.
Upper Montclaire, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1984.

44

Lacan, Jacques. "The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious." The Structuralists from
Marx to Levi- Strauss. Ed. Richard and Fernande DeGeorge. Garden City, NY: Archon,
1972.

. Le seminaire, Livre II Paris: Seuill, 1978.

. "Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Other: Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever."
Macksey and Donato 186-200.

Macksey, Richard and Eugenio Donato, eds. The Structuralists Controversy: The Language
of Criticism and the Science of Man. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970.

Racevskis, Karlis. Michel Foucault and the Subversion of Intellect. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1983.

Schneiderman, Stuart. Jacques Lacan: The Death of an Intellectual Hero. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1983.

45

PRAGMATISM, ARGUMENTATION, AND THE
POST-PHILOSOPHIC CULTURE

by Steven Meredith Garmon*

American pragmatism, which had been neglected in philosophic circles
following John Dewey's death in 1952, is receiving renewed attention
through the work of Richard Rorty. Rorty's 1982 book, Consequences of
Pragmatism, identified pragmatism with a call for post-Philosophic
culture (xiii-xlvii). I shall give a skeletal description of the defining attitutes
of this post-Philosophic culture, and then flesh out the account by
describing the nature of argumentation in such a culture. Finally, as a
clarifying device, I shall broadly consider one major criticism leveled at
pragmatism. The general point I want to make is that pragmatism can be
explained as the replacing of traditional philosophy with a theory of
argument in which the justification of a claim is culturally and
linguistically based.

Rorty distinguishes between Philosophy and philosophy. Philosophy-
with-a-capital-p means "following Plato's and Kant's lead, asking
questions about the nature of certain normative notions (e .g., 'truth,'
'rationality,' 'goodness') in the hope of better obeying such notions"
{Consequences xv). But we no longer need to follow that lead and ask those
questions. Small-p philosophy, on the other hand, means "simply what
Sellars calls 'an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense of
the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term'"
(Consequences xiv). The exploration of relations between ideas, rather
than the quest for an objective grounding for ideas, is the only type of
philosophy we need. In the post-Philosophic culture, true beliefs will not
be seen as those which accurately represent a reality independent of human
purposes. Rather, the standards of the community whether the broad
popular community or the narrower academic or professional
community would be seen as the only standards available for assessing
what to believe. "Accurate representations" in this culture will mean
"simply an automatic and empty complement which we pay to those beliefs
which are successful in helping us do what we want to do" {Mirror of
Nature 10). "Objective" will refer to "characterizing the view which would
be agreed upon as a result of argument undeflected by irrelevant
considerations" {Mirror of Nature 333-34). In areas where no agreement
seems likely, even though discussants are "undeflected by irrelevant
considerations," then "objective" could only be a reference to the hope of
eventual consensus {Mirror of Nature 335). A "subjective" consideration
would then be understood as

*Instructor of Speech, West Georgia College

46

one which is seen to be, or should be seen to be, irrelevant to the
subject matter of the theory. To say that someone is bringing in
"subjective" considerations to a discussion where objectivity is
wanted is, roughly, to say that he is bringing in considerations which
the others think beside the point. (Mirror of Nature 338-39)

A post-Philosophic culture would hold that "accurate representation,"
"objective," and "subjective" never have amounted to more than these
Rortian definitions, and that we don't need anything more.

The pragmatist has thus given up on the idea of self-evident intuitions, a
priori frameworks, or a permanent human nature. She has no proof that
these things do not exist. Rather, she notes that since Plato Philosophy has
sought ahistorical forms of truth, and the search has been fruitless. What
Philosophers have accomplished are some brilliant commentaries on their
own culture. The pragmatist takes the moral of this story to be that culture-
bound, "ethnocentric" commentary is all we can get.

In the post-Philosophic culture the study of argument would be a kind of
sociology the practices and standards to which members of actual,
concrete communities refer when they argue would be the object of study
rather than ideals of logic within abstractly conceived fields of discourse.
Thomas Kuhn is supporting this view when he argues that it is the
community of scientists which is the starting point for understanding the
way that inquiry works "paradigms" come later. "Scientific

communities," he writes, "can and should be isolated without prior
recourse to paradigms; the latter can then be discovered by scrutinizing the
behavior of a given community's members" (176). While individual
geniuses may spark scientific revolutions, Kuhn sees scientists'
contributions as always relative to a community: "Both normal science and
revolutions are, however, community-based activities. To discover and
analyze them, one must first unravel the changing community structure
of the sciences over time" (179). And the thing which members of a
community "share that accounts for the relative fullness of their
professional communication and the relative unanimity of their
professional judgements" is not anything ahistorical or transcultural. It is
not more than whatever "disciplinary matrix" the communitv endorses
(182).

The post-Philosophic culture, then, would reject the view that argument
is the attempt to prove that a conclusion follows logically from indubitable
premises. Pragmatists doubt that there can be any "indubitable premises."
Nothing is certain. As Wilfred Sellars notes, "science is rational not
because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise
which can out any claim in jeopardy, through not all once" (170). In the
post-Philosophic culture this view of the rationality of science would apply
to all subjects of argument. Argument would be the tying of a claim to

47

social standards the attempt to connect a controversial assertion with
beliefs which are not, for the time being, in question. The role of
indubitable premises is taken by whatever opinions the disputants happen
to agree on. And to say a conclusion "follows logically" is only to say that
the argument does, in fact, garner assent.

The propositions to which we assent our beliefs can be seen as
forming a network, with connections between propositions existing
whenever one proposition seems to us to imply another. The meaning of any
proposition lies in its direct and indirect connections with
other propositions. Some beliefs are more central than others; they
connect up with a greater number of other beliefs. Peripheral beliefs can be
changed with relatively little re-weaving of the belief network, but central
beliefs are much more difficult to change and require modifying many
other beliefs. In cases where central social practices are called into
question, the claim would have to be tied to either still more central beliefs
or to a large number of less central beliefs which would collectively
constitute strong "grounds." A more formal definition of argument which
the post-Philosophic culture would endorse, then, would be something
like: an exchange of views seeking to establish relationships between a
claim and those social beliefs not questioned in the particular exchange.

All arguments must therefore be, in some sense, circular; the
assumptions which we call upon to justify a claim can always be found
question-begging by radical skeptics. This view of argument can be made
more clear by seeing how Rorty answers the problem of the infinite regress.
This problem is that if we justify one proposition by citing a "deeper,"
"truer," or more self-evident proposition as support, then we shall never
end the need to find ever more self-evident truth. As Charles Willard put it,
"If you try to stop the infinite regress by embracing a standard, I shall
confront you with an incomensurable standard from another field to
buttress the demand that you further justify your stopping point. And so
on forever" (27-28). For pragmatists, however, this regress is only a
problem if it is what Rorty calls "vertical":

Whether one thinks of this regress as going down in search of the
Deepest or up the ladder of logical types in search of the Highest is
less important than what I shall call the vertical character of both
searches. This character consists in the fact that one looks at each new
step as a transition to a new level a level which is a necessary
condition for the existence of the previous step . . . Such a regress can
be constrasted with what I shall call a horizontal one, in which each
new step gives us something which is of essentially the same kind as
what we had at the last, but something which renders the last step
more determinate than it was. ("Pragmatism" 219)

48

The principle of horizontal infinite regress only says that we can always do
more explaining, more tying in of some ideas to other ideas. The more we
draw these connections, the more "determinate" the idea becomes, i.e. the
more we know about it. Scholarly investigation, for instance, will never
end; there will always be more connections to be drawn between ideas.
Unlike vertical regress, however, ideas are not tied to more certain or self-
evident ideas. Rather, horizontal regress searches for more and new
connections among our ideas. Since these connections define an idea, ideas
themselves evolve as more and different connections are drawn. The new
ideas, in turn, serve as points for further connection and re-connection.

Argument, then, goes on forever, realigning and redefining knowledge.
This is not a problem with the pragmatic view of argument, however,
because "reference to action . . . can take place at any step in the eternally
incomplete series of interpretations" ("Pragmatism" 223). The need to act
produces temporary stopping places. By making regress "horizontal,"
pragmatism renders infinite regress unproblematic.

A major criticism of pragmatism's cultural ideal is that it offers no
account of coercion, oppression and injustice, and thus fails to offer any
way to prevent or alleviate these problems. This criticism comes from
liberals who fear that if we abandon the idea that our liberal democratic
institutions can be grounded in permanent truths about the nature of
humans, society, or the world, then we will be unable to defend those
institutions. To give up the hope of conclusive, knock-out arguments that
our institutions better reflect the way humans were "meant" to live, on this
view, is to leave our way of life intellectually defenseless against tyrants.

It is essentially the same criticism that comes from more radical writers
who do not support liberal democratic institutions, and seek a normative
grounding against which to identify the characteristics of more just, less
oppressive social structures. Ideology and power, these writers say, will
continue, in a post-Philosophic culture, to determine how a community
argues, what it argues, and which arguments will be successful.

The pragmatist, I think, must agree that the social and linguistic bases of
all our knowledge can be thought of in terms of power and ideology.
"'Power' and 'culture' are equipollent indications of the social forces which make us
more than animals and which, when the bad guys take over can turn us into
something worse and more miserable than animals"( Rorty, Consequences
208). Pragmatists, qua pragmatist s, see no way around this. "Culture"(or,
more darkly, "power"), gives us the only truths we can know. Pragmatists,
however, follow Michel Foucault's suggestion that power is not
intrinsically repressive, "because, roughly, there is no naturally good self to
repress" (Rorty, Consequences 208). We must hope power can be
unoppressive, at any rate, because the only alternatives are to despair or to
bring back in some sort of self-evident intuition, some ahistorical truth.

49

Recent attempts to brcket out culture/ ideology e.g. Habermas's "ideal
speech situation" or Rawls's "original position" necessarily depend on
some self-evident intuition about what constitutes coercion or injustice.
The pragmatist, however, sees all intuitions as implications of some
optional vocabulary. If we could, somehow, bracket out all culture, what
would be left could say nothing to us, for to speak is to bring in the cultural
assumptions of the language. We could conduct careful observation of
such a cultureless being, of course, but cases like the wolf-boy are not likely
to tell us much about how to construct a just society.

Granted, many twentieth-century intellectuals do have such intuitions
about coercion as are required to construct the ideal speech situation, and
do intuit the reasonability of the choices of Rawls says actors in the
original position would make. But there is nothing ahistorically self-
evident about these intuitions. The "rational consensus" that emerges from
the ideal speech situation meets our view of rational, but not Plato's or
Aquinas's. The notion of justice we would choose in the original position is
our view of justice but may have little relationship to the operative notion
of justice of some fabulously happy future society. Critiques of Habermas
to the effect that the consensus growing out of an ideal speech situation
may sometimes be irrational, or of Rawls that his view of justice would not
be chosen in an original position, already expose the optional, non-self-
evident quality of the intuitions.

The admission that our view of the good life is historically situated,
however, takes away none of our arguments on its behalf. In abandoning
the expectation that we will one day find a conclusive, once-and-for-all
way to settle the matter, we need give up neither the search for arguments
our opponents will find cogent not any of the actual arguments with which
to defend or critique liberalism. Practical advantages rather than
theoretical groundings are the proper focus of political debate, so we lose
no argumentative potency by becoming post-Philosophic.

Moreover, the chances for success for any concrete proposal for
emancipation would seem to be increased in a post-Philosophic culture. If
a practical alternative with greater advantages than disadvantages can be
presented, the chances of the success of that alternative are increased
because a society that does not see its institutions as grounded in eternal
truth sees no reason not to entertain proposals for change. Captialist
institutions, for instance, are still implicitly supported by reference to "the
way the world really is." Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is taken as a
metaphoric description of objective reality. Pragmatists, however, see the
notion as part of one more circular argument within one one optional
vocabulary, so they are less attached to it.

Finally, proposals for emancipation can be thoughtfully considered and
even adopted without reference to normative groundings. Such normative

50

groundings tor liberation as those of Marx or Habermas grow out of a
prior recognition of some existing, concrete oppression or coercion.
Pragmatists suggest that if we have that recognition (historically situated
as it is), we have all that we need to go about looking for ways to alleviate
the problem. If we intuit, for example, coercion of dialogue, then we will
praise measures that reduce that coercion. To go from there to the
assertion that the "ideal speech situation" is a "critical standard in terms of
which any proposed set of basic social norms can in principle be assessed"
(White 170), makes sense only if it means that whenever a society has our
problems and our purposes it will recognize the same sorts of things as
possible solutions to consider. Habermas, Marx, Rawls, and other
political Philosophers can be read as offering relatively concrete advice on
how to organize our institutions so that we can get more of what we want
from them. A post-Philosophic culture would not rule out any such advice.
The additional matter, the attempt to offer transcultural groundings, is
only a rather empty complement to our social purposes. It is like the wheel
that Wittgenstein refers to when he says that "a wheel that can be turned
though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism"(95, 1, sec.
271).

WORKS CITED

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed., enlarged. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Rorty, Richard. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1982.

.Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

."Pragmatism, Categories and Language." Philosophical Review 70 (1961): 197-223.

Sellars, Wilfrid. Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge, 1963.

White, Stephen K. "Habermas on the Foundations of Ethics and Political Theory." Changing
Social Science. Ed. Daniel R. Sabia, Jr. and Jerald Wallulis. Albany: State University of
New York Press. 1983. 153-170.

Willard, Charles A. "Argument Fields." Advances in Argumentation Theory and Research.
Ed. Charles A. Willard and J. Robert Cox. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1982. 25-41.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E. M. Anscombe. 2nd ed. New
York: Macmillian, 1958.

51

ABSTRACTS OF MASTERS THESES AND
SPECIALIST IN EDUCATION PROJECTS

REMEDIAL MATHEMATICS FOR THE
UNDERPREPARED STUDENT

Jimmy Daniel Allen
(EdS, Secondary Education, June, 1985)

Some evidence has suggested that beginning college chemistry students
are lacking in the mathematical skills necessary for adequate success in
college chemistry. This study was designed to assess college instructors'
perceptions that this problem exists and to what degree their beliefs
compare with the math deficiencies inherent among a sample of high
school chemistry students.

A questionnaire was sent to 269 chemistry professors across the
Southeast. Results indicated the chemistry teachers believe that beginning
chemistry students are underprepared and are in need of remedial
mathematics.

A test of basic math skills was administered to 1 26 high school chemistry
and physics students at Calhoun High School in Calhoun, Georgia.
Results showed that students were deficient in nine of the 12 skills tested.

A test for correlation between the two revealed that a negative
correlation exists. This meant that students performed better on the
objectives which college professors believed were most important and in
need of remediation.

THE EFFECTS OF SUCCESS IN READING AND WRITING ON
STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARD READING

Denise Beaudoin (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1985)

This study was undertaken to investigate the possible change in students'
attitudes toward reading by using Success in Reading and Writing in a
Whitfield County Elementary School during the school term 1984-1985.
The problem of the study was to discover if the program had an effect on
students' reading attitude. Data from 60 students randomly selected from
the fourth- and fifth-grades were analyzed. This data consisted of pretes
and posttest scores on A Reading Attitude Inventory for Elementary
School Pupils by Lewis. Success uses the uncontrolled vocabulary of the
students; teaches each child a decoding method that helps him to read anj
word in the language; fosters the reading of library books; familiarizes th<
students with the different types of textbooks; and provides daily spelling
and creative writing experiences. The results of this study, tested by t-test

52

at the .05 level of significance indicated a significant difference between the
pretest and posttest scores on the reading inventory. The difference of the
fourth-grade scores was significant and positive; however the difference of
the fifth-grade scores was significant but negative. These findings indicate
that there are many factors which influence a student's attitudes toward
reading.

AN ATTITUDAL STUDY OF THE USE OF THE GEORGIA

CRITERION-REFERENCED TEST FOR PUPIL PLACEMENT

IN BREMEN, GEORGIA

Hildred L. Bell (EdS, Middles Grades Education, December, 1985)

The study was conducted to determine the opinions of third-, fourth-,
and sixth-grade students, the parents of these students, and the 36 teachers
at H. A. Jones Elementary School in Bremen, Georgia, concerning the use
of the Third Grade Criterion-Referenced Test as a Criterion for promotion
or retention. Three hypotheses were proposed. One hypothesis examined
the differences in the percentage of item responses among students,
parents, and teachers. Two null hypotheses were proposed which
compared responses of low achieving students with average and high
achieving students, and parents of low achieving students and high
parents of high achieving students. Data obtained through the responses
on a questionnaire were analyzed using chi square analysis. The .05 level of
significance was established as the level at which the null hypotheses would
be rejected.

The results indicated that there was no significant difference in opinion
between low achieving students when compared to average and high
achieving students. There was no significant difference in opinion between
parents of low achievers and parents of average and high achievers. In the
overall comparison of students, parents, and teachers, there was a high
percentage of agreement that the Third Grade Georgia Criterion-
Referenced Test should be the criterion for promotion or retention.

JOHN BARRINGTON WAIN: EXPERIMENTAL POET

Shirley Williams Bockford (MA, English, August, 1985)

John Barrington Wain, graduate of St. John's College, Oxford,
participant in "The Movement" of the 1 950's, is a widely recognized man of
letters, who was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1973-1978.
Although he has published works in all genres and is best known as a
novelist, his outlook on life and writing classifies him as a poet, and as such
he has published nine volumes of poetry. He is an experimental poet who
abhors being labeled. In his early poetry he experimented with tercets and
established verse forms, but his more recent efforts have been to develop a
"voice" that is at once public and private. He prefers short Anglo-Saxon

53

words and concrete imagery taken from ordinary experience. A strong
individualist and humanist, Wain is a stoic whose moral stance
communicates his belief in the realities of experience and his faith in the
power of poetry to lift man up.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EVALUATION INSTRUMENT
FOR MIDDLE GRADE ENGLISH COMPOSITIONS

Donna Daniela Bookhardt, EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to develop an effective evaluation
instrument for English composition in middle-grade classes and to train
teachers to use the instrument reliably.

Ideas and suggestions for this study were obtained from language arts
educators. Various assessment systems were researched with special
attention to the works of Paul B. Diederich, Charles R. Cooper, and Lee
Odell. The MSACS (Middle-School Analytic Composition Scale) was
developed and submitted to middle-grade language arts teachers for
survey response. The finished instrument was renamed the BSC
(Bookhardt Composition Scale). This scale includes two principal
sections, GENERAL FACTORS and CONTROL FACTORS, with nine
feature qualities for assessment. The scale has a four-point rating range
with low to high ratings of INADEQUATE, ACCEPTABLE,
NOTABLE, and OUTSTANDING.

Instrument reliability was tested in teacher-training sessions. Five
experienced language arts teachers representing grades six, seven, and
eight rated and rank-ordered sets of compositions in both monitored and
independent training sessions. Inter-rater reliability of W= .84 was reached
after three trials. Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance for agreement
among ranks was used for data treatment.

Conclusions from this study indicate that the BSC is a reliable analytic
scale appropraite for middle-school use and that language arts teachers
can be trained to use the instrument effectively. Specific recommendations
for further study include initiating a school-wide/ county-wide writing
program with an integrated assessment system including the BCS.

DOCTOR'S ORDERS: A STUDY OF WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE

EATING HABITS

Delores Morris Bradley (MA, Psychology, December, 1985)

The purpose of this study is to ascertain a measure of willingness or
unwillingness of a group of college students (N=42) and the general public
(N=44) to change their dietary practices. The survey form used in this study
is comprised of questions regarding eating habits requiring a Yes or No
answer.- Under each Yes or No answer a separate section of "reasons for the

54

response" is included. Additional questions have been formulated to allow
a view of certain health-related habits of the participants such as cigarette
smoking, exercise, drinking of alcoholic beverages and diet.

This study seeks to determine: (1) If the participant has ever been
advised by his/ her physician to change any poor eating habits he/ she may
have or go on a diet for any reason. (2) What would facilitate a change in
his/her diet, or make the process easier and, (3) if a change in eating
habits is necessary what factor would be most influential in effecting such
modification?

The most significant finding of this study is that a published study or
report will not impact as significantly on the willingness of an individual to
alter his/her poor eating habits as would the advice of a physician. That is,
the personal or family doctor is seen as an authority so far as influencing an
individual to change any non-nutritious or hazardous eating habits is
concerned. Moreover, this finding appears to hold without regard for the
amount of education one has.

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE ALLOCATED INSTRUCTIONAL
TIME FOR ONE CLASS OF FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Dallas Ann Dennis (EdS, Middle Grades Education, March, 1986)

The study was conducted to determine the relationship between
instructional time and noninstructional interruptions in one fourth grade
class in an elementary school in a suburban county. Nine research
questions were used in evaluating the research.

During the fourth week of school an observer was in the classroom daily
from 8:00 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. The observer recorded the length of all
interruptions in the appropriate categories on the prepared checklist.

The investigation revealed a loss of more than 51% of the allocated
instructional time due to interruptions. The category of interruptions
showing the greatest loss was transition with more than twelve percent.

CROSS-AGE TUTORING: A NEW ROLE FOR LAST-BORNS

AND ONLY CHILDREN AND ITS EFFECTS ON

READING ACHIEVEMENT

Evelyn B. Farr (EdS, Middle Grades Education, June, 1985)

The study was conducted to determine any effects of cross-age tutoring
on the reading achievement of fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade
Compensatory Education Reading Program students at North Fayette
Elementary School in Fayetteville, Georgia. Three hypotheses were
proposed. Data regarding grade, group, pretest and posttest scores for 32
students were analyzed using the t-Test for Independent Samples.

55

No significant differences in reading achievement were found for the
fourth-, fifth and sixth-grade students who tutored younger students as
compared to the fourth-, fifth and sixth-grade students who did not tutor
younger students.

THE EFFECT OF SELF-CONCEPT ON ACHIEVEMENT IN
TENTH GRADE REMEDIAL MATHEMATICS CLASSES

Claudia P. Harmon (EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1985)

This study was designed to determine what effect, if any, will efforts to
improve students' self-concepts have on the enhancement of the
mathematical skills needed to attain a passing score on the Georgia Basic
Skills Test (BST) in Mathematics.

Subjects used in this study were twenty-two students enrolled in a
mathematics course developed to enhance mathematics skills needed to
attain a passing score on the BST in Mathematics. During the seven-week
instructional period, the control group received remedial instruction in
basic mathematical skills as recommended by the Georgia Department of
Education, while the treatment group received the same remedial
instruction in an enrichment environment designed to enhance an
individual's self-concept. The treatment period for the experimental group
was a fifty-five minute class period which met daily.

For evaluation purposes, the March 20, 1984, administration of the
Georgia Basic Skills Test (BST) in Mathematics and a facsimile of the BST
were used as the pretest and the posttest, respectively, to assess the
achievement gains in mathematics. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was
administered as a pretest and posttest to assess any changes in self-concept,

A t-test was computed to ascertain any significant statistical differences
in achievement in mathematics for each group. A t-test was computed to
determine any significant differences in self-concept for each group.

The two null hypotheses stated that there would be no significant
differences between the two groups. The simple analysis of covariance was
computed to determine the correlation between the achievement gains in
mathematics and the gain in self-concepts.

There was no significant difference shown on achievement gain in
mathematics at the .05 level of significance for either group. There was no
significant difference shown in the gain in self-concepts at the .05 level of
significance in either group. There was no significant differences between
the pretest mean and the posttest mean within either the control group or
the treatment group as measured by the BST in Mathematics. There was
no significant difference between the pretest mean and the posttest mean
within either the control group or the treatment group as measured by the
RSES. There was no significant difference between the means of the

56

control group and the treatment group for the BST test. There was no
significant difference between the means of the control group and the
treatment group for the RSES. Therefore, the two null hypotheses were
accepted. A correlation between the achievement gains in mathematics
and the gain in self-concepts was not shown at the .05 level of significance.

THE EFFECTS OF THE USE OF SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

AND THE READING IS FUNDAMENTAL (RIF) PROGRAM ON

ATTITUDE TOWARD READING, ATTITUDE TOWARD SELF,

AND READING ACHIEVEMENT OF FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Edna W. Herndon (EdS, Middle Grades Education, June, 1985)

The study was conducted to see if the use of supplementary materials
and RIF with the basal reading series affected the students' attitude toward
reading, attitude toward self, and reading achievement of fifth-grade
students at Sand Hill School, Carrollton, Georgia. Four hypotheses were
proposed. Data regarding sex, reading achievement, and attitudes for 52
students were analyzed using the t test for dependent means to measure
gain.

No significant differences in achievement gain of boys and girls or of
better readers and poorer readers were found. There was also no
significant gain in attitude toward self during the research period. There
was, however, a significant gain in the students' attitude toward reading.

LOSING FAITH: THE EXPERIENCE OF LONELINESS

Donald Ray Ingram (MA, Psychology, March, 1986)

Loneliness begins when a significant other rejects a feeling that the
lonely individual has. The lonely individual's feelings are treated as though
they don't matter; they are not important. When John went to a dance
place, the Fifty-fourth Aeorospot, he felt lonely. He didn't matter to
anyone there. He said, "1 don't feel special." If John had not expected
someone to care for his feelings in this place, he would not have been
lonely, but he expected to be someone special to someone there; and he was
lonely. In other experiences, a similar initial feeling of rejection develops.
Robbin feels left out, and Mary and Kathy feel rejected. In each of these
cases there is a situation in which the individual's feelings are treated
poorly but this alone does not make him/her lonely. It is the secret
expectation that the significant other will provide an unfulfilled need, but
the significant other cannot or will not provide it. The lonely individual is
shy about asserting his/ her need because it is experienced as shameful. The
participant emerges from loneliness to the degree that he/she takes
responsibility for the need, rather than manipulating someone else into
taking care of it. The method is descriptive and phenomenological.

57

A READING ACHIEVEMENT COMPARISON OF CHAPTER I

STUDENTS USING A CHILDREN'S LITERATURE APPROACH

AND STUDENTS USING A BASIC SKILLS APPROACH

Mary J. Jarrell (EdS, Reading, June, 1985)

This study was done to determine if sixth-grade students in a Chapter 1
reading class who listened to children's literature read aloud every day and
then pariticpated in Sustained Silent Reading would show as much gain in
reading comprehension as would those sixth graders who were not read to
but who used a structured basic skills approach to reading. Ten sixth-grade
Chapter I students participated in this study, five in the experimental
group and five in the control group. The study lasted for 12 weeks from
September to December. The experimental group listened to a total of five
books during that time, with each day's reading being prefaced by a short
discussion of the previous day's reading. New vocabulary was introduced
at the beginning of a book and as encountered in the reading. Various
comprehension questions were discussed as the reading progressed. Some
creative writing was done upon completion of a book. In addition to the
daily 30 minute read-aloud sessions, students in the experimental group
participated for 15 minutes in Sustained Silent Reading to give them time
to practice reading independently. Class sessions totaled 45 minutes.
Students in the control group also met for 45 minutes daily. They worked
in a very structured format, after having skills such as sequencing, main
idea, and drawing conclusions introduced in a group, completing
workbook pages, worksheets, and task cards. Students were given the
Metropolitan Reading Test, Form J, as a pre-test in September, and
Metropolitan Form K, in December. A reading comprehension grade
equivalency score was obtained on both the pre- and post-tests. The null
hypothesis for the study stated that there would be no significant difference
in reading comprehension scores as measured by the Metropolitan
Reading Test of those sixth-graders using the Children's Literature
Approach and those students using the Basic Skills Approach. The
hypothesis was tested using a t-test at the .05 level of significance and was
rejected with a t-test value of -2.81 with 8 degrees of freedom. The Basic
Skills Group, the control group, made significantly more reading
comprehension gain, with a mean gain score of .86. The mean score of the
experimental group was .00.

FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN:
A DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

Melinda Jean Lafferty (MA, Psychology, August, 1985)

Past research on male/ female friendships has tended to focus on the
quantifiable aspects of these relationships with little attention being given
to the experience as it is lived by the people involved. The present study was

58

conducted as an effort to explicate the lived meaning of freindship between
men and women in a way that a new and truer perspective of the
phenomenon could be gained. There was no hypothesis to be tested, no
pre-conceived definitions or categories used.

The subjects were three men and three women who volunteered to
participate. They were initially asked to write a description of a meaningful
relationship with a member of the other gender and later, were interviewed
in order to elaborate on and clarify their original description.

Data analysis proceeded along the guidelines of the phenomenological
method as suggested by Wertz (1983). Within each individual transcribed
interview certain themes were realized. Each transcript was compared, one
to the other, so as to understand how the individual cases were
representative of an integrated whole.

While there were idiosyncratic features in the individual descriptions, it
was found that some generalizations could be made. The lived meaning of
trust, respect, the sharing of thoughts, feelings and activities, and the
advantage of broadened life perspective are described.

A COMPARISON OF SEXIST TRENDS IN CHILDREN'S

LITERATURE IN THE NEWBERY AWARD WINNERS

FROM 1965-1969 amd 1980-1984

Sharon W. Loner (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to find if there was a change in sexist
content in the Newbery Award winners. The study used exclusively the
award winners from 1965-1969 and 1980-1984.

All ten books used in this study were read by the researcher. A talley was
kept on each book to gather the following data: (a) the number of female
characters, (b) the number of male characters assuming passive roles, (c)
the number of males portrayed in illustrations, (d) the number of male
main characters, and (e) the overall number of females in the books. To
determine statistical difference, chi-square analysis was used.

Five research hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance.
There was a mixture of outcomes among the hypotheses. The number of
female characters in the books did increase significantly from 1965-1969 to
1980-1984. This was the only research hypotheses not rejected.

The number of male characters assuming passive roles did not increase
significantly from 1965-1969 to 1980-1984. The number of males in
illustrations did not decrease significantly from 1965-1969 to 1980-1984.
There was also no significant change in the number of male main
characters between the two groups of years. Finally, there did not prove to
be significant change in the overall number of females in the Newbery
Award winners from 1965-1969 to 1980-1984.

59

From this study, it was concluded that, except for the significant change
in the number of female characters, there was actually little change in sexist
trends in the Newbery Award winners from the 1960's to the 1980's.

The information studied leads to a recommendation that authors,
publishers, and educators must do more to alleviate sex-biased content in
children's literature. While some of the results showed a movement toward
equalization in the portrayal of males and females, there was still room for
improvement.

SEX DIFFERENCES IN MATHEMATICAL PERFORMANCE
OF SEVENTH- AND EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Blanche E. McElfresh (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1985)

This study was designed to determine if there is a significant difference of
mathematical performance between males and females. A comparison was
made on grades given at the end of each grading period and achievement
demonstrated on The California Achievement Test and The Georgia
Criterion Referenced Test.

Subjects used in this study were seventh- and eighth-grade students from
the Griffin-Spalding County School System in Griffin, Georgia. The total
population from which the sample was selected included 1,521 students.
Special Education students were excluded from the study.

Each seventh-grade student was given The California Achievement Test
and each eighth-grade student was given The Georgia Criterion
Referenced Test during the month of March. Grades for the three grading
periods were collected and assigned quality points. The test scores and
quality points were statistically analyzed by the analysis of variance test for
the purposes of this study.

The first, second, third, and fourth null hypotheses, which dealt with
grades, computational skills, application skills, and overall achievement in
mathematics of seventh-grade students, were rejected. The fifth and sixth
null hypotheses, which dealt with grades and overall achievement in
mathematics of eighth-grade students, were not rejected.

The results of the data of this study indicated that girls are superior in
mathematical performance in the seventh- and eighth-grade in
computation, application, overall achievement, and grades in
mathematics. The seventh-grade girls were significantly higher than boys in
mathematical performance in this study, however, in the eighth-grade the
girls were superior to boys but not at a significant level.

60

THE EFFECTS OF TEMPERATURE ON THE MATING

BEHAVIOR AND REPRODUCTION OF SELECTED

GENOTYPES OF D. MELANNOGASTER

Boniface Ude-Onyebuchi Okeke (MS, Biology, August, 1985)

This study was designed to provide information relative to changes in
the mating behavior and the resultant reproduction, that may be triggered,
by subjecting selected stocks of D. melanogaster to different constant
temperature levels.

Six mutant genotypes were selected on the basis of their known effect on
mating behavior. A wild type strain (Oregon R) was used as a control and
also the wild type males were mated with females of each of the mutant
genotypes.

Flies were removed from the stock vials after eclosion and separated
according to sex. They were then placed in vials containing six males or six
females of the same genotype. A male and female pair of each genotype
was left at room temperature while the others were placed in controlled
temperature chambers set at 20 C, 22 C, 24 C, 26 C, 28 C, and 30 C, for
twenty-four hours. At the end of this period five Oregon R males were
placed in the vials with the five mutant females and the vials placed back in
their respective chambers. The sixth female mutant fly and a male Oregon
R fly were placed on a grid in a petri dish and mating behavior was
observed for a period of thirty minutes. After thirty hours the males and
females were shaken from the mating vials and discarded. After nine days
the offspring were removed from the vials, separated by sex and counted.
The results indicate that different temperatures have an effect on mating
overtures, especially on the time elapsing between the introduction of the
male into the courting chamber and the male beginning his courtship.
Temperature has a decided effect on the number of offspring produced.
There was a gradual increase in the number of offspring from 20 C to 26 C
and a decrease from this peak to 30 C. More offspring were born at 20 C
than at 30 C. Statistical analysis of the experimental data by using the
SASS Program for analysis of variance and F test, with further
verification of the validity of the F test using Duncan's multiple range test,
provided the basis for rejecting the null hypotheses, namely that
temperature and genotype do not effect mating behavior and reproduction
in D. melanogaster. Duncan's test showed some interesting relationships
between and among the flies as regards mating behavior and reproduction.
Pearson's correlation coefficient gave a high positive correlation for the
ratio of male to female offspring produced for both temperature and
mating behavior.

61

A COMPARISON STUDY OF A CAI TUTORIAL PROGRAM AND

A CAI DISCOVERY PROGRAM TO TEACH ADDITION AND

SUBTRACTION OF DIRECTED NUMBERS TO LOW ABILITY

SECONDARY MATHEMATICS STUDENTS

Gary E. Smith (EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to determine for a group of low ability
mathematics students whether there was a difference in achievement of
students being taught addition and subtraction of directed numbers by a
computer-assisted instruction (CAI) tutorial program as compated to a
CAI discovery program.

It was hypothesized that students taught by the CAI tutorial program
would achieve at the same level as would students taught by the CAI
discovery program. It was also hypothesized that the number of students
exhibiting the ability to verbalize the rules for addition and subtraction of
directed numbers would not be significantly different for the two groups.

The subjects for this study were 64 tenth and eleventh grade students
enrolled in three general math classes at McEachern High School, Powder
Springs, Georgia. Each class was randomly assigned to one of three
treatment groups. The only difference in the treatment of the three groups
was that one group was taught by a CAI tutorial program, the second
group was taught by a CAI discovery program while a third group (control
group) received regular classroom instruction without any computer
instruction.

An analysis of vaiance on the raw scores of the general math test from
the Scott Foresman Comprehension Assessment Program was used to
determine whether the three groups were matched according to their
general mathematics abilities. Two forms of an addition-subtraction test
of directed numbers, consisting of 20 addition and 20 subtraction
problems, were used for this study. A pretest and a posttest were given and
a subtraction and addition raw score for both tests was obtained. A t-test
for each group was conducted for the pretest and posttest means to
determine if any significant learning occured as a result of the training
sessions.

To test the first hypothesis, the difference in the pretest and the posttest
scores for both addition and subtraction was obtained and an analysis of
variance for the three groups was used to test for any significant difference
in achievement gains. The level of significance was set at the .05 level of
condidence. To test the second hypothesis, each subject was asked to write
down the rules for adding and subtracting directed numbers. These two
rules were solicited both prior to the training sessions and after the training
sessions. To test for any significant difference in the number of subjects
able to verbalize these rules before and after the treatment a Chi Square
was used.

62

There was no significant difference between the computer-assisted
instruction groups with respect to achievement on both addition and
subtraction of directed numbers. The only significant difference was
between the computer-assisted tutorial group and the control group for
achievement gains in subtraction. No significant difference was found
between the subjects' abilities to verbalize rules before or after the
training sessions. A discussion of the results was made and
recommendations as to the use of computer-assisted instruction in the
classroom were made.

EFFECTS OF MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT ON ACADEMIC
ACHIEVEMENT OF FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS

Donna June Smith Stanford (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August,

1985)

The purpose of this study was to determine what effect, if any, maternal
employment has on the academic achievement of fourth-grade students at
Bowdon Elementary School in Bowdon, Georgia. Seven hypotheses were
stated. Data regarding race, sex, maternal employment status,
professional maternal employment and non-professional maternal
employment status, low socio-economic level and above low socio-
economic level, and achievement scores in reading and mathematics as
indicated on the California Achievement Test were collected. Using the
Analysis of Variance, these data for 130 students were analyzed.

There was no significant difference between the academic achievement
scores of students whose mothers were employed and the students whose
mothers were not employed. Also, no significant differences in academic
achievement scores were found when comparing male students, black
students, and white students regarding their mothers' employment status.
However, there was a significant difference between the female students'
mathematics achievement scores in regard to maternal employment.
Furthermore, there were significant differences in achievement scores of
students with professionally employed mothers and non-professionally
employed mothers. Also, there were significant difference in achievement
scores of students from a low socio-economic status and students from
above a low socio-economic status.

CORRELATING THE TEACHING OF GEORGIA AND
UNITED STATES HISTORY-A SURVEY

Zan S tailings Steadham (EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1985)

The problem of this study was to determine the best method for teaching
Georgia history should the course be taught as a discrete subject or
correlated with United States history? Furthermore, the problem was to

63

see what method of teaching Georgia history was being used throught
Georgia in the various local school systems.

The review of related literature clearly pointed to the need to correlate
the teaching of United States and state histories to make national history
more initmate and state history more realistic in relation to the state
history's true place in the nation and region. This correlated course should
be taught on the secondary level so that time in the lower grades could be
used for the basics. However, it should not be a requirement for graduation
due to the mobility of our population. This teaching method was upheld by
the Georgia's basic curriculum which stated that Georgia history and
studies should be taught in the eighth grade and should teach the
interdependence of United States and Georgia political systems, history,
and culture.

The results of the survey of the school systems of Georgia showed that
the eighth grade was the grade of choice for teaching Georgia studies
(79%). This put Georgia studies in the secondary level without making it a
graduation requirement. Sixty-three percent of the systems surveyed did
not include United States history for at least one half of their class leading
to the conclusion that the two studies were not being correlated. Seventy-
six percent of the surveyed systems did state that United States history
should be included in the Georgia studies classes because it made Georgia
studies easier for students to learn.

This study recommends that Georgia studies should be correlated with
United States history in order to make Georgia studies more relevant,
easier to understand, and realistically placed in its true perspective.
Placement of this class in the eighth grade answered the need of including
this important subject on the secondary level without making it a
graduation requirement. Teaching United States history at an earlier
grade, as in the seventh for example, does make it possible to correlate the
two subjects sufficiently, United States history and Georgia studies should
be correlated because, as shown by the literature research, the author's
experience, and the school systems surveyed, students acquire a better
understanding of both areas of study.

A STUDY OF THE RECREATIONAL READING HABITS
OF SIXTH-GRADE STUDENTS AT
BOWDON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Cathy W. Steed (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1985)

This study proposed to evaluate the recreational reading habits of the
sixth grade students at Bowdon Elementary School. Reading habits were
analyzed based on sex and by fiction or non-fiction book choices reported
by the students.

64

The subjects of the study were students in the sixth grade at Bowdon
Elementary School, Carroll County, Georgia for the 1984-1985 school
year. There were 88 participants in the study.

Students completed a questionnaire and a reading interest inventory.
Information asked for included how many books read, why they read a
book (when they read for pleasure), and what kinds of books (fiction or
non-fiction) they chose when they read for pleasure.

Data were compiled and sent to the West Georgia College Computer
Center to be analyzed. The .05 level of significance was the criterion
selected to reject the null hypotheses.

Hypothesis one stated there would be no significant difference in the
number of fiction books chosen by boys and chosen by girls. The t ratio
comparing the two means was -.55, d.f. (86), p=59. Hypothesis one was not
rejected as the data showed there was no significant difference in the
number of fiction books chosen by boys and chosen by girls.

Hypothesis two stated there would be no significant difference in the
number of non-fiction books chosen by boys and chosen by girls. The t
ratio comparing the two means was .35, d.f. (86), p-J2. Hypothesis two
was not rejected as there was no significant difference in the number of
non-fiction books chosen by boys and chosen by girls.

The third hypothesis stated there would be no significant relationship
between sex and the categories of frequency of books reported read.
Hypothesis three was not rejected as the chi square value for the
comparison was x 2 = 10.55, d.f. (5) with .06 significance which shows no
significant relationship.

This study does not support previous research on the subject (Tooze,
1957; Pilgrim & McAllister, 1968; Carlsen, 1980; Feeley, 1982). Research
has found that boys tend to choose non-fiction while girls choose fiction.
Girls generally read more than boys. In this study, boys and girls were
found to be more alike than different in their reading habits and
preferences.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ACHIEVEMENT OF

ELEVENTH-GRADE GEOMETRY IN A COURSE OF STUDY

WITH AND WITHOUT A LOGIC UNIT

Talmadge Ray Tucker, Jr. (EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether teaching a unit of
logic would cause a difference in the achievement levels of geometry
students on a standardized geometry test.

It was hypothesized that there would be no difference in the level of
achievement in geometry in two classes of geometry students, if one class

65

was taught a unit of logic and the other class was not taught a unit of logic.

The subjects were in two intact geometry classes at Calhoun High School
in Calhoun, Georgia. These clases included 28 eleventh-grade students.
The treatment was that one class was taught a unit of logic and the other
class was not.

The Comprehensive Assessment Program, High School Subject Tests,
Geometry was used in the study as both the pretest and the posttest and
served as the dependent variable. The posttest data were analyzed using the
two way analysis of covariance to test the null hypothesis at the .05 level of
significance.

It was concluded that geometry students would achieve at the same level
whether they had the logic unit or not.

THE EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

INSTRUCTION ON THE ATTITUDES OF FOURTH-GRADE

STUDENTS TOWARD THE ENVIRONMENT

Karen K. Turner (EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to determine if a more positive attitude
exists in students who have received 10 hours of planned environmental
instruction than in students who have not received instruction in
environmental topics. The relationship of attitude toward environmental
education in relation to sex and achievement in science was also evaluated.

The population of the study consisted of 50 fourth-grade students in two
self-contained classrooms at Brookwood Elementary School in Dalton,
Georgia during the 1984-1985 school year. The control group consisted of
25 students, and the experimental group contained 25 students.

The test used to collect data for the study was an environmental
education survey designed for fourth-grade students by the investigator.
The statistic used to test the null hypotheses was the analysis of variance.
The level at which the null hypotheses would be rejected was set at .05.

The independent variables were the type of group (control or
experimental), achievement in science, and the sex of the subjects. There
was a significant difference between the attitude test scores in relation to
the groups; therefore, hypothesis one was rejected in favor of a more
positive attitude toward the environment of the students in the
experimental group. There was no significant difference between the
scores on the test in relation to achievement in science and the sex of the
subjects.

66

THE SELF-CONCEPT ON THE GIFTED STUDENT IN

GRADES SEVEN AND EIGHT AT

RINGGOLD JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Ralph Wallin, Jr. (EdS, Middle Grades Education, March, 1986)

This study was designed to investigate the significant effects of
participation in an enrichment program on self-concept of gifted students
in grades seven and eight at Ringgold Junior High School.

The subjects used in this study were 44 students in grades seven and eight.
A group of 22 high achieving students, not in an enrichment class,
composed the control group. The experimental group was composed of 22
students enrolled in an enrichment program. The subjects of both groups
were similar in age, sex, and socio-economic status, grade in school, and
scored 135 or above on the Slossen Intelligence Test.

The self-concept test used for this study was the Piers-Harris Self-
concept Scale. The test was administered in January, 1986.

The t-test was uded to analyze the data and ther null hypotheses were not
rejected at the .05 level of significance.

Results from the analysis showed that there was no significant difference
in self-concept scores between the students in the enrichment class and the
high achieving students not in the enrichment class. There was no
significant difference in self-concept scores with regard to sex within the
experimental group. The results showed there was no significant difference
between the self-concept scores of those students just beginning this school
year and those students who participated in the enrichment program the
year before. These statistics imply that further research should be
conducted with both the experimental and control groups to determine if
the subjects' self-concept scores were valid.

A COMPARISON OF THE ACHIEVEMENT OF STUDENTS

TAUGHT WITH THE SUCCESS IN READING AND WRITING

PROGRAM AND STUDENTS TAUGHT WITH THE

BASAL READING PROGRAM

Esther Walston (EdS, Early Childhood Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to compare the achievement of students
taught with the Houghton-Mifflin Reading Program, a traditional basal,
and the students taught with the Success in Reading and Writing Program,
an alternative to the basal.

The subjects of this study were the 43 third-grade students at Fourth
Ward Elementary School in Griffin, Georgia. The control and
experimental group were considered equal in ability.

67

The control group was taught as prescribed by the Houghton-Mifflin
Reading Program. Students were grouped for daily reading lessons
according to the reading level completed in the second grade. Other
language arts skills were taught as separate lessons from locally adopted
texts. The experimental group was taught the full scope of language arts
with the Success in Reading and Writing Program. Students were taught
as a whole class with the students responding according to their ability.
The teacher worked with individuals and small groups as the need arose.

In the fall and again in the Spring, the California Achievement Test, the
Estes Attitude Test and a writing assignment were administered to both
classes. One week out of each month, a tally was taken of the number of
books checked out of the school library by students from both classes.

An analysis of covariance was used to test the null hypotheses at the .05
level of significance. No significant difference was found in the reading
achievement, attitude of reading or language expression of the students in
both the control and experimental groups. There was, however, a
significant difference between the groups in the number of books checked
out of the school library. It was found that students in the experimental
group checked out a significantly greater amount of books than students in
the control group.

It is recommended that a similar study be conducted comparing students
taught with the Success in Reading and Writing Program in grades K.-6
and students taught with a basal in grades K.-6 to see if the results would be
similar.

68

B.E. POWELL

ARTICLES:

"The May 30, 1984, Annular Eclipse in Georgia," B.E. Powell, et al.,
Georgia Journal of Science, 43, 82 (1985).

"Atlantans and Halley's Comet in 1910," B.E. Powell, West Georgia
College Review; XVII, 5 (1985).

"Newspaper Accounts of Halley's Comet in 1910 in Georgia," B.E. Powell,
Georgia Journal of Science, 43, 99 (1985)

"A Halley Scrapbook: What We Did in 1910," B.E. Powell, Astronomy,
14, 24 (March, 1986).

"Halley's Comet, 1910 and 1986," B.E. Powell, The Georgia Science
Teacher, XXV 10, Number II (1986).

PUBLISHED ABSTRACTS:

"Physics and Astronomy Workshops-Summer, 1984," B.E. Powell and
Lucille Garmon, Georgia Journal of Science, 43, 34 (April, 1985).

"The May 30, 1984 Solar Eclipse," B.E. Powell, David Edwards, and
Doug Nunnally, Georgia Journal of Science, 43, 36 (April, 1985).

"NSF Science Institute of 1984," Lucille B. Garmon, Bobby E. Powell,
and Latha Barnes, Georgia Journal of Science, 43, 46 (April, 1985).

69

n '

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

REVIEW

Published by

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

A Unit of the University System of Georgia
CARROLLTON, GEORGIA

WEST CEORCIA COLLEGE

Volume XIX

...

/ I" I ) \

PERIODICALS- DEPT
Irvine
'" ^ROLLTON, GE

May, 1987

WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

REVIEW

Volume XIX May, 1987

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Poet's Gift to Radio: Archibald MacLeisrfs
The Fall of the City
by Glenn D. Novak 1

Bukowski's Imagist Roots

b v Jimmie Cain 10

Greed is Destroying Our World
A Human Science Study
by James J. Barrel! and Peter W. Lueders 18

Shock'un A 'Son Gout: Concept Art at
West Georgia College
bv Dorothy Joiner 29

Abstracts of Master's Theses and Specialist

in Education Projects 35

Copyright 1987, West Georgia College
Printed in the USA

Published by
WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

Maurice K. Townsend, President
John T. Lewis III, Vice President and Dean of Faculties

Learning Resources Committee
George McNinch, Chairman

Charles Beard Spencer Hamada

Benjamin deMayo Lewis Larson

Jospeh Doldan Joseph H. McGraw

C. H. Edwards Dwight Romanovicz

Leticia Ekhaml Fred Parsons

Jimmy C. Stokes, Editor
Martha A. Saunders, Associate Editor
Marc J. LaFountain, Assistant Editor

The purpose of this publication is to provide encouragement for faculty
research and to make available results of such activity. The Review,
published annually, accepts original scholarly work and creative writing.
West Georgia College assumes no responsibility for contributor's views.
The style guide is MLA Handbook, Second Edition. Although the Review
is primarily a medium for the faculty of West Georgia College, other
sources are invited.

An annual Bibliography includes doctoral dissertations, major recitals
and major exhibits. Theses and articles in progress or accepted are not
listed. A faculty member's initial listing is comprehensive and appears in
the issue of the year of his employment. The abstracts of all master's theses
and educational specialists projects written at West Georgia College are
included as they are awarded.

A POET'S GIFT TO RADIO:
ARCHIBALD MACLEISHS THE FALL OF THE CITY

by Glenn D. Novak*

American radio drama of the 1930's was not, in general, experimental or
innovative. Governed by economic laws similar to those affecting
television in the '80's, the typical radio drama of fifty years ago usually
consisted of comedy series, mystery programs, adventures and romances,
or radio adaptations of successful stage plays or films. Such fare was
harmless, entertaining and, above all, immensely popular. Commercial
advertisers were eager to sponsor such programs, and audiences were built
up over time who came to expect familiar stories and only slightly varying
themes. Radical experimentation with either the medium or the message
was not one of the majorcharacteristicsofthe sponsored radio program of
the 30's.

It was, rather, the Columbia Workshop which provided the
opportunities for writers and directors to diverge from the more
established formats of the time. Formed in 1936 by W. B. Lewis, head of
the program division at CBS at the time, the Workshop encouraged the
writing and production of creative, non-traditional radio drama (Coulter
vi). Irving Reis became the director of the CBS sustaining enterprise. His
own innovative strips among them, The Half Pint Flask, St. Louis Blues,
and Meridian 7-1212 became models of thematic audacity and technical
experimentation. Under his leadership, the Columbia Workshop
flourished and grew in respect among both general public and prominent
authors. Only a little more than a year after its inception, one writer called
the Columbia Workshop "the most important laboratory in America for
artistic and technical research in radio drama" (Hood 21). Douglas
Coulter, Assistant Director of Broadcasts for CBS during the late 30's,
explained the wide variety of programs broadcast by the Workshop:

Except for about a dozen commissioned scripts, the Workshop
has chosen from unsolicited scripts, producing those which seem
worthwhile. There are no restrictions as to form, content,
treatment, or subject matter; anything goes, as long as it is in good
taste and makes a good story, (xv)

Among the names of some of America's finest writers was the
contributor of one of the Workshop's most successful plays. His name was
Archibald MacLeish, and his play was The Fall of the City. This paper
discusses the importance of the play to the development of radio drama,
and analyzes briefly some of its internal characteristics which might
account for its success and its influence.

* Assistant Professor oj Mass Communication, West Georgia College

1

The Poet's Perfect Audience

Archibald MacLeish is best known, of course, not as a radio dramatist
but as a poet. A well-educated man (Yale, Harvard) who had served as a
captain in the U. S. Army during World War I, MacLeish soon gave up a
successful law practice to turn his attention completely to the field of
poetry, long his avocation and first love. After a period of six years spent in
Europe (1923-28), MacLeish returned to the United States, an
acknowledged poet whose skill was widely admired (Smith 6). During the
years to follow, he would create some of the world's most beautiful and
memorable poetry: New Found Land, Streets in the Moon, Frescoes for
Mr. Rockefeller's City, Conquistador.

The Fall of the City marked MacLeish's first attempt at writing a radio
drama. Panic, a verse play for the stage, written in 1935, had proved a
testing ground for MacLeish's ability to convey a message written in poetry
but carried to an audience via dramatic presentation as opposed to the
written work. Regarding the attraction of the former method, MacLeish
asked rhetorically, "What poet ever lived who was really satisfied with
writing the thin little books to lie on the front parlor tables?" (MacLeish
ix).

MacLeish took about six months to write The Fall of the City, beginning
in the summer of 1936. His reasons for writing the play were twofold: (1)
He wanted to express to the public a theme which he felt was particularly
relevant to the times, a theme that concerned itself with tyranny, resistance,
and the price of liberty; (2) He wished to set an example for other writers,
poets and non-poets, in his use of verse and medium. He hoped that the
production of The Fall of the City would serve as an incentive to others
who might be reluctant to attempt the writing of a verse play for radio.

In the foreword to his play, MacLeish explained at some length his
reasons for believing that radio was the ideal medium for the poet. Of
primary importance was the fact that there existed on radio no
competition to the spoken word. Unlike the theatre audience, the radio
audience has no stimulation of the other senses which could in any way
diminish the power of the poetry. In an insightful and colorful example
from the realm of Wagnerian opera, MacLeish -nade his point:

Over the radio verse has no visual presence to compete with. Only
the ear is engaged and the ear is already half poet. It believes at
once: creates and believes. It is the eye which is the realist. It is the
eye which must fit everything together, must see everything before
and behind. It is the eye and not the ear which refuses to believe in
the lovely girlhood of a middle-aged soprano who sings Isolde, or
the delicate, water-troubling slenderness of the three fat Rhine
maidens ridiculously paddling at the ends of three steel ropes.
With the eye closed or staring at nothing verse has every power

over the ear. The ear accepts, accepts and believes, accepts and
creates. The ear is the poet's perfect audience, his only true
audience. And it is radio and only radio which can give him public
access to this perfect friend, (x)

Another reason for the poet to write verse expressly for radio rested in
the fact that the "radio announcer" character, a figure quite normal and
acceptable to radio audiences, provided the ideal vehicle to convey
information, exposition, or opinion regarding the action of the play. He
functioned much like the Greek chorus, but without the stylization or
rigidity of the latter, allowing natural transitions without obscuring
meaning or locale. On this second point at least one radio writer chose to
differ with MacLeish, calling the narrator a "characteristic wind-bag," and
asking, with a device like this, "Why bother to create a dramatic scene to
carry your story? ... It is frightfully poor writing at best" (Alexander).

Other reasons which MacLeish advanced concerning the radio poet
consisted of the following: the recent suspension of the WPA experimental
theatre had left a void in the production of innovative drama; also, because
radio production costs were lower, more risks could be taken in the trial of
new ideas and techniques, quite unlike the vested commercial interests
governing Broadway; finally, radio provided a much larger audience for
the poet, even though this audience was neither immediate nor capable of
generating instant feedback. This "infinitely greater" audience was a key
factor in MacLeishs enthusiasm for the medium, a consideration which
"alone should deeply move the American poet whose present tragedy is his
isolation from any audience vigorous enough to demand his strongest
work" (MacLeish xiii).

There were, of course, certain reservations, and MacLeish pointed these
out as well. A radio play should not exceed thirty minutes; beyond that, it
was very difficult to hold the listener. Obscurity was to be avoided. "To do
the trick bold and legible themes must be used," MacLeish stated. "Poetry
to be understood must be simple and clear, and that is the keynote of
success in writing for the air"(Dunlap "Radio Challenges").

The Whole Square is Faces

MacLeish practiced what he had been preaching. While The Fall of the
City contains obvious metaphorical devices, events which are not entirely
unambiguous, and speeches best described as cryptic at times, the poetry is
always simple and clear, the theme always bold and legible. The message is
clear yet inviting of our own special interpretations. This poetry, like all
good poetry, resists a capsule summary in a mundane prose more suitable
to a newspaper story. If we are not always certain what exactly is meant by
a phrase or a speech, it is because there is no exact meaning that we should
attach to it. Part of the beauty of the poetry and the power of the drama lies
in the fact that we, the listeners (or the readers), are free to interpret the

symbols as we see fit. MacLeish has given us the story; we are to draw the
conclusions.

The story itself may be summarized without difficulty; the effect of
hearing the actual broadcast can only be imagined. The play opens on a
large public square in an unnamed city. A large crowd has assembled, and
we, the audience, are to receive reports on what is happening through the
radio announcer, situated off to one side of the action, describing to us
what he sees:

Voice of the Announcer:

We are here on the central plaza.

We are well off to the eastward edge.

There is a kind of terrace over the crowd here.

It is precisely four minutes to twelve.

The crowd is enormous: there might be ten thousand:

There might be more: the whole square is faces. (MacLeish 4)
It is through the announcer and his "on-site" microphone that the entire
proceedings of the play are made known to us. We learn that the
excitement of the large crowd is due to the fact that at noon on the past
three days a dead woman has risen from her grave and appeared to the
people. Today they expect her to reappear and perhaps to speak. They are
not disappointed:

Voice of the Dead Woman:

Death is young in me to fear!

My dress is kept still in the press in my bedchamber:

No one has broken the dish of the dead woman.

Nevertheless I must speak painfully:

I am to stand here in the sun and speak:

The city of masterless men

Will take a master.

There will be shouting then:

Blood after! (7)
This announcement results in panic. Soon a messenger arrives with word
that a conqueror has landed on the nearby coast, advancing toward the
city. The resulting frenzy is temporarily subdued by the subtle arguments
of the pacifist orator, urging the people to follow a nonviolent course to
foil the invader:

Voice of the Orator:
Force is a greater enemy that this conqueror
A treacherous weapon.
Nevertheless my friends there is a weapon!
Weakness conquers!
Against chainlessness who breaks?

Against wall-lessness who vaults?

Against forcelessness who forces? (15)
Soon thereafter a second messenger arrives with a progress report on the
conqueror who, we learn, requires no resistance; he brings with him his own
enemy. Panic again ensues. The priests of the city then attempt to persuade
the people to turn to their gods, and an uncontrolled religious ritual begins;
a young girl is almost sacrificed in the excited confusion. A General
interrupts the proceedings with a strong appeal to the people to resist the
invader:

Voice of the General:

You! Are you free? Will you fight?

There are still inches for fighting!

There is still a niche in the streets!

You can stand on the stairs and meet him!

You can hold in the dark of a hall!

You can die!

or your children will crawl for it! (28)
The General's advice is not heeded, and the people run wildly throughout
the square, destroying their weapons and shouting:

Voices of Citizens:

Masterless men must take a master!

Order must master us!

Freedom's for fools: Force is the certainty!

Freedom has eaten our strength and corrupted our virtues!

Men must be ruled!

Fools must be mastered!

Rigor and fast will restore us our dignity!

Chains will be liberty! (30)
The conqueror finally appears, clothed entirely in armor. The people
cower at his feet, trembling, wretched, as he lifts the visor on his helmet.
Only the announcer sees the terrible truth of the situation:

Voice of the Announcer:

There's no one at all! . . . No one! . . . The helmet is hollow!

They don't see! They lie on the paving. They lie in the burnt spears:

The ashes of arrows. They lie there . . .

They don't see or they won't see. They are silent. . . . (32)
It is the announcer, in the tradition of the Greek chorus, who states the
theme of the drama at this point:

The people invent their oppressors: they wish to believe in them.

They wish to be free of their freedom: released from their liberty:

The long labor of liberty ended!

They lie there! (32)

When the crowd begins shouting with happiness over their "new freedom,"
the announcer's final words ring out the close of the play: "The city has
fallen" (33).

Signs and Symbols

In his probing analysis of The Fall of the City, L. C. Hood discusses the
central theme and the author's use of the parable to convey a message:

What the author has to say in this parable of ancient times in
which the present is mirrored by the past is to provide an
interpretation of what is happening to a world which feels itself
being doomed by the spread of dictatorships. He has said what he
has to say in poetry that apparently ooscures his theme but really
reduces the complexity of the present age to symbols which when
examined are more simple and more intense that the real thing.
(22)

The characters are all highly symbolic. The Conqueror represents
antidemocratic influences apparently coming from without (and typified
by the gradual Nazification of Western Europe at the time). The Dead
Woman is a symbol of those who prophesy that democracy is doomed. The
Liberal Orator represents all those who claim that not force but more
tolerance will lead humanity to victory over its oppressors. It is the Crowd
which is the tragic hero and central focus of the play.

High School Students and Army Trucks

The Fall of the City aired at 7:00 p.m., EST, on Sunday, April 1 1, 1937,
on the CBS radio network, WABC, New York. This time slot on that
particular evening was occupied by Jack Benny (WEAF), Forum Hour
( WOR), Symphony Concert ( WNYC), and News (WMCA). The play was
preceded on WABC by the Rubinoff Orchestra at 6:30 and followed at 7:30
by Phil Baker, comedian (Radio Schedule).

The part of the announcer was played by Orson Welles, personally
recruited earlier for the part by director Irving Reis. The morning of the
broadcast. Burgess Meredith had walked into the CBS studios and had
asked for a part in the play: he was given the role of the Pacifist Orator
("Fall"). House Jameson played the studio director who announced the
story and set the locale for the radio announcer to take over. The dead
woman was played by Adelaide Klein, the Priest by Edgar Stehli, and the
General by William Pringle.

The "crowd" consisted of students from New York University and
several New Jersey high schools, along with boys' club members. They
numbered about two hundred but were made to sound like ten thousand
by the process of recording their sounds earlier in the day and then playing
them back later through large loudspeakers during the actual
performance, at which time these same extras repeated their vocalizations.

6

The recordings formed a second "layer" of sound behind the live noises
being generated during the broadcast (Dunlap "The Fall of the City").

These sound effects were made all the more realistic by the natural
ambience of the radio stage. The broadcast took place from the drill hall of
the Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue and 66th Street in New
York City. The size of the place was ideal for the large group of extras, and
echos were easily generated. One unforeseen event almost spoiled the
play's opening, however. At five minutes to seven, the huge Armory door
opened and two five-ton Army trucks pulled into the building, creating
noise, confusion, and a break in concentration. The incident was quickly
controlled, however, and the broadcast went smoothly ("Fall").

A Prophecy and a Trend

The significance of The Fall of the City should not be underestimated.
The drama represents an important contribution on at least three counts.
First, a sense of extreme realism in sound effects was achieved and
maintained by the use of the Armory and a large cast as opposed to
a normal studio and recorded crowd noises. The technical aspects of the
antiphonal chorus sounds, crowd responses, and individual speeches
required the careful placement and mixing of four microphones in a vast
building with difficult acoustics.

Second, the drama deals with a provocative theme. The story was
remarkably relevant to the times, when Europe was undergoing the
turbulence and distress of the Anschluss, the bringing together of all the
Germanic and Slavic nationalities. Within only a few months of this
broadcast, Vienna would fall to Hitler; soon thereafter, Prague would
succumb to the Third Reich, then Memel, then Tirana. As Coulter put it,
"A repetition of The Fall of the City on any of these occasions would have
given the program almost the sharp edge of a news dramatization" (350).
The play was a grim testimony to the fact that cities and nations are
composed of large masses willing to follow a leader and eager to accept his
decisions and his visions of the future. MacLeish's play was an unhappy
prophecy.

Finally, and by no means least in importance, is the fact that The Fall of
the City represents the first attempt by an American poet to create a verse
play expressly for American radio. The play was not an adaptation from a
stage play, novel, film, or verse anthology; it was written solely for radio.
Geoffrey Bridson's verse drama, The March of the '45, had been broadcast
in England in 1936, and the BBC had given air time to the experimental
radio dramas of T. S. Eliot and James Hilton, but until April of 1937,
American audiences had had no opportunity to hear any productions of
this type ("Poetic Drama"). The success of MacLeish's drama was a major
force in the creation of subsequent verse drama for radio, most notably in
the poetic dramas written during the war years by Norman Corwin.

MacLeish had hoped to establish a new direction and create interest in this
new form. To a limited extent, he succeeded.

Poetry as Public Speech

The Fall of the City met with public acceptance and critical acclaim.
Ralph Thompson, writing in The New York Times, realized the
significance of the event: "This broadcast proved, perhaps for the first
time, that the radio has an enormous artistic potential and that music is not
the only means by which its commercial banalities may be tempered."
Gilbert Seldes wrote that the work was a "highly dramatic and imaginative
play in favor or human freedom. The Columbia Broadcasting System is to
be congratulated on having made the production. . . Perhaps the fact that
an experiment of this sort was made by one of the networks is as important
as Mr. MacLeish's attempt to use radio" (61). Orrin Dunlap was equally
excited by the broadcast, and expressed his unreserved optimism about the
future of verse radio drama: "Mr. MacLeish has pointed the way, and the
talented poets, who have been shy of the microphone or the microphone
shy of them, as it was for a long time of comedians, now have the gateway
open to the studio in which verse plays may be electrified and sprayed
through every city and hamlet" ("The Fall of the City").

Negative criticisms were, in general, minor in nature and few in number.
One writer felt that MacLeish's Conqueror was too brittle an abstraction
to carry any real power (Larkin 893). Seldes thought the speeches were too
long and that the action should have moved away occasionally from the
square to the advancing Conqueror (62). Dunlap stated that some of the
actors seemed to rush through their lines much too quickly, placing a
burden on the listeners ("The Fall of the City"). One reviewer seemed to
have missed the point completely, suggesting that the locale be not an
ancient Mayan city but rather a modern walled European city. The
listener's imagination had to work so hard "that the thrill of the climax was
lessened" (Wyatt).

The Fall of the City was considered one of the high points of the
Columbia Workshop, and is included in Douglas Coulter's anthology of
the Workshop's best plays (351-78). The drama was performed again on
CBS on January 9, 1938, several months before MacLeish's second verse
play for radio, Air Raid, was broadcast. Additionally, The Fall of the City
received numerous staged productions on college campuses across the
country, including a special dance-drama adaptation at Smith College in
June, 1938 ("Students at Smith"). Clearly, the play had come at the right
time and had had an impact upon the American public and upon the earlier
notions of what did or did not constitute good radio drama. Perhaps
Dayton Kohler, writing in The South Atlantic Quarterly in October, 1939,
best summarized the aesthetic contribution of MacLeish to a pre-World
War II America certain of its own goals but unsure of its global mission:

8

Archibald MacLeish has brought poetry back to the language of
public speech, poetry that is once more a record of man's common
fate. Written in an age of crisis, his work is an act of participation
in the living world ... he is a spokesman of the modern age, and, I
believe, the most challenging poet in America today. From him
the poetry of nameless men of anonymous generations, not a
poetry of collective dialectics but a literature of beliefs and
emotions that form an enduring pattern of human life ... He
reaffirms the idea of human freedom in poetry that belongs to our
country and our times.

WORKS CITED

Alexander, I. J. "A Script Writer Answers Mr. MacLeish."Atew York Times(April 18, 1937),
late ed., sec. 1 1:2.

Coulter, Douglas, ed. Columbia Workshop Plays. New York: Whittlesey House, 1939.

Dunlap, Orrin E., Jr. "Radio Challenges Playwrights to Try New Tricks. "New York Times

(October 30, 1938), late ed., sec. 9:12.
. "The Fall of the City Reveals Possibilities for Theatre of the Air." New York Times (April

18. 1937), lateed., sec. 11:12.

"Fall of the City." Time (April 19, 1937): 60.

Hood, Leon C. "An Analysis of Archibald MacLeish's Radio Verse Drama." Scholastic
(November 13, 1937): 21-22.

Kohler, Dayton. "MacLeish and the Modern Temper." South Atlantic Quarterly (October,
1939): 426.

Larkin, Oliver. "Air Waves and Sight Lines." Theatre Arts Monthly (December, 1938): 890-
97.)

MacLeish, Archibald. The Fall of the City. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1937.

"Poetic Drama Wins Hearing." New York Times (April 11, 1937), late ed., sec. 11:12.

Radio Schedule. New York Times (April 11, 1937), late ed., sec. 11:11

Seldes, Gilbert. "Screen and Radio." Scribner's Magazine (June, 1937): 61-62.

Smith, Grover. Archibald MacLeish. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971.

"Students at Smith to Dance a Drama." New York Times (May 1, 1938), late ed., sec. 2:3.

Thompson, Ralph. "Books of the Times." New York Times (April 28, 1937), natl. ed.: 21.

Wyatt, E. V. "Post-war Poets and the Theatre." Catholic World (August, 1937): 600.

BUKOWSKIS IMAGIST ROOTS

by Jimmie Cain*

In his foreword to It Catches My Heart in Its Hand, John William
Corrington suggests that the poet Charles Bukowski

has replaced the formal, frequently stilted diction of the Pound-
Eliot-Auden days with a language devoid of the affectations,
devices and mannerisms that have taken over academic verse and
packed the university and commercial quarterlies with imitations
of Pound and others. Without theorizing, without plans or
schools or manifestos, Bukowski has begun the long awaited
return to a poetic language free of literacy pretense and supple
enough to adapt itself to whatever matter he chooses to handle. (5)

Corrington goes on to say that Bukowski has done for the American
vernacular "what William Carlos Williams claimed to have done" (5).
Although Corrington correctly observes that Bukowski swears no
allegiance to "plans or schools or manifestos," it seems nonetheless quite
clear that William Carlos Williams' particular brand of Imagism has
influenced Bukowski's art. Indeed, Bukowski incorporates many of the
themes and poetic techniques found in Williams' work. Consequently, an
examination of the philosophy behind Williams' poetry will illuminate
Bukowski's debt and, moreover, reveal the extent to which Bukowski
accomplishes what "Williams claimed to have done."

Underlying Williams'aesthetic are the concepts of the founding father of
Imagism, the British poet T. E. H ulme. Rejecting out of hand the romantic
sentiment in poetry, Hulme objected "to the sloppiness which doesn't
consider that a poem is a poem unless it is moaning or whining about
something or other" (Hulme 127). Hulme envisioned a new classicism
not a return to Greco-Roman verse forms and themes, but a return to a
classical conception of man to replace romantic poetry:

One can define the classical quite clearly as the exact opposite to
this (the romantic view of man). Man is a fixed and limited animal
whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and
organisation that anything decent can be got out of him. (Hulme
116)

Because romantic verse has played "all the possible tunes" (121), Hulme
felt that such poetry had outlived its usefulness. He also discounted the
romantic belief that beauty is to be found in the otherworldly, the
transcendental. "The essence of poetry to most people," he wrote, "is that it
must lead them to a beyond of some kind" (127), for man is "unable to
admit the existence of beauty without the infinite being in some way or the

* Instructor of English, West Georgia College

10

other dragged in" (126).

This new classical verse would contain nothing of the ideal, but would
mirror the "fixed and limited" condition of man:

The classical poet never forgets this finiteness, this limit of man.
He remembers always he is mixed up with the earth. He may
jump, but he always returns back; he never flies away into the
circumambient gas. (120)

The great aim of this classicism is the "accurate, precise and definite
description" ( 1 32) of common things. Classical poetry arrests the reader's
attention and concentrates it on tangible objects (134). To keep the reader
from slipping into transcendent abstractions, the poem presents only
concrete, easily recognizable images. For Hulme, these images are not
merely decorative, as in romantic verse, but the "very essence of intuitive
language" (135).

Hulme's statements galvanized the then-aspiring poets Ezra Pound and
F. S. Flint, who with Hilda Doolittle, Richard Aldington, Amy Lowell,
John Gould Fletcher, and William Carlos Williams formed "Les
Imagistes." The Imagists, as they are more commonly known, adopted
Hulme's prescriptions and resolved to create poetry concerned with the
precise and accurate description of concrete images. Flint subsequently
produced his famous guidelines for Imagism:

1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or

objective.

2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the

presentation.

3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical

phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. (199)

To these rules Pound added the warning to "go in fear of abstractions"
(20 1 ). Amy Lowell appended the requirements that Imagist poetry should
use "the language of common speech," create "new rhythms," "present an
image," be "hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite," and allow the
poet "absolute freedom" in the choice of subject matter (Pratt 22).

Although Pound, Flint, and Lowell made different demands of
Imagism, the thrust for each is essentially the same as Hulme "s. All insisted
on the use of pure images images unencumbered by sentimentality or
abstract philosophizing. The image alone had to present some truth or
intention; individual images were not to rely on groups of ideas to transmit
meaning. The isolated image was to contain what William Pratt terms "a
moment of revealed truth," and its effect had to be "instantaneous rather
than cumulative" (29).

Of equal importance to each author was that the poet write only in
common, everyday language. The poet had to use language economically

11

as well, producing only the exact number of words needed to present an
unobstructed image. To achieve this goal, it was necessary that the poet
shun the use of abstractions. By leaving out all rational and moral
commentary, Imagist poets attempted to maintain objectivity. Mindful of
this demand, Pound argued that Imagist verse had to "be as much like
granite as it can be" (12). He further insisted that the "sparer, starker, more
striking the image, the better the poem" (Pratt 30).

Bukowski's poetry certainly exhibits the "powerful imagery" (Holland
31), the spontaneity, and the toughness called for by Hulme, Pound, and
Lowell, and the poem "1 Taste the Ashes of Your Death" recalls much of
Hulme's poetry:

the blossoms shake

sudden water

down my sleeve,

sudden water

cool and clean

as snow

as the stem-sharp

swords

go in

against your breast

and the sweet wild

rocks

leap over

and

lock us in.

The rocks which "leap over" the lovers bring to mind the "ruddy moon"
which "leans over a hedge" in Hulme's "Autumn." Notwithstanding the
similarities to Hulme, Bukowski's work is more akin to the poetry of
William Carlos Williams than to that of the other lmagists, for like
Williams, Bukowski writes only in a language that "is sensitive, harsh, yet
always accessible to the most turned-off layman" (Katz 1848), in a verse
that is "simple, casual, honest, uncooked" (Rexroth 5), and his images
come solely from the common, everyday occurrences of contemporary
American society.

Williams' 1 poetry differs from that of the other lmagists because it
operates strictly in the American idiom and presents nothing foreign to
American culture. Williams broke away from the group when he sensed
that their poetry was departing from the "language of common speech" to
stay close to his American sources and avoid the derivativeness that made
poems like Pound's "The Spring" and Aldington's "Lesbia" alien to his
desire for "new" (Rosenthal xix) and original poetry which he hoped to
create by writing in a style suitable for modern sensibilities ( Perkins 544).

12

Hence his condemnation in "Prologue to Kora in Hell":

our prize poems are especially to be damned not because of
superficial bad workmanship, but because they are rehash,
repetition just as Eliot's more exquisite work is rehash,
repetition in another way of Verlaine, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck
conscious or unconscious just as there were Pound's early
paraphrases from Yeats and his constant later cribbing from the
Renaissance, Provence and the modern French: Men content with
the connotations of their masters. (21)

In like fashion, Bukowski addresses modern sensibilities. Realizing that
today's reader expects to see present realities depicted in art and literature,
Bukowski deals exclusively in contemporary concerns, such as sex, drugs,
violence, disease, death, and man's inhumanity to his fellow man. To quote
Hugh Fox, Bukowski is "an authentic, the real-thing, because he talks
from the vantage point of the pavement, the dog biscuit factory, the whore
house, the park bench, the run-down room with the shabby shade and
worn-out rug stretched feebly across the sagging floor"(95). Another of his
abiding themes is the apparent meaninglessness and futility of existence, a
dominant twentieth-century interest. His use of language, equally as
modern and realistic as his topics, "can make words dance and roar like an
earthquake or whisper softly like a Spring breeze freshening the fetid air of
the streets where men past caring sleep fitfully in flophouse cubicles"
(Conroy 5). The first stanza of the poem "Success" typifies his use of
"common speech":

1 had a most difficult job

starting my 14 year old car today

in 100 degree heat

1 had to take the carburetor off

leap back and forth

adjusting the set-screw,

a 2 by 4 jammed against the gas pedal

to hold it down.

Save for one technical reference adjusting the set-screw the poem
contains nothing remotely incomprehensible. Yet, in a minimum of words,
Bukowski conveys an image of despair recognizable to many.

The poem "face of a political candidate on a street billboard" offers an
even better example of Bukowski's adherence to everyday American
locutions. In sixteen short lines, he captures the essence of the American
politico:

there he is:

not too many hangovers

not too many fights with women

not too many flat tires

13

never a thought of suicide

not more than three toothaches

never missed a meal

never in jail

never in love

7 pairs of shoes

a son in college

a car one year old

insurance policies

a very green lawn

garbage cans with tight lids

he'll be elected.

In this brief, unassuming sketch, Bukowski exposes not only the
superficiality of the "billboard" politician, but also the gullibility of the
American voter, expressing in a sparsity of language a complex idea
without the aid of abstractions, generalizations, or foreign terms.

In addition to writing only in "common speech," Bukowski shares
Williams' penchant for local color. Believing that poetry had to find its
primary impetus in "local conditions" (Perkins 553), Williams determined
to use the images of his native America in his poetry, feeling that he could
find the meaning of American life in the most common of things.
Bukowski displays the same devotion to local color in his poem "the violin
player," a work very similar to Williams'" At the Ball Game." As in"At the
Ball Game," the action in "the violin player" centers on the expression of
individuality, the "detail" which makes the crowd "beautiful"("At the Ball
game" 11. 1 1-12), in the midst of a faceless crowd. The setting, likewise, is an
athletic event, a horse race in this instance, and the audiences share a "spirit
of uselessness/ which delights them" ("At the Ball Game" 11. 3-4), wishing
"only to be amused by the action before them . . . willing to be amused by
life and death as well as sports" (Guimond 57). Like the "flashy female"
and the "Jew" ("At the Ball Game" 1. 19 and 1. 21), the violin player is
"ignored" ("the violin player" 1 . 11), yet all three have "It," the "beauty. . .
/that lives/day by day in them" ("At the Ball Game" 11. 25-27).

Beyond his similarities to Williams in language and imagery,

Bukowski's characterizations are almost identical to those of the older

poet. Commonly the only person Williams' poetry characterizes is the

author himself. Such pieces as "Danse Russe," "Tract," "January

Morning," "Sprouts," "Waiting," "The Widow's Lament in Springtime,"

and many others are first-person-singular accounts, each in some way

revealing something of the poet's psyche, his conceptualization of himself.

Similarly, Bukowski's "the red porsche," "the drill," "Yankee Doodle,"

and "claws of paradise" confess much about the author, and it would not

be imprudent to suggest that Bukowski excels at testimonial verse, as in the

poem "hot month":

14

got 3 women coming down in
July, maybe more
they want to suck my blood-
vibes

do I have enough
clean towels?

1 told them that I was feeling

bad

(I didn't expect all these

mothers

arriving with their tits

distended)

you see

1 am too good

with the drunken letter

and the drunken phonecall

screaming for love

when I probably won't

have it

Not all his reflective poetry is as morose as"hot month," however, as other
pieces convey a poignant suppleness and depth of emotion. This sensitivity
animates "fair stand the fields of France":

in the awesome strumming of no

guitars

1 can never get too high

in places where giraffes run like

hate

I can never get too lonely

in bars where celluloid bartenders
serve poisoned laughter
I can never get too drunk

at the bottom of mountains

where suicides flow into the streams

1 smile better than the Mona Lisa

high lonely drunken grin of grief
1 love you.

Certainly, Bukowski does follow the literary trail laid down by
Williams, updating his predecessor's demands with an infusion of
contemporary language. And even though some critics argue that "No
establishment is likely to ever recruit Bukowski" (Rexroth 5) and that he
"cannot be classified or yoked with any other poet, living or dead"(Conroy

15

5), BukowskTs indebtedness to Williams seems obvious. Bukowski has
heeded Williams' entreatment to make something new and original and to
use distinctly modern, common language. And although the parallels in
style and technique may appear to leave Bukowski open to the charge of
dealing in "rehash [and] repetition," Williams' Imagism is but one path,
though an admittedly well-traveled one, by which he expresses his own
perceived truths and approaches the essence of art, something Bukowski
defines in distinctly personal terms:

"Art"
as the spirit wanes
the form appears.

WORKS CITED

Bukowski, Charles. "Art." Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers
Begin to Bleed a Bit. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1979. 125.

. "face of a political candidate on a street billboard." Play the Piano Like a

Percussion, Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. Santa Barbara, CA: Black
Sparrow Press, 1979. 77.

"fair stand the fields of France. "Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until

the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1979. 124.
"hot month." Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin

to Bleed a Bit. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1979. 100.
. "I Taste the Ashes of Your Death." The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over

the Hills. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1969. 31.
. "Success." Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin

to Bleed a Bit. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1979. 83.
. "the violin player." Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers

Begin to Bleed a Bit. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1979. 61.

Conroy, Jack. "A Skidrow Poet." American Book Collector 16.6 (Feb. 1966): 5.

Corrington, John Williams. Foreword. It Catches My Heart in Its Hand. By Charles
Bukowski. New Orleans, LA: Loujon Press, 1963. 5-10.

Flint, F. S. "Imagisme. " Poetry 1 (Oct.-Mar. 1912-13): 198-200.

Fox, Hugh. Charles Bukowski: A Critical and Bibliographical Study. Somerville, MA:
ABYSS Publications, 1969.

Guimond, James. The Art of William Carlos Williams. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1968.

Hulme, T. E. "Romanticism and Classicism." Speculations. Ed. Herbert Read. London:
Regan Paul, Trench, Tryber & Co., Ltd., 1936.

Katz, Bill. "Bukowski-Kingof the Mean and Cement Poets."L/Z>ran'./ou/77a/95.10(15May
1970): 1848.

Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry from the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode.
Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1976).

16

Pound, Ezra. "A Few Don'ts for an Imagiste." Poetry 1 (Oct.-March 1912-13): 200-206.
. "A Retrospect." Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. Ed. T. S. Eliot. Norfolk, CT:

New Directions Pub. Co., 1954.

Pratt, William. The Imagist Poem. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1963.

Rexroth, Kenneth. "There's Poetry in a Ragged H itch-Hiker." New York Times Book
Review 5 July 1964: 5.

Rosenthal, M. L. ed. The William Carlos Williams Reader. New York: New Directions Pub.
Co., 1966.

Williams, William Carlos. "At the Ball Game." The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
Ed. Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair. New York: Norton, 1973. 292.

. "Prologue to Kora in Hell." Selected Essays of William Carolos Williams. New

York: Random. 1954.

17

GREED IS DESTROYING OUR WORLD
A HUMAN SCIENCE STUDY

by James J. Barrell* and Peter W. Lueders**

In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., a woman suffered a broken leg and four
others were injured when 1,000 people, some of whom had been
waiting for eight hours, rushed into a Zayre's Department Store to
snatch up the few Cabbage Patch Kids available.

The store manager, William Shigo, armed himself with a
baseball bat, "This is my life that's in danger," he said from behind
a protective counter.

Greed. Hardly a day passes that the local newspaper doesn't record the
unconscionable excesses.of a third world dictator or the intemperate
consumption of the world's natural resources. Preachers spare no diatribe
in warning their congregations of greed's evil. We see it on the streets and
hear it on the news greed is very much a part of our lives.

But just what is greed? It is a curious fact that one of society's most
insidious vices is so poorly understood. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
defines greed as "excessive desire for acquiring or having," but the
behaviors that we perceive to be "greedy" are as likely to be labeled
"avarice," "gluttony," "inconsideration," or "selfishness." There seems to
be no common agreement as to what constitutes greed.

Any attempt to review past research into greed is met with frustration.
There is none. This is not to suggest that so widespread and problematical
a phenomenon as greed has escaped the attention of the entire research
community. Rather, the paucity of greed research indicates the lack of an
appropriate approach for its systematic study.

The study of greed must address both the perception of greed in others as
well as the meaning of the experience "as lived." Through an analysis of
our perceptions of greed we can determine the necessary and sufficient
factors common to that experience and answer the question: What
constitutes greed? Additionally, by exploring the experiences of those
people who are perceived as being greedy, we can begin to understand the
"inside" of those behaviors. This provides a better understanding and
greater awareness of the phenomenon of greed that is vital to the solution
of the various confrontational problems associated with it.

A traditional approach to research that focuses on behavior is wholly
inappropriate to the study of greed. The greed phenomenon is best
understood through an experiential perspective that examines the lived
meanings related to human behavior. Much attention has been paid to the

* Associate Professor of Psychology, West Georgia College
**Graduate Student in Psychology, West Georgia College

18

importance of a proper approach as the critical factor in developing a
science of human experience (Giorgi 130; Van Kaam 66). The consequent
emergence of Human Science Research methods provides just such an
approach.

The Human Science Research method chosen for this study is the
Experiential Method (J. J. Barrell and J. E. Barrell 63; Barrell and Price
75). With its stated aim to achieve clarity, this method begins with direct
experience and concludes with a precise understanding of the structure of
an experience. This goal is achieved through a four stage process: ( 1) co-
investigators notice either immediate, or re-live past experiences, (2) the
experiences are recorded in a prescribed manner (first person, present
tense), (3) numerous reports, from various situations, are prepared for the
experience in question, and (4) co-investigators ask: What is common
across the experiences in these different situations?

Method

A study group composed of 14 male and 18 female under-graduate
psychology students, ages 19 to 35, served as co-investigators in this study.
The group discussed two distinct questions: (1) What do we experience
when we perceive greedy behavior in others?, and (2) What do we
experience when our behaviors are perceived as greedy by ourselves or
others? By recording descriptions of both immediate and past (re-lived)
experiences of greed, co-investigators recounted a wide variety of
situations leading to a greater generality of the findings.

The investigation was conducted in two phases. During the initial phase,
each participant was asked to record eight separate instances of the greed
experience: four from an "outer" perspective (i.e. perception of greed in
others), and four from an "inner" perspective. The inner perspective
provided descriptions of experiences when their related behaviors were
labeled as greedy by self or others. A report of each experience was made
"as lived;" in first person, present-tense format. Participants were also
instructed to avoid historical, mechanical, poetical, and interpretive
accounts of their experiences (J. J. Barrell and J. E. Barrell 69). The
resulting descriptions were analyzed in phase two to determine the
essential structure of the experience of greed.

Phase two was conducted over a three-week period in accord with an
experiential method for consensual validation (Barrell et al. 106). This
method consisted of a four-stage process: (1) presentation of each
investigator's personal understanding of the experiential structure, (2)
clarification of the ways in which co-investigators agree or disagree, (3)
referring back, as necessary, to the experiential description to resolve
disagreements, and (4) reaching consensus regarding the structure of the
experience.

19

The above method was employed in the following manner. All proposed
common factors were listed on a chalkboard. Drawing from personal
experience, investigators argued, one at a time, for or against each factor.
Because of the possibility that the same common factor might be expressed
in different words, participants were instructed to pay particularattention
to the meaning implicit in that common factor. Specifically, each common
factor must be present in every experience of greed, and the final list of
factors must be able to discriminate greed from any other type of
experience.

Findings
The Perception of Greed

Common factors were determined through an analysis of descriptive
data covering a variety of situations. Descriptions were categorized as
being from either an "inner" or "outer" perspective. The perception of
greed in others represents an "outer" perspective. The following are four
examples:

1 . My roommate's little boy had his birthday party this weekend. He
was three. I went to the party and the following experience occurred:

1 am standing watching the kids eat their cake and ice cream. I
notice this one kid. He hasn't eaten any cake but has completely
finished his ice cream. The kid next to him gets up and goes to play.
He gets the other kid's ice cream. His mother tries to take it away
from him. He is shoveling this ice cream in his mouth as fast as he can
before she takes it away. She lifts the cup of ice cream and he
screeches. He grabs the ice cream back. A tug-of-war between
mother and son ensues. Finally she gives it to him and he eats every
bite.

2. While I was waiting to talk to a professor 1 noticed a young male
student reading a note on the bulletin board. 1 watched as he pulled it
from the board and stuffed it in his books. 1 had the following
experience:

I think to myself, "What a jerk! Hecouldjustaseasily have written
down the information he needed. That information is for everyone
not just him." He begins to walk away. I can't believe it. I feel myself
getting tense. I want to confront him. As I begin to pursue him the
office door opens and I'm called in. I turn and walk into the office.

3. My three roommates and I were watchingT.V. last week when the
following experience occurred:

At 12:30 three of us all watch the same soap opera. The fourth
roommate decides she is the majority and wants to watch an old
movie classic. She does not ask our opinion, but instead turns to the
station. She stands in front of the T.V. for periods often minutes at a
time while running back and forth to the mirror to fix her hair. All

20

the time she's saying, "Don't turn the T.V.!" I begin to feel she's
hogging the T.V. and if she wants to watch an old movie she should
watch it in her room.

4. There was a party at my apartment. 1 had bought a case of beer
and there were several people over. I had the following experience:
John is here and did not bringany beer. I see him drinking my beer.
No problem. But now I see him taking a beer or two and putting them
in his coat pocket. I can't believe that someone at my house is, to put
rs bluntly, not only being greedy but stealing (in a sense) my beer.
John, what the hell are you doing! I'm letting you drink my beer. I'm
amazed that he is being so greedy with my beer.

Common factors implicit in the above type of descriptions represent
both the necessary and sufficient conditions for the perception of greed to
occur. Researchers reached consensus on the following factors:

X is perceived as:

1. Keeping others from having their part of a limited supply here the
individual is hoarding or consuming more than his or her entitlement. This
violates our sense of "fair play." Equally important is the perception of a
finite supply. The ice cream, the message taken from the board, and the
beer each represent a fixed quantity to be made available to all in an
equitable manner.

2. Being no more deserving than self or others How deserving of the
item is X? We make an immediate value judgment. In example number one
the other children are presumed to be equally (or more) deserving of the ice
cream. Were the greedy child known to be starving, and therefore
perceived as more "deserving" than the others, his behavior would not be
perceived as greedy. Clearly, this factor is necessary but not sufficient for
the perception of greed.

3. Ignoring the perspectives ofother(s) G reedy behavior is obvious and
readily recognized in others. Therefore, we presume X must also be aware
of this greed he must know what he is doing. There is a lack of empathy
(i.e. putting oneself in the place of others). We feel X is consciously
ignoring the viewpoints of those around him as he persists in greedy
behavior.

4. Being preoccupied with his/her wants or needs In the eyes of the
perceiver X is experiencing a form of "tunnel vision." For the moment, X's
world is no bigger than the "target" of his desire the ice cream, the
message on the board, watching a classic movie, etc. The terms "wants"
and "needs" refer to the relative significance of the target to X. "Needs," for
example, are experienced as more important than "wants" or "likes.

"Inside" Greedy Behavior

Now, let us look at what is actually happening in our own experience

21

when our behavior is pointed out as being greedy by either ourselves or
others. Interestingly enough, there is no direct experience of greed in
ourselves. It is not even a felt emotion like happiness or anger. Greed exists
only as the perception of a behavior. To recognize greed in ourselves we
must assume an "outer" perspective, that is, imagine "stepping outside"
ourselves and seeing our behavior as another person would. In the
following examples, those experiences which are "inside" the behavior
perceived as greedy will be the source of data. Again, four examples:

1 . 1 walked into Eckerd Drugs knowing that I needed to find a
magazine that had some good business articles in it. 1 had the
following experience:

1 flip through the magazine until I find it (the article). To my
surprise and relief, it's only one page. This is great. This means less
reading and an easier evaluation. But, as I stand here I 'm thinking,
"Why pay almost $2.00 for a one-page article?" So, I look around.
No one seems to be paying me much attention. 1 see no hidden
cameras. So I hold my finger on the page and close the magazine
over my hand. Slowly I rip the page out. The tearing noise is so
loud. My face feels so hot. 1 feel my heart pounding. 1 think, "I'm
stealing something, but then again it's only one piece of paper."
Well, I've got the page out. I wad it up and walk out of the store. I
made it. I got my article without spending any money and I feel
relieved.

2. I was eating pizza with one male and two female friends. There
were three pieces left. The girls were not the least bit interested in
pizza. My friend and I each took a piece of pizza. There was one
piece left. I had the following experience:

So, it's just you and me. Immediately the act of eating pizza
becomes a competition. My eyes shift back to the last piece of
pizza in the pan. I'm eating very quickly now I don't even taste it.
Just one piece left and it's mine. I deserve it more than he does
I'm bigger, and hungrier. I look across the table. He's eyeing the
last piece, too. I'd better make my move. I reach for the last piece.
Mine, all mine. I think I'll eat this last piece slowly.

3. I went to a bar over the weekend with one of my friends. These
guys kept coming up, asking us to dance, and buying our drinks. I
had the following experience:

1 keep thinking that this guy must really have the bucks. He asks
me if I want anything. I tell him, "A beer, please." A while later,
after we've danced some more, he asks me again. I reply, "A beer,
please," again. I can't believe this guy is spending so much money
on me and my friend. I keep telling her that whoever asks me if I
want something, I'm going to tell them, "A beer, please." I am

22

thinking 1 want to see how many beers I can get someone else to
buy me and if they'll buy more for me than my friend.

4. I was in my car at the bank waiting for a parking space. 1 was in
a hurry to make an appointment. One lady was backing out of a
space, another was waiting for her. I had the following experience:

I'm feeling that she's taking too much time to get in the space. I
feel that I have enough time to get in the space so I drive around
the corner and take it knowing the lady was waiting to turn in.
She's beginning to blow her horn at me. I'm not paying it any
attention.

Utilizing the same process of consensual validation summarized above,
investigators determined the following common factors for the
experiential correlatives of greedy behavior:

1 . / am preoccupied with fulfilling my desire/ need Identical to one of
the common factors in the perception of greed. The world "shrinks" as
attention is drawn to the target of the desire. Behaviors are determined by
the specific strategy chosen to satisfy the desire or need. In example
number one the desire to "get something for nothing" motivates the
individual to rip the page from the magazine. Desire/ need represents a
range of significance the object may hold for that person.

2. / do not consider myself undeserving The individual is judging him/
herself to be worthy of the target. Often the feeling of guilt must be "dealt
with" as we become aware of how our behaviors might be perceived by
others. We are incredibly creative in justifying our behaviors to ourselves.
Even in the case where we might stop for a moment and question whether
or not we are greedy, a justification occurs that can allow for the
continuation of the behavior. "I'm stealing, but then again it's only one
piece of paper." (example 1), and "1 deserve it more than he does I'm
bigger, and hungrier." (example 2), both justify behaviors about which the
person feels guilty. Through justification we make ourselves deserving of
the goal. Also, if we feel we must secure our futures; if we think highly of
ourselves; or if we feel that we have suffered greatly in the past, then we are
deserving of as much as we can get. There is no limit!

3. / expect I can fulfill the goal This is a question of motivation.
Without a reasonable expectation (i.e. greater than chance) that the goal
can be achieved, there is no action. "Reasonable expectation" is
determined by the personal meaning attached to the perception of an event
and varies according to the confidence the person has in his ability to attain
the goal.

4. I feel I have more to gain than to lose by acting The individual
carefully weighs the perceived risk of the greedy behavior against its
expected outcome. When the desire or need for that goal is greater than the

23

possible negative consequences of that behavior, the risk is judged
acceptable and the person acts. In example one, the possible results of
getting caught ripping the page out of the magazine are overshadowed by
the desire to "(g et ) mv article without spending any money."

Differentiation of Experiences Related to Greed

Our analysis of greed has allowed us to make comparisons with other
perceived actions such as avarice, gluttony, inconsideration, and
selfishness. Avarice represents a specific type of greed. In this case the
target of desire is wealth. Avaricious behaviors are motivated by an
insatiable desire to amass great wealth. While all avaricious behavior is
greedy, not all greedy behaviors are money-related.

Unlike greed, a person viewed as gluttonous is NOT perceived as
keeping others from having (heir part of a limited supply. They are simply
"stuffing themselves" oblivious to others around them. "Being a pig" is
the phrase commonly used to describe gluttonous behaviors.

Let us take the case of inconsideration. Suppose you are sitting in the
first row at a concert and people are leaving the dance floor in front of you.
However, two couples stop to talk right in front of you before leaving the
floor. The band appears and they are obstructing the views of both you and
others seated around you. These people can be perceived as inconsiderate
but not greedy. This is because they are perceived as NOT consciously
ignoring the perceptions of others. Now, if they are asked to move and do
not, then we could perceive them as greedy.

Finally, let us compare greed with selfishness. Whereas selfishness is
"taking care of only our needs," greed is "taking more than we need."
Selfishness refers to experiencing ourselves as "number one" the world
"revolves around us." Because of pre-occupation with one's own wants and
needs, selfishness is an important factor (cause) in any action that can be
perceived as greedy. It is not a separate experience from greed, but rather, a
component of it.

Emotional Responses to Greed

Our responses to greed are quite different depending on whether we
experience ourselves or others as greedy. It is likely that we will feel guilt in
the former and anger in the latter situation. For ourselves, guilt is the most
uncomfortable feeling. For after all, in this situation we join others in
becoming upset with ourselves. When we "turn on ourselves" there is no
escape from this bad feeling. We cannot "walk away" from ourselves.

Emotions, like anger and guilt, are not necessary for the perception of
greed or its correlative inner experience. They are reactions to these
meaning structures. However, although these emotions are simply
reactions, they are particularly important in confrontational situations.

As reactions, the intensity of anger and guilt depends on our own needs

24

and desires. For example, if one is tearing a page from a public phone
book, our anger in response to the perceived greedy behavior is increased if
we need to use that phone book ourselves. In short, we intensify the
emotions of anger and guilt as we take these situations more personally.

Discussion
The Problem

To solve the problem of greed we must first explore the difference
between behavior viewed as meaning or as action. Behavior as action
represents the "objective reality" a specific series of physical movements
about which we, as perceivers, can agree. From this perspective the cause
or purpose of the behavior is external to the perceiver (i.e. it lies in the
"actor"). Imagine, for example, the following classroom situation: In the
middle of a lecture a student hurriedly walks out of class without saying a
word. Anyone noticing the student would likely agree to the "facts" about
what happened: a student got up from his desk, picked-up his books, and
walked out the door he didn't say a word. When viewed simply as
"action," the behavior is "absolute."

Though behavior may be viewed as "action," it is understood as
"meaning." In the above example we attach meaning to the student's
behavior based on our own perspective, or mind-set, at that particular
moment (Robbins 48). In this instance the meaning of another's behavior
lies in the "mind" of the perceiver . If we had experienced the lecture as
being dry or unimaginative, it becomes "obvious" to us that the student left
out of boredom. If we were aware of the flu epidemic on campus and not
feeling very well ourselves, we might believe the student must have left
because he was sick. We could assume the student had an important
appointment or a personal emergency; there are numerous possibilities. It
is important to note that the meaning we ascribe to the behavior represents
our "subjective reality" and satisfies the question: Why?. The meaning of
the behavior is determined by the perceiver and peculiar to the context.
Nevertheless, these meanings do not determine the actual causes of the
behavior as an action.

It is clear that the cause of the perception of greed lies in the "mind" of
the perceiver. Insofar as solutions to greed-related problems are
concerned, the significance of this statement cannot be overemphasized.
We cannot control the perceptions of others. Instead we must look to the
factors common to the "inner" experience of greedy behavior (i.e. those
actions perceived as greedy) if we hope to curb the problems of greed.

Common factors are both necessary and sufficient for the occurrence of
a particular experience and represent the specific structure of that
experience. Consequently, the elimination of any single factor makes that
experience impossible. To control the common factors of the "inner"
experience of greed is to control greed.

25

The world of the individual preoccupied with fulfilling a desire or need is
necessarily small. As one attends to the particular goal, awareness of the
social context diminishes and that person becomes "isolated" from the rest
of the world. In this isolation, the world exists as a series of discrete spatial-
temporal events (i.e. it has been objectified). From this perspective the
individual no longer views the "big picture." That is, an awareness of the
rich, multi-level, ever-evolving relationship one shares with the world is
lost. The consequences of need-satisfying behaviors beyond the immediate
context are similarly affected. While those viewing the behavior might
perceive a willful disregard of the needs of others, this is not the experience
from the inner perspective.

The person concerned with need-satisfaction may assume either of two
attitudes toward the future: (1) denial of the future, or (2) faith in the
future. Denial of the future occurs when an individual believes there is no
future in which to satisfy needs. Needs must be satisfied HERE AND
NOW. Just such an attitude was expressed in a popular beer jingle, "You
only go around once in life. Grab for all the gusto you can get!" On the
other hand, having faith in the future presumes a belief in unlimited
resources. For example, the person using an inordinate amount of water in
the midst of a drought might feel justified in the belief that "it is bound to
rain soon, we've never been this long without it." Such a belief denies the
truth that for any given period of time available resources are limited.
Either attitude is fundamental to greed-related behaviors and each rejects
the truth: the future is open-ended and forever changing.

Accepting an unknown future, filled with question and doubt, threatens
our vital sense of security. Security exists only in certainty. But how can we
feel safe and secure knowing that a single accident or "act of God" can
bring physical, emotional, and/ or financial ruin? To feel secure we must
look out for#l provide for every foreseeable contingency. Logically, this
is impossible. And yet, our desire for security is overwhelming. This high
desire for security coupled with an uncertainty about beingable to attain it
is all that is necessary to produce anxiety and its related stress(Barrelletal.
1 1 1; J. J. Barrell, Sindledecker, and J. E. Barrell256). Moreover, this stress
is forever unless we can "control" the future. From this perspective, both
denying the future and having faith in the future (e.g. investing in greedy
behaviors!) are viable means of dealing with basic security concerns.

The Solution

Becoming more aware of the "self-in-context" is certainly part of the
solution to this dilemma. We each play many roles in life, but are usually
cognizant of only the most immediate. Our relations as friend, lover,
family member, and coworker are frequently acknowledged. Equally
important are the positions we hold as members of society, citizens of the
world, and even, residents of the cosmos. By "opening the frame of

26

reference" to incorporate these broader perspectives, individuals begin to
see and better appreciate their position and relation to others and the
world in which they live. This recognition of the interdependence of man
and world promotes a vital sense of affiliation and security.

For many of us, our interdependence with the world is not so clear.
Technology has amply provided for our safety and comfort, and few
Americans still struggle to draw their subsistence directly from the land on
which they live. While safe and secure in our temperature-controlled
homes with all the amenities, we easily forget (or ignore) the relation we
share with the earth. Technology has provided a "higher standard" of
living, but not without cost. The many decades of thoughtless strip-
mining, deforestation, and the wasteful use of water reserves have left our
future heavly mortgaged. Technology, with its promise for a "better
tomorrow today," denies our dependence on the world and its limited
resources.

Developing an expanded awareness of ourselves as part of a greater
whole need not be difficult. The following five to ten minute exercise is but
one of many possible methods. Like most exercises, maximum benefits
will be gained through daily repetition. The exercise:

Find a comfortable place outdoors and sit quietly. Look at the
scene around you, paying close attention to your sensations: the
the colors, the shapes, the textures, the sounds around you, the
feel of the wind on your face, the smells in the air, etc. Stay with
these impressions without thinking about them. Nov/, feel your
body as a part of these natural surroundings. As you begin to feel
this connection with nature, "get in touch" with the/act that you
are in the immensity of an unlimited universe. You are an integral
part of it. There is nothing to imagine or visualize, simply stay
with the understanding of this fact and feel its reality.

Increased awareness of context brings a different perspective. While
individual experiences will necessarily vary, certain common factors are
always present. Here is an account of one person's experience with the
exercise:

I was sitting outside a restaurant. The weather was sunny and
pleasant. I began to idly reflect on my place in the universe. As I
began to feel the "reality" of my situation I had the following
experience:

My body begins to feel more and more relaxed and I begin to
experience a calm "intensity. " I take another breath and the world
rushes up to embrace me I am "absorbed." Immediately there is
a multiplicity of vivid sights, sounds, and smells. The world exists
as a rich tapestry or mosaic in which every item, every event,
blends smoothly with another. As I move my gaze from the

27

clouds, to the trees, to the ground, to my feet, I perceive no gaps or
"voids." I feel my "presence" (i.e. I am here) as part of a limitless
whole differentiated but not separated. Everything exists in a
"common space." No single impression is more important than
any other and no impression has just one meaning. Both time and
("empty") space have dissolved. I feel secure. 1 am at peace. I do
not want to leave this place.

While awareness of the relationship we share with the world is
important, it is not sufficient to overcome such anti-social behaviors as
greed. We must acknowledge our position "in the world" as well as "of the
world." For example, few would question that a swami or guru engrossed
in a world of quiet meditation understands he is "of the world." But, his
contribution as an individual "in the world" is somewhat less clear. There is
an "ambiguity" in experiencing our relationship to the whole. This
ambiguity must be overcome if we hope to transform those experiences
(i.e. discover the causes) which lie behind our behaviors. "Awareness," of
itself, is not necessarily a "call to action."

The Experiential Method used in this study providesjust the necessary
process by which to achieve a clear understanding of the specific structure
of any experience. The common factors we derive through self-observation
and self-report are within us and, as such, under our influence. By
understanding these experiential factors we can increase the range of
choices available to us, and live "in the world" more effectively.

WORKS CITED

Barrell, J. J. and J. E. Barrell. "A Self-Directed Approach for a Science of Human
Experience." Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 6 (Fall 1975): 63-73.

Barrell, J. J., and D. D. Price. "An Experiential Approach with Quantitative Methods: A
Research Paradigm." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 20 (Summer 1980): 75-95.

Barrell, J. J., S. Sindledecker, and J. E. Barrell. "Test anxiety: an experiential study." A
Science of Human Experience. Ed. J. J. Barrell. Acton, MA: Copley, 1986.

Barrell, J. J., et al. "The Causes and Treatment of Performai.ee Anxiety: An Experiential
Approach." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 25 (Spring 1985): 106-122.

Giorgi, A. Psychology as a Human Science. New York: Harper-Row, 1970.

Robbins, A. J. Unlimited Power. New York: Simon-Schuster, 1986.

Van Kaam, A. L. "Phenomenal Analysis: Exemplified by a Study of the Experience of 'really
feeling understood'." Journal of Individual Psychology 15 (1959) 66-72.

28

"SHOCKTJN" A SON GOUT:
CONCEPT OF ART AT WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE

by Dorothy Joiner*

Proceeding on Brumbelow Drive toward the West Georgia campus,
Monday morning, December 1, 1986,1 happened to glance in the direction
of the school. At first startled, then delighted, I saw a voluminous
parachute of creamy white, orange, and muted khaki draped casually over
the roof of the Humanities Building. The unwonted sight jogged my
memory: the Concept Art Exhibition to be staged by Bruce Bobick's art
history class. Modern Art 310. I was in fact arriving a little early in order to
add my own conceptual piece to the display.

The building quickly lapsed from view as the road descended, and I
rounded the corner onto West Georgia Drive. 1 gaped in disbelief at the
bevy of police cars, lights aflash, parked in a narrow lane leading to the
Humanities Building. The object of their attention fairly glowed in the
parking lot. A bright yellow behemoth of an auto wrapped in clear Saran
was parked sideways so as to occupy no less than three of the coveted
spaces in this always overpopulated area. The extra-wide plastic
enveloping this oversized Oldsmobile from the early 70 's ended in a kind of
twisted "umbilical cord," attached to a telephone pole. A somewhat
amused young policeman was ticketing the gaudy, meretricious vehicle.
(In French and in Italian all the words for various kinds of cars are
feminine.) In felicitous harmony with the "cocoon" symbolism of the
wrapping, the officer asked the artist Christy Benton, "Did you imagine
that by wrapping this wreck, it would turn into a Rolls?"

1 learned later that Christy's idea had come to her during a class
discussion of Concept Art. She originally considered covering three spaces
in the student lot with gravel. Her "work" would have jolted those seeking
a parking slot into considering the scarcity and hence the value of the
space. But she then determined that cleaning up the gravel would be far too
onerous. The troublesome gravel was therefore transmogrified into an
easier-to-remove mammoth car, especially chosen for its well-established
flashy notoriety on the campus. The wrapped vehicle held several levels of
symbolism for Christy. She thought of it first as a kind of "land yacht,"
anchored with a cord "so that it wouldn't get away." It represented at the
same time a plastic cocoon, the meaning of which the astute policeman had
perceived. And on yet another level of meaning, the Saran-wrapped yellow
car was chosen for its shock value, alerting the viewer to its occupancy of
valuable space. This space was indeed expensive: the policeman had
affixed a $10.00 ticket to the door handle. Happily, however, Christy
appealed the charge, which was finally rescinded.

* Professor oj Languages, West Georgia College

29

Hardly having had time to savor the idea of the giant cocoon-car, I was
hurried into the building by Phil Price, who implored me to help him
disassemble his own concept work on the second-floor landing of the
northeast stairwell. The police had threatened to arrest him if he failed to
clear the stairs immediately. L) nfortunately, there was no time to enjoy the
intricately festooned party space that Phil had created. We had to rip away
the carefully crafted arrangement as quickly as we could.

Had I the leisure to look, 1 would have been immediately confronted
with the poster of a sultry woman and her sinuous cat, both archetypal
symbols of evil. A second poster, positioned to be seen by those descending
the stairs from the third floor, depicted a woman behind Levelor blinds,
gaily kicking up her heels and playing a trumpet. Thus the contrasting
posters offered two aspects of celebration: on the one hand, its potentially
negative side, and, on the other, its festivity and fun. Phil continued the
party theme with shiny aluminum foil over the railing, balloons, streamers,
and multi-colored throw rugs all suggestive of joyous abandon. In
contrast, Phil added unattached limbs of mannequins, as well as a
wastebasket gorged with empty aluminum cans: Coke, 7-Up, and
Budweiser. These last images represented the underside of celebration, its
often bitter aftertaste. They echoed the evil manifested by the first poster.

The party side of Phil's work was juxtaposed to a spare desk covered
with twine woven into a kind of web. Here Phil symbolized the other half
of a student's life, its arduous work, the twine web indicating the
confinement occasioned by a life dedicated to study. Repeated in the space
above the entire piece, the webbing was, in Phil's words, "hovering over a
student's whole life, like a trap," its partying as well as its lucubrations. In
fact, the web restricted all potential movement to such a degree that no
festivity was really possible after all. The meaning of the bright aluminum
overlay on the railing then becomes clear. It represented the glamorous but
ultimately superficial and deceptive aspects of partying. After a few
moments of our frantic dismantling, a policeman trudged up the stairs,
declaring in an authoritative tone that Phil was to follow him. Was this
mild-mannered, sensitive, courteous, and studious young man being
arrested? 1 subsequently learned that Phil's crime was puncturing the
cement block wall with three nail holes.

Returning to the ground floor, 1 saw a concept work 1 had missed on my

initial hasty entry, a long strip of white paper several feet wide running the

length of the south hall. Arrows drawn on the paper pointed to offices on

the right, together with terse assessments of their occupants. The word

"wisdom" indicated the domain of David Higgins, head of the philosophy

department; and "distilled water" was inscribed beneath the arrow

pointing to my own door, a good-natured jab at the wine bottles full of

pure water that 1 have regularly carried into the building for years. The

"mystery" artist of this piece has never been identified.

30

I was turned from an amused contemplation of this witty analogue of the
white carpeting laid down at weddings by an acrimonious outburst near
the elevator. That decrepit antique of a lift whose torpor we have all
deplored was filled with rolls of newsprint and heavy black sculpture
stands. The angry imprecations came from a teacher who was constrained
either to remove the obstacles or to exercise what French philosopher
Gaston Bachelard has termed "the heroism of climbing the stairs."

By this time, I was forced to abandon my enjoyment of the Concept Art
Exhibition and head for class. When I was free again at 1 1:00 a.m., the
other works had for the most part been removed; and I learned about them
only later. Almost no part of the building was without concept art that
morning. Jim Witt placed red danger signs over many of the electrical
outlets, his work calling attention to the potentially lethal forces normally
harnassed and hidden from view in the service of illumination and
appliances.

Carol Summer taped satin cloth in graduated shades of violet, purple
and orange over all the mirrors in the women's room on each of the three
floors. Her title Vanity has a complex significance. First of all, it recalls the
traditional ornamented vanity box for ladies, which usually contained
powder, a puff, and a mirror. On another level, the title suggests the empty
self-admiration associated with gazing in a mirror; and in yet a more
universal sense, it echoes the age-old vanitas theme which proclaims the
evanescence of earthly reality.

The southwest stairwell was also transformed by art. Between the
second and third floors, Sherri Adams covered a single step with white felt,
placing a DO NOT TOUCH sign nearby. She had intended to count the
number of footprints at the end of the day. When the material was
prematurely removed, however, everyone had graciously stepped over this
pristine "sterile" step.

Holly Faircloth placed her work Disposable Heroes in the building's
atrium. She painted stuffed garbage bags in conventional camouflage
patterns, strewing the lumpy containers over the carpeted floor of the
foyer. In the empty space, I am told, Holly's work took on the eerie look of
dead bodies. When the area began to fill up with students, however, the
mood brightened; and an atmosphere of excitement born of the ridiculous
replaced the initial somber feel. Holly gives credit for the title to her
younger brother, who borrowed it from a contemporary song. Holly's
work focused on the ephemeral recognition which society offers to heroes
such as veterans who have made sacrifices for the commonweal.

Just above Disposable Heroes, on the second floor of the atrium, Ivan
Purcell used masking tape to cover the area bounded on three sides by a
railing and open to the stairway on the fourth. Titled Bridging the Gulf,

31

Ivan's piece interrupted the continuity of space between the first and
second floors and blocked temporarily the vantage of those who
customarily lean over the railing to view the activity on the lower floor.
Spectators thus thwarted voiced their anger with surprising force.

Diane Eissler covered with a black drape the portrait of Kathy Cashen
on the landing of the atrium stairway. Fascinated by the image of this
smiling young woman who has given her name to the building's small
auditorium, Diane investigated Ms. Cashen's history. Learning that she
had died of leukemia in 1968, Diane wanted to reactivate, as it were, the
memorial to her memory, now largely forgotten by most students. To
make the point even stronger, Diane turned the bench on the landing
around to face the picture. She thereby forced the observer to concentrate
on the identity of the veiled portrait.

The Concept Exhibition even spilled out onto the campus beyond the
building. As an untitled kind of interface between inside and out, Kurt
Beshers placed sand on a portion of the second step of the porch around
the building, smoothing the sand to an exact forty-five degree angle.

Another work serving as transition between indoors and out was Renee
Tartaglione's entrance barricade. In front of two of the building's four
entrances she positioned cardboard tubes, each three feet high, laced
together with nylon webbing. To enter the building, it was necessary to be
somewhat more active than usual, either moving the featherweight
palissade or walking around it. Reactions to this blockade differed widely.
On the west side facing the quadrangle, the webbed tubes were simply
moved aside; but on the north, the barrier was angrily knocked down. One
needs only to consider that this entrance is closest to the faculty parking
lot.

Three concept pieces transformed the quadrangle into a short-lived art
gallery. One student placed hundreds of colored toothpicks porcupine
fashion into a mound. An administrator fearing that a student be impaled
by these sharp wooden weapons termed the work "dangerous." Another
student, Amanda Morris, erected a barrier of concrete blocks two and one-
half feet tall over the narrowest point of the walkway leading toward the
library. A pedestrian was thereby forced to leave the path to circumvent
the temporary wall. A third work by Curtis Davis provided an intriguing
amalgam of nature and art, of the natural and the artificial. He wrapped
the branches and trunks of trees on the quadrangle with vinyl tape,
creating interesting patterns in red and yellow.

Curtis adopted this technique from the well-known artist Marian J.
Vieux, who has wrapped trees with vinyl on Ossabow Island in Georgia, in
a Chicago churchyard, and outside the Evanston Art Center in Illinois.
The artist says that she uses "the tree as a line in space, to follow a linear
motion. . . . The line," she continues, "jumps out at you. "Assuming its own

32

"unique and recognizable profile," each wrapped tree is "animated," as it
were, by its artificial wrapping.

I later also learned more about the parachute floating in gentle swells on
the corner of the roof. It was the work of Professor Bobick as a tribute to
D. B. Cooper, the skyjacker who vanished after parachuting with a sack of
money from a plane over the Northwest in the 1970*s.

Another work should perhaps be added to this chronicle of the Concept
Art Exhibition, that is, my own piece which remained very literally a
concept because of the brouhaha generated by the exhibit. 1 had planned to
encircle the departmental vacuum cleaner with the gold satin rope used in
the gallery to cordon off especially valuable or delicate works of art. The
machine was to have been left running with the title Femme de menage:
Semper Courante. This deliberately bastardized melange of French and
Latin translated as "cleaning woman, always running," was to my mind an
ironic self-parody of the many unlikely tasks that fall one's way in
academe.

The ingeniously contrived concept works created by Professor Bobick
and his students participate in the post-Modernist, or more exactly, the
anti-Modernist tradition developed during the 1970's. Concept artists
reacted against the Modernist esthetic which had carried to its logical
extreme the art-for-art's-sake legacy of the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Modernist art exaggerated the importance of form over content,
tending to divorce art from the flow of life in an increasingly self-referential
esthetic. Although theoretically removed from mundane, material
considerations, modernist works were in fact most frequently transformed
into commodities by monied interests.

Seeking to reverse what he perceived as a hypocritical duality, the
concept artist began to shy away from art objects altogether, preferring to
confront his audience with the force of his own personality, indeed in some
cases with his own body. Most frequently the concept artist wants to elicit
an active response in his viewer, creating a participatory art in a literal
sense. He seeks to return art to its most basic roots, that is to say, making it
again a source of energy and perceptive understanding.

In this endeavor to counter what he sees as the mercenary proclivities of
the art world, the concept artist often denies art as a concrete object. This
"dematerialization" of the art object reverses a centuries-old tradition in
Western art. Early medieval manuscript illuminators, for instance, bound
their precious pages between gilded covers often encrusted with jewels
to manifest the great worth of the scriptures which they recorded. And in
the fifteenth century, Jan van Eyck painted the back of his panels in
marbleized patterns, again to emphasize the object's great value.

Yet just as Modernist art became paradoxically bound by the corruptive

33

influences of money at the same time that it denied in theory the relevance
of the material realm, so, too, is Concept Art replete with its own inherent
ironies. Even as it repudiates the Modernist esthetic, Concept Art actually
reinforces a fundamental though largely unarticulated Modernist premise,
that is, the substitution of artistic discipline and esthetic transcendence for
religion, a tendency begun in the latter half of the century. Several recent
religion, a tendency begun in the latter half of the nineteenth century,
examples of this substitution will suffice.

The Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh, for instance, imposes upon
himself arduous serial life-styles, each for a year, this period symbolic of a
whole life cycle. He once spent a year in a cage with neither television nor
books nor radio; for another year he punched a time clock hourly, thereby
depriving himself of normal periods of sleep; during a third year he lived
completely out-of-doors in New York City.

Two American Buddhist Monks offer another striking example of art
which assumes the role of religion. Traveling on foot from Santa Monica
to the Oregon border, these monks stopped after each three steps to kiss
the ground and to pray. Their trek is recorded on videotape.

But Chris Burden gives the most bizarre example of an effort toward
self-transcendence through art. The artist crawled naked over a surface
littered with shattered glass, was nailed to the roof of a Volkswagen in a
strange kind of crucifixion, and had a friend shoot him in the arm from a
distance of twelve feet.

From these examples it is obvious that the Concept artist most
frequently assembles a "portfolio" of lively stories, photographs, and
videotapes rather than objects such as those produced by a more
conventional artist. It is in this lineage that 1 offer a written chronicle of the
Concept Art Exhibition at West Georgia College. The talented students
and their works which lasted so briefly in "material assemblage^should be
remembered. Their art did far more than provide the matter for a five-page
police report; it altered to a greater or less degree the perception of many
on the campus. The artists of the Concept Art Exhibition merit our
recognition.

34

ABSTRACTS OF MASTER'S THESES AND
SPECIALIST IN EDUCATION PROJECTS

THE EFFECT OF LOW pH ON DAPHNIA PULEX

Lucius Geneve Adams, III
(MS, Biology, June, 1985)

Research in the area of acid rain has indicated topics which need further
investigation. One of these topics is to determine the effect of low pH on all
aquatic organisms with respect to survival, reproduction, and behavioral
changes which may occur. Daphnia pulex was selected as a test organism
for its significance in aquatic food chains, high rate of reproduction, and
ease of culture. The problem was to investigate the effect of low pH on
survival, growth, reproduction, morphology, and behavior. D. pulex was
cultured in a defined medium and fed two species of algae,
Chlamydomonas reinhardi and Scenedesmus sp. The test organisms were
introduced into media at pH 4.8, 5.5, 6.6, and 7.0. Survival, average body
length, number of eggs and births were determined over a 3 week period.
Behavioral response to a change in wavelength of light was observed in test
media of the 4 pH levels. At a pH of 4.8, there was a significant reduction in
all variables. This would indicate that in ponds or lakes at a pH level of 4.8,
populations of D. pulex would suffer considerably in areas of survival,
growth and reproduction.

FOSTERING INVOLVEMENT THROUGH

A CALENDAR OF BASIC SKILLS ACTIVITIES FOR

PARENTS OF CHILDREN IN THE

COWETA COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM

Nelda T. Boren
(EdS, Reading Instruction, August, 1986)

This study was undertaken for the purpose of providing a Calendar of
Skills for parents of children in each of the grades kindergarten through
three in the Coweta County School System and to analyze the data which
were collected from parents concerning the utilization of the calendars and
the helpfulness of the material contained in them. Calendars were
distributed to all children at the beginning of the 1985-1986 school year.
Data concerning the helpfulness of specific material in the calendar were
collected from 322 randomly selected parents at the end of the year.
Analysis of this data using chi square at the .05 level of significance

35

indicated that a significant number of parents found all items included in
the calendar to be of value. Percentagesof parents who reported
completion of at least 20 activities each month were tabulated by grade
levels. Analysis of variance at the .05 level of significance determined that a
significant difference existed among grade levels. The percentage of
parents in second and third grade who reported utilization of calendar
activities was lower than those reported in kindergarten. The average
percentage of parents who reported use of the calendar activities decreased
each month from September through April. The results of this study
indicate that a significant number of parents utilized the Calendars of
Skills and found the activities to be of value. It is recommended that such
information continue to be provided in the future.

THE EFFECTS OF TEAMS-GAMES-TOURNAMENT ON THE

ACHIEVEMENT OF FIFTH GRADE STUDENTS IN

SOCIAL STUDIES

Beverly R. Chitwood
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1986)

This research was conducted to determine what effect the use of Teams-
Games-Tournament has on the achievement of below grade level, grade
level, and above grade level fifth-grade students in social studies. Teams-
Games-Tournament is an academic game in which students work in
heterogeneous teams to learn specific material and then compete as
representatives of their teams with members of other teams who are like
them in past academic performance.

Six heterogeneous fifth-grade classes at City Park School in Dalton,
Georgia participated in the study. The six classes were randomly assigned
to either the experimental group of the control group. The experimental
and control groups received essentially the same social studies instruction
with the exception of the Teams-Games-Tournament activities which were
given to the experimental group.

The experiment was conducted for a nine-week instructional period.
Both the experimental and the control groups received social studies
instruction for 45 minutes per school day. The three control group teachers
taught social studies using their usual methods. The three experimental
group teachers covered the same material using the same textbook, but
added Teams-Games-Tournament activities three times per week.

One hundred standardized questions from five chapters in the text The
United States and Its Neighbors were used for the pretest and posttest to
measure social studies achievement. The independent t-test was used to
compare the mean scores on the posttests of the two groups. The mean

36

scores of the below grade level, grade level, and above grade level readers
in the experimental group were also compared by t-test analysis with their
respective counterparts in the control group.

Analysis of the data revealed that there was a significant difference in the
achievement of students taught social studies with Teams-Games-
Tournament. The experimental group had a higher mean score which was
significant at the .01 level. Also, the experimental group's grade level
readers scored higher at the .01 significance level. The experimental
group's above grade level readers had higher scores which were significant
at the .05 level. However, there was no significant difference in
achievement when the below grade level readers in each group were
compared.

Based on this research, Teams-Games-Tournament should be
considered a valuable instructional method for elementary teachers.
Further research using TGT under varying conditions was recommended.

A STUDY OF TEACHERS' OPINIONS OF USABLE CRITERIA
FOR CONSIDERATIONS OF MERIT PAY IN MIDDLE GRADES

Jessica P. Cummins
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1986)

The purpose of this research was to study the opinions of teachers
toward merit pay. Middle school teachers from five middle schools were
surveyed. Schools were selected from different socio-economic sections of
the school system.

Fifty-two percent or 130 teachers returned the survey. Out of 130
teachers, 20 were male and 1 10 were female. There were 71 holding a T-4
Certificate, 55 a T-5 Certificate, and 5 have a T-6 Certificate.

There were 51 teachers who had from 1-7 years of teaching experience,
48 had 8-12 years, 25 had 13-16 years, 4 had 19-24 years, and 3 had 25 or
more years of teaching experience.

The survey consisted of 25 questions. Teachers responded by marking
yes or no. The survey included questions from the areas of instruction,
student management, professional responsibilities, and education and
experience.

The majority of teachers preferred to be judged on the criteria found in
the area of instruction and student management. Teachers approved some
of the criteria in the area of professional responsibilities including lesson
plans, school attendance, a positive attitude, punctuality, and a
cooperative relationship with fellow staff members. However, in the area
of education and experience the results were insignificant except the

37

criterion concerning scores on the Teachers Certification Test. An
overwhelming majority of teachers did not want to be judged on their
Teacher Certification Test score.

THE MYTH OF THE ANDROGYNE:
GENDER, PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE DIALECTICS OF BEING

Donald E. Davis
(MA, Psychology, August, 1986)

As a growing number of historians are beginning to acknowledge, the
building of western thought and culture has been an enterprise of what
they are calling a male-centered or "patriarchal" attitude. The voice of
femininity, they claim, has been reduced to a mere whisper, a faint cry in
the wilderness of modernity. If a visiting anthropologist from another
planet were to randomly leaf through the cherished works of our culture, in
the halls of our great libraries, he or she would no doubt find something
missing in the pages of these carefully guarded texts texts written by and
for males. Our anthropologist friend would see that the "lesser sex" has
been almost universally, given little or or no status in the making of human
history. Though women have given birth, nursed, protected, and cared for
the children of an entire humanity, their documented "worth" remains
hopelessly eclipsed by the scientific, technological, and rational
"achievements" of a civilization that has given birth to such atrocities as
the chemical waste dump, nuclear meltdown, and atomic warhead.

The purpose of this thesis is to critically discuss the problem of gender
imbalance in the creation of civilization and culture. Under the umbrella of
adrogyny, we can begin to explore the feminist vision without resorting to
the dualisms of a non-dialectical approach. One of the powerful tenets of
androgyny, is its ability to both transcend and maintain the feminist
position without adhering to what Marilyn French has called the
"ideological purity" of the feminist separatist. Ultimately, feminism is not
about total separation from males or maleness but about a harmonious
integration of the masculine-feminine worldview within a socially,
culturally workable, framework. Unfortunately, some feminists failing to
recognize this, claim, for example, that "for women to participate in our
present (patriarchal) world is equivalent to their consorting with the
enemy" (French, 1985, p. 447). French says that this position, though
partially influential and productive, leads to a "tendency toward
totalitarianism" (p. 447).

The title, "The Myth of the Androgyne," was chosen primarily as a
poetic metaphor with which to portray a much more profound picture of
the power of the feminist vision as I see it. Although 1 will critically

38

discuss the role of the mythic androgyne (as reviewed in the
anthropological, psychological, and religious literature), my main intent is
to use the "myth" not only as an historical or psychological fact, applicable
to our times, but as a way to symbolically illuminate the "dialectics of
being." Certainly the androgynous idea has its roots in what Joseph
Campbell (1968) calls the "archaic view." Nevertheless, we must not
therefore suppose that this "ideal is to be encountered only k in the dark
backward and abysm of time'" (Heilbrun, 1973, p. xix). Androgyny,
whether in its original mythic form, or as we confront it in present
psychological discourse (e.g., Cook, 1985), continues to leave its mark on
the literature of our age.

THE EFFECT OF WRITING INSTRUCTION ON
STUDENTS' CREATIVE WRITING

Jacquelyn Fears
(EdS, Reading Instruction, August, 1986)

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of formal writing
instruction on students' creative writing.

The subjects in the study were 36 7th-grade students in gifted English
classes at Pointe South Junior High School in Jonesboro, Georgia. The
treatment group consisted of 16 students, and the nontreatment group
consisted of 20 students. All subjects in the study had qualified for the
gifted program in Clayton County.

The John Hopkins Model of Writing Instruction for Verbally Talented
Youth was used for the treatment. The students in the treatment group
received writing instruction using the exercises in the model. The students
in the nontreatment group received no formal writing instruction but did
have opportunities to write.

The writing of both groups was evaluated using the Georgia CBE
Writing Assessment Analytical Scale. The writing was evaluated on
quality, style, and mechanics.

The t-test was used to analyze the data, and the null hypotheses were not
rejected at the .05 level of significance.

Results from the analyses showed that there was no significant
difference in the gain scores on Quality, Style, or Mechanics of the
prewriting and postwriting assignments of the students in the two groups.

These results indicate that more research is needed in the area of writing
instruction and its effect of students' creative writing.

39

SEX-ROLE STRAIN AND ALCOHOLISM IN WOMEN

Ann S. Finley
(MA, Sociology, August, 1986)

Sex-role conflict and alcoholism in women was investigated using the
concept of sex-role strain analysis. It was hypothesized that high sex-role
strain would be related to alcoholism and also to low self-esteem. A third
hypothesis, that alcoholism and low self-esteem would be related, was also
investigated. The total sample included 38 women, 19 alcoholics and 19
non-alcoholics.

Results indicated that sex-role strain was not significantly related to
either alcoholism or low self-esteem, though a trend in this direction was
observed. Secondary findings were that low self-esteem and alcoholism
were significantly related, and both were related to previous treatment for
depression. Parental drinking behavior was found to be related to both
high sex-role strain and to alcoholism. Further, the alcoholic women were
more likely to be divorced or separated, to have less formal education and
to have a lower family income that the non-alcoholic women.

A STUDY MEASURING SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDES AND

THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO ACHIEVEMENT IN

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

David Alfred Giesel
(EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1986)

The purpose of this study was to measure the attitudes of high school
students toward science and to determine whether a correlation between
attitudes and achievement could be obtained. Attitudes were measured by
the Scientific Attitude Inventory. Achievement was measured by science
grade point average and results of the science section of the Iowa Test of
Academic Proficiency.

The SAI was administered to 600 students at Lakeview-Ft. Oglethorpe
High School in Catoosa County, Georgia. Of these, 145 were randomly
selected as participants. The study was designed to determine whether
measured differences in attitude for sex, grade level or course were
significant. Scores on the attitude inventory were compared to scores on
the achievement measures to determine correlation values.

Results showed that Lakeview-Ft. Oglethorpe students moderately
accept positive scientific attitudes and moderately reject negative scientific
attitudes although inconsistency was present as to the understanding of the
nature of science and also in evaluating their emotional views of science.
No significant differences were shown between scores on the SAI and sex

40

or grade level. Significant differences were obtained between SA1 scores in
biology grade 10 and biology grade 9, botany, human anatomy, and
chemistry. No other significant differences between courses were obtained.

A moderate positive correlation (r=0.40) was obtained when comparing
attitude to science grade point average; no significant correlation was
evident when comparing attitude to Iowa TAP scores. Positive
correlations between certain specific attitudes and achievement were
noted, but many scientific attitudes were accepted regardless of the level of
achievement.

THE USE OF AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTIC ART TO ENRICH
THE TEACHING OF AMERICAN HISTORY FROM 1860-1910

Roscoe Lis ton Googe, Jr.
(EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1986)

This study brings to the attention of American history teachers the vast
potential of American impressionistic art as an instrument for enriching as
well as supplementing the teaching of history. The major focal point was
the artists who were active painting impressions of the American way of
life at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century.

This study examines the use of impressionistic art in fifteen United
States high school textbooks. Lower level textbooks were found to be very
negligent in their use of impressionistic art and artists. The upper level texts
were more noticeably aware of impressionists accomplishments. Teachers
will be able to utilize supplementary materials in this study to enable
students to better understand history not only from an artist's point of
view, but of a person living in this period.

A FOLLOW-UP STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF

DEVELOPMENTAL FIRST GRADE ON FIFTH-GRADE

STUDENTS AT EASTSIDE AND ANTIOCH

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

Anthony E. Hohol
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, J 986)

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a significant
difference between mean achievement scores in reading and mathematics
of developmental first-grade students when compared to students not
needing readiness at grade levels one, three, four, and five.

41

Methods and Procedures

This study was conducted at Eastside and Antioch Elementary Schools
in Whitfield County. There were 25 randomly selected students in the
control and experimental groups.

In the fall of the 1979-1980 school year, all first-grade students at
Eastside and Antioch Elementary Schools were administered the
Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test. Students with scores less than 40
were assigned to readiness classes for the remainder of the year. The
readiness students participated in direct manipulative experiences built
aroung the following core areas: (a) fine motor control, (b) five senses, (c)
problem-solving skills, (d) oral language, (e) mathematics, and (0 art,
music, health, social studies, and science.

Student records of the experimental and control groups furnished
Metropolitan Achievement Test results in grade one and Scott Foresman
Norm Referenced Test results in grades three through five in reading and
mathematics.

The / test was used to test the null hypotheses. The level of significance
for rejecting or accepting the null hypotheses was set at .05.

Results

Findings of the study were:

1. The control group scored significantly higher (P= .01) than the
experimental group in reading at grade levels one, three, four, and five.

2. The control group scored significantly higher (P= .01) than the
experimental group in mathematics at grade levels one, three, four, and
five.

3. There was no significant difference between the control and
experimental group means in mathematics at grade three.

Conclusions

Based on analysis of the data it was concluded that:

1. The developmental students never attained like scores in reading of
the nondevelopmental students in grades one, three, four, and five.

2. The developmental students never attained like scores in
mathematics of nondevelopmental students in grades four and five.

3. The nondevelopmental and developmental students attained like
scores in mathematics at grade level three.

42

A DESCRIPTIVE EXPLORATION OF THE
IMPOSTER PHENOMENON

Judith Anne Horton
(MA, Psychology, March, 1987)

In their work with high achieving women, Clance and Imes (1978)
identified a pattern of self-doubt which they named the imposter
phenomenon, connoting an inner sense of intellectual phoniness which
persists despite objective evidence of one's ability and success. This study
analyses dialogal interviews in order to examine the experience and
meaning of the impostor phenomenon for the individual. Participants
were six self-described impostor phenomenon sufferers. The empirical,
descriptive methodology used provides a basis for contextualizing the
relative significance of themes which emerge from the analysis of the data,
as well as for evaluating the pertinence of the traditionally derived findings
of previous research. The findings, although congruent with Clance and
Imes' theoretical constructs, go beyond them in identifying how the
"impostor" experiences herself, others, and achievement situations. It was
found that the impostor phenomenon arises out of the interaction of
polarized thinking with a sensitivity to the critical evaluation of others, and
an identification with one's expressive rather than one's instrumental
abilities.

A STUDY OF TEACHERS' OPINIONS TOWARD
MERIT PAY IN DOUGLAS COUNTY

Maria L. Hutton
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, June, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to study teachers' opinions toward merit
pay. Elementary, middle, and secondary teachers' opinions were
compared as were union and nonunion teachers.

The population of the study consisted of the 173 elementary, middle,
and secondary teachers in Douglas County during 1984-85. A 20-item
questionnaire was developed by the researcher. Numerical values were
assigned to the 20 merit pay statements to enable the researcher to analyze
the data. Chi square was used and the .05 level of significance was
established as the level at which the null hypothesis would be rejected.

The results indicated that there were five merit pay statements out of 20
that were significant when comparing elementary, middle, and secondary
teachers. There was one significant statement when comparing union and
nonunion teachers. Teachers did not favor being evaluated by the
principal, committee or peer teachers, curriculum specialist, and

43

department head. The teachers agreed with their attendance, academic
credits, individual projects, group projects and classroom performance
being used as merit pay criteria.

THE EXPERIENCE OF TRANSFORMATION THROUGH
THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE

Donna L. King
(MA, Psychology, December, 1986)

It is my intention in this paper to explore the psychological life of the
body and to better understand how meaning is expressed through our
embodiment. Specifically, I am interested in the psychological
transformation which occurs when we embrace a radically new motility.
My point of departure will be a phenomenological analysis of a group of
the Alexander technique students, all of whom describe their experience as
dramatically changed since embarking on a course of Alexander lessons.

1 will begin my paper with a review of the literature on the Alexander
technique its history, praxis, and research methods. Following, I will
present a method of phenomenological research and apply it to the study
of five students of the Alexander technique. This section will culminate
with a description of the general structure of the experience of
transformation through the Alexander technique. Finally, I will conclude
with a discussion section in which 1 draw conclusions based on my
findings, relate these to others in the field of phenomenological and
psychoanalytic psychology, and make suggestions for further study and
investigations.

My interest in the Alexander technique began while I was living and
working in New York City. Coming from a background of music,
movement and psychology, 1 had heard of the Alexander technique from
several acquaintances in the performing world. Alexander work was said
to be subtle body work, involving gentle touch by a teacher along with
certain instructions to "keep the head forward and up," and, "let the back
lengthen and widen." Some people said they benefited from Alexander
while others complained they felt little or nothing during lessons. Having
had some difficulty in breathing freely while singing, and being at a
crossroad in my career pursuits, 1 decided to try Alexander lessons and see
what they could offer me.

Very early on, one of the most striking aspects of my lessons was the
surge of emotions I felt when the teacher worked on certain parts of my
body. I recognized that there seemed to be key areas of my body that when
touched in a certain way, or encouraged to move or let go, elicited a wave
of sadness or fear, or occasionally a sense of incredible release and

44

unburdenment. I felt an unhinging of psychological meaning, and I was
fascinated by the fact that there was very little verbal communication going
on between me and the teacher. These meaningful emotions emerged in
tandem with the special tough of her hands and the deeply penetrating
awareness with which I was feeling and sensing my body. 1 felt I was
gaining new access to understanding myself in the world, a heightened
awareness of being embodied. Conversation with my teacher revealed the
commonality of my experience with those of other students of the
Alexander technique.

The existence of this phenomenon was apparent, yet nowhere in the
literature of the Alexander technique could I find research which
satisfactorily described or analyzed the structure of the experience. It was
an uncharted frontier and I the self-appointed pioneer exploring what
many called "ephemeral" terrain. Armed with a novice understanding of

phenomenological methodology and some important mentors to guide me
along the way, 1 embarked on a quest that was to become this project: the
pursuit of the phenomenon of transformation through the practice of the
Alexander technique..

THE BATTLE OF JONESBORO:

A LOCAL HISTORY PARADIGM AND ENRICHMENT UNIT FOR

SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS IN

SOUTH FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA

James W. Leach
(EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this historical project is to provide structured materials
which will serve as a local history paradigm and as an enrichment unit for
social studies teachers in south Fulton County. The structured materials
will be useful in teaching a portion of the history of the area which used to
be Campbell County.

This historical project consists of the following sections: (1) a review of
the literature relevant to the teaching of local history (chapter 2), (2) a
descriptive narrative of the Battle of Jonesboro accompanied by maps and
illustrations (chapters 3-5), (3) a reader's guide of the literature pertaining
to the Battle of Jonesboro (chapter 6), (4) a long-and-short driving tour of
the area concerning the Battle of Jonesboro (chapter 7), (5) a summary of
recommendations about doing a local history, and (6) the means for
implementing this historical project (chapter 8). Social studies teachers
will greatly benefit from the plethora of information presented in this
historical project.

45

A STUDY OF PARENT INVOLVEMENT IN THE
GIFTED EDUCATION PROGRAM IN FAYETTE COUNTY

Mary G. Perry
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1986)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether parents are actively
involved in elementary gifted programs. Both parents and teachers of
gifted students were surveyed. The subjects were the parents of the 423
students and the eight teachers of the elementary gifted students in Fayette
County, Georgia, in May, 1 986. A six item questionnaire was developed by
the researcher, and results were analyzed using a Chi square formula with
.0 1 level of significance established as the level at which the null hypothesis
would be rejected. The results indicated that parents are not active in their
child's program of gifted education. Parents do not feel they regularly
communicate with the teacher, but do believe they understand what their
child does in the gifted classes. Teachers tend to see parents as being more
involved and report that parents communicate more regularly than the
parents themselves think they do. Teachers and parents agree parents want
to be more involved and be better informed about the program, but
believe other commitments prohibit more participation.

THE EFFECTS OF SELF-CONCEPT IMPROVEMENT

STRATEGIES ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

IN THE CLASSROOM

Joan B. Quijano
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, August, 1986)

This study was designed to determine the results of exposure to a self-
concept program on mathematical test scores of fifth-grade students.

Subjects for the study were fifth-grade students at Taylorsville
Elementary School. The subjects were intact groups found in the two
fifth-grade classes whose total enrollment was 56 students. The
experimental group and control group numbered 28 students each.

The study was conducted over a four week or 20 day period. The
Systematic Teaching and Measuring Mathematics (STAM M) cluster tests
were administered for the pretests and the posttests. The test scores from
the pretest and posttest were used to calculate the analysis of covariance
which did not result in statistically significant mean gains, at the 0.05 level
of significance. Therefore the null hypothesis was not rejected.
Conclusions, educational implications and recommendations for research
were drawn from the results.

46

THE EFFECT OF PHYSICAL MATURITY RATE ON THE
SELF-CONCEPT OF ADOLESCENT MALES

Linda Forester Seay
(EdS, Middle Grades Education, December, 1986)

This study was done to determine if there was a difference in the self-
concept of males whose physical maturity was delayed and those whose
physical maturity occurred at an earlier age. The study also was done to
determine if self-concept differed between the subjects in the sixth grade
and those in the eighth grade. A total of eighty-four subjects was identified
by certified school counselors with the help of certificated physical
education teachers within the schools from which the subjects were drawn.
Identification was based on certain physical characteristics indicative of
the onset and advancement of puberty. The sixth grade subjects were
within the age limits of 1 1 years months and 12 years 6 months; the eighth
graders were within age limits of 13 years months and 14 years 6 months.
The Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale was administered to all subjects by
the school counselors in a morning test session during April, 1986. After
the tests were scored, data were analyzed by using the two way analysis of
variance and tested at a .05 level of significance. No significant difference
was found to exist due to grade or to physical development. No interaction
was found to exist among the groups.

TRANSFORMATION: THE ALCHEMY OF ADDICTION

Frank Rice Tiller, III
(MA, Psychology, August, 1986)

This study was undertaken to demonstrate that the individually
destructive nature of addiction results from an inner division and polarities
within the personality, and an inability to conjoin these separated parts
into a cohesive holistic functioning. The study of Alchemy as a symbolic
process of deep personality structure and spiritual development is used
metaphorically within a Jungian context to define and elucidate the ways
in which these conjunctions may be accomplished through a Program of
Recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous or other anonymous programs.
Information regarding the system and imagery of Alchemy as a science of
transformation is presented in a broad framework to give the reader some
feeling for the correspondence of symbol that reveals deeper and
underlying meanings inherent to any Program of Recovery. The major
historical development of Alcoholics Anonymous is described along with
foundation concepts to assist all readers in understanding this current
American self-help system. Poetic, historical, mythological, and

47

anthropological parallels are used to communicate spiritual types of
personality phenomena which otherwise either remain in the realm of
symbol, or tend to be misinterpreted by popular psychological systems, the
medical community, and other methods relying on numerical data,
causative projections, and so forth. An alchemical step formula combined
with a discussion of the theory of archetypal manifestation is compared
qualitatively to the growth experience of the Twelve Steps of A. A. and its
ally organizations. The psychological need for spiritual expression from
the total personality is discussed, with substance use viewed as a situating
in time and social context the realization of transcendental absolutes. The
attainment of experiential states such as those described by alchemy and
later by such researchers as Huxley and Maslow are seen as a normal
human function, and related to the arising Self as personality/ existential
meaning through a Program of Recovery.

POST-SECONDARY FOLLOW-UP OF LEARNING DISABLED
ADOLESCENTS HAVING RECEIVED VOCATIONAL TRAINING

Janet M. Turner
(EdS, Special Education, March, 1987)

The impact of vocational/ technical training at the secondary level of
learning disabled students is analyzed to see if it has any bearing on the
future vocational choice of those students. The analysis is figured by the
follow-up of several learning disabled students who completed a year long
vocational/ technical training course while in high school to see if they
continued in that same area of training upon graduation. Results will give
some indication of whether or not vocational training for learning disabled
students is of any benefit in helping them to determine a vocation upon
graduation. Significance to the field of education will be as to whether or
not these vocational training programs have any impact at all on these
students.

THE EXPOSURE TO CAREERS IN YOUNG ADULT NOVELS:

AN ASSESSMENT

Robert E. Twiggs
(EdS, Secondary Education, December, 1986)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent of information that
can be obtained about careers through the reading of young adult (YA)
novels. One area examined was the degree or level of exposure that junior
and senior high school students receive to adult careers in YA novels.

48

Another aspect of the study was to evaluate the portrayal of the adult in a
particular career and to ascertain whether that portrayal is either negative,
positive, or neutral. A third area of concern in this study was to determine
whether a trend exists in YA novels toward portraying any particular
socio-economic group.

A total of twenty-two novels was selected from the "Best Books" lists of
Booklists for five years. The researcher read each of the selected novels
thereby determining which careers were presented in each novel. The
researcher noted the type of career based on level of skill required and
whether the job was held by an adult or a teenager.

In addition to the above, the researcher noted whether the characters
and their careers were portrayed negatively, positively, or neutrally. Nine
career factors were evaluated: words associated with the career, ethical
standards within the career, actions within the career, actions outside the
career, emotional reward of the career, the handling of stress related to the
career, lifestyle afforded by the career, and views of career held by other
characters.

Conclusions drawn from this study indicate that in general adults and
their careers in YA novels are portrayed in a neutral manner. The data
indicated that exceptions did exist but that in most instances when an adult
character was portrayed negatively in areas of his/her career he/she was
portrayed positively or neutrally in other career factors. The data also
indicated that educators were the most numerous adult group in YA
novels. Clerks and food service personnel along with medical personnel
were the next most prevalent groups. No single socio-economic group was
given special treatment by YA novelists. The number of characters from
the three skill levels was virtually equal as was their portrayal.

From the data and the review of the literature, the researcher concluded
that using YA novels as a component of career awareness in conjunction
with literature study is a viable choice for the classroom teacher, the school
librarian, and the vocational and/or guidance counselor.

THE EFFECT OF VARIATIONS IN THE

FORMATIVE-FEEDBACK-CORRECTIVE CYCLE ON

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IN HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY

Daisy G. Waldrep
(EdS, Secondary Education, August, 1985)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a
significant difference in the achievement of high school chemistry students
due to variations in the formative-feedback-corrective cycle in a mastery

49

learning program. Achievement measures were scores on seven summative
tests. Three intact classes were randomly assigned to three treatments: (1)
no formative testing, (2) formative testing followed by feedback only, and
(3) formative testing followed by feedback with suggested correctives. The
treatments were reassigned during the study so that each class was exposed
to each treatment. The prior course average was used to adjust for the
effect of pre-knowledge. Analysis of covariance procedures on each of the
seven summative tests indicated no significant differences between the
three treatments or when formative testing was compared to no formative
testing. When the two treatments with formative tests were compared, the
results were not consistent. For three of the seven summative tests,
significant differences were indicated between students who had
correctives and those who had feedback only. Students who had
correctives performed significantly better on these three objectives. No
other significant differences were found.

A COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL AND VISUAL FORMS
METHODS IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION INSTRUCTION

Kathleen S. Yeneha
(EdS, Secondary Education, March, 1987)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether seventh-grade
students from regular language arts classes would show greater
achievement gain in composition after having been instructed in
exposition by visual forms methods that those students who were
instructed by traditional methods. Sixty-one students participated in the
study. Thirty-three students formed the experimental group, and 29
students were in the control group. The study was conducted during a 1 5-
day instructional period during which time both groups were instructed in
basic paragraph and essay development. Class periods were 55 minutes in
length. The control group was instructed by traditional methods using
lecture, basic textbook information, and worksheet activities. Only the
experimental group included the use of "Hub and Spokes, ""S-curve, "and
pyramid visual forms as illustration of the structure of paragraph and
essay development. No visual forms were used by the control group.
Personal essays were written by both groups as pretest and posttest writing
samples before and after the 15-day instruction period. Scores obtained
from these tests were used as data to test the null hypothesis which stated
that there would be no significant difference in the writing achievement of
students instructed by visual forms methods as opposed to instruction by
traditional methods. The null hypothesis was tested using the Analysis of
Variance at the .05 level of significance and was not accepted since the

50

mean gain score of the experimental group was 1.0, from pretest to
posttest, whereas the mean gain score of the control group was 10.0 from
pretest to posttest. The difference between the two means resulted in a
ratio of F(l, 56) = 4.29, p .05.

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