,/"--;> .''' / WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE 'T^iew WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE Published by West Georgia College A Unit of the University System of Georgia Carrollton, Georgia Volume XXIV May 1994 Published by WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE Bruce W. Lyon, Acting President Don N. Smith, Vice President and Dean of Faculties Learning Resources Committee Ben de Mayo, Chairperson Charles Beard Bruce Bird Mauricio Cabrera Tim Chowns Mary Creamer Anita Vanbrackle Victoria Geisler Kathryn Grams Javier Hasbun Lee Jan Wayne Kirk Martha A. Saunders, Editor Jeanette C. Bernhardt, Associate Editor Joanne R. Artz, 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. West Georgia College assumes no responsibility for contributors' views. The style guide is MLA Handbook, Second Edition. Although the Review is primarily a medium for the faculty ofWest Georgia College, other sources are invited. The abstracts of all masters' and educational specialists' theses written at West Georgia College are included as they are awarded. Digitized by tine Internet Arcinive in 2011 witii funding from LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/westgeorgiacolle2425unse ',<'if!'>" WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE Volume XXIV May 1994 TABLE OF CONTENTS "Common Meter" by Rudolph Fisher: An Uncommon Gumbo of Prose, Blues, Jazz, Love, and War by Patricia E. Bonner 5 Financing Higher Education in Georgia: A Comparative Analysis by Richard Guynn and Carole E. Scott 17 Transpersonal Psychology: A New^ Paradigm of Inquiry by Kaisa Puhakka 31 Exploring Writing Across the Curriculum: An Invitation to Faculty Across the Curriculum by Timothy A. Peeples 39 Abstracts of Master's Theses and Specialist in Education Projects 47 Copyright 1994, West Georgia College Printed in the USA (ISSN 0043-3136) "Common Meter" by Rudolph Fisher: An Uncommon Gumbo of Prose, Blues, Jazz, Love, and War by Patricia E. Bonner* Rudolph Fisher is perhaps one of the most gifted and innovative literary magicians to w^rite in the genre of the short story. The spirit and pulse of the Harlem Renaissance are alive in the world of his stories. Although Fisher is a lesser known writer of the Harlem Renaissance, he deserves a renaissance of his own. His unorthodox style, his exciting prose that is full of pleasant surprises, and his use ot blues and jazz music breathe life into nostalgic memories of hot, swinging Harlem, New York, in the 1920s. Fisher records the lives of the black people whose bruised souls sang the blues and crooned sweet jazz in one of his most popular short stories, "Common Meter." It is a love story born and bred in Harlem, and it throbs with the magic, soul, and heartache of the black experience. The Harlem Renaissance is the literary period in which Fisher wrote, and Harlem is the setting for "Common Meter." A brief look at Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance is necessary in order to understand the historical context of this story. In the nineteenth century, eighty to ninety percent of blacks lived in the South, and during the great migration, between the years of 1910-1920, 450,000 blacks left the South. In the years of 1920-1930, 750,000 more blacks emigrated from the South heading for the North (Lewis 108-9). Forced out by the poverty of southern agriculture and the brutality of southern racial bigotry, these Negroes went in search of a freer life and better job opportunities. Though their settlement labeled them northerners, they brought with them their southern values, their southern tastes, their god, their music, and their capacity for hope. Soon Harlem began to swell with large numbers of black people, whose culture would leave an indelible tattoo upon its history. Hundreds of thousands of African- Americans invaded the North, providing the ingredients for a renaissance. 'Assistant Professor of English, West Georgia College 5 The Harlem Renaissance (1920-30) was an artistic movement in| African-American history' that touched upon every medium of creativity. African-Americans contributed major w^orks in literature, art, music, and I drama. It w^as as if they collectively attained an attitude of racial pride and assertiveness. Nathan Huggins in his book Harlem Renaissance vividly describes the personality of the movement: It is a rare and intriguing moment v^^hen a people decide that they are the instruments of history-making and race-building. It is common enough to think of oneself as part of some larger meaning in the sweep of history, a part of some grand design. But to presume to be an actor and creator in the special occurrence of a people's birth (or rebirth) requires a singular self-consciousness. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, down into the first years of the Great Depression, black intellectuals in Harlem had just such a self-concept. These Harlemites were so convinced that they were evoking their people's "Dusk of Dawn" that they believed that they marked a renaissance. (3) African-Americans were finally able to give more voice and visibility to their culture and art. Emancipation, Reconstruction, and the dawn of the twentieth century had done little for the social and political advancement of African-Americans. Their post-Civil War years had been spent in a desperate struggle to survive, with little time or encouragement for artistic expression. The Harlem Renaissance, however, inspired and maintained an interest in the black condition in America. This was achieved by black assertiveness in every possible medium. People around the country and the world took notice. The achievements of African- American intellectuals were reflected in the brilliance of their contributions. They created the "New Negro," a term coined by Alain Locke. By the end of the war in 1919, African-Americans were becoming more assertive than their prewar brothers and sisters. Their willingness to fight showed that the Negro was anxious to make America safe for himself as he had been to make the world safe for democracy. This "New Negro" would insist on absolute and unequivocal social equality. He would be self-assertive and not content with second class citizenship. Despite the disillusionment that followed wartime idealism, the 1920s continued the spirit of emancipation, innovation, and newness. The spirit of the times was also referred to as "The Jazz Age." This spirit manifested itself in Harlem and in its nightclub circuit with blues and jazz music and performers that serenaded Harlem's inhabitants. Cabarets opened everywhere, including the famed Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and Small's. These nightclubs were established specifically for white patronage and observed Jim Crow laws. Some of the big band greats such as the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra and the Duke Ellington Orchestra frequently performed at these estabUshments. In addition, music gushed out of such blues queens as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Alberta Hunter, all of whom received recording contracts in this new age (Huggins 3-10). Many aU-black"jook joints" or nightclubs, "jam sessions," and rent parties were also firmly embedded in the black community. Blues and jazz music spread through Harlem like a friendly disease. The Uterature of the Harlem Renaissance captured the spirit of the Jazz Age and reflected much of what was actually going on in Harlem. Rudolph Fisher realistically portrays the people and the music from this period in his short story "Common Meter" set in Harlem during the 1920s. All of the action takes place in Harlem on Lenox Avenue in a nightclub named "The Arcadia," known as "The World's Largest and Finest Ballroom." On Saturday night, the owner of the club is sponsoring a battle between two bands, a competition between Fess Baxter's Firemen and Bus Williams' Blue Devils. Both are soulflil jazz bands that play the blues and swell the euphoria found in the club. People come to the Arcadia to be healed by the music, to seek the joy of a jazzy night, and to look for love. Fisher describes the club and its inhabitants as follows: So much outside. Inside, a blazing lobby, flanked by marble stairways. Upstairs, an enormous dance hall the length of a city block. Low ceilings blushing pink with rows of inverted dome-lights. A broad dancing area, bounded on three sides by a wide soft-carpeted promenade, on the fourth by an ample platform accommodating the two orchestras. People. Flesh. A fly-thickjam of dancers on the floor, grimly jostling each other; a milling herd of thirsty-eyed boys, moving slowly, searchingly over the carpeted promenade; a congregation of languid girls, lounging in rows of easy chairs here and there, bodies and faces unconcerned, dark eyes furtively alert. A restless multitude of empty, romance-hungry lives. (74) The competition between the two bands is paralleled by the competition between the two men, Fess and Bus, for the love of Miss Jean Ambrose. One of the minor characters observes, "They can't use knives and they can't use Knucks. And so they get to fight it out with Jazz" (Fisher 80). The winner will claim the jazz championship of the world, win a trophy called "The Lovin' Cup," and, of course, win the heart and hand of Miss Jean Ambrose. Miss Ambrose is described as a child of Harlem who speaks its language. Orphaned at a young age, she is described as strikingly beautiful with pretty black wavy hair, merry black eyes, and clear amber skin with roses imprisoned in it. And she is known to have the sassiest "hip-switch" of all the women. Bus has gotten her a job in the Arcadia as a dancing companion to men for pay and as a hostess. The two band leaders, Fess and Bus, are simply overwhelmed by her beauty. On her first night at work. Bus asks her to marry him while Baxter promises her money and a good time. Although Fess and Bus are master jazz men who have the power to take music and turn it into pure emotion and feeUng, their personalities differ. Fess is flamboyant, aggressive, and outgoing, fully aware of his power over women. As the narrator says, ". . . catching sight of girls was one of his special accomplishments." Fess is handsome too and is described as cheese-colored with straightened brown hair. His appearance, style, and charisma captivate women. Bus, on the other hand, has a more sincere and unaggressive demeanor and follows the truth of his heart rather than his sexual appetite. He is described as having a jolly round brown face with an easy smile. Bus does feel threatened by Fess, or rather threatened by the charm that Fess can pour all over Jean, and they even have a brief physical confrontation over her honor. They are warned by the owner of the club to fight it out with jazz sticks, their weapons, not with fists (Fisher 79). The battle between the two bands is set for the following Monday night; then, everyone will find out who is the best man to win the jazz contest, the "Lovin' Cup," as vvell as Miss Jean Ambrose. Rumors spread all over Harlem about this competition, and a week later, the Arcadia is full of pleasure seekers. The rules are established: Each band will play three numbers: a one-step, a fox-trot, and a blues number. The owner has a stop watch, and he will time the applause after each number, and the leader receiving the longest total applause is the winner. So their success depends on how deeply their music is able to move the crowd. Monday night arrives, and the Arcadia is full. The competition begins. Bus Williams' Blue Devils win the coin toss and play the first number. The narrator describes Bus' musical philosophy and the Blue Devils' performance as follows: Bus' philosophy of jazz held tone to be merely the vehicle of rhythm. He spent much time devising new rhythmic patterns with which to vary his presentation. Accordingly he depended largely on . . . his master percussionist, who knew every rhythmic monkey-shine with which to delight a gaping throng. Bus had conceived the present piece as a chase, in which an agile clarinet eluded impetuous and turbulent traps. The other instruments were to be observers, chorusing their excitement while they urged the principals on. (Fisher 82) But from the moment the piece starts, something is obviously wrong. People stop dancing in the middle of the number, puzzled. The traps of the drums are voiceless, only emitting shadows of sound. The applause is only 15 seconds. Each drum-sheet is dead, cut with a knife by Fess. Next is Fess's turn, and he faces the crowd with confident happiness. His band is phenomenal. The author describes his performance: Fess Baxter was directing a whirlwind number, sweeping the crowd about the floor at an exciting, exhausting pace, distorting, expanding, etherealizing their emotions with swift-changing dissonances. Contrary to Bus William's philosophy, Fess Baxter considered rhythm a mere rack upon which to hang his tonal tricks. (Fisher 83) Of course, there is nothing wrong with Fess' drums. The applause is 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Although Bus wants to confront Fess about his treachery, he is stopped and encouraged by his drummers not to quit. Instead of playing the drum, his drummer will play the wood, cymbals, and sandpaper. Then, Bus begins his second number, a fox-trot; however as the narrator says, "The spine had been ripped out of their music, and they could not compensate for the gaping absence of bass" (Fisher 84). The applause is only 45 seconds. Next again is Fess. The Firemen's fox-trot is Fess' rearrangement of Burleigh's "Jean, My Jean." The crowd loves it, but it fails to delight Jean Ambrose, whom by its title it was intended to flatter. The narrator describes the music: "The thing was delirious with strange harmonies, iridescent with odd color-changes, and its very flamboyance, its musical fine-writing and conceits delighted the dancers" (Fisher 83). When Bus tells Jean that Fess has destroyed his band's drums, her attraction to Fess is immediately severed. Many times in the black community, all is not fair in love and war, so Jean urges and encourages Bus to try to win the competition. The present score is for the Blue Devils, one minute even; for the Firemen, six minutes and 30 seconds. Now it is time for the Blue Devils' last number, the Blues. The narrator provides excellent description of this performance: He had chosen the parent of blues songs, the old St. Louis Blues, and he adduced every device that had ever adorned that classic. Clarinets wailed, saxophones moaned, trumpets wept wretchedly, trombones laughed bitterly, even the great bass horn sobbed dismally from the depths. (Fisher 84) What's more, the crowd falls under the spell of Bus' blues. The narrator continues: And so perfectly did the misery in the music express the actual despair of the situation that the crowd was caught from the start. Soon dancers closed their eyes, forgot their jostling neighbors, lost themselves bodily in the easy sway of that slow, fateflil measure, vaguely aware that some quality hitherto lost had at last been found. They were too wholly absorbed to know just how that quality had been found: that every player softly dropped his heel where each bass-drum beat would have come, giving each major impulse a body and breadth that no drum could have achieved. Zoom-zoom-zoom-zoom. It was not a mere sound; it was a vibrant throb that took hold of the crowd and rocked it. (Fisher 84-85) The emotional power of the blues washes over everyone with sweetly melancholy magic. Fisher heavily emphasizes the fact that the crowd is transported by the music, not just back to the suffering of slavery, but even further back to Africa and its drumbeats of black life. Through the music, the crowd walks through the heavy sorrow of their history. As the narrator says, "Not a sound but an emotion that laid hold on their bodies and svsomg 10 them into the past. Blues--low-down blues indeed blues that reached their soul's depths" (Fisher 84). However, the blues is more than just a sad song. It is a paradoxical mixture of joy and pain and suffering and soothing. The emotional weight of the blues played by the Blue Devils begins to lighten; the color, texture, and tone of the music change. "The blueness . . . the sorrow, the despair began to give way to hope. Rapturously, rhapsodically, the number rose to madness and at the height of its madness, burst into sudden silence. Illusion broke. Dancers awoke, dropped to reality with a jolt" (Fisher 85). The crowd applauds, its palms sore. Bus and his Blue Devils have moved the crowd and taken them to places of nostalgia, melancholy, ecstasy, sorrow, and hope in a way only music can. It is Fess's Firemen's last chance, but their style of wild improvisation and dependence on rhythm is useless in a low-down blues song. Also, just after the crowd has walked through the depths of the Blue Devil's blues and wallowed in the emotion ot the music, Fess's Firemen cannot connect with them. The cathartic effect of the Blue Devils' blues leaves them spent and satisfied. The crowd's applause for Fess's Firemen dies in a few seconds, except for a few people Fess has paid to clap. The fmal score is Bus Williams' Blue Devils 7 minutes and 40 seconds, and Fess Baxter's Firemen 8 minutes flat. Fess is declared the winner, and the owner of the club presents him with the Lovin' cup amid shouts of hisses and boos as well as derogatory name-calling directed at him. The crowd is silent as Fess bends down to give Miss Jean Ambrose a gallant hand up to the platform. With a bow, he hands her the cup. Shouts from the crowd assault both of them, and they urge her not to accept the cup. Then, the Blue Devils' drummer exposes the ripped drum, and some of the angrier members of the crowd begin to descend upon Fess. Jean Ambrose's momentary hesitation abruptly vanishes. She takes the trophy and runs to give it to Bus. The romance-hungry crowd screams in delight as Bus gathers Jean and the cup into his arms. "The crowd went utterly wild--laughed, shouted, yelled, and whistled till the walls of the Arcadia bulged. Jazz emerged as the mad noise subsided" (Fisher 85-86). The story ends with Bus Wilhams' Blue Devils playing "She's Still My Baby." Although on the surface "Common Meter" is a rather simplistic love story, Fisher has surrounded it with the musical history of African-Americans. Like mimetic shadows, black music accompanied 11 and sometimes preceded every mood and move of the African- American in his quest for freedom and equality. Black music, then, tells about the feelings and thinking of black people and the kinds of mental and emotional adjustments they had to make in order to survive and succeed in America. In the vein of Langston Hughes, Fisher uses musical metaphors to characterize and define the experiences of masses of poor black people all over America. His characters in "Common Meter" are blues people who live the blues experience. The lives of all poor black people in the 1920s were not characterized by the blues, yet the blues was a real and constant aspect of many of their lives. Their experiences were dominated by a struggle to survive: meeting the landlord's rent, trying to find one of the menial jobs within prescribed social limitations, trying to scrape up enough money for food, clothes, and in some instances, liquor, and dealing with the humiliations that the color of their skin evoked. Their experiences were also characterized by personal struggles such as unrequited love, domestic violence, sexual despair, and broken relationships. The terms blues experience also includes the good times gleaned from the struggle: "throwing" rent parties, going dancing, singing, partying in "jook joints," eating barbecue and potato salad; in short, wallowing in the occasional but softer seams of poverty. The people who consistently fill the Arcadia live in the blues experience; they are blues people. In "Common Meter" two of the ladies in the club acknowledge how beautiful Jean Ambrose is and say, "I could look a lot better'n that it I didn't have to work all day." "No lie. Scrubbin' floors never made no bathin' beauties." Even Miss Jean Ambrose is a child of the blues experience. She is in many ways a "motherless child," having been raised in an orphanage. She is familiar with the blues and is reduced to earning money by catering to the needs of many men, for the people who attend the Arcadia know that a large part of struggling to survive in America takes a destructive toll on their bodies and sometimes their spirits. The blues is their life-line. It is no accident that Bus Williams' band is named the Blue Devils. The blues derives its name from "a fit of the blue devils" which is a mood of despondency (Tracy 59). The Blue Devils' blues in "Common Meter" seems to have the power to heal world-weary lives. Fisher defines the blues through the voice of his narrator: The blues were very low-down, the nakedest of jazz, a series of periodic wails against a background of steady, slow rhythm. 12 each pounding pulse descending inevitably, like leaden strokes of fate. Bus found himself singing the words of this grief-stricken lamentation: Trouble trouble has followed me all my days, Trouble-trouble has followed me all my days- Seems like trouble's gonna follow me always. Baby-baby-my baby's gone away. Baby-baby-my baby's gone away- Seems like baby-my baby's gone to stay. (Fisher 78) These two stanzas are exact replications of the traditional blues form, and the narrator describes the instruments which make the melody so blue. The waihng clarinet, the weeping C sax, the moaning B-flat sax, and the trombone (Fisher 78) mix melancholy medicine for Bus and the night clubbers. Also, the repetitious use of the blue u>o?7/ "trouble" in the first stanza evokes the weariness and sadness found in the blues. In the second stanza, the common blues theme of lost love is present. Because a common history binds the blues singer and his audience, he draws his audience into the reaUty of the black experience. Bus sings about real-life tragedies and disappointments, personalizes an experience which is then grabbed up by the folk and becomes the possession of the folk. When the blues are in Arcadia, true feelings are exposed and healed by their melodic and emotional power. The other music in "Common Meter," jazz, provides another kind of insight on the lives of blues people. If blues can be seen as a melodic metaphor for the misery in the lives of common black people, jazz, then, is the sound of their laughter, a laughter that dances, cries, and sings tunes that heal the riff made by the blues. Weeknight and weekend doses of jazz help to wash out the bitterness caused by weariness and keep the taste for living in their mouths. Langston Hughes in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" describes jazz as an artistic interpretation of black life: . . .jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul-the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. (2-3) Rudolph Fisher also recognizes jazz's resemblance to many of the emotions and movements of black people. His characters in "Common Meter" need 13 jazz in their lives. Jazz creates rainbows of good feeling that move in rhythmic weaves through their whole bodies and uplift their burdensome spirits. Jazz, however, is more than an opiate; it is regenerative. Jazz music fills the Arcadia. Fess Baxter's Firemen are experts of improvisation. One of his pieces is described as being "...dizzy with sudden disharmonies, unexpected twists of phrase, [and] successive false resolutions" (Fisher 83). The free-flowing unraveling rhythm captivates the crowd, and unbridled dance takes over. Jazz, then, paradoxically symbolizes a freedom experienced and, simultaneously, sought after by the masses of African-Americans. Joy, laughter, and the blare of Negro bands are the methods of protest against the impoverished condition of their lives. The smoky, crowded cabarets are then like shrines that give testimony to an unconquerable spirit and a will to survive. Also, in "Common Meter" Fisher's characters speak a "jazzed" language. 1 here are words like sweet papa, mama, Jivin , back-dive, cats, and "birds" that are associated with jazz musicians and their world. Witty conversations between characters also simulate the playful interplay between jazz instruments and players. A brief conversation between Fess Baxter and one of his band members is an example: 'P.P., do you see what I see, or is it only the gin?' 'Both of us had the gin,' said P.P., 'so both of us sees the same thing.' 'Judas Priest! Look at that figure, boy!' 'Never was no good at figures,' said P.P. 'I've got to get me an armful of that baby.' 'Lay off. Papa,' advised P.P. (Fisher 75) Still another example of a "jazzed rapport" is a conversation between Jean and Bus: "You ought to get a bonus for beauty.' 'Nice time to think of that--after I'm hired.' 'You look like a full course dinner--and I'm starved.' 'Hold the personalities, papa.' 'No stuff. Wish I could raise a loan on you. Baby--what a roll I'd tote.' (Fisher 76) By the choice and combination of words, sounds, rhythm, and tone, Fisher achieves the motley quality associated with jazz. 14 Both blues and jazz music represent aspects ofblacklife, and the music is simply life-sustaining. Fisher acknowledges the close relationship between blues and jazz in the story. He calls the blues very low-down, the nakedest of jazz, and Langston Hughes asks in his famous poem entitled "Cabaret," "Does a Jazz Band Ever Sob?" Fisher records African- Americans' battles with the blues in Harlem's jazz clubs. Finally, the theme of love, the desire for it, the need for it, and the healing power of it permeate "Common Meter." The people go to the Arcadia looking for love, almost as if they are starved for it, and they choose a place with a reputation for drawing pleasure-seekers. The Arcadia entices Harlemites with its magical nights, excitement, flin, and music. Liquor, music, dance, and easy conversation loosen inhibitions. Conversations between people are Rill of sexual innuendos, and sexual eroticism is paraded and encouraged by many. This atmospheric sexuality seems to be a major ingredient of a jazz night's magic. The hope for love, sex, romance, or any form of comfort is ever-present. The blues people in "Common Meter" go to the Arcadia for temporary life renewal. There is blues in their love as well as joy. Rudolph Fisher goes beneath all of the merry-making to expose the tragedy in their lives. The reader is constantly reminded of the poverty of the Arcadia's inhabitants. An example is a brief conversation between two minor characters who go the men's room to share a half-pint of gin and to talk about Miss Ambrose: 'Too damn easy on the eyes. Women like that ain't no good 'cep'n to start rouble.' 'She sho' could start it for me. I'd 'a' been dancin' with her yet, but my two-bitses give out. Spent two hardearned bucks dancin' with her, too.' 'Shuh! Might as well th'ow yo' money in the street. What you git dancin' with them hostesses?' "You right there, brother. All I got out o' that one was two dollars worth o' disappointment.' (Fisher 80) Still, the highest premium is placed on love. Upon observing the competition at the Arcadia for the hand of Miss Jean Ambrose, the crowd seems to revel in the successful joining of Bus and Jean. They applaud it and perhaps live vicariously through it. The major life force of any culture, but particularly the black culture, is love. The characters in the story crave it, and it fmally heals them so that they endure. They fmd love among each 15 other and comfort within the music. They party as if their lives depend on it. "Feel-good" music is always around even if the rent money or a woman's man is not. The blues and jazz selections that the Blue Devils and the Firemen play embrace and warm the people like a lover or the soothing hands of a mother. This love story moves and unravels to the tempo and emotional power of blues and jazz. In conclusion, Rudolph Fisher accurately records the lives ofHarlemites during the 1920s; however, he goes beyond capturing the gaiety of the masses to record the scars ot living and the sounds of pain that could not be muted. "Common Meter" becomes much more than a static literary occurrence; rather, it becomes living voices, real experiences, movement as well as blues and jazz emotion in performance. Like a highly seasoned New Orleans gumbo, his prose is a well-blended mixture of stylistic trickery that recreates the style and mood of black music. Through artistic improvisation, Rudolph Fisher captures the struggles and joys of African-American lives through the kaleidoscope of jazz and blues in "Common Meter." Works Cited Fisher, Rudolph. "Common Meter." Black Voices. Ed. Abraham Chapman. New York: New American Library, 1968: 74-86. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renahiame. New York: Oxford UP, 1971. Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," (Reprinted from "Nation," June 3, 1926, pp. 692-694) in The Langston Hughes Review. Providence; Afro-American Studies Program, Vol. IV, Number I, Spring 1985. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Tracy, Stephen. Langston Hughes and the Blues. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 16 Financing Higher Education in Georgia: A Comparative Analysis by Richard D. Guynn ^ Carole E. Scott* In recent years the total cost per student of higher education has risen more rapidly than the increase in the general price level. Because the rate of increase varies among states, the citizens of some states have reason to be particularly concerned about this phenomena. As a result, many people want to know what is happening in their state relative to surrounding states and to the United States' average. A research firm located in Washington, D.C., has for the past 15 years compiled a substantial amount of data pertaining to the costs of higher education. For each year from 1978 to 1993 much of this information can be found in a publication entitled "State Profiles: Financing Higher Education." Each year since 1978 the publisher has updated data about financing higher education for each state. A second publication by the U.S. Department of Education, "State Higher Education Profiles" also contains voluminous information about both the cost and the ability of a state to finance higher education. The purpose of this paper is to explain to what extent spending on higher education in Georgia differs from the national average and what factors account for these differences. In this paper Georgia is compared with the nation as a whole and with other states in the South. The methodology employed is to use selected data from the two sources cited above and other data to make certain comparisons among several southern states and the nation as a whole. The states studied are Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Six of these comprise the Sixth Federal Reserve District and are frequently grouped for purposes of comparison. Three other states are included (Arkansas, North Carolina, and South Carolina) because of their proximity to states in the Sixth District. Henceforth, these states will be referred to as "regional" or "southern" states. 'Professors of Economics, West Georgia College 17 The data collected reveal that there are variations among the southern states in how the costs of education are allocated between taxpayers and students. Also revealed are the tax capacities and tax effort of these states and which of these states devote the greatest shares of their tax revenue and tax effort to fund higher education. This paper presents the information necessary to provide a basis for comparing Georgia with the United States averages and corresponding data from eight other southern states. The data pertain only to public institutions of higher education. Specifically excluded are private, non-public institutions. The data selected for comparison purposes are believed to be key factors which measure a state's ability and willingness to support public education. These factors are believed to inherently govern funding levels for higher education. Obviously, other factors that cannot be measured may be important, but they are not subject to comparative analysis. This study assumes that in the absence of a widely acceptable model, the evaluations of a state's achievements can best be judged by a relative comparison with other states. The authors assume that national average values infer "typical" conditions on an "acceptable" norm. In short, inter-state comparisons and rankings provide a means of evaluating relative status and achievement. Tables 1, 2, and 3 present three measures of potential and actual enrollments in state-fmanced institutions of higher education. Table 1 depicts high school graduates per 1,000 population for each state for the 1992-1993 academic year. Table 2 gives the full-time equivalent (FTE) students for the regional states' institutions of higher learning. Table 3 shows the annual FTE students per 1,000 population for 1992-1993. These three tables show the ranking of Georgia and the Southern states along with the U.S. average. One hundred means the state's figure equals the national average. Each of the first three tables shows an index number which is a measure of each state relative to the U.S. average for all states. This arrangement of data for comparison is used in all the tables. Table 1 demonstrates that during the 1992-1993 academic year Georgia ranked 36th among the fifty states with 9.6 high school graduates per 1,000 population. Georgia's rate was only slightly below the national average. Four other states in the region also fell below the national average (9.7) while Arkansas led the region with 11.1 high school graduates per 1,000 population. Florida had considerably fewer graduates per thousand, 77% of the national average. (A state with a higher percent of population 18 under 18 will, of course, have a lower ratio of high school graduates per 1,000 even if it is educating an equal number of each generation through high school.) This category gives a production unit measure of financial load for handing that supports student-related functions of instruction, academic and institutional support, student services, and operation and maintenance of the physical operation and maintenance of the physical plant. Annual average FTE enrollment is based on total yearly credit-hours. Some states like Florida have a substantial in-migration of high school graduates educated in other states. The FTE per thousand population is an important indicator of fiature enrollments because states with the least number of graduates per 1,000 normally have a lower responsibility to provide education at lower levels while those states with a relatively young population could expect to pour more additional fiinds into higher education programs. Table 2 shows the FTE (full-time equivalent) students in state colleges and universities per high school graduate. Only one state in the region ranked below Georgia (Arkansas). Alabama led the southern states with a ratio of 4.09 which was 21 percent above the nation's average. Among all states, Georgia ranked 33, placing it well into the bottom one-half of the nation. Five of the regional states (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and North CaroUna) ranked in the top 50 percent of all states. A similar pattern emerges in Table 3, which presents FTE students in public institutions of higher education per 1,000 population. The Georgia ratio was 29.4, placing it third in the region and 36th in the nation. Alabama's national rank placed the state first in the region and number 5 among all states. This means that Alabama was the most successfiil in attracting residents and non-residents to public institutions of higher education A state's pubUc FTE enrollment is determined by multiplying the number of high school graduates by the college participation ratio. Experts believe that enrollments can be improved by the establishment of a statewide system of low cost community colleges. It is possible for a state to have high rates of high school graduates per 1,000 population and a low national rank of FTE pubHc students per high school graduates, as is the case with Arkansas. 19 Funding Higher Education: Tax Capacity, Tax Effort, and Appropriations to Higher Education It is difficult to make meaningful comparisons of tax data from one state to another because tax rates and bases and the combination of taxes levied are different. In recent years the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) has developed alternative methods of estimating the revenue raising ability of state and local governments. Called the Representative Tax System (RTS) and Representative Revenue System (RRS) they are methods developed by the ACIR for measuring the fiscal capacity of each state (ACIR 11-12, 1989). The RTS defines tax capacity as the dollar amount of revenue that state and local governments would raise if they applied a nationally uniform set of tax rates to a commonly used set of tax bases. The RRS defines revenue capacity in a similar manner, but includes a number of non-tax revenue bases in addition to all the tax bases included in the representative tax system. Thus, the representative tax system and representative revenue system express fiscal capacity as the relative per capita amount of revenue a state would raise if it used "representative" tax and revenue systems. These fiscal capacity indicators are good measures of state governments' potential ability to raise revenue. The index can be interpreted as a measure of how much a state elected to utilize its potential revenue base relative to other states. For example, if a state index is less than 100, the national average, then that state's fiscal effort is less than the national average. A state's fiscal capacity index is a good measure of a state's effort to fund important functions such as higher education. Tables 4, 5, and 6 contain data which show the regional states' estimated tax capacity and estimated tax effort to fund public services. Table 4 gives the tax capacity (per capita) of the regional states. Georgia ranked 47th with a per capita tax capacity of $1,962, compared with a national average of $2,160. The states Georgia ranked above were Mississippi and Tennessee, which had per capita collections of $ 1,814 and $1,863, respectively. Florida's tax capacity was the highest in the region, but it was only slightly above the national average. The last column of Table 4 gives the tax capacity for the regional states without adjustments for regional price differences. Georgia's tax capacity was 9 percent below the national average. All states in the region except 20 Florida had a tax capacity below the national average. Five of the southern states were more than 15 percent below the national average in terms of tax capacity. However, when adjustments were made for regional price differences only one state, Mississippi, was more than 15 percent below the national tax capacity average. The tax effort index is a measure of the actual taxes collected in each state relative to their tax capacity, where tax capacity is measured by the Representative Tax System. An index number greater than 100 indicates that a state is raising more in taxes relative to its economic base than the national average. The tax effort index shows that all the regional states had a tax effort less than the national average. Georgia had a tax effort of 95.9, which placed the state 23rd among all states. Georgia's index was 96 percent of the national average. With the exception of the state of Georgia, all the regional states ranked in the bottom one-half of the nation (Table 5). Table 6 shows estimated per capita revenues for 1992, which is an indicator of a state's fiscal capacity. The fiscal capacity of a state is an estimate of a government's ability to raise revenue from its own source. Per capita personal income figures are often used as an alternative for RTS estimates of the fiscal capacities of state and local governments using this measure. Georgia ranked 46th in the nation with a COG index of 87 (87 percent of the national average). All of the southern states ranked well below the national average. Georgia's national rank was below all but three of the regional states. Tennessee's tax revenue per capita ($1,519) placed it last in the nation. Table 7 presents information which measures the effort made by each regional state in its attempt to fund higher education from the state's revenue system. Shown is total tax revenue per FTE student. This figure shows the maximum potential for funding public sector higher education. Shown, too, in this table are tax revenues calculated on a per capita basis, which indicate the relative amount of wealth available for public use. The financial health of a state is, of course, measured by the amount of tax money available to fund the various specific functions of the state. States can be categorized as "rich" or "poor" according to the amount of tax dollars collected per capita. The states which are better off financially usually have more wealth per student than the states with low tax collections. 21 States show a remarkable range in potential tax revenues per FTE student. Tax revenue per student is comparatively low in most of the southern states. Florida was the only regional state with tax revenue per student ($73,520) above the national average of $65,685. Georgia was second in the region with a national rank of 28. Four of the southern states fell in the bottom 10 states in terms of revenue per student. Naturally the poorest states which attempt to educate a significantly larger proportion of their population are faced with a substantial financial commitment. Some of the more wealthy states could have a low value for this category simply because they operate large school systems at the collegiate level. The column designated on the COG index gives tax revenue figures which are adjusted for regional differences in purchasing power. When appropriations to higher education are considered relative to available revenues, Georgia ranked 30th in the nation while three of the regional states (North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas) ranked among the top 10 states. Georgia appropriated 6.7 percent of its revenues to higher education, compared with the national average of 6.3 percent. Only two states, Florida and Louisiana, fell below the regional average with 6.2 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively. It should be noted that while only one regional state, Florida, ranked in the top half in terms of gross revenue measures--only three states were in the bottom half of the nation in terms of the percent of revenues actually allocated to higher education. This ratio measures the relative importance of higher education in these states' budgets (Table 8). While Georgia and seven of the regional states ranked in the bottom half of the states according to gross revenue measured, most states in the region ranked above or near the top half using the index adjusted for purchasing power (Table 9). In terms of actual dollars appropriated per student, Georgia ranked low nationally (36), but its spending was 97 percent of the national average. The only state in the region that ranked substantially below the national average per student was Louisiana. Table 10 presents data for tuition payments made by students as a percent of the total cost of higher education. The national average for the 1992-93 school year was 30.8 percent. Georgia was below the national average with 26.4 percent of the total cost being paid by students. This percentage placed Georgia 36th in the nation. Only two other states in the region, Florida and North Carolina, had students who paid a smaller 22 percentage of the total cost of their education. The state of North Carolina led the region in terms of paying the highest proportion of the total cost of education, with the state bearing 80.2 percent of the total cost. Louisiana and Mississippi expected students in their states to pay approximately 40 percent of the cost of their education (Table 10). This table shows that the burden of financing state higher education is borne in varying proportions by students and taxpayers with the latter bearing the larger share in the southern states. Tax revenues earmarked for education are the major source of funding for public institutions of higher education. Some states rely more heavily on student tuition in order to lower how much money is appropriated out of tax revenues for higher education. Summary Table 11 gives a summary of Georgia's rank and index for the 10 classifications compared. Of the 10 categories considered in this paper, Georgia ranked 30th or below in nine areas when compared with all states. Compared with all states Georgia ranked in the top half of the nation in the category of tax revenues as a percent of tax capacity (23rd). The State of Georgia ranked high in its region in only two areas. It ranked first in the region in terms of tax revenues as a percent of tax capacity, which demonstrates that Georgia was using its tax capacity to a greater extent than any of the other states in its region. The second area in which Georgia ranked high in its region was tax revenue per student. High revenues per student indicate that the state of Georgia has a greater potential for fiinding education than the other regional states. In five of the categories Georgia ranked in the bottom half of the region and was low compared with all states. Georgia has a low tax capacity per capita (ranked 47th nationally), but has a high index (106) in the category of Education Appropriation as a percent of Tax Revenue which demonstrates that Georgia devotes a greater share of its available tax revenue to public higher education than most states do (Table 11). The data presented in this paper reveal how the regional states currently fund higher education. They show that there is a significant variation among these states in regard to the proportions of their tax revenues which they allocate to higher education and the manner in which educational costs are shared between taxpayers and students. 23 Table 1 High School Graduates, National Rank and Index for Southern States, 1992 Higli School Gra duates National State per 1,000 Population 1992-1993 Rank Index Alabama 10.4 19 Arkansas 11 .1 11 Florida 7.4 50 Georgia Louisiana 9.6 9.4 36 39 Mississippi North Carolina 10.0 9.4 32 40 South Carolina 10.1 27 Tennessee 9.6 37 U.S. 9.7 Index' 108 114 77 99 97 103 96 104 98 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. ': Percent of National Average State Table 2 Participation Ratio, Rank, and Index for FTE Public Students per High School Graduate, 1992 - 1993 FTE Public Students Per High School Graduate 1992-93 Rati Index National Rank Alabama 4.09 Arkansas 2.60 Florida 3.53 Georgia 3.06 Louisiana 3.37 Mississippi 3.80 North Carolina 3.79 South Carolina 3.26 Tennessee 3.28 U.S. 3.39 121 77 104 90 99 112 112 96 97 100 6 44 19 33 24 9 10 28 26 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. 24 Table 3 Annual FTE in Public Institurions of Higher Education per 1000 Population, Index and Rank 1992-93 Annual FTE Public Students Per 1,000 Population 1992-93^ State Ratio" Index National Rank Alabama 42.7 Arkansas 28.8 Florida 26.2 Georgia Louisiana 29.4 31.9 Mississippi North Carolina 37.9 35.4 South Carolina 33.0 Tennessee 31.4 U.S. 32.9 130 87 80 89 97 115 108 100 95 100 5 37 44 36 32 13 21 28 33 SourceiResearch Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. ": In public institutions of higher education. 25 Table 4 Tax Capacity, Indexes and National Rank, Southern States, 1992 Tax Capacity^ per Capita National State 1991 (COG)^ Index Rank Index" Alabama $2,131 99 41 81 Arkansas 2,026 94 45 78 Florida 2,206 102 32 103 Georgia 1,962 91 47 91 Louisiana 2,157 100 37 89 Mississippi 1,814 84 51 68 North Carolina 2,181 101 35 93 South Carolina 2,107 98 42 83 Tennessee 1,863 86 50 82 U.S. 2,160 100 -- 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. ': Estimated '': Cost of Government Index--COG index estabhshes comparable state purchasing power by correcting for geographical price differences ': Index without adjustment for geographical price differences 26 Table 5 Tax Effort, and National Rank, Index for Southern States, 1992 Tax Revenue as a Percent National State of Tax Capacity Rank Alabama 82.6 46 Arkansas 82.3 47 Florida 84.8 42 Georgia 95.9 23 Louisiana 91 .1 32 Mississippi 91.1 33 North Caro lina 88 .5 39 South CaroHna 89 .9 36 Tennessee 81 .5 48 U.S. 100.0 Index 83 82 85 96 91 91 88 90 82 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. Table 6 Tax Revenue per Capita, Index, National Rank, 1992 Tax Revenue per Capita" Index National State (COG)'' COG^ Rank Index Alabama $1,759 81 48 67 Arkansas 1,667 77 49 64 Florida 1,872 87 47 88 Georgia 1,881 87 46 87 Louisiana 1,966 91 39 87 Mississippi 1,653 77 50 62 North CaroUna 1,930 89 41 82 South Carohna 1,894 88 45 75 Tennessee 1,519 70 51 67 U.S. 2,160 100 -- 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, i975'-;99J, Washington, D.C., 1993. ': Estimated '': Adjusted for differences in buying power 27 Table 7 Tax Revenue per Student, Rank Index for Southern States, 1992-93 Tax Revenue National Index per Student' Rank COG Index'' Alabama $42,435 50 65 51 Arkansas 59,748 30 91 73 Florida 73,520 16 112 110 Georgia 60,319 28 92 97 Louisiana 58,218 34 89 84 Mississippi 45,917 48 70 54 North Carolina 54,495 40 83 76 South Carolina 58,612 32 89 74 Tennessee 47,454 46 72 70 U.S. 65,685 100 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. ": Per FTE student '': Without adjustment for regional buying power Table 8 Education Appropriations Rank and Index for Southern States, 1992-93 Education Appropriation as a Perc ent State of Tax Reven ues Alabama 9.6 Arkansas 9.2 Florida 6.2 Georgia 6.7 Louisiana 5.6 Mississippi 8.6 North Carolina 10.1 South Carolina Tennessee 7.9 8.4 U.S. 6.3 National Rank Index 7 151 10 145 34 98 30 106 40 88 12 136 6 159 17 124 14 132 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. 28 Table 9 Education Appropriation per Student, National Rank, Index, Southern States, 1992-93 Education Approp National Index*" State per Studenf Rank Index' COG Alabama $4,061 34 98 78 Arkansas 5,505 9 132 106 Florida 4,590 24 110 108 Georgia 4,040 36 97 103 Louisiana 3,249 46 78 74 Mississippi 3,959 39 95 73 North Carolina 5,491 10 132 121 South Carolina 4,617 23 111 92 Tennessee 3,967 37 95 92 U.S. 4,164 - 100 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. ": Adjusted for purchasing power differences '': Not adjusted for purchasing power differences Table 10 Tuition as a Percent of Appropriation and Tuition, Rank and Index for Southern States, 1992-93 Tuition as a Percent State of Appropriation and Tuition Alabama 37.7 Arkansas 29.6 Rorida 23.4 Georgia Louisiana 26.4 39.2 Mississippi North Carolina 39.5 19.8 South Carolina 37.4 Tennessee 29.6 U.S. 30.8 Rank Inde 18 31 39 36 16 13 43 19 32 122 96 76 86 127 128 64 121 96 100 Source: Research Associates of Washington, State Profile: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978-1993, Washington, D.C., 1993. 29 Table 11 Georgia National and Regional Rank, Index for 10 Categories for 1992-93 Category National Rank Index Regional Rank High School Graduates Per 1,000 Population FTE Public Students Per its Graduates Annual FTE Public Students Per 1,000 Population Tax Capacity Per Capita Tax Revenues as Percent of T. Capacity Tax Revenue Per Capita Tax Revenue Per Student Education Approp. as Percent of Tax Revenue Education Approp. Per Student Tuition as a Percent of Approp. + Tuition 36 99 33 90 36 89 47 91 23 96 46 87 28 97 30 106 36 36 86 86 Source: Compiled from Tables 1 - 10. Works Cited Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Measuring State Fiscal Capacity, 1987. Washington, D.C. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. State Fiscal Capacity and Effort, 1988. Washington, D.C. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Representative Expenditures Addressing the Neglected Dimension of Fiscal Capacity. Washington, D.C, 1990. Office of Educational Research and Improvement. State Higher Education Profiles. Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1992. Research Associates of Washington. State Profiles: Financing Public Higher Education 1978-1993. Washington, D.C, 1993. 30 Transpersonal Psychology: A New Paradigm of Inquiry by Kaisa Puhakka* In contemporary society, science and religion have their own mutually exclusive provinces that together are supposed to cover the range of human needs and aspirations. But neither has been hospitable to human experience, especially the kind that claims to know truth and contact reality directly. Religion views such experiences with suspicion while science objectifies and trivializes not just these but any and all experience. Consequently, we tend to lose touch with our capacity to know and to experience and, instead, attribute the knowing capacity to sources outside ourselves, to the "experts" and their methods and procedures. We forget that the most spectacular triumphs in science have occurred at times when human experience in the form of a thought or a vision changed the course of the scientific endeavor. And we feel uneasy with the transformative visionary experiences that from time to time have revitalized our stagnant religious institutions. Representing the rarified outer horizon of consciousness, such experiences are difficult to objectify or control. Not surprisingly, they are marginalized by the sciences and shunned by religious establishments. Transpersonal psychology is a new field of inquiry with a mission to rehabiUtate our human capacity to know and to experience. "[It] ... is concerned with the study of humanity's highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual and transcendent states of consciousness" (Lajoie & Shapiro 91). The prominent theorists and researchers of this field represent a variety of established disciplines, such as psychiatry, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. What brings them together is their belief that life-transforming spiritual experiences and the universal human capacity to have such experiences are worthy of systematic investigation. Rather than explain them away by reducing them to psychopathology as Freud did, or to neurophysiological anomalies, as other scientists are prone to do, transpersonal psychologists seek to understand the spiritual dimension of Assistant Professor of Psychology, West Georgia College 31 human beings on its own terms and to explore its implications for adult human maturation and growth. The meaning of "transpersonal" suggests capabilities and experiences that take us beyond our personal histories and concerns and beyond the biological, social and cultural conditioning that shapes them. Transpersonal psychology calls into question assumptions made by science as well as common sense about consciousness and human nature. In their place, new paradigmatic assumptions are introduced. The most fiindamental and at the same time most controversial of these assumptions concerns the nature of reality itself. The conventional wisdom of our technological age, echoing the sciences, tells us that reality is ultimately physical, consisting of energy and matter. From these. Darwinian evolutionary theory tells us, biological life and finally consciousness evolved. Consequently life and especially consciousness are only epiphenomena of, and hence not quite as "real" as, physical energy and matter. Transpersonal psychology reverses this notion. According to its view, reality is ultimately of the nature of consciousness, and the evolution of physical matter and biological life is informed and pervaded by consciousness. In defense of such a bold move, transpersonal psychologists point to the spiritual and religious traditions throughout the world that have affirmed the spiritual essence ofhuman beings and their intrinsic connection with nature and God. In the larger map of humanity provided by history and cultural anthropology, the holistic vision of interconnectedness infused with spirit is the rule, while the fragmented worldview of the contemporary West that cuts human beings off from nature and God is the exception. A contemporary expression of the holistic vision is found in what Aldous Huxley called "perennial philosophy." Huxley borrowed this term from Leibniz and defined it as follows: [It is] the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being .... (vii) The "divine Reality" that transcends the dualism of mind and matter is ultimately our own nature, transpersonal psychology claims. A Sanskrit word from Hindu philosophy, satchitananda, is sometimes used to refer to 32 this nature (Puligandla 205, 223). This word consists of three parts, sat = being, cbif = consciousness or knowing, and ananda - bUss or joy. Thus, our true nature manifests in the coming together of being and knowing in a blissfiil union, knowing contacting being directly and joyously. Our physical bodies, our psychological make-up and personalities are real and significant, but transpersonal psychology maintains that our deepest sense of self is not identified with these. Rather, our selfhood includes but ultimately transcends the physical, personal, social, historical and cultural dimensions of experience. It is in this sense that our true nature is transpersonal. But this transpersonal nature is not abstract and removed from our personal experience; quite the contrary, it is directly accessible within our innermost being as satchitananda. Contacts with satchitananda have been reported throughout history all over the world, typically by mystics and other religious or spiritual adepts. The claim that our human nature is satchitananda is Hkely to strike a contemporary westerner as strange, to the say the least. Yet, our ordinary experience and knowing contain windows that ever so often open just for an instant to permit glimpses of satchitananda. A moment of insight is such a glimpse. An insight can occur in the context of trying to solve a problem, when after going around in circles for days, weeks, or months, the person suddenly sees the situation in a new way, as if scales that had covered the eyes suddenly fell away. According to Gestalt psychologists, a radical reorganization of perception and thinking takes place that allows the person to come up with a solution to a hitherto intractable problem. The moment of insight is characterized by a sudden feehng of awakening, often accompanied by a spontaneous expression: "aha!." Most remarkable, however, is that at that moment, the person's face spontaneously breaks into a smile. A closer observation of a person who is having an insight reveals that just before the smile, the person draws in a breath. During this inhalation, just for a split second, all human expression vanishes, and the eyes, wide open, look unseeingly through things into infinite space. What happens at that moment? Nothing. Literally nothing. The person lets go of the old pattern of thinking, and the new pattern has not yet emerged. For just a fraction of an instant, there is a gap, a void, a nothing. By the time the person exhales with "Ahh, I see!" and smiles, the gap is closed again. 33 Fresh seeing or insight arises out of this gap. An insight is a truly creative act: something is created out of nothing, not derived from other things. In this empty space that from the point of view^ of thinking and description is nothing, the act of seeing and the fullness of being coincide in a moment of bliss. This moment is typically so brief that it may be already gone by the time we turn attention to it. It is too brief for us to grasp hold of and possess. We do eagerly grasp hold of its products, though. They are the new ideas, the reformulations of old thinking. We cherish them as trophies of our creative potential. We even take the trophies to be the insights. The act of seeing or insight, however, is not the same as its products. The products can be turned into useful purposes, sometimes also into glory and fame. But only the moment of insight gives instant and unconditional enjoyment. Is it not these moments that inspire college professors to teach and students to learn (as opposed to "getting through" a course)? For these, moments are the source of vitality for the life of the mind and of the heart as well. When we lose contact with this source, when months and years pass without a moment of insight, our thinking and work loses its vitality and originality. And we are no longer having fun! The moment of insight is an opening, a parting of the murky clouds of stagnant thinking. Such a moment is a window to our true nature as seeing, being and bliss, say the transpersonal psychologists. Conceivably, this kind of clearing of the clouds could occur more frequently than it usually does, and the openings could be wider, deeper and longer lasting than they typically are. Are there perhaps ways to cultivate the skill of insight? The answer is, yes. A variety of methods and procedures have been developed in the ancient as well as contemporary psychological and spiritual disciplines for cultivating the ability to clear the clouds of thinking.' The study and systematic development of such methods is a central concern of transpersonal psychology. Insights are concrete phenomena accessible to observation and reflection. Reflecting upon them may help open us up to considering the fundamental paradigmatic notion of transpersonal psychology. It is that consciousness is ultimately more, not less, real than the biological and social processes from which conventional science says consciousness evolved.^ A corollary of this notion is that consciousness is more than what we ordinarily take it to be. The insights we experience may be "right" or 34 they may be "wrong." But they nurture our souls, minds and hearts, and they (the ones that come to be judged as "right") give birth to the theoretical and technical innovations we value. There is a sense, then, in which we might say that at least some insights are bigger or "more" than the minds that have them. Having laid the groundwork for the transpersonal paradigm, let us now turn to the more specific assumptions that define this field as an alternative paradigm of inquiry.^ These are given in six statements (italicized) and elaborated in the following. 1. Ordinary waking consciousness (OWC) is suboptimal. The kind of waking consciousness we consider normal and healthy is characterized by largely automatic, habitual cognitive and emotional processes that are out of our control. That is, on a moment by moment basis, we usually have little to say as to what kinds of thoughts, images, or emotional reactions occur in us. Such a state of consciousness, while adequate and perhaps even optimal for performing certain tasks, allows tor a very limited range of experience of self and world. 2. Multiple states of consciousness are available to people. There appears to be a universal tendency among people to seek ways to alter their consciousness. Small children like to whirl around until they feel dizzy. Throughout history people have regularly consumed drugs or intoxicants sanctioned by their society. Some ot the altered states of consciousness thus produced are suboptimal; some may even be pathological. However, others are superior to OWC in terms of clarity, insight and a sense of well being. In the transpersonal Hterature, these are called optimal states of consciousness (OSC). 3. Optimal states of consciousness are natural to people. While various sorts of altered states of consciousness can be induced by artificial means, such as drugs or other special procedures, OSC are "natural" in the sense that they spontaneously emerge when the habitual, automatic processes of OWC cease or are brought under voluntary control. 4. Optimal states of consciousness usually require training with specific methods and discipline. Altered states of consciousness, especially those that are optimal, rarely occur spontaneously but often require years of arduous discipUne and training. By contrast, OWC not only occurs spontaneously but is the only state of consciousness, besides sleep, known to most people. Because it is deeply habitual, OWC appears to be "natural" 35 and require no training. However, we are in fact being trained in it from birth by our social and cultural environment. The training of optimal states involves gaining awareness and unlearning of the habitual processes of owe. Methods for such training are available in a variety of spiritual and rehgious traditions; for example, the disciplines of yoga and meditation that have been developed in Hinduism and Buddhism. Many of these methods do not require acceptance of the metaphysical or religious beliefs of their respective traditions. 6. Verbal communication about OSC is necessarily limited, and their study consequently requires radically new approaches. The standard epistemologies and research methodologies available from philosophy and the sciences function within the confines of OWC. That is, certain structures that are fundamental to OWC are assumed by these methodologies. But they distort and occlude the OSC under study. Specifically, they lead to all kinds of reductionistic fallacies, such as reducing all altered states, including OSC, to pathology, as in traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, or to their neurophysiological correlates, as in the medical and neurological sciences. For most people, such reductionism has little appeal when applied to common human experience and its rich offerings. Aside from B.F. Skinner, few feel incHned to reduce the arts, Uterature, or even scientific theory-construction to observable behavior and schedules of reinforcement. Generally we are content to enjoy, study, or use them on their own terms. Yet when it comes to the experiences and ways of knowing studied by transpersonal psychology, the urge to reduce them to something measurable or easily explainable is strong."* Perhaps this is because they are rare and point to uncharted dimensions of human consciousness. We may also feel uneasy with the power of these experiences to take the person beyond the edge of the familiar and the acceptable, as in the case of the mystic and the spiritually illumined. Transpersonal psychology calls for the development of methodology that allows the experiences at the outer reaches of human consciousness to be studied on their own terms. What kind of methodology would be adequate for the job? At the present time, the answers to this question are far from established. We can certainly appreciate the difficulties involved. For the experiences of the mystics and the spiritually illumined do not yield to the hermeneutical/phenomenological methods of the human sciences. Up to a point these experiences have familiar enough emotional 36 flavors and cognitive structures that make them amenable to a meaningful interpretation. But beyond the everyday peak experiences, as one approaches the Godhead ofMeister Eckhart, the One ofPlotinus, the Atman-Brahman of the Hindus, or the Emptiness of the Buddhists, language simply fails to capture the experience and sense of the knowing reported by those who have had these experiences. In other words, we don't know what takes the mystic to direct contact with God, or the original thinker to the source of his or her insight. The objectivity or "truth" of their knowledge-claims is not the issue here. Rather, it is the fact that they experience it so. EEG patterns and other neurophysiological correlates, though interesting in their own right, are of little help with understanding this kind of experience, just as they are with understanding artistic or other creative experiences. The adepts in Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or native Shamanic cultures frequently engage some systematic disciplines and methods in their practice. These disciplines and methods are provided by their traditions, not our scientific ones. Perhaps our science can learn something from these traditions. Indeed, some contemporary cognitive scientists have already begun to mine the practical discipUnes associated with Buddhism for methods of direct experiential access to subtle states of consciousness that were previously believed to be subliminal and inaccessible to awareness. (Varela, Thompson 6c Rosch 21-33) As a paradigm of inquiry, then, transpersonal psychology is of necessity interdisciplinary and intercultural. Other cultures are not just objects of study but may be genuine partners in investigation. In this way transpersonal psychology honors the capacity of human beings everywhere, at all times, to know and to contribute to the fund of human wisdom. But perhaps the most important legacy of transpersonal psychology is to fmd ways to restore the fragmented, diminished spirit of the contemporary western person to wholeness within itself and connectedness with nature and the sacred. Notes 'Several manuals of meditative practices written in an accessible style for a Western audience are available. Typically, these describe Buddhist meditative methods which are "neutral" with respect to religious belief and relatively easily adaptable to the context of life in the contemporary West. See, for example, Goldstein, Hart, and Kornfield. ^Huston Smith in Beyond the Postmodern Mind elaborates upon the contrasts ber-.veen the conventional scientific paradigm which holds that consciousness evolves from physical via biological, 37 or from "less" toward "more," and the paradigm of perennial philosophy and transpersonal psychology which holds that consciousness is ontologically prior to biological and physical phenomena, or that "less" comes out of "more." 'Informative discussions of transpersonal psychology as an alternative paradigm of inquiry are found in Walsh and Vaughan 15-70, Wilber 39-81. "Donald Rothberg provides a thorough discussion of the problems of reductionism in transpersonal psychology and makes a case for using unique methodology appropriate for the phenomena of transpersonal experiences. Works Cited Goldstein, Joseph. The Experience of Insight: A Natural Unfolding. Santa Cruz, CA.: Unity Press, 1976. Hart, William. Vipassana Meditation as Taught by Goenka. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987. Huxley, Aldous. Perennial Philosophy , vii. New York: Harper & Row 1940/1990. Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart: A Guide through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1993. Lajoie, Denise, and S.I. Shapiro. "Definitions of Transpersonal Psychology: The First 23 Years." Journal bf Transpersonal Psychology, 1^.\ (1992): 1-34. Puligandla, Ramakrishna. Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy. New York: Abingdon Press, 1975. Rothberg, Donald. "Philosophical Foundations of Transpersonal Psychology: Introduction to Some Basic Issues." Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 18.1 (1986): 79-98. Smith, Huston. Beyond the Postmodern Mind. Wheaton, IL.: Quest Books, 1989. Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1991. Walsh, Roger N., and Frances Vaughan, eds. Beyond Ego: Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1980. Wilber, Ken. Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm. Boston, MA.: Shambhala, 1990. 38 Exploring Writing Across the Curriculum: An Invitation to Faculty Across the Curriculum by Timothy A. Peeples* Throughout our nation, colleges and universities are choosing to initiate and maintain what are commonly called writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs. Why? There are many answers to this question, but the most appealing is the effect of WAC on teachers and students both in and out of the English departments. As reported by one math instructor: Math and science courses at Prince George's are successfully completed (D or better) by only 50 percent of those enrolled; some entry-level courses have much lower success rates. The faculty and administration have initiated a number of programs to improve retention .... As part of this effort several science professors and over half of our full-time mathematics faculty have attended at least one WAC workshop, and writing is regularly being used to help improve success rates The first time I made these [writing] assignments an integral part of the course, 70 percent of the students passed compared with under 50 percent for the same course without writing. In my spring 1987 semester, among all students who completed all writing assignments, not one failed the course. (Fulwiler and Young 74 &75) Not only are teachers noting the use of writing results in improved student learning, but as one professor of business and a WAC participant states, "My scholarly writing has improved greatly" (Fulwiler and Young 55). One of the greatest concerns of faculty with the initiation of a WAC program is that they will be made responsible for what the English 'Instructor of English, West Georgia College 39 department should be doing. One physics professor addresses this issue in a way most illuminating: A few of my colleagues' [sic] question the arrangement, feeling that writing instruction belongs in the English department. Having been influenced by the same prejudices, an occasional student in Writing in Physics will ask, "This is an 'English' course, isn't it? How come there's so much physics in it?" Perhaps the student's question answers my colleagues' questions. (Fulwiler and Young 214) WAC has matured enough that its scope cannot be covered in any single book, much less in a single article. However, a single article can outline basic issues in and the basic parts of WAC so that faculty across the academy can be invited into WAC's ongoing dialogue. The following discussion will briefly comment on the history that gave rise to WAC, distinguish WAC as more than a general education alternative and 'other than' remedial, present its goals and the curricular consequences of adopting those goals, express what WAC does not try to do to a curriculum, and report on some of the methods used in preparing faculty for using writing in their classrooms and models used in designing WAC programs. In its beginnings, writing across the curriculum was created "to initiate previously excluded students by means of language instruction" into the academic world (Russell 271). Because of the GI Bill and the Baby Boom, colleges and universities found themselves admitting more and more students ill-prepared for academic life. With the increase in student enrollment, the choice colleges and universities faced was to fail large percentages of their students or to create ways to initiate more effectively those students who were ill-prepared. Even at the most prestigious schools, like Harvard, the first school to initiate general freshmen composition, and Michigan, one of the earliest universities to establish a WAC program, the choice has been to create better ways to initiate these students who most likely would have failed under the traditional curriculum. And WAC, at its earliest inception, was created in response to this need. But it is wrong to perceive WAC as "remedial" or as merely another general education alternative. WAC is not remedial; it is developmental. The most recent studies in writing, rhetoric, and language acquisition argue that we do not learn how to use language once and for all. Instead, 40 we develop a sense of language propriety over time and w^ithin specific contexts. This argument, and not the initiation of previously excluded students, stands as the centerpiece of contemporary WAC programs. What the developmental model of language acquisition argues for in the way of curricular changes goes as follows. Because students do not learn language use once and for all, a curriculum cannot plan to prepare students in a few freshman English/speech courses for academic writing. Rather, the curriculum must offer courses, at least partially designed, to instruct in and develop language use, at both the lower and the upper divisions. And because language use is learned within specific contexts, each discipline must take some responsibility for initiating students to its discourse and later developing the language skills of students in that discipline-specific discourse. A study at Harvard by Derek Bok serves as one of many studies supporting WAC's claim that students must continue to practice their writing skills in order to develop, and even to maintain, their language felicity. In his study, Bok found that senior science majors, who had not been writing in their upper-division courses, had worse prose than freshman science majors just completing freshman composition. On the other hand, seniors in the humanities, students who had continued to write in their upper-division classes, wrote better prose than freshmen in the humanities. Bok's conclusion is clear: "students must continually practice writing if they are to maintain their proficiency and improve their writing skills" (Haring-Smith 25). In addition to arguing that writing must be taught at all levels of education in order for students to maintain proficiency and to improve writing skills, WAC theories argue that such language instruction is best accomplished within specific disciplines. In the old academy, before increased specialization and sharp disciplinary distinction, it was possible to instruct students in one "universal" academic discourse. But with the rise of specialization, disciplines--as an effect of specialization and in an attempt to create a strong sense of "community" within a disciplinecreated discourses increasingly more discipline-specific, discourses different from those of other disciplines. As stated by Slevin, Fort and O'Conner in their report on Georgetown University's WAC program, "A discipline is characterized not simply by its object of inquiry but by the principles governing how propositions about that object can properly elicit interest 41 and assent, can legitimately induce in other members of this community the conviction that a particular idea is not only true but also important to know" (Fulwiler and Young 12). Therefore, "How one effects comprehension, concern, and asset that is, the study of writing and rhetoric--is ... a central question in all disciplines" (Fulwiler and Young 12). Some general education movements have tried to re-establish "the good of days" by pushing for the use of a single discourse across the disciplines, an "academic discourse." Predictably, these attempts have failed in the face of strong discipline specialization (Russell 25). Though some WAC programs still attempt to achieve the goal of universal discourse, the majority and the most stable--realize the following: the reality of our academy includes specialization; and because language is used differently across the disciplines, it must be learned within the contexts of those disciplines. Stable, successful WAC programs base their goals on such a developmental model of language, a model embracing the concepts of continual writing practice and discipline-specific writing instruction, rather than a remedial model. Therefore, previous WAC programs teach us to follow two basic principles in the development of a successful program: first, language use must be taught and practiced within discipHne-specific contexts through all levels of education; and second, the building of a program must begin from or out of the developmental view of language acquisition. In order to proceed from a developmental model, to actually get a program working, faculty must at least begin to see their own language use as rhetorical--specifically suited to persuasion within their own disciplines rather than "natural." Because writing (language use) has been seen traditionally as remedial, a "one shot deal," "faculty have tended to mistake the inevitable struggles of students to acquire the rhetorical conventions of a discipline for poor writing or sheer ignorance" (Russell 18). Though poor writing and ignorance are certainly sometimes to blame, often the cause of "poor writing" is students' ignorance of or inability to use the discourse conventions of the discipline within which they write. For students to become informed of and skillful in a discipline's conventions, faculty must first realize that their own language use has rhetorical conventions, the "kinds of evidence accepted, the style deemed appropriate. 42 the familiar turns of phrase .... specialized lines of argument, vocabulary, and organizational conventions, the tacit understandings about what must be stated and what assumed" (Russell 1 8). v^lso, faculty "must perceive that all teachers have a responsibility to instruct their students in the language and logic of their discipline" (Haring-Smith 20). Once faculty can, or at least begin to, view their language use as rhetorical and perceive their responsibilities to writing instruction, they can (begin to) identify discipline-specific conventions for their students and create ways for their students to practice the rhetorical skills of the discipline. And once such identification and practice have begun, a WAC program has begun to succeed. The goal, however, of WAC has two parts, the improved, especially discipline-specific, writing skills of students accounting for only one. The second goal ofWAC is the promotion and use of writing as a learning tool. Within the traditional curriculum, writing has been used primarily as an assessment tool: students are asked to write so their instructors can see how well the students "get it," "it" being the content of the course. WAC programs claim, basing their argument on extensive empirical and anecdotal evidence, that the value of writing extends beyond its assessment/ communicative value to a relatively ignored value of writing, its ability to motivate more critical analysis and to create better understanding of content. As Brown University's Tori Haring-Smith reports, "When students write down ideas that have been presented to them and translate those ideas into their own words, they learn concepts more thoroughly whether they are studying physics, poetry, or anthropology" (20). Ij Much of the thrill professors outside of EngHsh departments find in teaching courses with a writing emphasis comes from students' increased motivation "to explore" content and issues within the discipline and their consequential better grasp of course content. At a national conference held in February of 1993, a conference with over 50 per cent of its speakers representing discipUnes other than English, were numerous enlivened accounts of courses becoming more interesting for the professors and producing more analytical and better informed students after the courses added writing as a learning tool. So in addition to a WAC program's goal to improve writing proficiency by extending instruction into all levels of education and across disciplines, WAC promotes a use of writing that at 43 once enlivens teaching for some professors and increases students' analytical abilities and course content understanding. Though "the ability to write clearly and use language in a persuasive and responsible manner is one of the most important skills a student can learn in college," WAC does "not overlook other creative and analytical processes like sketching, constructing mathematical models, and design experiments" (Haring-Smith 26). A WAC program tries to extend w^riting practice across the disciphnes and through all levels of education, but it tries neither to force writing instruction into courses or onto faculty, nor to flood the curriculum with language instruction at the expense of other critical parts of education. The goal of a WAC program is inherently positive, to add to the effectiveness of the curriculum in producing more skillful students and to strengthen the learning of students in the courses already present in the curriculum. To establish a WAC program that responds to the positive goals of WAC without "invading" the faculty and the curriculum, the process of implementation must be patient. And the process must reflect the cross- disciplinary nature of the program by inviting faculty from all disciplines to explore, plan, and evaluate the program. To invite faculty interested in using writing in their courses, to invite them "to explore" writing across the curriculum, most programs offer several educational forums: teleconferences, guest speakers, workshops led by national WAC scholars, workshops led by a WAC director or freshman writing director, workshops led by faculty across the curriculum who have attended previous workshops and implemented writing in their courses, mini-tutorials offered through the writing center, and local monthly WAC publications. But of these the workshop is the most common and, initially, the most effective. "The workshop at its best is an instance of communal scholarship applied to pedagogic problems, engaging faculty members from across the disciphnes in an intellectual exchange that draws on the expertise of all participants" (Fulwiler and Young 142). Furthermore, the workshop is typically "different from other faculty activities ... in that the workshop is (1) scholarly and pragmatic and (2) politically and intellectually nonhierarchical" (Fulwiler and Young 142). Therefore, the workshop creates an egalitarian context for discussion of faculty concerns about implementing writing in the classroom. 44 During the initial stages of WAC implementation faculty are usually, and reasonably, concerned about such issues as "doing the job of the English teacher," not knowing how "to teach" writing, dealing with what they fear will be a greatly increased grading load, avoiding a loss of course coverage, identifying discipline-specific conventions, and "fitting" writing into their classes. The workshop is particularly suited to discussion and resolution of these issues. And during the workshops, faculty can discuss the different goals of freshman composition classes and writing in the disciplines, learning that writing across the curriculum is not equivalent to "grammar across the curriculum" and thus not equivalent to making other faculty "do the job" of the English faculty. Faculty can discuss the universal principles of writing that enable them "to teach" writing, ways to use writing without greatly increasing workloads, using writing to increase students' depth of knowledge without reducing course coverage, the rhetorical elements that distinguish one discipline from another, and general methods of developing writing tasks. Though workshops are designed to prepare faculty to independently establish writing in their classrooms, having faculty across the disciplines work alone in courses designed with a writing emphasis is not the only option available in terms of curricular models. The central features of WAC programs are "faculty development workshops, a facultywide supervisory coordinator, student tutors, departmental responsibility for students' writing proficiency, a system of student writing portfolios, and external funding (federal and corporate) to defray start-up costs" (Russell 205). But programs come in various models. "The most common model at large research universities was and is a campuswide writing requirement administered by a committee of faculty from several disciplines, which students satisfy by taking a certain number of 'writing intensive' (WI) courses offered in several--sometimes all--departments" (Russell 288). However, the writing intensive model does not work for all schools, and each school must carefully consider which model best suits its tradition, needs, resources, and goals. Other models include the following: a "linking model" links small writing classes with larger lecture classes, the writing classes being taught, typically, by English faculty, some schools keep writing instruction entirely within the English department, hiring "specialists" across the disciplines to teach disciplinary writing under English course headings; some programs have simply tried to assign 45 students to writing center tutorials as part of course credits; and other schools have recruited and trained "peer tutors" who are "assigned to a particular course ... or to a writing lab" (Russell 289). Each model has its advantages and disadvantages, and deciding which model to adopt or what combination of models to adopt should be a decision shared by faculty across the disciplines. Writing across the curriculum has proven to be a valuable curricular addition for many schools, its strength and worth illustrated in WAC's two decade history. Many, administrators and faculty across disciplines, are showing interest in developing WAC programs. The one truth all WAC programs across the country share is that the strongest, most stable, most effective, most enjoyable WAC programs grow out of a cross-curricular cooperation. Working from a cross-curricular cooperative beginning, any institution should be able to greatly improve the educational experience of its students through the development and implementation of a WAC program. Works Cited Fulwiler, Toby, and Art Young, eds. Programs That Work: Models and Methods for Writing Across the Curriculum. Portsmouth: Boyton/Cook, 1990. Haring-Smith, Tori, et al. A Guide to Writing Programs: Writing Centers, Peer Tutoring Programs, and Writing-Across-the-Curriculum. Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1985. Russell, David R. Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1870 - 1990: A Curricular History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois, 1991. 46 ABSTRACTS OF MASTER'S THESES AND SPECIALIST IN EDUCATION PROJECTS A Comparison of Mathematics Achievement and Attendance Between Middle Grade Non At- Risk Students and At- Risk Students with Interventions Donna M. Baker EdS, Middle Grades Education December 1993 This study was designed to determine the effect, if any, interventions would have on academically at-risk students. A group of eighth-grade students who had been retained one or more years prior to entering middle school were compared to a group of eighth-grade students who were considered average students and had never been retained in their school career. Subjects used in this study were eighth-grade students who attended Lee's Crossing Middle School for three years. Lee's Crossing Middle School is located in Troup County, Georgia. The pretest for both eighth-grade groups was their fifth-grade score on the mathematics section of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The posttest for both groups was their eighth-grade score on the mathematics section of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills given in the Spring of 1993. The data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance and indicated that academically at-risk students, even with interventions implemented for three years, scored significantly lower than "average" eighth-grade students. According to Rafoth and Carey (1991) recent reviewers of the literature on retention effects have concluded that there are no clear benefits for students in terms of academic gains, personal or social growth, or improvement in attitude toward school. Retention as a policy, according to Smith and Shepard (cited in Rafoth and Carey, 1991), has become increasingly criticized for its negative impact on children and has been found to be associated with increased risk of dropping out of school. This researcher recommends that further studies be conducted, using 47 other means of evaluation throughout the year, to see if a significant difference in growth continues to occur. Being Language: The Spoken Rituals of Subjectivity Derek Harrison Bambach AM, Psychology December 1993 This project is an investigation of Jacques Lacan's investigation of consciousness development and linguistic functioning. Lacan theorizes human subjectivity through the complex processes of language, and claims that meaning is generated according to a grammatical logic which structures conscious experience. Identity is formed through this process as a particular organization of knowledge, inseparable from a subject who is animated by it. Through writing, I attempt an understanding of this knowledge in the only way that is theoretically possible: by reconstituting myself according to the terms of the Lacanian system. Following Lacan's work, there are two essential issues I concern myself with: the differential terms of symbolic communication and the rules by which they are combined and exchanged. The first chapter of the text outlines the syntactical functioning of language. Grammar is viewed as a structural logic or architecture that informs subjectivity and generates meaning in a given situation. Next I take up semantic matters, specifically the terms or signifiers that are grammatically combined through linguistic praxis. More than a simple vocabulary, these are the historically situated and psychologically rich images that anchor a flexible but continuous sense of self. Finally there is the question of meaning, insofar as that is what is generated in the combination of these signifiers, according to their specific laws. While I may appear to discuss the two issues separately, they are quite literally dependent on one another, and this involvement is itself, a third term which must be reckoned with. The result of the communicative process is none other than the individual subject, marked at points of difference from itself and from others. Finally I include a caveat: if there is an ambiguity present in this text, it is likely because the project was undertaken to be written more than to 48 be read, and is therefore more performative than explanatory. Attempts to clearly express a point or conclusion are purely for the readers' benefit; the writer is almost exclusively concerned with process and its impact. As this is the most difficult knowledge to capture with words, the results are unavoidably vague. Further the question of what exactly I am doing is accessible solely as a question of my Desire. And that can only be known retroactively, by reading backward through the transference relations that hold this subject-matter together. The Effects of Mentoring Programs on the Self-Esteem and Mathematics and Science Performance of Middle- School Students Cheryl R. Caldwell EdS, Middle Grades Education August 1993 This study was designed to investigate the effect mentoring programs have on the self-esteem and mathematics and science performance of middle-school students. The program evaluated took place from October 1992 until April 1993 in a medium-sized community 45 miles west of Atlanta, Georgia. Mentors were carefully selected and trained students in attendance at a nearby college. The program primarily focused on mathematics and science processing skills through a combined one-on-one mentoring session/large group activity format. Meetings, held twice a week, lasted for one and a half hours. Subjects were 40 sixth-grade students who attended Carrollton Junior High School. Chosen by their teachers based on observed achievement-oriented behaviors and membership in a minority race or low socioeconomic strata, 20 members of the sample participated in the mentoring program and formed the experimental group. The remaining 20 subjects formed the control group. The Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale was administered as a pretest in October 1992 for determination of presence of significant differences. Scores from the mathematics and science portion of students' fifth-grade Iowa Test of Basic Skills were gathered for pretest analysis 49 using the t test. With the .05 probability level, no significant differences between the two groups were found. The Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale and the mathematics and science sections of the ITBS were administered again in April 1993. The t test analysis showed no significant difference between the experimental and control groups indicating the mentoring program had no significant effect on the self-esteem and mathematics and science performance of the middle-school students participating in this study. Further study of mentoring programs, especially those which address gender, racial, and socioeconomic issues, are recommended. An Investigation of The Relationship Between Pre-Primary Education, Socioeconomic Status, Positive Parental Involvement and Mathematics Proficiency in Eighth-Grade Students Tonia S. Contorno EdS, Secondary Education December 1993 This research was conducted to determine what effect pre-primary education and positive parental involvement have on the proficiency of eighth grade math students. Socioeconomic levels and their relationship to mathematics proficiency were also examined. Scores from the Orleans-Hanna Algebra Prognosis Test were collected from 79 students and these were used to determine the students' mathematics proficiency. A survey was sent to parents of the students to document their child's attendance in a pre-primary education program. Students were given surveys about their parents' involvement with their education. An attempt was made to fit a linear regression model with positive parental involvement and pre-primary school attendance used as the independent variables. Test scores were used as the dependent variable in order to predict students' test scores in the future. 50 Correlation analysis of the students' scores, the amount of pre-primary education the students had received, and the parental involvement scores w^ere examined. The results indicated little relationship among these factors. Socioeconomic levels were examined and Chi-Square Analysis was performed on the data. Analysis indicated that there was a dependency on the socioeconomic level of a student and his/her mathematics proficiency. Using a linear regression model, a student's score on the test could be predicted with some accuracy using information about whether or not the child attended four year old kindergarten. This study suggested that socio-economic factors weigh more heavily in predicting students' mathematical proficiency than any other factor analyzed. The Relationships Between Contract Grades, Mathematics Anxiety, and Performance of High School Students Sara Crews EdS, Secondary Education June 1993 The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between mathematics anxiety and performance among high school students, and whether the use of a contract had any influence on these factors. The study involved 325 students in grades 9 through 12 who were enrolled in General Math I, Applied Math, Elementary Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and Trigonometry. The study took place over a nine weeks grading period. At the beginning of the grading period, the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale for Adolescents (MARS-A) was administered to all students. Half of the classes of each subject constituted the control group and were graded as usual. The remaining classes were the treatment groups in which students were asked to sign a contract. To fulfill the contract a student was to have no more than four absences during the nine weeks, bring materials to class, take all tests and quizzes, correct any errors on tests, and turn in all daily assignments. 51 Any student who fulfilled the terms of the contract received a grade of at least 70 (passing). If the student earned a higher grade, two points were added to the grade actually earned. At the end of the nine weeks, the MARS-A was administered again. Correlations were examined between pre-study and post-study grades and pre-study and post-study MARS-A scores for both treatment and control groups to determine whether the contract had any influence on grades or on mathematics anxiety. Comparisons were made between scores for male and female students as well as between students enrolled in general versus college preparatory classes. This study found that mathematics anxiety as measured by the MARS-A was significantly higher for females than for males. There was also a significant difference in performance of male and female students as measured by grades. However, contrary to the findings of most previous research, this study found the grades of females to be higher than those of males. A comparison of mathematics anxiety between general and college preparatory students showed slightly higher levels of anxiety among the students in the general curriculum track, but the difference was not found to be statistically significant. A weak negative correlation was found between student grades and mathematics anxiety ratings, supporting previous research. There was a mean decrease in MARS-A scores for all students who were rated at the beginning and end of the grading period. While the students who fulfilled the terms of the grading contract showed a greater decrease in MARS-A scores than did the students in the control group, this difference was not found to be statistically significant. Test grade averages for those who fulfilled the contract increased slightly while those in the control group showed a slight decline. Although teachers found this somewhat encouraging, the differences in grades were not found to be statistically significant. 52 Aspects of the Gullah Dialect in Southeastern Regional Literature Henry Manning Dreyer, Jr. MA, English June 1993 The ancestors of the Negro inhabitants of the area along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and a small bit of adjacent Florida for about one hundred miles inland, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia were brought to the southern part of North America to tend the rice and cotton which were the principal crops of those areas before the Civil War. These people, and some of the white inhabitants who had frequent contact with them, spoke an exotic English-based creole dialect called "Gullah" in South Carolina, and "Geechee" in Georgia and Florida. Most of the Gullah people were isolated on the farms, and especially so on the Sea Islands, and they were socially isolated from the more educated white people as well. The white people with whom they had most frequent contact were the overseers who were principally English peasants and who spoke regional English dialects. The Gullah dialect retains much of these regional linguistic eccentricities in addition to some African words, but the Gullah syntax reflects the African languages that these people spoke before coming to America. Not much of the African languages was retained or passed to the descendants of the transported slaves because it seemed flitile to retain languages which were of no use in the New World. The GuUah creole which developed became the birth language of the new generations, and it was the tongue used exclusively at home. With the advent of freedom, however, and the greatly increased contact with educated white persons, the Gullah language has been largely displaced in favor of some form of Standard English. With the disappearance of cotton and rice as "money" crops, the need for large amounts of manual labor also disappeared. It was necessary to teach the rising generations of the Gullah people to speak English as the common tongue in order to train them for occupations other than manual labor. This teaching, and the dying off of the older generations who were native Gullah speakers, has made this unique creole language a rapidly dying tongue. 53 Because it was spoken so commonly and so widely by white people as well as Blacks, the language has had a fascination for Americans from all over the nation. It has been the subject of much literature in the Southern states, and there has been a great deal written about the language as well as a considerably amount in this oral language as it sounded to each individual writer. This thesis examines the derivation of Gullah both geographically and linguistically, and its looks at the use of Gullah in Southern regional literature as well as in literary works by writers from other parts of the United States. Gullah is an integral part of the history of America, and especially that of the Southern States. There is a rising ground swell of interest today in preserving this fascinating dialect. Skin Color Bias Among Black Americans Angela S. Haugabrook MA, Sociology December 1993 Negative portrayals of and attitudes toward varying degrees of skin color within ethnic groups have led to animosity, discrimination, and misunderstanding between the members. Failure to understand the role of skin color has posed persistent difficulties especially for Black Americans who view the acknowledgement of skin color distinctions by other Black members as a source of divisiveness for the group. This lack of understanding has resulted in a barrier to the communication between members in efforts to sustain group harmony. This report discusses the historical impact of skin color bias on Black Americans and assesses the degree to which this bias operates among contemporary ethnic groups using Black American college students as the study sample. The findings of the study indicate that the respondents utilize color bias in various relations with other Blacks. Yet attitudes reflect a tendency to downplay the significance that this differentiation has on the development of positive interaction among group members. In order to facilitate understanding of skin color functions as a part of group dynamics, discussion is presented on possible theoretical frameworks 54 by which skin color bias may be interpreted. By re-introducing this topic to the academic forum, the role and consequences ot bias may be further examined and strategies developed to ameliorate negative results such bias can cause. The Effects of the Electronic Bookshelf on Reading Attitudes of Chapter I Students Diane W. Hill EdS, Reading Instruction June 1993 The purpose of this study M^as to determine if there was a significant improvement in reading attitudes of third-grade Chapter I students after using the Electronic Bookshelf computer program. The Electronic Bookshelf is a reading motivation/management system whose objective is to instill a love of reading in students. Morris Street School implemented the program with Chapter I students during the 1993 school year. The study was conducted during the months of February, March, and April of 1993 and involved 20 Chapter I third-grade students at Morris Street School in Dalton, Georgia. The experimental and control groups each consisted of ten students chosen randomly from all third-grade Chapter I reading students. At the beginning of the study, the reading attitudes of both the control group and the experimental group were measured by the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey. A numerical score was assigned to each student based on the responses to the attitudinal survey. Numbers were used instead of names and students remained anonymous. At the end of allotted time for the study, the students who participated in the research study were given the same reading interest inventory to determine if any significant attitude improvement toward reading occurred while using the Electronic Bookshelf. The t-test for dependent means was used to determine if there was a significant level of improvement in reading attitudes of the students in the experimental group. The results of the t-test failed to show a significant improvement in reading attitudes of those students who were exposed to 55 the Electronic Bookshelf. The results were t = 1.32, using .05 to determine the significance, the level of significance needed to be 2.10. The t-test for independent means was used to determine if there was a significant difference in the attitude gain scores between the experimental and control groups. The .05 level of significance was used to reject the hypothesis. There was no significant gain in the scores between the two groups so the hypothesis was rejected. The t-test yielded .61 as compared to the 2.2 needed to establish significance. The Effects of Reward on Running Performance As Reward Relates to Motivational Tendency and Fitness Level in Sixth Grade Students Sherri Lee Hintz EdS, Physical Education August 1993 This study was conducted to examine the effects of reward on running performance as reward relates to motivation tendency and fitness level in sixth grade students. Two hundred and forty-six sixth graders participated in the study. Subjects were given the School Motivation Analysis Test (Krug, Cattell, &c Sweney, 1976) and classification of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational tendency was determined for each subject from the raw score. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD, 1980) Health Related Fitness Test mile run was administered to all subjects. Percentiles were used to classify fitness levels (unfit, moderately fit, and fit) for all subjects. Rewards (no reward, low reward, and frequent reward) were given to subjects based on the physical education class they were scheduled to attend for the six weeks. The nature of the reward utilized was free-play basketball time. The reward treatment condition consisted of 18 timed runs that were scheduled during a six week time period. In the frequent reward treatment condition subjects were allowed to have free-play basketball after every timed run (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). In the low reward treatment condition subjects were allowed to have free-play basketball after the Friday run. In the no reward treatment condition subjects were not allowed to have free-play basketball. To qualify for the reward each 56 subject had to meet or exceed the minimum required laps for the timed run. There were 10 minute runs requiring three quarter mile laps on Mondays and Wednesdays. There was a 25 minute run requiring seven quarter mile laps on Fridays. The lap requirements were consistent with the guideline established by the local county curriculum for Physical Education. Results of the analysis revealed a significant difference in running performance between the frequent reward condition (p < .001) and both the no and low reward conditions. No significant difference was found to exist between motivational tendencies (p > .05). There was also a significant difference (p < .001) in the running performance between fit, moderately fit, and unfit subjects in all reward treatment conditions. A Study Comparing the Effects of Two Teaching Methods on Achievement in Solving Stoichiometry Problems Gerard Raymond Hodnette EdS, Secondary Education August 1993 The purpose of this study was to determine if chemistry students would be more successful in solving stoichiometry problems if they put the problem into pictures rather than using the traditional dimensional analysis method. Intact high school chemistry classes were used in this study, two on the high academic level and two on the lower academic track. The classes were divided so there were two classes (one from each academic track) in both the treatment group and the control group. The treatment group was instructed in drawing a picture of the stoichiometry problem and using this visualization to solve for the answer. The control group was taught the dimensional analysis problem-solving method. The classes were given a pretest prior to beginning the treatment and a posttest after the treatment period. The raw scores were analyzed using a regression analysis computer program. Results of the study indicated that there was no significant difference between the treatment and control groups. Also no significant difference was found between gender groups within the treatment group. Differences 57 between higher academic achievers and average academic achievers in the treatment group were found to be significant. However further analysis showed a similar difference between the same groups within the control group; therefore the difference was not attributed to the experimental treatment. It appears that visualization of stoichiometry problems does not improve student problem-solving achievement. Nonquantifiable data does indicate some students relate well to this method. Its use along with traditional dimensional analysis would serve students with different learning styles. Recommendations for future research from this study are that larger scale studies be carried out and that they should include an interview process to assess student understanding. StiULife: Transformation and Symbol Sandy Howell MEd, Art Education August 1993 This paper explains a series of thirteen drawings and paintings that deal with the still Ufe. The subject matter ranges from fruit, vegetables, and sports equipment to dead fish and deer skulls. Even though the subject matter varies greatly, the underlying theme concerns the symbolic message inherent in man's manipulation of objects on a two-dimensional plane. Transformation of materialistic concerns to spiritual ones is of major interest to the artist in this series. A variety of media, such as pastel, pencil, colored pencil, and acrylic are employed to achieve a visual representation of these ideas. 58 A Comparison of Traditional Versus Keyword Mnemonic Instruction on the Learning of Secondary Science Vocabulary Robin G.Jenkins EdS, Secondary Education March 1994 A comparison was made between a traditional method of instruction and a keyword method of instruction using intact high school classroom groups of secondary science students. In all groups, the same medical word part definitions were used to enhance anatomy and physiology students' science vocabulary. In the traditional method groups, students read word parts aloud with their definitions and then rehearsed orally each word part with their instructor. In the keyword method groups, medical word parts were paired with sound- alike audionyms ("keywords") and visual images that related the word part to its keyword and its definition. The purpose of this study was to see if the keyword method of instruction would result in significantly different test scores for high school students' initial acquisition of word parts when compared to traditionally instructed learners. In addition, six- and twelve-week retention scores were also compared for significant differences between the two groups. The results were inconclusive: a significant difference was only found for the first lesson's acquisition score and for the 100 word part acquisition score. On these two measures, the keyword group outperformed the traditional group. Daily acquisition lesson test scores for days two, three and four; as well as the six- and twelve-week retention test scores revealed no significant difference between the groups on these measures. 59 "The Remedy of Holy Prayer": The Mortuary Roll of Abbess Mathilda of Holy Trinity, Caen (D. 1113) Teresa Elaine Leslie MA, History December 1993 This thesis, '"The Remedy of Holy Prayer': The Mortuary Roll of Abbess Mathilda of Holy Trinity, Caen (d. H13)," displays a variety of approaches to this medieval Latin document, produced in twelfth-century Normandy, as a historical source. In the Middle Ages, mortuary rolls commemorated the deaths of prominent religious leaders, particularly abbots and abbesses. An obituary of the deceased was produced in a monastic scriptorium and then circulated to other religious communities by a lay messenger called a breviator, who would solicit prayers for the deceased as well as commemorations to add to the roll. The mortuary roll of Abbess Mathilda was very widely circulated throughout Normandy, France, and England; the roll contains 253 commemorative entries, which are called tituli. Chapter One of this thesis is a study of the encyclical of Abbess Mathilda's roll, discussing this obituary section of the roll as a unique biography and comparing the abbess's obituary with two contemporary mortuary roU obituaries for abbots, those of Abbot Vital of Savigny (d. 1122) and of Abbot Andre of Chezal-Benoit (d. 1112). Chapter Two is an analysis of the tituli section of Abbess Mathilda's roU and the tituli contained therein. The travel pattern of the breviator is examined, and the religious communities that he visited (and those he apparently did not) are discussed. This chapter also examines the content of many of the tituli, which provides fascinating insights into twelfth-century attitudes toward prayer, monasticism, death, and women. These verses were written by monks, nuns, canons, and students; some contributors wrote in a very irreverent style, and their words are examined in detail, as are more conventional entries. Chapter Three places Abbess Mathilda's roll in its social, political, religious, and historiographic context as a document related to medieval Christian attitudes toward death and the afterlife. Essentially, mortuary 60 rolls were intended to create extended prayer networks for the deceased. The many types of links Mathilda's roll represents emerge: links between monastic and patron, individual and community, male and female, monk and canon, the living and the dead. The conclusion to this thesis ties the three chapters together by reviewing the ways this document reinforces, and occasionally challenges, the assumptions of modern historians concerning twelfth-century Latin Christianity. Four appendices follow: a translation of Abbess Mathilda's encyclical, with the original Latin text; a list of the communities contributing to the roU; a map of the breviator's route; and a discussion of the common misidentification of Mathilda as the daughter of William the Conqueror. A document as rich as Abbess Mathilda's mortuary roU presents a myriad of challenges to historians, and this thesis reveals the vast potential of this previously untapped source. An Investigation of the Correlation Between Attitudes and Gender in Algebra II Performance Elizabeth Jayne Lewis EdS, Secondary Education December 1993 The relationship between a person's gender and his/her mathematical performance has been a highly publicized topic recently. Males consistently score higher than females on tests of mathematical proficiency. This discrepancy between gender and mathematical performance could be due to the attitudes of the students. This correlational study focuses on such variables as gender, attitudes. Algebra I performance and Geometry performance as they relate to Algebra II achievement. The subjects were 67 eleventh and twelfth grade Algebra II students who were placed in an ability grouped Algebra II course based on their performance in Algebra I and Geometry. There were 29 male subjects and 38 female subjects. The Aiken Mathematics Scale was administered to students in order to determine attitudinal differences. Each student's permanent records were used to determine Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II grades. 61 The results indicated that there was a significant correlation between a student's attitude and mathematical achievement. There was a significant correlation between the attitudes of a male student and his mathematical achievement. There was no significant correlation between a female student and her mathematical achievement. The results also indicated a significant correlation between students' Algebra I grades and their Algebra II grades. The correlation between a female student's Algebra I grade and Algebra II grade was also significant. This was not true for a male student. There were no significant correlations between students' Geometry grades and their Algebra II performance. Trans-Filter Migration of Agranulocytes Pablo Del C. Lugo, Jr. MS, Biology June 1993 A modified Boyden Chamber was used to determine the galvanotaxis of human agranulocytes (monocytes) in a constant dc electric field (8V/ cm). In these experiments the agranulocytes were placed onto the top surface of two cellulose nitrate filters (5 microns) and the electrode of interest was placed under the lower surface. The number of agranulocytes on the lower surface of filter 1 and all the cells in filter 2, the lower filter, were counted at 5 minute intervals for 20 minutes and compared with controls. More (84.39%) agranulocytes migrated to the anode than to the cathode (6.78%). Because thermal heating is identical whether the electrode is reversed or normally placed, heating was not thought to be a significant factor in increasing the random migration of agranulocytes. When the temperature was lowered from 36C to 21C, there was a decrease in the number of agranulocytes on the anode surface. Because the number of agranulocytes migrating to the anode at 2 1 C was not the same, this indicates that the migration of agranulocytes to the anode is not due to a passive electrophoretic phenomena but due to a metabolically dependent activity of agranulocytes. 62 Shaking the Tree: A Ritual of Midlife Change Jane S. Manner MEd, Art Education August 1993 Shaking the Tree is a series of eight paintings exploring a spectrum of experiences encountered at the portal of middle age. The series begins with the rescue of the child who was frustrated into near oblivion by socialization and biology. It then moves systematically through a life examined: the ambivalence of relationships, the tension of being both intuitive and rational, the unabashed claiming oflight and dark motivations, the futility of looking outside for meaning, the isolation necessary for achieving authenticity, and the empowerment of creativity. Finally in "Quantum Process," perhaps perceived as diminished, the artist is in a coil of change much like the worm hole of quantum physics, which occurs after a star has become a black hole but before it becomes a new star. In this state aU that has existed and will be is pure undefined and infinite potential. Somehow, awareness of the power-filled coil is possessing the secret ofjoy. The Effect of Prior Knowledge of Electron Configuration on the Achievement of High School Chemistry Students as Related to Writing Formulas Barbara B. Martin EdS, Secondary Education June 1993 This study was performed to determine if there was a hierarchical relationship between students' knowledge of electron configuration and their ability to write chemical formulas and name compounds from formulas. Two academic levels of chemistry students at a west central Georgia high school were divided into experimental and control groups using intact classrooms. The experimental group, composed of two A-level and one B-level classes, received instruction on electron 63 configuration while the control group, composed of one A-level and one B-level class, received instruction on an unrelated topic. Both the experimental group and the control group then received instruction on writing chemical formulas and naming compounds. Results of the study indicated that there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in their ability to write chemical formulas and name compounds. Further analysis of the data indicated that there was no significant difference between the A-level experimental group and the A-level control group in their ability to write chemical formulas and name compounds. In addition, no significant difference was found in the B-level experimental group and the B-level control group in their ability to write chemical formulas and name compounds. Consequently, there appears to be no relationship between students' abilities to write chemical formulas and name compounds and their knowledge of electron configuration. Mathematics as Communication Melanie Adams Maxwell EdS, Middle Grades Education June 1993 Recent studies and literature provide a compelling argument for the use of more student-centered communication techniques to be implemented in the mathematics classroom. These techniques include the use of cooperative learning groups, learning logs orjournals, justification of mathematical reasoning, and group discussions. According to the National Council of Teachers ofMathematics, the mathematics classroom needs to move toward a setting that is more student-centered and less teacher dominated. This seven-month study was conducted in an effort to gain evidence of a possible connection between the use of student-centered communication techniques and the improvement in mathematical concept development. Two sixth-grade general mathematics classes were compared using the mathematics concepts subtest of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills as a pretest and a posttest. 64 Both groups studied the concepts on an identical time Une with the same homework assignments. Also, both groups were assigned to one teacher and met the same number of minutes each day but at different times. At the time of the pretest, there was no significant difference between the groups in ability. The control group and the experimental group were treated differently. The experimental group used daily learning logs and cooperative learning groups. Also, the students in the experimental group were encouraged to defend their mathematical reasoning and discuss problem-solving processes in small and large group settings. More open-ended and non-routine problems were assigned to this group than to the control group. The control group had a more traditional classroom discourse where the teacher was the center of most communication and drill assignments were assigned without student-to-student discussion. No log writing assignments were given to the control group. It appears from the results of the study that the use of student-centered communication techniques in the mathematics class does play as a positive factor in a positive difference in concept development, but is not an isolated factor. Also, it appears that there is no significant difference between genders as to the different treatments in this study. The Treatment of Values Adopted by the Georgia Board of Education in Selected Young Adult Novels Barbara Ann Newton EdS, Secondary Education June 1993 The purpose of this study was to determine the presence of the core values concepts developed by the Values Education Task Force of the state of Georgia and adopted for implementation by the Georgia Board of Education as revealed in 10 selected contemporary YA (young adult) novels. The study focused on four research questions: l.To what extent do selected young adult novels present the values concept of citizenship? 65 2.To what extent do selected young adult novels present the values concept of respect tor others? 3. To what extent do selected young adult novels present the values concept of respect for self? 4. Do young adult novels offer a means for students to become acquainted with the Georgia Board of Education core values concepts of citizenship, respect for others, and respect for self? The analyses of the 10 novels, published between 1987 and 1990, indicated that all core values are portrayed in the novels, some more frequently than others. The values subconcepts of knowledge, loyalty, courage, tolerance, and commitment (in order of ranking) received the highest presence in the novels with the values of justice and liberty receiving the lowest ratings. The results indicate that the novels represent well the core values concepts adopted for implementation by the State of Georgia Board of Education and are worthy of inclusion in the school curriculum. The implications suggest that the teachers may use these novels for class, group, or individual reading as a means for students to explore values and to clarify their beliefs. Recommendations for further research include (a) analysis of other young adult novels and other genres of literature and (b) the effect of reading such selected novels on students' attitudes and behaviors toward values concepts. The Mask as the Recorder of Myth Mary Denease Norman MEd, Art Education August 1993 This creative research report focuses on the mask as the recorder of legend and myth. The works, seven clay masks and four watercolor paintings, are derived from a Native American myth whose objective is to explain the origin of supernatural phenomena or acts of nature. The Indian philosophy of the sacredness of nature is examined in the context of the ancient myth and in its application to the actions of Man today. 66 Social Influence Theory: A Comparison of Social Influence Between Professionals and Non-Professionals John 0' Sullivan EdS, Guidance and Counseling August 1993 The purpose of this study is to assess the social influence of both professional and non-professional counselors as reported by their respective clients. The Counselor Rating Form-Short (CRF-S) was administered to 64 clients of both professional staff and non-professional staff at West Georgia College's Counseling Center. Means and ratio scores are computed and correlated using the t-test formula. A significant difference occurred at the .05 level in one of the three measures. Circular Forms Based Upon Selected Natural, Cultural, Philosophical, and Artistic Sources Marsha A. Parm MEd, Art Education August 1993 The subject of this series of fourteen works is the circle and its related forms: the sphere, the spiral, and the implied circle in radial composition. The content, style, and media vary from piece to piece, but the visual orientation to the circle unifies the works. Influences from several sources are represented in the series. These include circular phenomena in nature, cultures that utilize the circle and related forms, Western thought and philosophy, and the works of other artists. 67 A Descriptive and Historical View of the Effects of a Breech Birth Faye Reneau MA, Psychology December 1993 The purpose of this project was to gain an in-depth look at the physical trauma of an infant born breech and the effect on one later in life. The project was designed to review available data and to give a longitudinal account of one person's history as it related to a breech birth. The project was also designed to give a sense of meaning to the writer's experience and reactions to those experiences. She did this by reviewing her own history descriptively and qualitatively by putting the adult self in the place of the younger subjective self, thus engaging in the re-creation of the earlier experiences. The writer selected resources from the literature, diary, memory, a dream, detailed regressions utilizing self-hypnosis, heuristic experiences, verbal accounts from mother, and pictures. The writer attempted to be accurate in this account, and in so doing, acknowledged her intimate, subjective involvement as the experiencer, the historian, the observer/observed, and analyst/analysand. The Effect on Instruction Emphasizing Identified Learning Styles on Reading Achievements of Chapter I Third-Grade Students Judy Camp Sloman EdS, Reading Instruction December 1993 This study was conducted to determine the effect of instruction emphasizing identified learning styles on reading achievement of Chapter I third-grade students. The participants met the criteria for admission to the Chapter I reading program in the eight Floyd County, Georgia, elementary schools qualifying for Chapter I services. 68 The treatment or experimental group of 60 boys and 62 girls was administered the Reading Style Inventory (RSI) by Marie Carbo (1988b) to identify their reading styles and to match materials and instruction to these identified styles. The reading styles of the control or comparison group of 57 boys and 51 girls were not identified. The loiva Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) given each spring in Floyd County provided the data of pretest and posttest Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE) reading comprehension scores for both the control and the experimental groups. The instructional time for both groups was approximately 7 months. A non-equivalent pretest/posttest design with intact group was the research design. An independent t-test was used to analyze the data with .05 being the level of significance at which the null hypotheses would be rejected. The results of this study indicated that teaching to the identified learning styles of Chapter I third-grade students had no significant effect on NCE reading comprehension scores. The three null hypotheses were not rejected. It was recommended that fiirther research be conducted with older students to determine if these same findings hold true. The Cat as Symbol and Subject Linda Akers Smith MEd, Art Education August 1993 The Cat as Symbol and Subject is the focus for this series of art works consisting of fifteen pieces including drawings, paintings, handmade paper, collages and sculpture. Influenced by historical and religious references, the artist used symboHsm and realism to depict cats exhibiting their mysterious and sometimes bizarre behavior. These works give a contemporary glimpse at the evolution of the feline, while rhaintaining that mystical quality which so endears them to their owners. 69 An Art Curriculum for Heard County's Third Grades Based Upon the Integration of the Georgia Quality Core Curriculum and the Whole Language Approach Annice Marilyn Sorrells MEd, Art Education August 1993 Heard County Elementary Schools are in the process of adopting the whole language approach to learning in their classrooms. The curriculum director and systemwide art teachers discussed the use of this approach in the art classes. This Master's project was undertaken to develop an art curriculum for third grade students integrating the Georgia Quality Core Curriculum objectives with themes similar to those in the Macmillan Reading Series. Art lessons with the whole language approach will enable the students to organize their thoughts in oral and visual responses. Children's original thinking and art production is fostered with the development of art skills and aesthetic problem -solving responses through an increased awareness while feeling, creating, learning and viewing art. Art and academic classes become more meaningful because of the integration of the content in an original, emotionally satisfying manner. A Survey of Knowledge, Training, and Attitude about Learning Style of Teachers in the Marietta City Schools Linda H. Walker EdS, Secondary Education August 1993 The purpose of this study was to examine the knowledge, training, and attitudes about learning styles of teachers at aU three levels of instruction early childhood, middle schools, and secondary--in the Marietta City School System. It was concluded that teachers at the early childhood level of instruction had more exposure to learning instruction 70 in their teacher in-service programs as well as graduate and undergraduate programs of study. Early childhood teachers were also more aware of their own personal learning style. In addition, the study sought to demonstrate the diversity of the system's student population with a random sample testing of the student population assigned to four regular social science classes. The students were tested with the Learning Channel Preference instrument. The preference instrument used in student testing also indicated diversity in student learning styles in the areas of visual, auditory, and haptic. This was done to reveal the need for teachers to have knowledge of learning styles instruction. The Effect of Using Cooperative Learning Pairs on Mathematics Achievement of I Sixth- Grade Chapter 1 Students Pamela Davis Winchester EdS, Middle Grades Education August 1993 The purpose of this experimental research was to determine the effect of using cooperative learning pairs versus independent work to practice problem solving in mathematics. The subjects to be used in this research were members of two intact sixth-grade Chapter 1 math classes at West Haralson Middle School. The following procedures were used: 1 .Both classes were given a seven-item pretest to assess problem -solving skills. 2. Class I worked independently through 19 self-teaching worksheets that specifically address the tested skills, without teacher intervention. 3. Meanwhile, Class II worked through these same worksheets in cooperative learning pairs chosen by the teacher, again without teacher intervention during the practice sessions. 4. Both classes were then given a posttest that measured the same skiUs as the pretest and worksheets. S.The improvement in scores from the pretest to the posttest was calculated to determine if a significant difference existed between the improvements of the two classes. 71 The data obtained from these tests were used to test the hypothesis that sixth-grade students using cooperative learning pairs to practice skills will have significantly higher mathematics achievement scores than students who practice skills individually. The null hypothesis was tested using the independent t-test analysis at the .05 level of significance. The comparison showed a significant difference, t - -3.3249. The group who practiced skills in cooperative pairs had higher mean gains than those who practiced individually. 72 Hi"" \U U _^ (C^'^ti WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE Review +ZP 1636 995 25 ^ScSnfiB I i Pud West Ge( A Unit of the University System of Georgia CarroUton, Georgia Volume XXV May 1995 Published by West Georgia College Beheruz N. Sethna, President Don N. Smith, Vice President and Dean of Faculties Learning Resources Committee Ben deMayo, Chairperson Charles Beard David Boldt Tim Chowns Victoria Geisler Kathryn Grams Joseph Tyler Wayne Kirk Kareen Malone George McNinch Michael Phelan Cheryl Thrash Martha A. Saunders, Editor Jeanette C. Bernhardt, Associate Editor Joanne R. Artz, 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 orriginal scholarly work. West Georgia College assumes no responsibility for contributors' 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. This issue contains abstracts of faculty research projects funded by the Learning Resource Committee for 1994-1995. Also abstracts of all masters' and educaitonal specialists' theses written at West Georgia College are included as they are awarded. WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE Volume XXV May 1995 TABLE OF CONTENTS Reading the Medieval Woman's Voice: Reflections on the Letters of Margherita Datini, an Italian Housewife on the Eve of the Renaissance by Joseph P. Byrne 5 The State Income Tax: A comparative Analysis of Southern States by Richard D. Guynn 6c Carole E. Scott 14 Fighting Fire w^ith Fire: Evil, Violence, and Empathy in the American Vigilante Film by Glenn D. Novak 29 The Hammer and The Dove: Nietzche, Foucault, and The American Nevv^ Historicism by Christopher Wise 43 Abstracts of Faculty Projects Sponsored by the Learning Resources Committee of West Georgia College 58 Abstracts of Masters' Theses and Specialist in Education Projects 67 Copyright 1995, West Georgia College Printed in the USA (ISSN 0043-3136) Reading the Medieval Woman's Voice: Reflections on the letters of Margherita Datini, an Italian housewife on the eve of the Renaissance By Joseph P. Byrne* "Women's history, by definition, is an effort to restore to the historical record material which traditional histories have ignored, effaced, or misrepresented. With such material, we hope to unearth the ideological and social worlds that have constructed separate genders, to explore the distinct interests and agencies at work in these constructions, and finally to transform our understanding of the past" (Howell 140). While some may argue that Martha Howell's description and prescription leave out the vital impetus to contemporary social change that has fueled feminist historical and critical efforts from the start, I personally find this passage rather comforting. It serves as a reminder that there are many mansions in my mother's house of women's history, and that, as a male visiting an ideological and gender-charged field, my work might augment and feed, as it in turn is nourished by, the work of feminist scholars committed to broaden modern and historical social and intellectual dialogues. A decade ago, in "Making a Difference," Greene and Kahn defined their version of the feminist scholarly agenda: that [f]eminist scholarship. . .restore a female perspective by extending knowledge about women's experience. . . .Feminist scholars study diverse social constructions of femaleness and maleness in order to understand the universal phenomenon of male dominance. (1-2) In 1988 the literary critic Janet Todd in her Feminist Literary History wrote. The main subject [of women's history is] the subject of women in history, women who wrote in history and who, ideologically 'Assistant Professor of History, West Georgia College 5 marked and muzzled, no doubt, nevertheless wrote with a voice that has never been sufficiently attended to. (6-7) She takes issue, however, with those who "put theory before literature and the idea of woman before the experience of women" (14). Further on Todd addresses the issue of men who labor in these fields, wishing that they might start reading women and recognizing feminist criticism. We would only be asking them to return the compliment of many centuries. . . .1 believe that we should simply do more work of the archival and archaeological type on specific periods, while keeping in mind all of the questions and possibilities of feminist criticism in its entirety. (137) No doubt, at least part of Todd's outlook was shaped by Germaine Greer's introduction to the 1982 Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, in which Greer wrote. We have not reached the moment (in 1982) when we may generalize about women's work, because no generalization which is not based upon correct interpretation of individual cases can be valued. It is only by correct interpretation of individual cases that we can grasp what we have in common. . . .(quoted in Todd 138) It is in light of these manifestoes to bring light to the heretofore covered, to develop the archival base of original sources, and to allow for the examination of the individual case (whichever "correct interpretations" one may apply to it) that this short report on the letters of Margherita Datini is presented^ Margherita (1360-1423), daughter of the executed Florentine patrician Domenico Bandini, grew up in the papal city of Avignon, where she met and, in 1376 at the age of 16, wedded the 40-year old Francesco Datini, famed 'merchant of Prato.' Francesco was an extraordinarily successful and wealthy international businessman in later fourteenth-century Tuscany. He has become an iconic figure in late medieval and early Renaissance studies over the past century. This is due in large part to the serendipitous discovery of his enormous documentary cache, preserved by accident in the house he and Margherita built in the 1390s, and which today serves as the repository for his and the city of Prato's archives. Economic historians have long mined the 120,000 business letters and nearly 500 account books for data on, and insights into, the late fourteenth-century mercantile world, but relatively little use has yet been made of the 10,000 private letters and 50 household account books. Margherita herself, discoverable only through these particular records, merited a limited and superficial biography by Enrico Bensa some 60 years ago, and Valeria Rosati w^rote her 1969 Thesis for the University of Florence on Margherita as yet a scholarly dead end. Frances and Joseph Gies devote a chapter to Margherita in their work on medieval women. Although they utilize a few of Margherita's published letters, like most they rely for the bulk of their information on the treatment given her by the English expatriate Iris Origo in her 1960 book on Francesco Datini, The Merchant ofPrato? In his chapter on northern Italian urban sources for Joel Rosenthal's 1990 Medieval Women and the Sources for Medieval History, David Herlihy wrote usefully but deceptively: [t]he Datini archives located at Prato, the largest of all the collections of private mercantile records, include from 1381 exchanges between Francesco di Marco Datini, then in Pisa, and his wife Margherita. These letters are an exceptional source in recapturing the spirit of a medieval Italian marriage. (143-144) That's all they recapture? a naive statement I dare say for one who has written at length on women's history. The fact of the matter is that the earliest of Margherita's letters dates from 1384, and her half of the extant correspondence, some 243 letters, spanned the last quarter century of her 35-year marriage to Francesco. In the mid-1970s Valeria Rosati first published transcriptions of all of Margherita's letters in the journal Archivio Storico Prates^, and in 1990 the archive published in book form Elena Cecchi's edition of Francesco's 182 letters to his wife'*. Despite Rosati's publication, Herlihy could still get away with simply citing Origo's then 30-year old work as the published source for Margherita's letters. Not the passage of time alone, but the fact that Origo herself did not do the basic research among the letters, make hers a problematic as well as dated treatment. Perhaps Herlihy's chapter was simply tossed off, a quick fix for "Women's History" from one of the profession's guiding lights. On the other hand, though it was at least a decade old when Herlihy wrote, Rosati's collection may simply have been unknown to him: after aU, according to the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), only four libraries in this country had it in their collections as of late 1994. Recent theoretical work and case studies of the epistolary (letter- writing) genre have strongly suggested that letters constitute the most authentic voice that we have from women of the middle ages, and perhaps well beyond. Despite his rather naive statement that "[i]n the middle ages it is doubtflil that there were any private letters in the modern sense of the term" (the Datini correspondence belies this notion in spades), I do like medievalist Giles Constable's formulation that "(t)he letter was thus regarded as half of a conversation or dialog between the sender and the addressee, and it involved a quasi-presence and a quasi- speech between the two" (11,13). Elizabeth Goldsmith's introduction to Writing the Female Voice sparks the insight that Margherita's letters were an "extension of the private moment" she shared with her spouse, and not necessarily an opportunity for special expression. The unselfconsciousness that Diane Watt found in the Paston Letters^, the "extension of orality" to which she makes reference, permeates Margherita's reports and reflections, creating indeed a "rhetoric of household correspondence" (133). This is less the case in the beginning of the Datini correspondence, when, at least subtly, Margherita, or her scribe, applied rules derived from the ars dictaminis ^. such as the formal heading al nome di Dio (in the name of God), the formal salutation and self-recommendation to her husband, and the formal sign-off of Idio vi guardi (may God watch over you). As she apparently grew more accustomed to writing (or dictating), the formality of these elements, especially the salutation and self-recommendation, quickly fell away. The formal business nature of these writings, however, is strictly retained in the dating of the letters, the references to the letters to which she is responding and the dates and times those letters from her husband arrived. A good part of each letter is taken up with the loose ends of domestic economy. It is not, however, as simple as historian Lauro Matines, 20 years ago, makes it sound. In his brief reference to Margherita's correspondence he states that Many of the same sorts of jobs [e.g. household maintenance, finance] governed the life of Margherita. . . .His letters to her rain in tasks and commissions, and her replies patiently list her carrying out of them. (17) Margherita as Griselda''-, even Origo, Martines' only source, a quarter- century earlier was more sensitive and more accurate! Margherita's letters reflect a petulant and caring vv^oman who is, in fact, constantly negotiating with her workaholic husband. The extant correspondence began in the tenth year of their marriage, she in her 25th year of life, and he old at 50. By this time the young woman had no doubt learned the rhetorical tricks of negotiation, and the interplay of informing, pleading, scolding and reminding was well honed by the time she began dictating her thoughts. Although her scribe usually stood between her and her reader, this seems to have little influenced the contents of the letters, which in general remained at about the same level of intimacy whenever she wrote them herself. Datini, apparently concerned with whom his wife was using as an amanuensis, suggested early on that she dictate to Piero di Filippo, a man not too close to Francesco; she did not like the idea and replied, but unless Simone's around, I go to Niccolo dell'Ammanato (her brother-in-law), since he seems to me more suitable than Piero, or to Lorenzo, to these two I tell my secrets, and not to anyone else. . . . (since she probably confessed to a priest regularly, this sharing of secrets with men may have been a bit more natural for her than for us today). She went on, Francesco, I know that I have written you very extensively and have shown too much "signoria" (an interesting word that carries the weight of "arrogance" or "lordship") against you in telling you the truth. . .yet I am still for telling you the truth, insofar as I know it. She admitted, however, that "had I been with you I would have spoken with a smaller mouth" (letter of 23 January 1386/7'). This last is an interesting comment that strongly suggests that these letters can be more than merely an "extension of orality," but rather a release valve for pent- up emotions that she dared not share "bocca a bocca" (Ht. "mouth to mouth"; we would say "face to face") . Elsewhere she, like many of Datini's correspondents, stated that she would expand upon some subject once they were together again: "about all of the other things [about which he wrote to her] I will not respond to you, because I hope to be with you very soon and I will say in person what is on my mind" (letter of 27 February 1384/5). Often, however, he opinion is made clear, and the phrase me pare , which translates as "it seems to me" or "it appears to me," runs Hke a refrain through her letters, with reference to all aspects of her husband's (and thus, or course, her ) life. In the first extant letter alone the phrase appears eight times. In interpreting her written words as a mirror, one often sees the reflection of her husband's face beside her own, as her place in both the relationship and in the world is determined largely by his presence. In her earliest letters Margherita stuck closely to the formal niceties of the ars dictaminis . consistently using the formal voi, the second person plural subjective pronoun, in addressing her husband. As she began to create her own version of domestic rhetoric, the voi was usually replaced by the familiar tu, second person singular, except when she chose to preach to her husband. The formal pronoun and verbiage give weight, measure and thus authority to her words and ideas, often with moral overtones or scriptural intonations. Yet she never allowed herself the liberty of challenging Francesco's authority the wisdom behind some of his choices, yes, but not his ultimate power over both of their lives. You tell me that I ought not always be a Uttle girl, and that that which we do well, we will succeed in doing; you speak the truth. And it has been a long while since I left my childhood behind; but I do wish that you would not always be Francesco as you have been ever since I have known you, who has never done anything without first tormenting your soul and then your body. You say, always preaching, that you will gain a beautiful life. . .you have been saying this for ten years now. . . .This is your fault. If you wait too long, you will never seize this beautiful Ufe. Yet she adds after it all: " I am always content to do whatever you want" (letter of 16 January 1386/7). The woman that we confront in Margherita's letters was also at the center of a community of women', both local and scattered. Unlike men's letters, hers send greetings to women they both know, and send the best wishes to those who know Francesco. She urged that he hug so-and-so's daughter for her, reassure another in her pain, and take care of a recently widowed woman. With regard to two women, the wife and the mother of Francesco's best friend, Niccolo di Piero Giunta, Margherita wrote, 10 It is true that Mona Lapa (the wife) says every day that she wants to go [to Pisa, where Francesco and Niccolo are]; the reason, I believe, is that she has love for her husband, as she has said that she has, and for other members of the family. You know that Mona Ghaia (the mother) is ailing, and Niccolo is working too hard: it is good for men to have things done (for them), and to fmd at home, when they return, their wi(ves). On my part, I give her as much honor as I know how, and I have requested of all of the famiglia that they obey her more than they do me" (letter of 28 January 1386/7). With time, Margherita's confidence and forcefulness in preaching to her obstinate mate emerged, as the letters so eloquently demonstrate. She grew into her many roles: as a woman who never bore Francesco a child, though she did raise and love one of his bastards, her efforts flowed into many channels. Her competence was often duly noted, and noted in the end when Francesco made her one of the four executors of his will, and one of four rectors of his posthumous charitable institution, both very unusual positions for a woman to hold. Society indeed heaped its inequities upon this talented woman of the early Renaissance, and the neglect of her husband, so often lamented in her letters, made her life harder to bear than it should have been^^; yet she could still stand tall, in the high relief provided by this unique correspondence: "I am not a httle girl anymore. . .," she once reminded her high-handed husband, and promptly put him in his place, "I have a httle of the Gherardini blood, but I don't know what your blood is!" (letter of 23 January 1386/7) Unlike the voices of millions of medieval European women, Margherita's comes down to us through the medium of her letters. It speaks to us of the day-to-day troubles and joys, hopes and fears, tasks and amusements of a woman and her friends of long ago. It speaks to us of her social world and her part in it, of her most intimate relationships and the meanings that these gave to her life. Because she was no queen or abbess, saint or great lady, hers is a more common voice that thus tells us more of life in her time and place than do the greatest works of philosophers and poets. It is a voice worth attending to. 11 Notes ' A fuller exposition of the author's work on these letters will appear in his forthcoming article "Women and Children in the Casa Datini, 1376-1410," to be published in Feminea Medievalia. ^ Enrico Bensa,"MargheritaDatini,"y^rf^W!o5/on(:oPr/c 6 (May 1926): 1-14; Valeria Rosati, "Vita di una donna a fianco di un operatore economico," (These, Universita di Firenze, 1969); Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978); Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato (London: Peregrin Books, 1963). ^ Valeria Rosati, "Le lettere di Margherita Datini a Francesco di Marco [Datini]," Archivio Storico Pratese 50 (1974): 3-92; 52 (1976) fasc. 1: 25-152; fasc. 2: 83-202. In 1979 these were collected and published as a book under the auspices of the Pratese archive (see Works Cited). * Elena Cecchi, ed. Le lettere di Francesco Datini alia moglie Margherita (Prato: Societa Pratese di Storia Patria, 1990). '' The Paston Letters constitute a collection of several hundred documents written during and shortly after the fifteenth century by members of the Paston Family of Norfolk, England. See The Paston Letters, ed. Norman Davis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). ' The arsdictaminis was the medieval art of formal letter writing, a subject taught in some schools and some textbooks. See Martin Camargo, Ars Dictaminis, Ars Dictandi (Turhout: Brepols, 1991). ' "Griselda" was a medieval literary character known for the patience and attention to duty. " Most of her letters are signed off "for Margherita", which implies that she dictated them even after learning to write in the early 1390s. * In Margherita's time the New Year began March 25. Today, therefore, dates between 1 January and 24 March are often written with both the year they considered it (e.g. still 1386) and the year we would consider it (e.g. 1387). This eliminates the potential confusion that can result from the use of a single year designation. '" See, for example, Showalter for a discussion of women as a distinct community within a society: "It can, however, be argued that women themselves have constituted a subculture within the framework of a larger society, and have been unified by values, conventions, experiences and behaviors impinging on each individual." (12) " This may not be saying much, since earlier she had complained that the servants "are mocking both of us to my face [treating] me as ifl were a new woman [in the household]." (letter of 23 January 1384/5) '^ On 16 January 1386/7 she wrote, "Ifl have said anything that has displeased you, I pray that you might pardon me: a great love makes me speak this way. You send to me to tell me that I should enjoy myself and have a good time; and that you stay up 'til morning had have lunch at midnight and have dinner at Vespers: I will never enjoy myself and will never rest easy if you don't take life differently. For love of Mona Lapa I force myself to stay happy and to give her the best time that I can; I wish that you would do likewise." 12 Works Cited Constable, Giles. Letters and Letter Collections. Typologie des sources du Moyen Age occidental, fasc. 17. Turnhout: Brepols, 1976. Goldsmith, Elizabeth. "Introduction." Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature. Boston: Northeastern U P, 1989. Greene, Gayle, and Coppelia Kahn. Making a Difference. Feminist Literary Criticism. London: Methuen, 1985. Herlihy, David. "Women and the Sources of Medieval History: The Towns of Northern Italy." Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval Htstory. Ed. Joel T. Rosenthal. Athens, Georgia: The U of Georgia P, 1990; 133-154. Howell, Martha C. "A Feminist Historian Looks at the New Historicism: What's So Historical About It?" Women's Studies 19 (1991): 139-147. Martines, Lauro. "A Way of Looking at Women in the Italian Renaissance." The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1974): 15-28. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1977. Todd, Janet. Feminist Literary History. New York: Routledge, 1988. Rosati, Valeria. Le lettere di Margherita Datini al suo moglie Francesco (1384-1410). Prato: Archivio Storico Pratese, 1979. Watt, Diane. "No Writing for Writing's Sake: The Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women." Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre. Ed. Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1993: 122-138. 13 The State Income Tax: A Comparative Analysis of Southern States by Richard D. Guynn and Carole E. Scott* The state personal income tax is a large revenue producer for many states. Georgia'a income tax accounted for 41.8 percent of its total tax revenue in 1993. In recent years Georgia's taxpayers have questioned the efficiency and equity of the income tax as vv^ell as other taxes. This concern has prompted the governor of the State to appoint a commission to study the entire tax structure and make proposed recommendations for changing the tax system. The focus of this paper is on the personal income tax because it is a direct tax with a large base and has real potential for revision and for raising substantial sums of revenue. This tax has the advantage of being a comparatively easy tax to administer and, if properly structured, is considered to be the fairest tax in that its impact on the individual varies with his or her ability to pay. In this paper, the structure and yield of the personal income tax in Georgia will be compared with those of other states in Georgia's geographical region (7\labama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississsippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee). These states will be referred to as the southern states or regional states. Since the tax structures of the various states utilizing the personal income tax have different characteristics a detailed comparison is beyond the scope of this paper. Some general observations of their basic characteristics are essential in order to demonstrate the basic differences in tax structures and to establish the proper perspective of the position of each of the regional states with respect to each other. Because the states in the southern region do not rely heavily on the personal income tax relative to other states, it will be useful for this study to incorporate tax data from all states utilizing the personal income tax. The data in this paper reveal that Georgia and North Carolina rely moderately heavily on the personal income tax as a source of revenue relative to the other regional states. Georgia relies less on this tax than did eighteen of the forty-three states that levied an income tax in 1991, while 'Professors of Economics, West Georgia College 14 North Carolina ranks tenth in the nation in this category. The other states in the region have lower ranks, when compared with all states. The comparisons made in this paper suggest that southern states needing additional tax revenue should consider the personal income tax as a source due to its potential for yielding significant increases in revenue and due to their current moderate use of the tax. Development of State Personal Income Tax During and after the Civil War, several states enacted provisions for personal income taxes. These were proportional taxes, administered by local property tax officials, and were quite ineffective as revenue producers. Many states levied income taxes for only a few years, but several continued to rely on this form of taxation into the 20th century. Wisconsin was the first state to adopt a well planned, centrally administered state personal income tax. This tax, initiated in 1911, provided for progressive tax rates and personal exemptions (Herber 235). The success of the income tax in Wisconsin led several other states to adopt similar income tax laws. By 1920, nine states and the territory of Hawaii had adopted income tax laws. Six additional states added these levies during the 1920s. The Great Depression created a need for increasing state revenues; therefore, sixteen states adopted personal income taxes between 1931 and 1937 (Herber 236). By 1966, thirty-six states employed the personal income tax as a source of revenue; however, New Hampshire and Tennessee applied the tax only to dividend and interest income. New Jersey taxes only New York residents who earned income in New Jersey. Indiana used the flat-rate net income tax (Herber 236). Georgia instituted the personal income tax in 1929 as a permanent part of its revenue system. Prior to 1929 the tax was largely a corporate income tax and applied to profits on investments. The personal income tax was revised in 1951 so that it accounted for approximately 24.0 percent of the state's tax receipts. The 1951 revision dictated graduated rates, ranging from 1.0 percent on net incomes of $1,000 to 7.0 percent on net income over $20,000(Brooks 66). Appendix I shows that Oregon obtained the highest personal income tax yield as a percentage of total collections in 1993 with 66.9 percent of its total tax revenue coming from this source. Of the states levying an 15 income tax, only two received less than 10 per cent from this source. Georgia collected 41.8 percent of its total tax collections from the personal income tax. This ranked it tenth among the 39 states utilizing personal income taxes. Massachusetts collected the most per capita revenue from this tax, amounting to $891.16 per person, while Tennessee received the least, securing only $19.59 per person. Georgia received $445.07 per person. This figure ranked Georgia in sixteenth position among all states with respect to per capita tax collections(See Table I). State personal income tax collections as a percentage of personal income for the forty- four states levying a state income tax are shown in Appendix II. The figures range from a high of 5.10 per cent in New York to a low of 0.34 percent in South Dakota. In 1991, Georgia ranked second among the regional states and nineteenth among all states with a ratio of 2.88 percent(See Table II). North Carolina, the highest ranking regional state, had a ratio of 3.56 percent. Five of the southern states had a ratio of more than 2.0 from this source. These data show that although Georgia ranks high among the regional states in its emphasis on the state personal income tax, its national rating in this category is moderate compared with all states(See Appendix II). Characteristics of State Personal Income Taxes The United States Bureau of the Census defines personal income taxes as " taxes on individuals by net income and taxes distinctively imposed on special types of income (e.g., interest, dividends, income from intangibles, etc.)" {State Government Finances 54). Most state personal income taxes resemble the federal income tax, but differ in structural details, particularly those involving tax brackets, rate levels, and personal exemptions. Furthermore, variations exist in the definition of taxable income. The basis of taxation is usually income derived from the ownership of factors of production in the form of wages, interest, rents profits, salaries, and certain dividends. There appears to be a growing trend among states to use the federal income tax as a basis for the state income tax. In 1960, fourteen states had a federally-based income tax. This number rose to nineteen states within a decade. States electing to follow federal guidelines for computing taxable income may either express their tax as a percentage of the federal tax, with 16 certain modifications, or some other federal tax concept like adjusted gross income, net income, or taxable income, used as the base figure for the state personal income tax. Twenty six states used the federal adjusted gross income as their tax base in 1991(See Appendix III). The chief advantage of a federally based state income tax is the simplicity of administration. Copies of the federal income tax forms can be sent to the appropriate state tax collection division to facilitate compliance, and federal-state administrative cooperation can be utilized for enforcement purposes. An alternative approach v/ould be to let the individual file a state tax return with the state and should there be a question about one's tax return, the state could request that the individual forward sl copy of the federal tax return after a question has arisen. Deductions States demonstrate some variation in the deduction of federal income taxes for the reporting of state personal income taxes. In 1991, three regional states permitted state taxpayers to deduct the total amount of federal income tax paid to compute net income. Nine states total allowed deductions of the federal income tax(See Appendix IV) Additional differences can be found from state to state in the treatment of such items as losses, depreciation and obsolescence, depletion allowances contributions, and other types of deductions. A few states allowed a deduction from the income tax in lieu of an exemption, while four states (Colorado, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont) have their income tax based on a percent of the federal tax payable. Comparisons among states showed that personal exemptions ranged from a high of $12,000 for a single taxpayer and married people filing separately in Connecticut to a low of zero in New York. Georgia allowed an exemption of $3,000 for persons filing a joint return while the standard deduction for a single taxpayer was $2,300. Dependents were permitted a $1,500 exemption. The exemption permitted for a single person fell within the range of $ 1 ,000 to $2,500 for most states (ACIR 55). Personal Exemptions Most states levying personal income taxes employ personal exemptions except for a few states which have a narrow based income tax, such as the State of Tennessee. Tennessee imposes an income tax only on interest and 17 dividends. Personal exemptions are usually employed in order to guarantee what is said to be a minimum subsistance standard of living for families and individuals. Exemptions can also serve to simplify administration of the tax by making it unnecessary for persons with low incomes to file a tax return. Tax Rates and Brackets The great diversity in tax rates and brackets among states makes it difficult to offer generalizations. Table III gives the rates for the highest and lowest brackets for states as well as the number ofbrackets used in each state in the year 1994. Several states outside of the region employed a flat rate or proportional tax. The minimum rate for the lowest bracket was 1.0 percent, while the maximum rate for the highest bracket was 7.75 percent. Three of the southern states applied a rate of 7.0 per cent or higher in their highest bracket. There is also much variation in the number and width of tax brackets used by states having a personal income tax. The number ofbrackets varies from three to six in the region. The width of the brackets has an important effect on the tax severity. The narrowest bracket for the lowest income is $500(Alabama), while the widest bracket is $12,750(North Carolina). The lowest income for the highest income bracket is income over $3,000(Alabama) and highest income is all income over $60,000(North Carolina(See Table III). Regional State Income Tax Comparisons Total and Per Capita Tax Revenue As shown in Table I, Georgia obtained 2.9 billion from the personal income tax in 1991, thus ranking it second in the group of nine regional states. Georgia is second to North Carolina in the collection of revenue from this source. Florida is the only state in the region which does not levy a personal income tax. Per capita amounts received by the regional states in 1991 ranged from a high of $524.64 to a low of $19.50 in Tennessee. Georgia obtained $445.07 per capita, placing the state in second position among the regional states(See Table I). Table I shows an absence of data for Tennessee because this state does not levy a tax on personal income from wages and salaries. Tennessee's 18 personal income tax is limited to a tax on interest and dividends flowing to individuals and corporations. The State of Tennessee applies a rate of 6.0 percent to taxable interest and dividends. Arkansas imposes rates of 1.0 to 7.0 percent on taxable income between $3,000 and $25,000. A rate of one percent is applicable to taxable income over $3,000 and a rate of 7.0 percent applies to taxable income over $25,000. The state of Georgia applies rates of 1.0 to 6.0 percent. The lowest taxable income bracket starts with an income of $750 which is taxed at a rate of 1.0 percent. The highest bracket starts at $7,000 and is taxed at a rate of 6.0 percent(See Table III). North Carolina imposes the highest minimum tax rate. The rate of 6.0 percent begins with the lowest tax bracket, which is applied to income under $12,750. Among the southern states. North Carolina also imposes the highest rate for the top bracket. The rate for the highest bracket is 7.75 percent, which is the rate levied on incomes greater than $60,000. Only one other southern state (Louisiana) has a bracket for those with taxable incomes greater then $50,000. Of the seven regional states levying an income tax on personal income, five impose a tax rate of 6.0 to 7.5 percent on the highest bracket (See Table III). Three of the regional states use six brackets and four states use only three brackets. There is no uniformity among the southern states as to the rates applying to various brackets. None of the states in the region use the same rates, brackets, and exemptions for taxpayers with comparable incomes. The evidence presented in this paper indicates that two states in the southern region, Georgia and North Carolina, make strong use of the personal income tax compared to other regional states. However, when comparisons involve all states, the evidence shows that the southern states have a weaker personal income tax relative to that of many states. Those states needing additional tax revenues need to address two important questions: How can the personal income tax be made more productive, and by how much would various changes increase tax revenue? The amount of revenue a state receives from its personal income tax depends primarily upon two factors: (1) the size of the tax base (the amount of income subject to taxation) and (2) the level of tax rates. The yield of the income tax could be increased by broadening the size of the tax base. This could be done in several ways. First, the tax base could be altered 19 by redefining taxable income through a change in the statute or by eliminating the exclusion of certain types of income from taxation. Another method involves a change in the size of the personal exemptions or tax credits. Of course, both methods could be utilized simultaneously; that is, taxable income can be redefined at the same time exemptions or credits are modified. The size of the personal exemption is an important factor influencing the amount of a state's taxable income. Generally, exemptions are regarded as a kind of initial tax bracket in which the tax rate is zero. Exemptions serve three basic purposes in that they (1) remove from taxation certain minimum amounts of income, (2) provide a means of differentiating among taxpayers in different family positions, and (3) serve as an administrative convenience by removing the application of the income tax to low income taxpayers. Thus, if the size of the personal exemption is reduced, the size of the taxable income will be increased. Consequently, more people will pay taxes, and people already paying taxes will pay more. The chief reason for reducing the size of the personal exemption is to derive more revenue. There may be other reasons such as renewed pressure on the part of taxpayers to force more economy in government. Although state governments do not, as a rule, assume the role of stabilization of prices, they could aid the federal government by reducing exemptions in order to absorb purchasing power to combat inflation. In addition, states may desire to reduce exemptions in order to raise more revenue and, at the same time, avoid levying other types of taxes with less desirable features. The main revenue effect of raising or lowering exemptions is the reduction or increase in the amount paid by the taxpayer above the exemption level. The size of an increase depends upon the extent of the reduction. A second method by which the tax yield could be increased is by raising the rates. A state could raise its rates by increasing the statutory rate while maintaining the same tax brackets and by narrowing the width of these brackets. Reducing the width of tax brackets for some levels of income without a change in the tax rates at other income levels would result in attaining maximum rates very quickly. Perodic modifications in bracket structures are justified because of changes in real income. For example, the real impact of rate structures can be changed substantially because of inflation. Even though taxable income brackets remain unchanged, money income may increase rapidly. 20 Consequently, the impact of inflation acts as a statutory increase in tax rates, but because of inflation, high rates are applicable to lower "real" incomes. On the other hand, if the purpose is to generate more tax revenue, brackets should be retained at the same level, or even narrowed, in order that the highest rate will be attained more rapidly. A third alternative by which tax yields can be increased is to use a flat tax. Four states which impose a state personal income tax use a flat tax. There are two reasons for levying a progressive tax rather than a flat tax. The first, that the rich have a greater ability to pay, has already been referred to. The other justification is that the progressive income tax is a tool of social engineering. Proponents of a flat income tax generally attack it on this basis. Society will be better off, they contend, if market forces, rather than government, dictate economic decisions. Through a complex system of exemptions, deductions, and credits, a progressive tax system can tremendously alter economic decision making. Because this system is politically motivated, it results, economically, in less than optimum decisions being made. This system makes it possible, too, for politicians to make and reward friends and punish their enemies by exempting the former from and imposing taxes on the latter. Often what is called a flat tax is not actually a flat tax. It is actually a very steeply progressive tax because there is a very large standard deduction and generous personal exemptions. Even this kind of flat tax, however, offers the advantage of not levying the kind of penalty on advances in productivity as does a progressive tax. A progressive tax imposes such a penalty because the harder and more efficiently a taxpayer works, the smaller is the part of the resulting gain in income that the taxpayer retains. That this disincentive does reduce work effort and efficiency is indicated by the fact that reductions in the maximum rate in a progressive tax system have resulted in an increase in tax receipts. Revenues may also increase because, by eliminating tax loopholes, the tax base is broadened. Besides possibly reducing tax receipts by lowering taxable income, because of their complexity and the incentive for avoiding the ever higher tax rates as income grows, a progressive tax imposes substantial costs of administration, compliance, and enforcement. Existing progressive tax systems are criticized, too, because they discourage saving and investment by taxing that part of income saved and interest earned on these savings and impose double taxation to corporate profits. To promote economic 21 growth, current proponents of flat taxes include in their proposal the elimination of both these flaws in an existing progressive tax system. Summary Florida is the only regional state which does not levy a personal income tax. Tennessee limits the tax to income on interest and dividends. Data presented in this paper show that tax rates, tax exemptions, and size of income brackets vary considerably among regional states. Several alternative revisions could be made to make the state income tax a more productive tax. It is evident that Georgia could increase income tax revenue by employing one or more of the alternatives discussed. The personal income tax will likely become relatively more important as a major source of revenue in the future. This is evidenced by the fact that more states are using the personal income tax as a part of their fiscal systems. Also, the trend shows that more tax revenue is being generated from this source, and the income tax is growing in both absolute and relative importance. Should Georgia or any of the regional states exempt food from the sales tax and/or grant property tax relief to taxpayers, lost revenues could be replaced by relying more heavily upon the personal income tax. It is suggested that Georgia should follow the trend establised in other states and rely more heavily upon the state personal income tax for additional revenue. If this course of action is taken, Georgia can effectively expand the scope and/or increase the quality of state governmental services. TOTAL PERSONAL INCOME TAXES AND PER CAPITA TAXES BT STATE AND STATE RANK, 1991 TOTAL STATE TAX TOTAL STATE TOTAL PERSONAL STATE COLLECTIONS PERSONAL INCOME INCOME TAX PER CAPITA (Millions of ) TAX COLLECTIONS COLLECTIONS AS A STATE COLLECTIONS STATE (Millions of S) X OF TOTAL TAX COLLECTIONS (Percentages) RANK (Dollars) RANK ALABAMA 3,943.00 1,174.00 29.77X 5 287.17 ARKANSAS 2,366.00 794.00 33.56X 4 334.69 FLORIDA 13,764.00 0.00 O.OOX 9 - GEORGIA 7,154.00 2,948.00 41.21X 2 445.07 LOUISIANA 4,309.00 804.00 18.66X 7 188.99 MISSISSIPPI 2,461.00 480.00 19.50X 6 185.03 NORTH CAROLINA 7,850.00 3,534.00 45.02X 1 524.64 SOUTH CAROLINA 3,933.00 1,387.00 35.27X 3 389.51 TENNESSEE 4,311.00 97.00 2.2SX 8 19.59 "= = =-="" ======= ===== =================== ================== SOURCE : US. Deprtiiient of Comerce Bureau of Census, State Goverranent Finances : 1991 (Washington : OPO, 1992), Table 5,6 and 32 22 TOTAL PERSONAL INCOME AND INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX REVENUE AND RANK ,by State 1991 INDIVIDUAL =========== PERSONAL INCOME TAX TAX REVENUE STATE INCOME REVENUE AS A PERCENTAGE RANK (MUUons (Thousands Of PERSONAL of dollars) of dollars) INCOME ALABAMA 63,880 1,396,960 2.19X ARICANSAS 3,276 916,120 2.67X FLORIDA 2M,880 582,149 0.22X GEORGIA 116,891 3,364,239 2.88X LOUISIANA 63,944 1,130,291 1.77X MISSISSIPPI 34,243 619,425 1.8U NORTH CAROLINA 113,445 4,034.432 3.56X SOUTH CAROLINA 55,077 1,538,081 2.79X TENNESSEE 81,659 442,576 0.54X 8 SOURCE : Appendix I STATE INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAXES (As of January 1, 1994) TAX RATE CHANGE (in percents) NUMBER OF BRACKETS INCOME BRACKETS LOWEST HIGHEST ALABAMA ARKANSAS FLORIDA GEORGIA LOUISIANA MISSISSIPPI NORTH CAROLINA SOUTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE 2.000 1.000 1.000 2.000 3.000 6.000 2.500 5.000 7.000 6.000 6.000 5.000 7.750 7.000 3 500 3000 6 3000 25000 6 750 7000 3 10000 50000 3 5000 10000 3 12750 60000 6 21750 10850 SOURCE : Book of States : 1994, p. 367, The Council of State Governments, Lexington, KY, 1994. 23 TOTAL TAX COLLECTIONS, PERCENTAGE FROM PERSONAL INCOME TAX, RANK BY STATE, 1993 TAX PERCENTAGE COLLECTIONS INCOME TAX RANK (tHiUions) REVEMUE $4,815.7 24.8X 30 2,301.9 0.0 U 5,501.8 29.5 33 3,000. 32.4 29 48.543.1 35.4 20 4,606.5 37.9 12 6,853.0 34.9 24 1,417.0 36.9 U 16,461.2 0.0 44 8,107.3 41.8 9 2.831.6 32.6 28 1.423.7 36.0 19 14.053.9 34.4 25 7,003.4 41.0 10 4,036.1 36.8 IS 3,314.6 31.3 31 5.309.4 33.2 26 4.420.4 20.4 39 1.746.1 35.2 22 7.257.7 42.7 7 10.396.9 51.7 2 11,721.9 29.0 K .S44.2 41.9 S,I27.1 26.6 S S,8U.S 10.9 11 976.3 H.l 2S 1,830.6 J7.7 8 2,055.4 8.0 U 919.8 7.8 42 13,298.0 32.7 27 2,517.6 .7 4 31.961.8 49.9 3 9,331.2 42.8 6 nr.i 1S.S 41 t3,*49. 36.6 16 4,251.8 10.6 32 S.SM.3 66.9 1 U,42e.8 29.2 34 1,382.2 36.1 IB 4,234.3 35.3 21 629.5 0.0 44 5,477.9 1.7 43 18,216.6 0.0 44 2,217.6 37.9 12 787.2 36.3 17 7,316.6 49.0 4 8,922.9 0.0 44 2,392.6 26.0 37 7,867.3 43.8 5 715.0 0.0 44 ALABAMA ALASKA ARIZONA ARKANSAS CALIFORNIA COLORADO CONNECTICUT OEUUERA FLORIDA GEORGIA KAUAI I lOAMO ILLINOIS INDIANA lOUA KANSAS KENTUCKY LOUISIANA HmtE fflCYLAMO tftSSACMUSETTS hKM'tm XHMBSOfA N [SSilI fiSSOURI KBTAM HE8CASKA NEVADA NEU HAMPSHIRE NEU JERSEY NEU MEXICO NEW VOK Nitm CMULIU mm tM3>TA OOAMOMA OKEGQII PENNYSYLVAJIIA RHODE ISLAND SOUTH CAROLINA SOUTH DAKOTA TENNESSEE TEXAS UTAH VERMONT VIRGINIA WASHINGTON UEST VIRGINIA UISCONCIN UYCHING 01 ST. OF COLUMBIA 2.590.9 23.5 SOURCE : Tax Fotjidat Ion, Inc. . SPECIAL REPORT . NEU YORK. 1994, Table 6,p.7. 24 STATE PERSONAL INCOME TAXES: FEDERAL STARTING POINTS INDIVIDUAL PERSONAL INCOME TAX TAX REVENUE STATE INCOME REVENUE AS A PERCENTAGE RANK (Millions (Thousands OF PERSONAL of dollars) of dollars) INCOME ALABAMA 63,880 1,396,960 2.19X 33 ALASKA 12.280 253,649 2.07X 34 ARIZONA 62,779 1,437,970 2.29X 32 ARKANSAS 34,276 916,120 2.67X 24 CALIFORNIA 634,896 21,257,723 3.35X 12 COLORADO 66,536 1,580,799 2.38X 29 CONNECTICUT 85,038 990,488 1.16X 38 DELAWERA 13,831 608,272 4.40X 3 FLORIDA 264.880 582,149 0.22X 42 GEORGIA 116.891 3,364,239 2.88X 19 HAUAII 24,539 989,114 4.03X 7 IDAHO 16;452 505,860 3.07X 15 ILLINOIS 237,658 5,481,583 2.31X 30 INDIANA 96,851 2,804,586 2.90X 18 lOUA 47.714 1,548,637 3.25X 14 KANSAS 45.476 1,093,690 2.40X 28 KENTUCKY 57.365 2,367,858 4.13X 5 LOUISIANA 63.944 1,130,291 1.77X 36 MAINE 21.421 656,801 3.07X 15 MARYLAND 109.347 4,579,305 4.19X 4 MASSACHUSETTS 136.673 6,062,956 4.UX 2 MICHIGAN 176.244 5,768,083 3.27X 13 MINNESOTA 86.368 3,432,825 3.97X 8 MISSISSIPPI 34.243 619,425 1.81X 35 MISSOURI 93.358 2,270,889 2.43X 27 MONTANA 12.753 353,744 2.77X 22 NEBRASKA 26.700 685,060 2.57X 26 NEVADA 26.755 - O.OOX 43 NEU HAMPSHIRE 23.218 159,154 0.69X 39 NEU JERSEY 192,341 4,421,646 2.30X 31 NEU MEXICO 22.930 418,444 1.82X 34 NEU YORK 413.726 21,106,499 5.10X 1 NORTH CAROLINA 113.445 4,034,432 3.56X 10 NORTH DAKOTA 9.877 165,184 1.67X 37 OHIO 196.927 6,742,756 3.42X 11 OKLAHOMA 49.593 1,355,861 2.73X 23 OREGON 51.919 2,132,779 4.11X 6 PENNYSYLVANIA 234.648 6,248,194 2.66X 2S RHODE ISLAND 19.523 475,213 2.43X 27 SOUTH CAROLINA 55.077 1,538,081 2.79X 21 SOUTH DAKOTA 11.520 38,606 0.34X 41 TENNESSEE 87.659 442,576 0.50X 40 TEXAS 302.612 162 O.OOX 43 UTAH 26.038 797,478 3.06X 16 VERMONT 10.112 284,904 2.82X 20 VIRGINIA 126.229 3,521,137 2.79X 21 WASHINGTON 101.140 - O.OOX 43 UEST VIRGINIA 26.385 767,554 2.91X 17 UISCONCIN 88.888 3,444,299 3.87X 9 WYOMING ,37B - O.OOX 43 Source: U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Business 1 Economics, Survey of Current Business Tahle A (Vl/ashin(jtn n, D.C.: U.S. GPO, IS 194) vol 74. 25 APPENDIX III STATE PERSONAL INCOME TAXES : FEDERAL STARTING POINTS RELATION TO INTERNAL REVENUE CODE ALABAMA ALASKA ARIZONA ARKANSAS CALIFORNIA COLORADO CONNECTICUT DELAWARE FLORIDA CEORCIA HAUAI I IDAHO ILLINOIS INDIANA IOWA KANSAS KENTUCKY LOUISIANA MAINE MARYLAND MASSACHUSETTS MICHIGAN MINNESOTA MISSISSIPPI MISSOURI MONTANA NEBRASKA NEVADA NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW JERSEY (> 1/1/93 i/i/93 CURRENT CURRENT CURRENT (a> 1/1/93 12/31/92 1/1/93 CURRENT 1/1/93 1/1/93 CURRENT 12/31/91 CURRENT 12/31/92 CURRENT 1/1/88 CURRENT (b) 12/31/92 CURRENT CURRENT CURRENT (a) (c) Federal adjusted gross Income Federal adjusted gross incone Federal taxable incoe Federal adjusted gross IncoaM Federal adjusted gross incoiBe Federal adjusted gross Incone Federal taxable income Federal taxable incoaie Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal taxable income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income NEU MEXICO NEU YORK NORTH CAROLINA NORTH DAKOTA OHIO OKLAHOMA OREGON PENNSYLVANIA RHODE ISLAND SOUTH CAROLINA SOUTH DAKOTA TENNESSEE TEXAS UTAH VERMONT VIRGINIA UASHINGTON WEST VIRGINIA WISCONSIN WYOMING DIST. OF COLUMBIA CURRENT CURRENT 1/1/93 CURRENT CURRENT CURRENT CURRENT CURRENT 12/31/92 (a) (c) (a) CURRENT CURRENT (e) 12/31/92 (a) 1/1/93 12/31/92 (a) 11/5/91 Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal taxable income Federal liability (d) Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal taxable income Federal liability Federal taxable income Federal taxable income Federal liability Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income Federal adjusted gross income : Book of State : 1994, The Council of State Governments, Lexington, KY, 1994. (b) Or 1/1/87, taxpayer's option. (c) On interest and dividends only. (d) Or federal taxable income based State does not employ a federal starting point. on current- Internal Revenue Code. Gyrrant ttata has adi^ad Internal Revenue Code as currently in(e) Not to exceed tax coeputed using MtM (ntflut* tUtt ha* a^^ed IRC at amended to that date. Internal Revenue Code as of 1/1/92. (a) Mo atata tncaaa taa 26 STATE PERSONAL INCOME TAX, PERSONAL EXEMPTIONS AND FEDERAL INCOME TAX DEDUCTIBLE, 199A PERSONAL EXEMPTIONS FEDERAL STATE INCOME TAX Single Married Dependents DEDUCTIBLE ALABAMA ALASKA 1,500 3,000 300 ARIZONA 2,300 4,600 2,300 ARKANSAS 20 40 20 CALIFORNIA COLORADO 64 128 64 CONNECTICUT 12,000 24,000 DELAWARE 1,250 2,500 1,250 FLORIDA GEORGIA 1,500 3,000 1,500 HAWAII 1,040 2,080 1,040 IDAHO 2,450 4,900 2,450 ILLINOIS 1,000 2,000 1,000 INDIANA 1,000 2,000 1,000 lOUA 20 40 15 KANSAS 2,000 4,000 2,000 KENTUCKY 20 40 20 LOUISIANA 4,500 9,000 1,000 MAINE 2,100 4,200 2,100 MARYLAND 1,200 2,400 1,200 MASSACHUSETTS 2,200 4,400 1,000 MICHIGAN 2,100 4,200 2,100 MINNESOTA 2,450 4,900 2,450 MISSISSIPPI 6,000 9,500 1,500 MISSOURI 1,200 2,400 400 MONTANA 2,400 2,800 1,400 NEBRASKA NEVADA 69 138 69 NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW JERSEY 1,000 2,000 1,500 NEW MEXICO 2,450 4,900 2,450 NEW YORK 1,000 NORTH CAROLINA 2,000 4,000 2,000 NORTH DAKOTA 2,450 4,900 2,450 OHIO 650 1,300 650 OKLAHOMA 1,000 2,000 1,000 Y OREGON 113 226 113 Y PENNSYLVANIA N RHODE ISLAND N SOUTH CAROLINA 2450 4,900 2,450 N SOUTH DAKOTA N TENNESSEE N TEXAS N UTAH 1,838 3,675 1,838 Y VERMONT N VIRGINIA 800 1,600 800 N WASHINGTON N WEST VIRGINIA 2,000 4,000 2,000 N WISCONSIN SO N WYOMING N DIST. OF COLUMBIA 1,370 2,740 1,370 N Source: The Book otStetes . 1994 vol. 30, The council of State Governments, p. 367, Lexington, KY. 27 Works Cited Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism, 1994. Vol.1. Washington, D.C. 1994. Brooks, R.P. The Financial History of Georgia 1732-1950. Institute For The Study of Georgia Problems. Athens: University of Georgia, 1952. Georgia Department of Revenue. 799-/ 5/a^w/!W/?e/>orA Atlanta, G A, 1994. Herber, Bernard P. Modem Public Finance. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Erwin, 1967. Tax Foundation: Special Report No. 33, 1994. Washington, D. C, 1994. The Book of the States 1994. Council of State Governments. Lexington, KY, 1994. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, State Government Finances: 1991: Washington , D.C, 1992. 28 Fighting Fire With Fire: Evil, Violence, and Empathy in the American Vigilante Film by Glenn D. Novak* The American vigilante film of the 1970s and 1980s is a genre unto itself. It vaguely resembles the Western in its depiction of the good men versus the bad, but it is set not in the law^less years of the 1870s West but in the late twentieth-century urban environments of New York City or Los Angeles. The vigilante film also shares common elements with the popular crime dramas of the '30s and '40s, wherein the criminals, despite their cleverness or degree of organization, inevitably came to a bad end as they were gunned down in the streets by local police or brought to justice by the G-men. The police, however, are not the saviors of society in the modern vigilante film; and they rarely, if ever, figure in the apprehension or punishment of the villain. They are more often seen as part of the problem than as part of the solution. And, of course, the vigilante film shares a common bond with the suspense film or mystery, although its suspense is rarely on the level of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller or Agatha Christie story. The audience, if not the authorities in the film, know early on who is doing all the unbridled killing in the parks, subways, and alleys. The suspense derives from not knowing just how far the vigilante can go before he is caught by the police. Which potential mugger will get a shot off before our hero does? When will an innocent witness appear and take that vital description of the lone gunman to police headquarters? In short, how long can the vigilantism continue? The most defining characteristics of the vigilante film are its myriad depictions of evil, its unrestrained use of graphic violence, and its almost insidious creation of audience empathy for the blatantly amoral acts of its protagonists. Few Hollywood films other than those dealing exclusively with Satanic themes, such as The Exorcist and The Omen trilogy, portray evil operating in society with such intensity, cynicism, and brutality. Everywhere the vigilante protagonist goes, he seems to encounter evil. His wife is mugged, his daughter raped, his home ransacked, his own 'Associate Professor of Mass Communication, West Georgia College 29 person attacked on the street with astonishing frequency and frenzy. Other victims refiise to testify out of fear and hence become compUcit in their own assailants' activities. Police are indifferent, incompetent, or totally insensitive to the cause of victims' rights. Politicians minimize the crime statistics and spew forth vacuous statements about the effectiveness of their "new war on crime." From the punks in the alleys to the Mayor's Office, the vigilante confronts in varying degrees -evil. He responds to it, inevitably and repeatedly, with violence. Vigilante Film Defined The modern vigilante film should be carefully defined before examining how evil is depicted and manipulated within it. The vigilante film concerns the efforts of a private citizen, man or woman, to operate outside the law in ridding the streets of evil and crime, or to seek retribution against specific villains who did harm to him or her in the past. Such a definition deliberately excludes such films as Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, and Cobra, for they concern that unusual breed of men known as the "vigilante-cop." Despite the cops' excesses with regard to criminals' rights, these films nevertheless concern central figures police officers who are legally licensed to carry guns and use them in their jobs of enforcing the law. The protagonists are not private citizens, disillusioned with the police, who choose to take the law into their own hands. The vigilante film depicts an apparently normal citizen who, if left alone by the criminal elements of society, would have no complaint and no reason to strike back. It does not use a mentally unbalanced character as its central figure. This definition therefore excludes a film like Taxi Driver, wherein an obviously disturbed Robert DeNiro shaves his head into a Mohawk and sets about the deliberate task of massacring the miscreant pimps who control the life of his new girlfriend, the teen prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Films dealing with macho war veterans sent back to Viet Nam by superior officers (somehow representing official government sanctions) to spring MIAs and POWs are similarly excluded from this definition of the vigilante film. Rambo is certainly not the story of an ordinary citizen protecting himself against crime. It is the tale of a superhuman killing machine out in the jungles of a foreign country looking for trouble, and always finding it. 30 The films of the Old West brand of vigilantism are also excluded from the definition. The vigilante form of justice that seemed to prevail v^^as primitive and often unfair, but was frequently the only type of justice to be found in a wide-open society where civihzed towns and duly deputized officials were few and far between. The Ox-Bow Incident, for all its drama and power in depicting the errors of well-intentioned vigilantism, is therefore outside the scope of this discussion on the modern urban vigilante. The Modern Vigilante Film The modern urban vigilante film in this country can be traced back to the 1970 film,/o^. UnHke the other films to be discussed,/i9f is really about two vigilantes, the blue-collar factory worker named Joe Curran (played by Peter Boyle) and the well-off advertising executive Bill Compton (played by Dennis Patrick). The film has been called "a terrifying and convincing vision of a deeply divided society" (Keneas). Set during those polarized days of the Viet Nam War, the film depicts two kinds of conflicts, two arenas of cultural collision. The two men are completely different, with different kinds of jobs, educational backgrounds, famihes, and interests. Nothing on earth could pull them together except their hatred of "hippies." Joe is a bigoted reactionary who fought in Korea and who loathes the peace movement. Bill is a well-educated and seemingly tolerant liberal who happened to kill the pill-pushing boyfriend of his teenage daughter in one moment of blind rage. That act alone brings the two men and their disparate cultures together. The other clash of cultures is seen in the lifestyles of the young hippies compared to those of their estabUshment families. It is a film about a tragically unbridgable Generation Gap, so typical in 1970, and about the random vigilante violence that erupts when the two cultures meet head on with no hope of communication or reconciliation. The Death Wish series, directed by the EngHshman Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson as architect Paul Kersey, represents the epitome of the urban vigilante film. The opening words of one review of the film are: ''Death Wish is the film to see if you've just been raped, mugged or ripped off (Orth). The critic apparently felt that viewing the original film. Death Wish (1974), would provide some degree of satisfaction to the real-life victims of urban crime. In the original film. Kersey's wife and 31 daughter are attacked and raped in their New York City apartment. The wife dies and the daughter becomes a helpless catatonic. Kersey acquires a handgun and takes to spending his quiet nights strolling Central Park and riding the subways alone. When the punks and muggers come after him, he defends himself by shooting them and fleeing. Death Wishllwzs released in 1982 and capitalized on the tremendous popular (if not critical) success of its forerunner. The film has Kersey now in Los Angeles still doing his vigilante business but with much more professionalism, aggression, and personal delight. No mere amateur anymore, Kersey rarely waits for evil to come after him; he seeks out the men whom he would have preferred to avoid earlier in his life in New York City. The film is much more violent than its predecessor, and a good deal less subtle in its characterizations and plot. Winner moves Kersey back to New York City in Death Wish III. Evil and violence are rampant in the film. The police are cruel, inept, and sadistic. The youth gangs that terrorize the ghetto neighborhood where Kersey likes to hang out kill and rape solely for the fiin of it. And Kersey himself goes to wretched excesses in his quest for the appropriate weapons to destroy the evil around him. He does, of course, prevail at the end, allowing for the saga's continuation in Death Wish IV:The Crackdown. The Dirty Harry films {Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer), as discussed earher, do not really fit the definition of the true vigilante film. Clint Eastwood plays Harry Calahan, the San Francisco police detective assigned to the "dirtiest" cases by a captain who is consistently outraged by Harry's inhumane treatment of criminals. One of Eastwood's films deserves special consideration here, however, not because of Harry's presence or behavior in the picture, but because of Sondra Locke's. In Sudden Impact {19S3), directed by Eastwood, Locke plays the protagonist, a female vigilante killer who is tormented by her vivid recollections of a night years ago when she and her sister were brutally gang-raped by a group of drunken teenage misfits. The plot centers around her systematic location of each of the now-grown men involved that night, and her cold- blooded execution of each. Clearly operating outside the law, Locke meets Eastwood and they fall in love. He suspects her activities, yet somehow cannot completely condemn her behavior. Both have been victimized by the legal system before, and are disillusioned with the courts. As David Ansen says, "There's an intriguing, and morally complex, issue at play 32 here, and its resolution makes one wonder where Eastwood could take Dirty Harry next if anywhere." The commercial successes of both Sudden Impact and Death Wish were certain to inspire imitations. One such film, the title simply an amalgamation of its predecessors, is called Sudden Death. Released only a couple of years after Sudden Impact, Sudden Death is the story of a female vigilante who assiduously pursues the goal of destroying the entire male population. She is raped by two men in a New York City taxi at the film's outset, and spends the remaining hour or so allowing herself to get picked up in bars and on the streets so she can vent her rage on all men with her trusty Smith &. Wesson. Like Bronson, she stalks the night alone, looking for trouble, and she is rarely disappointed. The last pair of films of importance to a consideration of evil and violence in the vigilante film are The Exterminator (1983) and The Exterminator II {19S5) . Produced by Golan Globus and directed by Mark Buntzman, these films star Robert Ginty (Anderson of The Paper Chase in a considerable role reversal) as the Viet Nam vet who runs up against the most vile assortment of criminals ever assembled in (you guessed it) New York City. The films are derivative of the Death Wish series, but they depict evil in more stylized and ritualized ways. Gang members dress in bizarre garb and carry torches in the subway system prior to a sadistic execution of a citizen who did them no harm. Ginty and his friend cruise around the slums in a huge garbage truck, an interesting and apt metaphor for the depravity and evil of the human garbage they must later deal with. The Exterminator fAvas, like most of the others within this genre, make up for in sheer violence and ruthless retaliation against crime what they lack in character development and sophistication. Evil and Violence: Society at Fault Classical notions of tragedy center on some flaw within the main character. In the vigilante film, however, tragedy, evil, and the resulting violence are caused by the flawed society in which both the criminals and the vigilante live. The films seem to reflect the notion that "in today's mass societies the tragic flaw so often lies in 'the system,' those huge aggregates of power that can neutralize and crush the individual" (Kroll). The social order that most persons would expect inside a normal supermarket has somehow broken down in Death Wish. Three young 33 punks wander aimlessly through the aisles, picking up items of food and throwing them around in a flagrant display of anti- authoritarianism. Grocery clerks and shoppers do nothing, trying to ignore the hooliganism, not wanting to get involved. Their indifference is a portent of the total lack of caring and compassion to be seen within society during the rest of the film. The dirt, noise, and congestion of New York City is graphically displayed in Death fTw^ when the camera zooms out on a taxi cab occupied by Kersey and his wife, revealing a traffic jam from which there appears to be no escape. The honking horns, the grayness and filth everywhere, the profound sense of confinement and claustrophobia stand in sharp contrast to the beauty, serenity, and cleanliness of the Hawaiian beaches from which the couple has just returned. Winner uses the physical depression and bleakness of the city environment much as he does the supermarket scene as a metaphor for a jungle that contains more perils than pleasures, more bad than good. One of the more striking metaphors for the evil and corruption existing within the fabric of society is seen in The Exterminator II. Robert Ginty chooses to fight fire with fire, and takes up residence in a huge abandoned warehouse, dark and filthy. Inside, he puts his welding talents to use in transforming a New York City garbage truck into an invincible urban tank. Human garbage will be disposed of in the appropriate way, in a garbage truck. His character becomes a self-appointed chief sanitation officer, cleaning up the unchecked crime and sweeping human scum off the streets as one would fill a commercial dumpster. His weapon of choice is a throwback to his Viet Nam days a flamethrower. \nJoe the peer group of the young is depicted as corrupt. How can any parent hope to properly raise a youngster when his or her peers live in communes, deal drugs, engage in sexual orgies, and generally indulge in a lifestyle that is a strange mixture of Satanism and hedonism? Society perpetuates its evil ways, the film seems to be saying, by the early indoctrination of its youth. Joe Curran must go into this subculture and teach it a few lessons. If the young as a group are rebellious and wicked, the police and the courts are seen as incompetent and devoid of justice or reason. In Death Wish III, the police captain sadistically beats Kersey in an office because of his past "crimes" as the New York vigilante. The brutality and intimidation 34 continue against this private citizen, apparently without rights, until he agrees to the official's demand: to return to the streets and continue his vigilante killings in a crime-ridden ghetto. The police admit their incompetence and their inability to control crime while operating within the parameters of the law. They are hamstrung by the courts; only a vigilante can succeed in a society that cares more for the criminal than the victim. Sudden Impact is an excellent example of the manner in which the vigilante film treats the courts. After the pohce risk their lives bringing in the crinjinal so that he may face a trial before his peers and his accuser, the judge (shown as a hberal and a female in this film) dismisses the case on a legal technicality. She appears perturbed at the arresting official for wasting the court's time, and is somewhat conciliatory toward the accused, who sits in the courtroom with a smirk on his face, leering at both the police and his recovering victim. Again, the system is ineffective and condones the elements of evil within it. The vigilante films seem to be saying, in the words of one critic: "The Constitution may be a fine document in theory, but the chaos of modern society has enfeebled it" (Sragow 90). At Face Value: Appearance of the Criminal In the modern urban vigilante film, evil looks evil. It is as if the director wishes to telegraph the nature of the antagonists to the audience. The villains look nothing Uke the villains in the James Bond films mature, suave, clean-shaven and manicured. They are rather the stereotypical street-people dirty, unshaven, sadistic in appearance. They are uneducated and uncultured, use slang and profanity consistently, and appear to be entirely without redeeming social value. One can learn to like a Dr. No or a Goldfinger for his ingenuity, organization, and paradoxical humanity as he subjects 007 to a technological torture chamber. It is difficult to like the vigilante's prey, however. He is coarse and crude, sexually insatiable, crazed on drugs, and eager to slash any victim who refuses to surrender his or her wallet, purse, or body. He is physically repugnant. He looks evil. The best examples of evil appearances are found in the Death Wish and Exterminator films. In each of them, the audience observes young men of every racial background shot in close-up, leering into the camera as if z;;^ 35 were Bronson, the intended victim. The villains wear grotesque Mohawk haircuts; some shave their heads completely. Others wear large painted crosses or "Xs" on their foreheads or scalps. Many are tattooed. All seem to wear leather and carry chains. There is no mistaking these characters for anything other than the "punks" and "creeps" they are called by the vigilante-protagonists. The average citizen would certainly go well out of his or her way to avoid any encounter, day or night, with these individuals. Acting the Part: Behavior of the Criminal For the audience member who perhaps dismisses the "punker look" as an innocent stage of youthful rebellion and who prefers not to judge any book by its cover, the vigilante film delivers on all that it promises. The evil-looking characters do indeed perform brutal acts, and they do so with a profound sense of abandon and enjoyment. Quite unlike the villains in the earlier sagas oiThe Untouchables, Roaring Twenties, or Godfather t^'ics, these young urban thugs often strike a victim for no apparent reason other than boredom. A few require money to feed their drug habits, but many wander about the streets of New York or Los Angeles mindlessly raping young women, knifmgold men, destroying property, and torturing people who happen to get in their way. They are rarely interested in taking over the narcotics business, or in controlling the profitable and illegal enterprises of prostitution, gambling, or extortion. The profit motive that inspired Al Capone and Don Vito Corleone seems not to apply to this modern urban criminal. He is the human equivalent of a mad dog, a pit bull on two legs attacking people without warning and without provocation. When in The Exterminator II, for example, a truck driver is taken prisoner by a marauding gang of young punks, he is not tied up and held for ransom. He is not forced, Patty Hearst-like, to participate in other gang crimes. Rather he is carried, kicking and screaming, by dozens of war-painted, torch-carrying, chanting gang members, down into a New York subway. There, in a grisly and ritualistic execution scene, the man is tied to the train tracks, and a switch is thrown. The sadists rejoice as the speeding subway train simultaneously electrocutes and decapitates their lone victim. The scene is memorable for both its emphasis on ritualized gang violence and its vivid communication of a strongly nihilistic theme. These persons thrive on death and destruction. Nothing and no one has any value. 36 Stanley Kauffmann, writing in The New Republic, raises an interesting point regarding the evil of such villains. He is uncertain that these persons are really evil, or really even criminals, and states: "If forensic medicine still means anything at all, a psychotic killer is not a criminal responsible for his acts" (26). He goes on to make his point with a discussion of the youth gang seen in Cobra, a gang quite similar to those seen in The Exterminator Hot Death Wish III. He asserts that "though such ritual sadists certainly exist, this gang has much more to do with pathology than with moral corruption" (26). Kaufmann's point may be well taken, and we perhaps should remember that mass murderer Richard Speck was said to have one extra chromosome, and hence not capable of a criminal act. He is now serving life in a psychiatric institution rather than a maximum-security prison. The structure of the typical vigilante film, however, promotes a strong empathic bond between viewer and victim, linking the two such that the vigilante must emerge the hero. The perpetrator, regardless of medical explanation, is ultimately responsible for his own behavior. That behavior is vilified at the expense of any thoughtful psychological interpretations. For whatever reason, an evil agent has perpetrated an evil act against an innocent and defenseless victim. Judging the Protagonist In the vigilante film, the protagonist is the vigilante. The writer and director work very carefully to see that the sympathies of the audience members are with the man who is out to right the wrongs of society. We get to know the vigilante fairly well, and we begin to realize that this man or woman has been wronged. He or she has been victimized much like we have been or like someone we know may have been. Sondra Locke's character in Sudden Impact has been raped; her sister is in a mental institution as a result of the same experience. The law has been no help to her in bringing the assailants to justice. As we get to know her character, and to like her, we feel empathy. We sometimes feel rage. The audience is on her side, wanting her to get her revenge. The same maybe said of Bronson's character in the Death Wish films. In each film, a family member or loved one is brutally slain, and the law can do nothing to turn up even the slightest clue. The audience slowly but very surely gets caught up in this virtuous man's frustration, and there is a considerable sense of vicarious participation in the man's gradual 37 transformation from law-abiding citizen to ruthless vigilante. Audience members seeing the original Death Wish in theatres in New York loved the film, and helped make it a huge commercial success. David Petzal described the audience the night he saw the film in 1974: "The atmosphere in the theatre was electric. People absolutely roared with delight when the bad guys met the bullets. What they were seeing w2iS justice' (67). The female vigilantes have three things in common. They have been raped in the past, usually by more than one man. The protagonist in Sudden Death wzs raped by two men who stole a taxi and, on a lark, cruised up to her apartment building just as she was coming out to hail a cab. In Sudden Impact, Locke and her sister attend a party on a beach that quickly degenerates into a drunken orgy. A gang of five male perverts repeatedly rape the two girls under the sadistic supervision of a cackling lesbian gang leader. Another trait the female vigilantes have in common is their aptitude for sexual seduction. They are attractive women and possess an uncanny ability to lure men into situations that will inevitably spell death for the men. They have become clever actresses, knowing just how to appeal to the male ego (and libido) so that the violent outcome is always the same. The women also share a talent for handling guns. They have apparently been practicing on the pistol range, and have become crack shots. The handgun is their only real friend, the great equalizer, and they go nowhere without it. The male vigilantes also share common characteristics. They are often veterans of some war. \nJoe, Joe Curran served proudly in Korea, and his basement is a monument to that war, filled with the assorted artifacts of sanctioned violence. In Death Wish, we learn that Paul Kersey's father was career Army, which soured his son on military life. He became a conscientious objector during Korea, a supremely ironic character trait in view of his later transformation into the most violent of all vigilantes, especially in Death Wish III. The character played by Robert Ginty in The Exterminator films is, like Rambo, a Viet Nam vet. Trained only to kill in a very unpopular war, he too has returned to a world that seems to have no place for him. He knows only how to fight an enemy, and that enemy defines itself within the gritty grayness of the New York City slums. With the exception of Joe Curran, the vigilantes are not racists. They are white men who kill evil people without regard to race, color, creed, or 38 national origin. EVen Joe, who hates Blacks, ends up raiding the hippie commune and shooting what appears to be an assortment of mainly white teenagers. Director Michael Winner carefully orchestrates his Death Wish films to make sure that Bronson's victims represent all races. He shoots about an equal number ofWhites, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and nondescript males of varying complexions and dialects. This way, of course, as one critic observed, "Bronson can be an equal-opportunity killer" (Orth). The vigilante makes a moral and physical journey in these films. He or she starts out a good person, living in respectable, middle-class surroundings. He then passes into a middle-ground of physical danger and moral ambiguity. By the end of the film, the vigilante is committing acts that are so violent and excessive, often living in the same squalor as his victims, that he or she may indeed by regarded as contemptuous. The continued associations with evil have, in the end, reduced the protagonist to another antagonist, transforming virtue into vice. He or she is wanted by the police, but refuses to surrender to the same authorities he had originally turned to for comfort and redress. The original Death Wish (1974) best exemplifies this gradual and realistic transformation from goodness through amorality to evil. Architect Paul Kersey is a self- proclaimed Hberal ("My heart bleeds a Httle for the underprivileged now and then") who was a conscientious objector during the Korean War. He is obviously a reasonable and compassionate man who believes in the virtues of the judicial system. Only after his wife and daughter are brutalized in his apartment one afternoon while he is at work does Kersey first seem to experience anger. His first stage that of pacifist, law-abiding citizen ends after he is repeatedly told by police that they have tried to find the assailants but that the case is now closed. Stage two begins as Kersey purchases several rolls of quarters at the bank and places them in a sock which he carries around in his pocket at night. He is not looking for trouble, or even looking for the assailants. He merely wants to be able to protect himself if trouble comes his way. It does. A young mugger jumps out of an alley and demands money. Kersey hesitates, confused by his feelings, then smashes the sock full of quarters against the mugger's face. Kersey flees the scene, returns home, and is violently sick in the bathroom. He has begun his early stage of violating the law by retaliating against an attacker. He knows the poHce can do no good. The audience, too, is being seduced into a similar belief 39 Kersey may only be perceived as evil during stage three when he receives a handgun from a friend out West, and begins to use it on the streets ofNew^ York. He now feels an exhilaration each time he deliberately places himself into a dangerous situation. He goes out looking for trouble. It becomes a sport. He frequents dark alleys, Central Park at night, and empty subway cars. He is no longer an innocent citizen walking back home to his apartment from the office. He is a killer waiting, and hoping, for a good excuse to kill. When he does kill, he does so cavalierly, without regret or emotion, without any more nausea. He enjoys his new role as urban vigilante. The ultimate manifestation of the perverted, homicidal personality now residing inside Paul Kersey comes in Death Wish 7/(1982). He has cornered a young gang member in the deepest recesses of an underground parking garage, and the rapist is without a weapon, on the floor, totally defenseless. Kersey is armed but does not force the criminal to rise and go with him to the police. Rather, he notices a large, bright cross hanging from the man's neck. Struck by the irony. Kersey asks: "Do you love Jesus?" The answer: "Yes, I do." Kersey retorts: "Good, because you're going to meet him." He then fires his revolver point blank at the man's head. The virtuous and patient architect has become the epitome of hatred, violence, and evil. Social Implications of Evil in the Vigilante Film The people who attend the vigilante films at theatres and they are many indeed or watch them re-run on cable TV stations with considerable regularity, enjoy the notion that the underdog is finally getting his due, that there really can be an effective deterrent to urban crime. A film like Death Wish is "a catharsis for thousands of viewers" (Orth). People who live in big cities read the papers and watch television news. They are afraid of crime. One observer, commenting on the popularity of the vigilante films, has stated: "We are getting to the point where life may indeed be as dangerous as the movies depict it, and we are drawing farther and farther from the idea that the law can do anything about it" (Petzal 68). The increased fear of victimization as a result of watching violence on television has been the subject of research by George Gerbner of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He found that 46% of heavy TV viewers (those viewing an average of over 40 four hours a day) who live in cities rated their fear of crime "very serious" as opposed to 26% for the light TV view^ers (those viewing an average of under two hours a day) (21). If viewers watching women being raped and men beaten and robbed on television tend to develop this paranoia that Gerbner calls the "mean-world syndrome," then why would not city dwellers who view the feature-length vigilante film develop it also? And what about the suburbanites and the rural dwellers? Such films fiction, to be sure can hardly be said to be conducive to their desires, lukewarm at best, to visit the cities nearby. Whether the vigilante films are good, bad, or indifferent, they do stir in viewers strong feelings of identification, frustration, and resentment. Not all of the viewers favor the vigilante. At the end of the movie Joe, a group of young people at a midnight Broadway showing stood up and yelled at the screen, "We'U get you, Joe!" (Gilliatt, "God Save the Language" 65). It has been said that the vigilante-cop blockbuster hit Dirty Harry (1971) greatly increased the price of Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolvers, as viewers, convinced of the omnipresence of violent crime around them, flooded gunshops to buy the weapon, causing shortages for years (Petzal 67). Most of the sophisticated and liberal-thinking New York City film critics disliked and dismissed the vigilante films as fantastic distortions of urban violence and slaps in the face to the Big Apple. Penelope Gilliatt seemed to see comedic elements in the plot and characters of the original Death Wish. Her observations seem to place the film into a category of films heavily dependent on exaggeration and fantasy, perhaps not unlike Animal House or Tootsie. She claimed that Death Wish is given over to characters who voice every bigotry about New York that runs rampant in the rest of the world, which seems to believe that New York's upper middle classes had better move posthaste to the suburbs before their wives are raped or their children learn Spanish, and that the bums who make up the rest of the city are just "freeloading off welfare" with a switchblade in every pocket. ("New York, New York" 48) Although the film sharply contrasts good and evil, there occurs somewhere in the middle a blurring of that important distinction between the two. It inspires a consideration of moral relativism that is difficult to 41 dismiss. Although many critics did not take the film seriously, Maureen Orth saw some potential ramifications in the tremendous popular success of Death Wish. In the conclusion to her 1974 review of the film in Newsweek, she asked a rhetorical question that was to be sadly answered on a real New York subway ten years later: "They're cheering Death Wish everywhere. Which American metropoUs will have the honor of producing the first spin-off vigilante?" In December of 1984, Bernhard Goetz, an unlikely Bronson imitator, was riding a New York subway train. Four Black youths were on the train, and asked him for money. They possessed a sharpened screwdriver. Goetz possessed a loaded revolver. Feeling threatened, he fired bullets into each of the four youths. One remains paralyzed a decade later. Goetz was eventually convicted of the illegal possession of a firearm. He was acquitted on charges of assault and attempted murder. Works Cited Ansen, David. "Gunning their Way to Glory." Newsweek 12 Dec. 1983: 109. Gerbner, George, et al. "The 'Mainstreaming' of America: Violence Profile No. W." Journal of Communication 30.3 (1980): 10-29. Gilliatt, Penelope. "God Save the Language, at Least." The New Yorker 15 Aug. 1970: 65-66. . "New York, New York." The New Yorker 26 Aug. 1974: 48-50. Kauffmann, Stanley. "Go Ahead. Make my Hour." The New Republic 23 June 1986: 26-27. Keneas, Alex. "Odd Couple." Newsweek 27 July 1970: 71. Kroll, Jack. "Newman vs. 'The System'." Newsweek 6 Dec. 1982: 151. Orth, Maureen. "Deadly Deterrent." Newsweek 26 Aug. 1974: 82. Petzal, David E. "Rambo, Paul, and Harry." Field & Stream Oct. 1986: 67-68. Sragow, Michael. "Heroes We Don't Deserve." The Atlantic Oct. 1985: 89-91. 42 The Hammer and The Dove: Nietzsche, Foucault, and The American New Historicism by Christopher Wise* "...I am simply Nietzschean...! try to see, on a number of points, and to the extent that it is possible, with the aid of Nietzsche's textsbut also with anti-Nietzschean theses (which are nevertheless Nietzschean!) what can be done in this or that domain. I'm not looking for anything else but I'm really searching for that." -Michel Foucault, in his last interview, 1984. Introduction The growing strength of the New Historicism, considered by many American intellectuals as the only viable alternative to Marxian interpretive theory, attests to the undeniable impact Michel Foucault has had upon a new generation of literary theorists, scholars, and critics.' However, Foucault's loyalty to Friedrich Nietzsche is often elided by many enthusiasts of the New Historicism, no doubt through a premature eagerness to appropriate such an astonishingly successful methodology-and, of Foucault's achievements, there can be little question. For example, in a recent exchange between Hayden White and John Schaeffer regarding Foucault's work, we are no where provided with an analysis of the religio-mythic aspects of Foucault's thought, though both critics seek to disclose the metaphorical and rhetorical elements in Foucault's historiography through homologizing Giambattista Vico's anticipation of Foucault.^ In The New Historicism (1989), Schaeffer also demonstrates the religious implications of Vico's thought, complicating White's appropriation of Vichian rhetoric in the interests of secular pluralism. However, neither White nor Schaeffer examines the Nietzsche-Foucault relationship which first enables the production ofFoucault's "eschatological" historiography, neither critic sufficiently analyzes the role that a Nietzschean 'Assistant Professor of English, West Georgia College 43 and prelinguistic paleosymbolism may be said to play in Foucault, and, by proxy, the American New Historicism.^ My concern here will be to clarify the unarticulated and non-reconstructed colloquial language which remains the ultimate meta-language of Foucault's theoretical position. Foucault's writing wiU be portrayed throughout as organized and empowered by emotionally charged prelinguistic symbols--or, by a limited number of quasi-mythical scenes, most notably the Death of God, the Eternal Return, or the so-called Coming of the Superman. By employing Jurgen Habermas's notion of paleosymbolism, however, I will also suggest that such prelinguistic symbols may also determine and modify human behavior, thereby complicating the pragmatic value of Foucault's discourse. For example, the critique of the linguistic determination of the human sciences in Les mots et les choses (1966) is necessarily problematized when one considers the pragmatic alternatives implied by Foucault's "simply Nietzschean" perspective. Obviously, I will hereby reject Foucault's request that we not ask on what authority he speaks, since it will be precisely my task to define and criticize the authority from which Foucault delivers his oracular and apocalyptic pronouncements-namely, the authority of Nietzsche.'' In this sense, I wiU be offering a hermeneutical response to Foucault by arguing with Hans-Georg Gadamer-and Foucault himself in Les mots et les choses among other places that understanding is never entirely possible without authority, and that Foucault's life-long prejudice against authority may also be examined within the context of the general discrediting of authority, which Gadamer has argued occurred during the enlightenment. Thorny though Foucault's discourse maybe, as White has complained, without certain categories borrowed from the workofNietzsche, categories which serve as a system of coordinates in the body of his writing, Foucault's work could not function at all, much less with the success that it has enjoyed thus far within the context of the American New Historicism.' It will be my contention that a master code or Ur narrative may be said to undergird and stabihze the trajectory of Foucault's discourse-both the "early Foucault" and the "late Foucault"-which also provides the recuperative basis for his traditional and allegorical readings of both literary and non-literary texts. 44 The White-Schaeffer Exchange In opposition to Hayden White, John Schaeffer has emphasized the role of the reUgious imagination as the necessary ground for the production of all rhetoric in Vico's system. Schaeffer argues that neither White nor Foucault is "fully cognizant of the central role Vico gives to religion in his poetic logic. ..[how]. ..the logos originates in the reUgious and derives its power from it" (98). Thus, Schaeffer concludes that "price for Vico's theory of periodicity is acceptance of its basis in religion." Already in his essay "Foucault Decoded: Notes From Underground," White had demonstrated that the movement ofFoucault's epistemes maybe considered as homologous with Vico's theory of periodicity, his transformational account of the displacement of one rhetorical trope for another throughout the life of a culture.*' If it is possible to homologize Vico and Foucault in this regard, however, one could also argue for the creation of even more homologies between these two thinkers, especially in Vico's and Foucault's understandings of the religious imagination. Les mots et les choses and L'Archeologie du savoir {1969) are often described as attempts on the part of Foucault to eliminate "the recourse to ontology" and hermeneutic depth which characterized his earlier writings on psychiatry, especially apparent in Foucault's self-critical denunciation of Folie et deraison (1961) in L'Archeologie du savior J However, if the movement of epistemes in Les mots et les choses may no longer be considered as randomly determined, or if the price for Vico's theory of periodicity is, indeed, acceptance of its basis in religion, what then may we infer about the price for Foucault's transformational system of epistemes ? Of Folie et deraison, Foucault later writes, "It would certainly be a mistake to try to discover what could have been said of madness at a particular time by interrogating the being of madness itself, its secret content, its silent, self-enclosed truth" {The Archeology of Knowledge 41). Even earlier in Naissance de la clinique (1963), Foucault had attempted to abandon hermeneutical recovery, or any recuperative strategy of interpretation, by arguing against the interrogation of the Logos in the search for "truth. "^ Roy Boyne, in Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of' Reason (1990), has argued that Foucault's "rejection" of hermeneutics was in part motivated by Jacques Derrida's critique of Folie et deraison, delivered in a lecture in 1963, and later published as "Cogito and The History of Madness" in Writing and Difference (1978). In Michel Foucault 45 (1982), Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow have added that, Hke most French intellectuals of the sixties, Foucaultwas swayed under the growing influence of Structuralism to reject the semantics of hermeneutical recovery in favor of the syntactic logic of StructuraHsm (16-17). Much later in 1 984, Foucault will state that the early theoretical studies he had performed were essentially based on the use of a "philosophical vocabulary, game, and experience, to which [he] was. ..completely devoted" {Politics, Philosophy, Culture243). However, Foucault adds the disclaimer that "it is certain that [he is] now trying to detach [him] self from this form of philosophy." Ironically, in this same interview (his last public appearance) Foucault will conclude with the declaration that he is "simply Nietzschean." Like Foucault's search for the determining episteme in Les mots et les choses, the arche of the logos Schaeffer demonstrates that, "Vico is [also] trying to reveal the arche of what the orator works with. How did that rhetorical sensus communis get into the language in the first place; and what is its role and fiinction in cultural development?" (98). However, one important difference between Vico and Foucault is that Vico never wavered in the acknowledgement of his own arche, his own vulgar preunderstanding, whereas the later Foucault found it increasingly difficult to maintain the Nietzschean posture of his early writings, especially after Derrida's devastating critique ofFolie et de'raison. In this regard, it would be reasonable to assume that Foucault's own " arche " may be understood as the equivalent of Vico's imaginative universal, or "the primal metaphors of a language which become categories of perception and value" (93-94). Schaeffer argues that Vico's ultimate contribution to discursive theory lies in his ability to articulate the procedure through which one discursive period gives way to another: through the evolving sensus communis or "vulgar wisdom as it is apprehended, or...'prehended,' in the language of a particular community" (94-95). Vico also describes the sensus communis as "judgment without reflection," the source of a "common mental dictionary" for human communities. As evident in his so-called "break" with the dialectic, Foucault's own sensus communis is arrived at, paradoxically, through a retreat into the psychological monad-the advent of the "mad philosopher"-whereby one attempts to recover certain imaginative "categories" in the creation of a "strictly original" synthesis of psychic phenomena (Foucault Mental Illness andPsychologyld) . For Foucault, such an attempt is necessarily accompanied 46 by the dissolution of the category of the individual "subj ect" as a precondition for psychic identification with, what will later be described as, certain "novelties" to be found within the domain of silence {Language, Counter-Memory, Practice 41). Heideggerian Psychology To fully appreciate Foucault's filial dependency on Nietzsche, Foucault's reception of Nietzsche must first be filtered through the impact of Martin Heidegger on his early writings. "It is possible that if I had not read Heidegger, I would not have read Nietzsche," Foucault tells us. "I had tried to read Nietzsche in the fifties but Nietzsche alone did not appeal to me-whereas Nietzsche and Heidegger: that was a philosophical shock!" {Politics, Philosophy, Culture 250). While Foucault states that Nietzsche's influence ultimately outweighs the influence of Heidegger, he describes Heidegger as the second major force in his philosophical development. Among other similar interests, both Heidegger and Foucault share an aversion for metaphysics, for humanism and the epistemological enthronement of Cartesian reason; both philosophers attempt to reject the Kantian subject, detached from the thing-in-itself, in favor of Being-There, or Dasein, an ontology of lived experience in the world. Above all, Heidegger and Foucault share a dislike for the empirical pretensions of the human sciences, especially evident in psychology's claim to offer a "science" of the human subject. Foucault first encounters the thought of Heidegger through the work of Ludwig Binswanger, a Swiss psychiatrist who had based his own phenomenological approach to psychiatry on Heidegger's notion of Dasein. In Maladie Mentale et Personalite', and in his lengthy introduction to Binswanger's Le reve et ['existence (1955), Foucault argues for the development of an ontological psychology in opposition to prevailing Kantian models of psychoanalysis. Even more radically than Binswanger, Foucault combines the psychology of Dasein with a quasi-Marxian analysis of the mental institution, also depicting Freudian psychology as the culminating moment of a long and systematic exclusion of the "true meaning" of madness. In these early works, Foucault attempts to uncover the "truth" of madness through, what Paul Ricoeur has called, a hermeneutics of suspicion. Much as Heidegger had argued in Being and Time (1927) that western metaphysics and reason have attempted to 47 conceal the truth ofDasein, Foucauh argues that the history of psychiatry may also be understood as reason's long repression of the "truth" of madness. Though Foucault later rejected his "naive" attempt at uncovering the "truth" of madness, along vv^ith any variety of hermeneutics which attempts to uncover or recuperate meaning, Foucault's aversion for Kantian and Freudian models of psychoanalysis only increased throughout his career, evident especially in L Vo/onte'dusavoir (197 6), dihistory of the confessing subject as the locus of all knowledge. In his studies of Binswanger, Foucault rejects prevailing forms of psychoanalysis, aimed only at the functional recovery of the patient rather than the disclosure of the patient's "strictly original" strategies of psychic organization. Here, Foucault attempts to demonstrate the oxymoronic nature of institutional psychiatry's creation of a noso-terminology, the unqualified assumption of mental conditions as being "organic" or "physiological." Terms like "mental illness," or any other descriptions of madness as organic, physiological diseases are uniformly rejected by Foucault as poorly conceived metaphors; we are shown instead how psychiatry appropriated the use of physiological terminology by postulating a model of the psyche as an "organism," thereby accepting a host of enlightenment and romantic prejudices, most obviously the distillation of all consciousness into the Kantian subject. By merging subject and object in Heidegger's Dasein, Foucault instead emphasizes the way in which human beings are related to the world, the way in which mind, world, and history are inseparable in a network of relations; thus, rather than embracing the standard, "regressive" model of institutional analysis, Foucault argues that we should respect the integrity of the patient's unique experiences, seeking a recovery of the historical dimension of the "illness." "Ill as a patient may be," Foucault tells us, "a point of coherence cannot but exist" {Mental Illness and Psychology 26). Thus, the psychiatrist's more urgent task involves recovery of a "point of coherence" within the unique psychic constitution of each "patient," rather than nosologically determining already established patterns of behavior. For Foucault, the prevailing psychoanalytic theories of the mental institution must be rejected as Cartesian, epistemological pseudosciences. As Heidegger had postulated the existence of "underlying structures of preunderstanding," Foucault also argues for the recovery of certain organizing strategies within the patient's personal worldview which will guarantee "the experienced unity 48 of [the patient's] consciousness and horizon" (28). Such an onto-psychoanalytic approach would entail analysis of the historicity of the "illness," or the individual's "being-in-the-world." For Foucault, there would also be no question of archaic personalities "buried deep" within the Kantian subject, unconscious categories or mental contents to be reintegrated back into the ego's overall set of representations; any depth-psychoanalytic therapy attempting to uncover such "buried contents" of the unconscious must necessarily, and erroneously in Foucault's view, postulate a mythical conception of energy or spirit (i.e. Freud's libido, Janet's psychic force, or Jung's autonomous archetypes). According to Foucault, such analytic constructs all err through positing Man as the locus of all epistemological understanding; all these theories must be rejected as dupes of the historical enlightenment, the prejudices of the Cartesian universe. Instead, Foucault proposes a psychology which would take into account an understanding of what it means "to be" over and against an interrogation of the isolated subject, aimed solely at the individual's reintegration back into "productive" society. Moreover, Foucault expresses his concern and indignation at a culture which has systematically applied the label of "mentally ill" to those whom it has cruelly subjugated within its institutions of confinement. Instead, psychiatry must recognize the historical narrowing of human possibilities which has taken place in western culture since the beginning of the enlightenment, how what is understood as illness often passes for acceptable behavior in other cultures and eras; thus, what Foucault makes clear is that only modern culture has come to understand madness as illness; only the merciless arrogance of an irrational form of reason could have first made possible the birth of the institutional clinic. Foucault concludes, "Our society does not wish to recognize itself in the iU individual whom it rejects or locks up; as it diagnoses the illness, it excludes the patient. The analyses of our psychologists and sociologists, which turn the patient into a deviant and which seek the origin of the morbid in the abnormal, are, therefore, above all a projection of cultural themes" (63). For Foucault, the important question is not whether or not the patient needs psychiatric therapy to overcome his illness, but how and why institutional psychiatry needs the patient to further its goals of exclusion and interrogation. "It is not because one is ill that one is alienated," Foucault writes, "but insofar as one is alienated that one is ill" (103). 49 Though he continued to perceive the psychiatric institution as repressive, even expanding and enlarging his descriptions in Folie et deraison and La naissance du clinic^ Foucault later rejected the Marxian component of his analysis by which he had argued that mental illness itself could be eliminated by the removal of societal contradictions within the patient's environment (107). By shifting from Marx to Nietzsche, especially evident in the concluding chapter of Folie et deraison and in "Preface to Transgression," Foucault rejects all dialectics and revolutionary paradigms which promise to bring about a reversal in prevailing social conditions; after his discovery of Nietzsche, Foucault will no longer believe in the transformative potential of dialectical discourse, the ability of truth-aimed conversation to bring about social revolution. With the emergence of the mad philosopher, Foucault repudiates any notion of the thinker who stands behind his words in reasoned dialogue. Foucault's "Points of Coherence" Though Foucault rejects "Kantian" psychoanalysis, his endorsement of the Heideggerian notion of preunderstanding obviously complicates his critique of Freud's reliance on the ahistorical subject with underlying categories of thought. For example, if we mediate between Vico's imaginative universals and Heidegger's structures of preunderstanding, it soon becomes apparent that Foucault has more in common with Vico than merely their similar transformational systems of epistemes . By fiat of Heideggerian Dasein, Foucault's discourse in no sense may be said to rid itself of the archaic personalities or autonomous complexes which were found to be so undesirable in the theories of Freud, Janet, and Jung. This lingering idealist essentialism in Foucault, perhaps best described as a transcendental idealism, also complicates Foucault's dismissals of dialectical and teleological discourse. While we may applaud Foucault's efforts to develop a psychology in the context of Heideggerian historicity, Heidegger himself never embraced a particular set of mythic coordinates, a particular tradition to privilege above all others; in fact, the later Heidegger purposely distanced himself from Gadamer's view that a saving truth could somehow be recuperated from the western tradition.^ Though one could argue that both Foucault and Heidegger attempted to usher in a return to the gods, as White has observed about Foucault and as Habermas has observed about Heidegger, 50 Heidegger himself never identified any specific prelinguistic images upon which a new ethics could be formulated. Foucault, on the other hand, established his renown and early reputation through announcing his "mixed vocation of apostle and exegete" in relation to the messianic proclamations of Nietzsche in the final, enigmatic texts {Madness and Civilization 287-288). In Folie et deraison^ for example, Foucault informs us that Nietzsche's last cry, pro-claiming himselfboth Christ and Dionysos, can somehow become for us today "the endless path to flilfiUment." We are told that Nietzsche's Dionysiac and Christie self-identification, "that which robbed Nietzsche of his reason," can now make possible for us the creation of a new reason, a reason beyond the discursive limits of Cartesian reason. For Foucault, Nietzsche at this point becomes no less than the latest avatar of the dying and reborn God, "born posthumously" so that we mere mortals might live, so that the dissolution of Nietzsche's thought might open out a new realm of thought onto the modern world. With apocalyptic and prophetic assurance, Foucault proclaims to us that Nietzsche's giving of himself will now become the yardstick by which the future world will be measured, and clearly found wanting. Not unlike Northrop Frye, who privileges certain poetic images and mythic structures upon which all meaning can be allege rically recuperated, the "early" Foucault celebrates a Great Code of sorts, a select number of quasi-mythical scenes which serve as the organizing "points of coherence" throughout his stylistically consistent, if not structurally redundant, proliferation of texts. Later, Foucault will assure us that he has given up these language games, or at least that he is working towards giving them up. In Maladie mentale et psychologic, Foucault had written that, "the essence of mental illness lies not only in the void that it hollows out, but also in the positive plenitude of the activities of replacement that fill that void" (17). In The Content of The Form (1987), Hayden White argues that the essence of plenitude which fills up the void for Foucault is really no void at all, but a "plenum of force; not divine, but demonic" (134). White asserts that Foucault's "true subject" is Power, which has been "hypostatized and given the status that spirit once enjoyed in an earlier, humanistic dispensation." White's observation is both accurate and astute: if Nietzsche constitutes the latest avatar of the dying and reborn God, the Antichrist made manifest in the flesh, Foucault prophetically assures us that we are not to be left entirely comfortless in our now-faUen state. Though the 51 hammer has slipped from the philosopher's hand, his Spirit will live on for us in the form of a Power which will operate like a "secret invasion from within" {Mental Illness and Psychology 77). As Paul had proclaimed the Risen Christ throughout the synagogues of the ancient world, so Foucault now proclaims his task as both apostle and exegete, announcing the Sovereignty and Divinity of the "Nietzschean figures of tragedy, of Dionysos, of the death of God, of the philosopher's hammer, of the Superman approaching with the steps of a dove, of the Return" (Language, Counter-Memory, Practice 39). Foucault's earlier critique of religion in Maladie mentale et psychologie might well be applied to his own vocation as Nietzschean apostle: "[Religion] may be the object of delusional belief," Foucault had told us earlier, "insofar as the culture of a group no longer permits the assimilation of religious or mystical beliefs in the present content of experience. To this conflict and to the need to overcome it belong the Messianic delusions, the hallucinatory experience of apparitions, and the evidences of the thunderous 'call' that restore, in the world of madness, the shattered unity experienced in the real world" {Mental Illness and Psychology 81). Paradoxically, what had disqualified religious experience in the early Foucault now becomes precisely that which both corroborates and redeems his own apostolic and exegetical calling in Folie etderaison. In Maladie mentale et psychologie, such a calling we see prefigured in Foucault's emotionally charged and apotheostic defense of the Berdaches Medicine Men among the Dakota Indians, homosexual shaman whose "religious status as priests ...is bound up with their particular sexual behavior" (62). It is in this sense White comments that, as an oracular and apocalyptic prophet, Foucault's religious utterances wiU later make "even the Nazis look tame in comparison with the 'bio-politics' that [he] sees taking shape on the horizon" {The Content of The Form 133). That Foucault defines his discursive task as apostolic and exegetical will hardly come as a surprise to those already familiar with the trajectory of Foucault's work; however, it should surprise us that so few of Foucault's numerous commentators have chosen to discuss the often bizarre, quasi-religious implications of his writings. For example, it is often assumed that there can exist in Foucault's writings a "value free" analytic: while the "early" Foucault is rightly embraced as poetic historiographer, the "late" Foucault is uncritically heralded by some as 52 post-Kantian"deconstructionist of the body," a philosopher who can somehow miraculously escape the assignation of any one specific center; who can evasively assert that his own discourse, "far from determining the locus in which it speaks, is avoiding the ground on which it could fmd support" {The Archaeology of Knowledge 2^S-2^G)!'^^ But, it is perhaps the "early Foucault" himself who best clarifies the problem of granting the "late Foucault" exemption from an embarrassingly vulgar point d'appui : If language exists, it is because below the level of identities and differences there is the foundation provided by continuities, resemblances, repetitions, and natural crisscrossings. Resemblance excluded from knowledge... still constitutes the outer edge of language: the ring surrounding the domain of that which can be analyzed, reduced to order, and known. Discourse dissipates the murmur, but without it it could not speak {The Order of Things 120). These continuities, resemblances, repetitions, and crisscrossings that necessarily exist within Foucault's writings transmogrify into an unholy trinity of sorts: a quasi-occultic celebration of the Death of God, followed by the altruistic sacrifice of Nietzsche's reason, and the recent emergence of Power as the new Unholy Spirit. As stated earlier, there are also any number of practical questions which might be raised concerning the religio-mythic element in Foucault. For example, as Habermas has argued, discourse serves not only as a medium for exchanging messages, but also as a means of shaping and altering the attitudes which ultimately determine human behavior; thus, as Wittgenstein has also made clear, language may very well be "only a game," but it is a game which is a way of hfe. If we accept Nietzsche's Dionysian values as superior to more widely accepted values within Western culture, obviously the formerly embraced values, especially those ofJudeo-Christian Humanism, must now become those values which are hereafter excluded and repressed. Because it is impossible to establish any culture upon values which are not in some way exclusive, or, because we cannot, after all, transvalue all values as Nietzsche himself was aware, the more urgent question in discussing Foucault would seem to be not how can we now pragmatically make use of Foucault's "value free" analytic, but rather what do we think of the unarticulated values and ethics that are inherent in Foucault's Dionysian system? Should these values be endorsed 53 at the cost of contemporary established values? Though Foucault denies the inevitably of his own center, as well as the transcendental character of Power, does the "late Foucault" truly escape his own essentialism? Furthermore, how do Foucault's claims to non-essentialism further complicate the contemporary canonization of his texts within the academic institution? One of the most disturbing aspects about Foucault's popularity among American academics today is that his work has tended to legitimate reactionary ideologies like the so-called New Historicism, especially in re-entrenching largely oppressive institutional traditions and methods of literary analysis. For example, one can "safely" be an American New Historicist today, congratulating oneselfon being theoretically up-to-date, while endorsing an approach to literary study which differs very little from the American New Criticism in its political agenda. Another way of saying this might be that a disturbing symmetry exists between the American New Historicism and the Republican Revolution of the mid 1990s, just as there was once a disturbing symmetry between the American New Criticism and the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Empowered by the more subtle and easily misunderstood approach of Foucault, the American New Historicism functions as the latest in a long line of liberal ideologies that often appear progressive but in reality pose even greater obstacles to institutional restructuration than outright neo-fascisms like Francis Fukiyama's or Allan Bloom's. The larger question would then seem to be not how do we argue from a value-free position, as the later Foucault and the American New Historicism attempts, but rather how can we build a human community with an ethics which can be acceptable and valid to everyone existing within that community? Or, on what basis will such an ethics be established? If we embrace Foucault's gospel of Dionysianism, do we now truly have at our disposal a realistic and viable standard for human society? In his last interviews, Foucault continues to insist that he is a philosopher, though a philosopher who has somehow broken with the dialectic (Politics, Philosophy, Culture 242-254). However, the classical distinction between philosopher and sophist, or rhetoritician, has always consisted in the philospher's desire to engage in truth-aimed dialogue, over and against the sophist's desire to disengage truth through manipulating language without recourse to dialectic. Can Foucault simultaneously call himself a philosopher and still deny the necessity of the dialectic? Furthermore, does Foucault's 54 commitment to the interview form, apparent in his two volumes of published dialogues, also problematize his unchanging claim at having rejected dialectical discourse in favor of the "discourse of transgression"? There are any number of similar obstacles in the "later" Foucault's assertions that he has indeed "left behind" the Nietzschean language games of his earlier discourse, that he has now somehow arrived at a "purer" analytic in the second half of his career. At the beginning of this essay, I stated that Foucault's achievements have been both significant and remarkable; however, if I have chosen to criticize Foucault's work, it is only the "later" Foucault who I have found problematic, the Foucault who denied his own arche or center while busily investigating and decentering the logos within all discursive formations other than his own." Despite my reservations about Foucault, however, I believe we may stiU profit from his work, but only if we understand him primarily as a mythopoeic, creative writer, rather than a philosopher or political thinker. Another way of saying this would be to at least partly agree with Richard Rorty that ironist theorists like Foucault and Nietzsche are "invaluable in our attempt to form a private self-image, but pretty much useless when it comes to politics" (Contingency, irony, and solidarity 83). In this regard, the category of creative writer need not be construed as a devaluation of Foucault's accomplishments, but, on the contrary, may be regarded as critical praise of the highest order. Notes ' Stephen Greenblatt in his essay, "Towards a Poetics of Culture," The New Historicism, New Yorlc Routledge, 1989 (1-2), acknowledges how the presence of Foucault on the Berkeley campus of the University of California shaped the development of his own theoretical position, which Greenblatt himself later coined as "The New Historicism." ^ Hayden's White essay "Foucault Decoded: Notes From Underground" first appeared in History and Theory, vol. 12, 1973 (23-54). John Schaeffer's essay "The Use and Misuse of Giambattista Vico: Rhetoric, Orality, and Theories of Discourse" is printed in The New Historicism (89-101). Though my interests here differ from the above thinkers, their exchange remains in my opinion, so far, the most fruitful discussion of Foucault's thought. ^ Jurgen Habermas defines "paleosymbols" in the following way: they are "symbols which control behavior and not merely signs, for [they] have genuine significative functions... [They] are not installed in a grammatical rule system. They are not ordered elements and do not appear in configurations which can be grammatically transformed. . .Prelinguistic symbols are heavily laden with emotion and center in each case on definite scenes." From "On Hermeneutics' Claim to Universality." The Hermeneutics Reader, New York: The Condnuum Publishing Company, 1990 (308). 55 '' See Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain, Michel Foucault, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984 (2). Cousins and Hussain argue that "it is redundant to construct a Foucault which has aU the attributes of a general theory, one which can be wheeled into battle with the masters and fathers of social thought. ..[for,]. ..while Foucault's treatment of power relations is distinct and novel, this does not constitute a general theory" Such tendencies to aUow Foucault exemption from the construction of a "general theory" in any attempt to analyze his work have contributed to the paralysis of theory in demythologizing the writings of Foucault--the residual longing, no doubt, for a "pure" analytic or an "empirical" approach to the human sciences. I am arguing instead that the "authority" of Nietzsche extends throughout the trajectory of Foucault's writings, from his earliest work on mental illness to his final publications on human sexuality. Also, see White's The Content of the Form: "Foucault's answers to questions of his discourse's origin seem curiously weak..." (107). ^ Habermas states, "The specific element in linguistic intersubjectivity resides in its ability to serve as a basis for communication between individual members of the language community.. .the intersubjectivity of colloquial understanding cannot be sustained without a mutual self-representation on the part of the speaking subjects" (308). "On Hermeneutics' Claim to Universality," The Hermeneutics Reader. A less complicated way of saying this would be to follow Northrop Frye's observation that "all commentary is allegorical interpretation, an attaching of ideas to the structure of poetic imagery," The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) 89. ''In Vice's cyclical scheme, metaphor is displaced by metonymy, followed by a similar displacement of metonymy by synecdoche, followed by the final displacement of syncedoche by irony, which begins the cycle all over again. ' See Hubert L. Dreyflis 6c Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982(11-12). * Foucault, The Birth ofTheClinicyNewYoik: Vintage Books, 1975: "For centuries we have waited in vain for the decision of the Word" (p. xvi). ' Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology, trans. Willliam Lovitt, New York: Harper & Row, 1977. For more on Neokantian transcendentalism m Heidegger, see The Hermeneutics Reacier{41-47 &i.274-319), especially Tegardmg the Gadamer-Habermas debates. Habermas argues that Heidgger's existential ontology presents us with yet another inflection of a priori Kantian philosophy, as does the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer. I am arguing here that Habermas's critique of a residual and categorical transcendentalism in Heidegger may also be applied to Foucault; however, in the case of Foucault specifically I am arguing that there lingers a more dubious transcendentalism, insofar as Foucault refuses to acknowledge the mythical categories which empower his discourse, especially evident in the self-critical denunciations of his early texts. There are also socio-pragmatic implications regarding the symbols which Foucault chooses to privilege: for example, can Foucault's position ethically be endorsed within the academy? Can his discourse be validated as a means of building human communities? ' In The Content of The Form, White discusses this problem in Foucault with remarkable insight, arguing that Foucault's answers concerning the points of origin within his own discourse "seem curiously weak" (106). " For example, Dreyfus and Rabinow in Michel Foucault make clear that "there is no pre- and post-achaeology or genealogy in Foucault [italics theirs]" (104). Though the emphasis shifts from archaeology to genealogy in the late Foucault, Dreyfus and Rabinow point out that the genealogical process of analyzing discursive formations could not be possible in Foucault without the preceding archaeological process which "still isolates and indicates the arbitrariness of the hermeneunc horizon of meaning" (106). Thus, throughout the trajectory of Foucault's work, the archaeological strategy of 56 identifying the " arche " of the " log os" in various discursive practices, as the procedure which must first occur before the genealogy can even be undertaken, is never really abandoned. Works Cited Dreyfiis, Herbert L. & Rabinow, Paul, Michel Foucault (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) Cousins, Mark and Hussain, Athar, Michel Foucault (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984) Foucault, Michel, The Archeology of Knowledge , trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Vinatage, 1976) , The Birth of The CUnic (New York: Vintage Books, 1975) ^ Language. Counter-Memory. Practice (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977) ^ Madness and Civillization (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) ^ Mental Illness and Psycholog y (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1987) ^ The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) ^ Politics. Philosophy. Culture , ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, (New York; Routledge, 1988) Habermas, Jurgen, "On Hermeneutics' Claim to Universality." The Hermeneutics Reader (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1990) Heidegger, Martin, "The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology, trans. Willliam Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) Rorty, Richard, Contingency, irony, and solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Veeser, A. E., The New Historicism (New York: Routledge, 1989) White, Hayden, The Content of the Form (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989). 57 ABSTRACTS OF FACULTY PROJECTS SPONSORED BY THE LEARNING RESOURCES COMMITTEE OF WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE Developing a School Renewal Plan to Improve School Climate Clete Bulach, Department of Educational Leadership The purpose of this research is to evaluate a school renewal process which focuses on improving school climate. The overall design includes: 1) the collection of data prior to the implementation of a school renewal plan; 2) the development and implementation of a school renewal plan; and 3) the collection of data after implementation of the plan to determine which plans are the most effective in improving school climate. Five schools in the West Georgia College service area are involved in the research. They are the following: Eastside Elementary in Coweta County, Argyle Elementary School in Cobb County, Lake Harbin Elementary School in Clayton County, Mt. Zion Elementary School in Carroll County, East Paulding Middle School in Paulding County, and Thomasville Heights Elementary School in Atlanta City Schools. Each of these schools has collected school climate data on the following areas: openness, trust, order, instructional leadership, collaboration, involvement, expectations, instruction, and environment. Strengths and weaknesses were identified and each school developed their own school renewal plan based on an analysis of the data collected. Each school's renewal plan will be further analyzed to determine which parts of the plan contributed the most toward improvement of the nine school climate variables. As a result of these analyses, it is anticipated that a number of suggestions will be forthcoming that wiU be of assistance to other schools regarding things they "should" or "should not" do if they want to improve school climate. 58 Continuing Research Into the History of Early Radio in Argentina Robert Claxton, Department of History No one has chronicled and analyzed the history of radio in Latin America despite the fact that this medium was a principal means of mass communication from the 1920s to the 1950s and the 75th anniversary of the first broadcast is approaching. There is no study even of an individual Latin American country which could be called "comprehensive," including a discussion of the origins of the technology in that place, the financing of the stations, the evolution of technology, the development of regulation, a description of the programming, and reflections on the impact of radio on society. The history of early radio in Latin America has special significance because Latins pioneered that medium in the "lesser developed world." By 1930, there were more radio stations in South America alone than in Asia and Africa combined. Scholars have examined the histories of film-making, photography, print journalism, and television in Latin America but they have neglected radio. This research project concentrates on Argentina from 1920 until the rise of Juan Peron in the 1940s. Argentine radio resembled the United States pattern (in some other ways anticipated it) by funding itself through commercial advertising rather than licensing fee method of the B.B.C. This on-going research project pursues answers to three fundamental questions: (1) Is Latin culture really not conducive to technological inventiveness? Initial research has shown that an extensive amateur radio operator subculture existed in Argentina not unlike the network Susan Douglas found in the United States and discusses m Inventing Broadcasting, 1899-1 922 (1987). (2) Do Latins lack an entrepreneurial attitude? Again, I have already found that some Argentina radio pioneers took risks to make their stations succeed and initially had no other revenue except that from radio component stores and sale of advertising time. (3) What impact does radio have? In particular, did radio sustain democratic values? There was a swing toward democracy in Latin America from the World War I era until the Great Depression. During that time, radio and movies were introduced and telephones and record players spread. This is similar to the swing to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s which is also the era of 59 FAX machines, satellite teleconferencing, VCRs, and e-mail. Does the introduction of new communications technologies foster democracy? A Mossbauer Study of Pre-Columbian Pottery Ben de Mayo and Daniel White*, Department of Physics Mossbauer spectra were obtained for pre-Columbian pottery sherds from five riverine and coastal sites in Georgia. The spectrometer was operated in a constant acceleration mode at room temperature; it is calibrated with an iron foil enriched with Fe 57 and a primary standard sodium nitroprusside absorber. The isomer shift, the quadrupole splitting, the Fe*VFe*** ratio, and the Fe^O^ content have been measured. The samples were supplied by D. L. Simpkins of the Anthropology Department at West Georgia. In addition, clays from Lizella, Georgia, were studied under various heat-treating conditions; results were compared with those of the pottery sherds. In this continuing project, a highly sensitive technique called Mossbauer spectroscopy is being used to learn more about our Native Americans. Archaeological pottery samples obtained from our own archaeologists are being analyzed. Furthermore, local clays such as the Indians probably used are being treated under known temperature-time conditions to determine how the native pottery was produced. The samples are ground into powders and then formed into pellets for use in the Mossbauer spectrometer. Laboratory microcomputers are used to record and plot the Mossbauer data, to prepare the data for transmission to the mainframe computer for analysis, to store the results in a coherent form, and to record the time/temperature profile of the heated samples. In addition, pottery is being made both using as much as possible the techniques of the archaic natives and using a computer-controlled and recorded laboratory furnace. Student workers will continue to be heavily involved in this project. 'Student 60 Superconductivity Research Ben de Mayo, Department of Physics This project is continuing to make excellent research progress in the fascinating and technologically important area of high temperature superconductivity. Because the new superconductors become superconducting at temperatures much higher than conventional superconductors, these materials offer much promise for practical devices. In our particular study, we are applying a magnetic field to the sample in its non-superconducting state, then adding liquid nitrogen to cause it to become a superconductor. We monitor the magnetic field at the sample by using a 3-axis probe built with student help in this lab, and we use a computer to record and analyze the data. Also, we use powerful graphing algorithms to present the results in a coherent form. We have so far this year assembled and calibrated the air-core electromagnet that will be used to apply a magnetic field to the sample. We are now designing the framework for holding the superconducting sample in the field. Next we shall take data on a number of superconductors purchased with an FRG grant. The project is successfully involving students; support was received this year from the Student Research Assistant Program. Coupled Energy- Velocity Relations for the Damped Motion of a Charged Particle in Electric and Magnetic Fields: A Simple Scheme Javier E. Hasbun, Department of Physics The x-y motion of a charged particle in the presence of electric and a magnetic fields is studied with the inclusion of scattering. The scattering is included in the Lagrangian formulation for the particle through an energy dependent Rayleigh dissipation function. This energy dependence couples the x-y velocities with the particle's energy. While the rate of energy loss can be obtained through the Hamiltonian of the system, the lifetime is derived using a simple classical model. An enhanced damping in the motion of the charged particle arises due to the energy dependence of the collision time in marked contrast to the uncouple motion. 61 Damped Motion of a Charged Particle in the Presence of Electric and Magnetic Fields Javier E. Hasbun, Department of Physics The classical motion of a charged particle in the presence of an electric and a magnetic field is studied with the inclusion of scattering. The scattering is included in the Lagrangian equations for the particle through the use of the Rayleigh dissipation function. The resulting equations for the motion are solved analytically as a fiinction of time. The behavior of the charged particle motion is strikingly different from the case w^ithout scattering. If the equations of motion are discretized, it is possible to obtain unique patterns whose shapes depend on the values of the fields, the characteristic scattering time, and the initial conditions. A Comparative Study of Aging Policies Between People s Republic of China (PRC) and Republic of China (ROC) Leejanjan, Department of Sociology and Anthropology This study tries to explore how cultural, political and economic factors may affect the making of aging policies by taking advantage of the fact that PRC and ROC both share the same cultural heritage but have different political and economic systems and different stages of economic development. A comparison of the similarities and differences in PRC and ROC aging policies may provide a good chance of finding out how those factors separately and/or together affect policy making. Research methods include: 1. Library and government archives research. 2. Interviews with directors of Social Welfare Bureaus and civic leaders of advocate groups for the aged. 3. Consulting with academic members working in the field of gerontology. 4. Visits to selected public and private nursing homes. 62 A Differential Geometric Approach to the Analysis and Synthesis of Reflector and Refractor Systems Eha Newman, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science I have been studying the theoretical and numerical analysis of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs), especially those of mixed type and generalized Monge- Ampere equations. These equations arise in several applications. The first application is that of optical system design and analysis. The second application arises in the study of transonic flight wherein one wishes to design fuel-efficient axisymmetric jet flows. Ultimately in both of the above applications, one must solve a nonlinear Monge-Ampere (MA) equation which may be of elliptic, hyperbolic, or mixed type. As with most completely nonlinear PDEs, one does not expect to find existence or uniqueness results for these equations except in special cases. However, in order for my work on these applications to maintain interest outside of the mathematics community, I must demonstrate solidly how the techniques in modeling optical systems or airplane wings can be used to design such objects effectively. Therefore, some questions which must be considered are: _ What are well-posed boundary value problems? i_ What numerical schemes would provide the best solutions to the MA equations? _ What can we say about these numerical solutions mathematically? While the MA equations describing the two appUcations are considerably different, progress in answering these questions for one MA equation may lead to the answers for the other equations. I have worked for several years on the analysis and design of optical systems. I used the Faculty Research Grant to travel to the University of Delaware in December, 1994, where I met with Professors Pam Cook and Gilberto Schleiniger. These researchers have worked in the area of transonic flight for many years and are serving in an advising role as I learn techniques which facilitate the analysis of nonlinear PDEs. With their support, I applied for an NSF Research Planning Grant for Women. If the grant proposal is successful, it will provide me with release time and travel money which wiU accelerate my progress in this research. 63 Synthesis of a Family of Polyamines Jeffrey Reid, William J. Pottorf, II and Victoria Geisler, Chemistry Department Protein kinase C is a family of lipid activated enzymes which are important in the regulation of cell growth and differentiation, as well as the onset of cancer and AIDS. The inhibition of this enzyme could lead to clinically useful drugs. In particular, charge has been shown to play an important role in inhibiting enzyme function. Our research focuses on the synthesis of polyamines which contain sufficient lipophilic character that will enable multiple interactions with the membrane bound enzyme. We have developed synthetic procedures to produce a series of long chain aliphatic polyamines. Two of the proposed compounds have been successfilly prepared and two others are currently being pursued. The synthesis of these compounds represents a viable route for preparing a novel class of lipophilic polyamines. The compounds will be studied for their effects on protein kinase C. Equations of Diffusion and Oscillation with Applications to Biology William Rivera, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science The travel grant was applied to fund a visit to the Applied Math Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The grantee collaborated with H.I. Freedman on topics in Mathematical Biology with an emphasis on Ecology and the environment. The grantee also discussed applications of chaotic and periodic orbits with Muldowney and others. The grantee delivered the first applied math seminar for the Mathematics Department of Alberta in Fall 1994. The grantee also presented talks on their joint research at the conference at UT Knoxville in October 1994 and at West Georgia College in February 1995. The grantee has also written the first of a series of articles stemming from this joint research entitled: "Stable Patterns with applications to Biology." The article contains a variety of proofs, examples, applications, and computer graphical plots of solutions obtained by numerical computation. 64 Investigation of High Spin and Low Spin Iron Complexes Designed to Undergo Proton Coupled Electron Transfer Spencer J. Slattery, Department of Chemistry Proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) reactions involve the transfer of electrons concurrent with the transfer of acidic hydrogens (H* or protons). The importance of PCET processes in biological systems and its apphcation in areas such as molecular electronics and catalysis have recently prorhpted the design and study of PCET systems. No studies have been focused at developing a series of complexes to model simplistic to progressively more complicated PCET processes. For such a series, nitrogen-heterocyclic iron (II) complexes are excellent candidates. These compounds can be designed to exhibit one-electron/one proton or one- electron/ two-proton reactions in which their complexity will depend on the Fe (II) spin state (number of unpaired electrons). We are currently designing nitrogen- heterocyclic iron (II) complexes to model the various couplings which can occur between three chemical processes: proton transfer, electron transfer, and spin state transition. These complexes are studied by various instrumental methods such as electrochemistry, nuclear magnetic resonance, magnet susceptibility, and ultraviolet/visible spectrophotometry. The Industrial History and Archaeology of Carroll County, Georgia Steve Taylor, Department of History The purpose of this project is to identify and document the early development and industrialism in the county. This research will be conducted in conjunction with Karl Steinen of the Anthropology program as a preliminary step to the nomination of these resources to the National Register of Historic Places. Funding from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources will be sought for preparing the actual National Register nomination. 65 Carroll County is undergoing an amazing amount of change. Spurred by our proximity to Atlanta there has been an impressive amount of population growth over the past twenty years, an increase in the number of houses built, and industrial development. This growth has had a devastating and unmeasured effect on the cultural and historical resources of the county. The history of Carroll County is intimately tied with the beginnings of industrialism in the Southeast. Mills, cotton gins, and mines are only three examples of the kinds of structures and locations that were developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that shaped the growth of our county and rural Georgia in general. 66 ABSTRACTS OF MASTER'S THESES AND SPECIALIST IN EDUCATION PROJECTS Social and Economic Conditions of Small Farmers in Antebellum and Postbellum Coffee County, Tennessee Victoria S. Anderson MA History March 1995 This thesis studies small farmers of antebellum and postbellum Coffee County, Tennessee, to determine how their experiences and concerns compared to those of other small farmers of the South. The class made up of small farmers who owned their own land and tenants who were in the process of acquiring property in the nineteenth century comprised the largest in the South. Yet, it was not until the 1930s that attention was focused on small farmers by historians of the South. Filled with a strong sense of independence and patriotism, small farmers entered the South in the early nineteenth century in search of private land ownership, social equality, and adventure. They supported their church, family, and community, and in 1861, often reluctantly fought a war in defense of these institutions. Four years of fighting proved disastrous for many small farmers. Extended absences from home meant that soldiers were unable to defend and provide for their families. Fields went unplanted, livestock was lost or stolen and family members went hungry and unprotected. When they did return, the soldiers were often injured, sick, or disabled to such a degree that they were never able to farm extensively again. Facing debt and with no means by which to provide for their families, many small farmers were forced to sell most if not all of their land. Many resorted to permanent tenancy, sharecropping, and mill work, all with the same consequences, the loss of independence. The effects of their loss transcended into the twentieth century as more and more of these small farmers were forced to turn to government intervention in order to survive. The legacy of an entire class of people who had prided 67 themselves on their self- sufficiency, loyalty, and strong belief in democratic principles, was, for many, gone forever. The introductory chapter discusses the historiography of small farmers from the first writing of Frederick Law Olmsted, who failed to recognize their existence, to Frank Owsley, who revolutionized the study of social history by using previously unpublished census returns to prove the existence of these small farmers. Recent studies building on Owsley's research, by historians such as Steven Hahn, Paul Escott, Bill Cecil- Fronsman, and Orville Vernon Burton, provide more historical data as to the lifestyle of small farmers, their plight during the Civil War, and the devastating results that followed the conflict. Included as well is a definition of small farmers as it applied to Coffee County; as coming to an agreement on who "small farmers" were has been almost as controversial as the Civil War itself. Establishing Coffee County as a region of small farmers is the purpose of Chapter One. The county itself will be described in relation to its position in the state and further in the region of Middle Tennessee and the state as a whole. Settlement patterns are explained. The economy of antebellum Coffee County is examined, particularly as it pertains to small farmers. The institutions which were important to small farmers are presented in Chapter Two. Their families and churches are described in some detail in order to provide the reader a more comprehensive understanding of daily life of small farmers in antebellum Coffee County and the South. Chapter Three discusses the Civil War and how it affected the people of Coffee County. Located in an area which was occupied early in the war, these people suffered at the hands of both Union and Confederate troops as well as bushwhackers and marauders. The final chapter. Four, is an epilogue discussing some of the long- term effects the war had on small farmers in Coffee County. Many of them lost land, personal property, and independence as they were forced to become tenants, laborers, and factory workers. Others, like their ancestors before them, moved further West in search of the autonomy and self-sufficiency they had lost by 1865. 68 The conclusion looks again at the farmers of Coffee County and compares their experiences with those of small farmers described by Hahn, Burton, Ash, Escott and Cecil- Fronsman. Comparisons are made as to the similarities of the lifestyle of the farmers in different sub-regions before and after the Civil War. Perception of Fitness Compared to Fitness Performance on a One Mile Run AValk Test Between Active and Inactive Sixth Grade Boys Glenn Davis Darden EdS, Physical Education and Recreation August 1994 This study was conducted to compare perception of fitness to fitness performance on a one mile run/walk test between active and inactive sixth grade boys. One hundred-and- twenty-four sixth grade boys participated in this study. A demographic survey was administered to the subjects during physical education classes at a local area middle school, and information obtained was used to classify them into level of activity (active or inactive). Immediately after completing the demographic survey, each subject completed a modified version of the Perceived Physical Fitness Scale to measure perception of fitness. Data from the perception scale were compared to performance data for each subject from the one mile run/walk test administered as part of the Coweta County physical education curriculum. Results of the analysis revealed no significant difference in perception of fitness compared to fitness performance on a one mile run/ walk test between active and inactive subjects. However, there was a significant difference in fitness performance scores between subjects in this study and those studied previously. A significant difference also was found in fitness performance on a one mile run/walk test between active and inactive subjects in this study. 69 opinions of Regular and Special Education Teachers Toward Proposed Changes in Program Structure Under the Regular Education Initiative ylmy Whitton Edge EdS, Middle Grades Education June 1994 A descriptive research project was conducted to determine the opinions of regular and special education teachers toward the proposed changes in program structure that would occur under the basic tenets of the Regular Education Initiative. The population consisted of all kindergarten through eighth grade certified, currently employed regular and special education teachers in a small, rural Northwest Georgia town of approximately 10,000 people, largely in the lower socioeconomic level. A survey instrument developed by Robert D. Coates and used in research reported in the Journal of Learning Disabilities . 22, 1989, was used to survey the teachers. The instrument contained 14 statements covering identifying, testing, and classifying students for special education, using the same techniques to teach both regular and special education students, preserving resources currently reserved for special education students, and meeting the needs of all students in the regular classroom. Cover letters and survey instruments were distributed to the five schools used in the survey. A total of 133 regular education teachers and 18 special education teachers were surveyed. Responses were received from 95 regular education teachers (71.4%) and 11 special education teachers (61.1%). The frequencies of responses of agree, undecided, and disagree on the Likert scale were tabulated for the 14 statements on the instrument. Responses by regular education teachers were separated from those by special education teachers. The responses of the two groups were then compared. An analysis of each tabulation was reported using percentage of frequencies. Results showed that 65.8% of regular education teachers and 72.7% of special education teachers disagreed with the basic tenets of the Regular Education Initiative that would result in changes in the way educational services would be delivered to both regular and special education students. 70 The percentage of disagreement was higher (+6.9%) for special education teachers than for regular education teachers. Opinions of regular and special education teachers, as evidenced by responses on the survey instrument, indicated disagreement with proposed changes in program structure that would occur under the basic tenets of the Regular Education Initiative. The Effects of Inductive and Deductive Teaching of English Agreement in Ninth Graders' Writing Harriett M. Gillham EdS, Secondary Education August 1994 The purpose of this research project was to examine whether inductive or deductive instruction in the rules of English agreement subjective/ verb and pronoun/antecedent would assist students in producing a writing sample with fewer agreement errors. Thirty-four randomly scheduled students in two classes of average ninth grade students of Grammar/Composition 92 at a public high school in Cobb County, Georgia, were used. The research procedure for this project was conducted in the following way. One class was labeled Group 1 (inductive) and the other class Group 2 (deductive). All students submitted a pretreatment writing sample on an assigned topic within the first two weeks of an 18-week semester. The researcher (teacher) collected and duplicated the papers to return the originals to the students with errors in agreement marked for the student to note. The researcher devised a three-day instructional unit each day made up of 50 minutes focusing on subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement, which was taught approximately two weeks after the pretreatment writing. Group 1 was taught the instructional unit inductively by working through examples of correct agreement in teacher/student designed examples. Group 2 was taught this instructional unit deductively by memorizing rules and completing textbook exercises and worksheets. During the rest of the semester, the students were given other writing topics at different times. The researcher marked the same types of errors 71 as they occurred, giving the students practice in learning to write without these errors. With two weeks left in the semester, a post-treatment writing was collected on a topic done in the same mode and on the same level of difficulty as the pretreatment writing. The results of the number and kinds of agreement errors and the number of words and paragraphs per student and per group were tabulated for the pretreatment and the post- treatment writing for comparison. To determine the difference in gain between Group 1 (inductive) and Group 2 (deductive) in number and types of errors from the pretreatment writing to the post-treatment writing samples, two t tests were used at the 0.5 level of significance. The results showed that there was no significant difference in either Group 1 (inductive) or Group 2 (deductive) to the number and kinds of errors made in subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement in the two treatment writing samples. The conclusion for this limited study is that both inductive and deductive methods of teaching English agreement made no significant difference when taught to two randomly selected groups. Since slightly more students in the deductive group made more gains, this difference might be attributed to the smaller size of the group than the inductive. The implication of this study is that perhaps students with different learning styles might learn better with different methods. The Effect of Computer Simulation on Posttest Achievement in a Chemistry Unit on Molecular Structure Kathleen M. Gray EdS, Secondary Education December 1993 The purpose of this study was to determine whether the utilization of computer simulation activities in a chemistry unit on molecular structure improved achievement more than the utilization of mechanical model activities. The study was conducted as a quasi- experimental pretest- posttest group design. The posttests of the experimental and control groups were compared by an analysis of covariance with the pretest scores and first semester chemistry grades as the covariates. The pretest and 72 i posttest scores of each group were also analyzed separately to see whether any significant achievement gains were made by either group. One assumption made in this study was that the sample was representative of college preparatory junior and senior high school students who were enrolled in chemistry classes in order to satisfy the state requirement of three science courses. A second assumption was that the pretest posttest instruments were appropriate measures of achievement in relation to the objectives of the study. The subjects for this study included first-year chemistry students over a three year period. The combined experimental groups, composed of 67 students, and the combined control groups, composed of 69 students, both received 10 to 12 days of teacher-centered instruction on molecular structure. The experimental groups then participated in computer simulation while the control groups participated in molecular model activities. All students completed the same worksheets during the activities. The results of this research indicated that while the posttest scores of both groups were significantly higher than were the pretest scores, there was no significant difference between the posttest scores of the experimental and control groups. These analyses suggested that while significant gains were produced by both the computer simulation program and molecular model activities, neither method was superior. In view of the findings of this investigation, it is suggested that the study be replicated using a larger sample size as well as other computer programs that might now be available on molecular modeling. It is also recommended that further studies be conducted to determine the effects on student achievement of using computer simulation programs and molecular activities together. Finally, it is suggested that further investigations be conducted to determine teacher needs in the area of computer literacy. 73 An Existential-Phenomenological Critique of Modernity Via Richard Kalich's Novel: The Nihilesthete Steven Michael Grice MA, Sociology August 1994 This is a sociological literary critique of Richard Kalich's novel, The Nihilesthete. An existential-phenomenological perspective v^^as used to offer a critique of modern, positivist society via the novel as a sociological landscape. Henri Lefebvre, Alfred Schutz, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are the primary interpreters of social existence employed in this analysis. Alienation, art, and transcendence are the main themes explored and parallels are drawn betw^een Kalich's characters and the aspects of modern society they embody. The Impact of Teacher Expectations on Student Achievement in Social Studies Edward Clark Hanes, Jr. EdS, Secondary Education August 1994 The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of teacher encouragement through the communication of expectations on high school social studies students. Previous research on this subject has been contradictory in its findings, with more recent studies disputing the self- fiilfilling prophecy theory. During a six-week period, three world history classes at Griffin High School in Griffin, Georgia, were observed after receiving varying degrees of encouragement through teacher expectations. The students were divided into nine subgroups, most of which responded positively to the amount of encouragement they received. However, only the subgroup of aU males in the study showed a significant level of improvement. 74 A Comparative Study of Two Methods of Instruction in Middle Grade Science Reading Mary A. Heard EdS, Middle Grades Education June 1994 Teaching of science is one of the most abstractly structured areas in the school curriculum. Teachers need to supplement instructional strategies or methods to facilitate and promote an interest, as well as an understanding of science reading. The aim of this study is to determine how effective instructional reading strategies are on student achievement and attitudes toward science reading. Subjects consisted of seventh-grade students from Carrollton City School System. Students were recruited through a consent letter sent home to parents describing the purpose of the study and a request for their children's voluntary participation. In addition, research subjects were assured of confidentiality by this consent form. Two groups of seventh graders received the same lecture from the researcher. The experimental group received instructional reading strategies, in addition to a lecture format. This method of instruction was for a 4-week period. Achievement was measured by a pre- test and post- test designed to measure objectives covered by the textbook. Students' attitudes were measured by a pre-test and post-test agreement scale developed by the researcher. Data were collected and analyzed using analysis of covariance to determine the level of significant differences using the 0.5 level of significance. The results of the data from this study indicated that the mean scores for science achievement were not significantly different for students taught using the traditional lecture format and students taught in traditional science classes with the implementation of science reading strategies. In addition, there was no statistically significant difference between students' attitudes toward science reading in the experimental group and the control group. Based on the findings, observations, and conclusions of this study, the researcher recommends that further studies be made in this area to determine if these findings hold true under different conditions. 75 "Divorce Not Wisdom from Your Honor": Conceptual Ambiguity in Shakespeare's Henry IVy Part Two Dena Thomas Lumpkin MA English March 1995 In 2 Henry IV, William Shakespeare produces ambiguity with the terms wisdom and honor. The different meanings of the words and the value judgment of each interpretation are in part based upon which character in the play is making the distinction. Different value systems institute different emphases of the terms. The ambiguity of the play finds its climax in the newly crowned Henry Vs severe rejection of his old friend Falstaff in the final scene of the play. This action creates an intense ambivalence in the audience, a reaction anticipated by the play since it is swamped with ambiguity. The ambiguity of the terms wisdom and honor and of the rejection of Falstaff provides internal validity in the play so that the play comes to life because of its ambiguity, not despite it. Multivocality in the Short Fiction of Carlos Fuentes Lucy Barnes McDowell MA, English March 1995 In her book Carlos Fuentes, Wendy Paris describes the multivocality of Carlos Fuentes's texts as it reflects a many-layered country and a complex contemporary world. Fuentes achieves this multivocal effect in three primary ways, Faris says one, through formal shifts of narrative stance; two, through processes of multiplication; and three, through intertextual allusion (186-87). The cumulative effect of the workings of these multivocal features of Fuentes's text is a tangled web of voices, ideas, and meanings. 76 In Fuentes, the third category is almost endless in its forms and includes a multitude of voices. Two of the most consistent voices belong to Argentina's Jorge Luis Borges and Carl Gustavjung. Borges is heard not only on the surface of Fuentes's texts but below the surface; in endless variation, Fuentes replicates the logic of Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths" {The Labyrinth) with its multiple and alternating realities as the basic structure of most of his stories. In fact, "The Garden of Forking Paths" is generally considered to be the "blueprint" for magical realism. Magical realism is, perhaps, the most important development in recent Latin American literature, having grown out of several Uterary traditions from the 1940s on in the works of contemporary Spanish writers; but it has its origins in earlier writers particularly Edgar Allan Poe and Horacio Quiroga as well as Borges who combine the strange and dreamlike images of European surrealism and the marvels reported by early travelers to the new world. Fuentes says that Don Quixote is the archetypal figure in Hispanic magical realism. What draws Jung's subterranean voice to Fuentes's texts can be summed up in a single statement by Fuentes: "The past is a memory that must be dreamed again." This statement contains key words past, memory, dream, and dream again which define a single word myth- -that connects Jung and Fuentes. Fuentes uses magical realism in two distinct but related capacities to underline extreme psychological power and to suggest the presence of ancient cosmic forces. Psychological power and ancient cosmic forces are the stuff of Jung's work as well. Both Jung and Fuentes observe how the past takes the form of history, religion, and, ultimately, myth. In many of Fuentes's works, the physical threshold is the magic threshold which serves as the entrance to Fuentes's world of the second reaUty which Fuentes repeatedly portrays. For Jung, dreams or other reduced states of consciousness (deUriums, reveries, visions, hallucinations) serve as the threshold to the second reality i.e., the collective unconscious and the life of the archetypes. 77 A Study of the Effects of Computer Assisted Instruction on Achievement in Eighth Grade Social Studies Roy Perren EdS, Secondary Education June 1994 The effects of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) on achievement in eighth grade social studies are examined in this paper. The research was designed to determine if there was a significant difference in the achievement of students taught by conventional methods and the achievement of students taught by CAI. A control group (N=49) and an experimental group (N=50) were given a pre-test before a six week instructional period. The control group was taught by conventional methods while the experimental group was taught using extensive, but not exclusive CAI. At the end of the six-week period both groups were given a post-test identical to the pre-test. The students were also given the Computer Assisted Learning Attitude Survey to determine if there was a significant difference in the attitudes of students taught by conventional methods and the attitudes of students taught by CAI. The research determined that CAI has no significant effect on achievement in eighth grade social studies, male or female. It was also determined that there was no significant difference in the attitudes toward CAI of students, male or female, who have been taught by conventional methods and those taught by CAI. Suggestions were made, based on observations during the study and findings of other studies, as to how CAI may become more effective in the classroom. 78 A Comparison of the Effects of Literature-Based Reading Programs and Basal Reading Programs on Student Achievement in the Middle Grades Pamela Wells Pierce EdS, Middle Grades Education August 1993 The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a literature-based reading program compared to that of a basal program on achievement scores for middle grade students. The study was based on scores from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills given to fifth-grade students at Battlefield Elementary School in Catoosa County in north Georgia. Scores collected from the years 1988-1989 through 1989-1990 reflect reading taught by the basal approach. These teachers generally followed the lesson plans set forth by the teachers' manuals, including skill sheets, workbooks, vocabulary activities, and basal readers. Some independent reading was assigned, usually in the form of book reports, and some reading aloud was done at the discretion of the teacher. These grade equivalent scores were compared to those gathered from the fifth grade from 1990-1991 through 1991-1992. The last two sets of scores show results from a literature-based reading program. In these literature classrooms, the emphasis was on reading. Much more independent reading was expected, and time was provided for it. The classes also read trade books together at times, and skiU lessons were taught as needed. Teachers made a point to read aloud to these classes daily. A grade-equivalent mean was determined for the two years of basal instruction as well as for the two years of Hterature instruction. The two mean scores were compared using the t-test and were found to exhibit a statistically significant difference, thereby supporting the hypothesis that the literature-based reading approach produces significantly higher gains on reading achievement than the basal approach as evaluated by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. 79 The Effects of Real-Time Microcomputei^ Based Laboratory Tools on the Achievement of Kinematics Concepts and Related Analysis by High School Physics Students Sandra J. Rhoades EdS, Secondary Education March 1995 The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of microcomputer- based laboratory (MBL) real-time measurement and graphing of motion on students' understanding of kinematics concepts and ability to interpret and analyze data. Four Honors Physics classes (n=112) from a suburban high school were randomly designated as either control or treatment groups. The students were pretested and posttested with the Test of Kinematics Concepts developed at Dickinson College. All students accomplished the same laboratory and graphing tasks. The treatment group completed the MBL kinematics activities, while the control group did standard experiments on the same concepts: velocity, acceleration and force. A significant difference in gain scores in the treatment group and control group was found, with the gain of the treatment group being substantially higher than the gain of the control group. Moral Development as Viewed in Selected Young Adult Novels Nancy S. Spears EdS, Secondary Education August 1994 The purpose of this study was to examine the moral development of adolescent characters in selected young adult (YA) novels to determine whether characters faced decisions that involved a moral dilemma, a conflict between 2 of the 10 moral issues as defined by Kohlberg. The study focused on five research questions: 80 1 . What types of moral issues as defined by Kohlberg created moral dilemmas for adolescent characters in selected YA novels? 2. Did male adolescent characters use Kohlberg's justice ethic or GiUigan's caring ethic when solving dilemmas in selected YA novels? 3. Did female adolescent characters use Kohlberg's justice ethic or Gilligan's caring ethic v^hen solving dilemmas in selected YA novels? 4. On w^hat moral development levels did male adolescent characters operate when solving dilemmas in selected YA novels? 5 . On what moral development levels did female adolescent characters operate when solving dilemmas in selected YA novels? The analyses of the 12 selected YA novels, published between 1986 and 1992, indicated that the adolescent characters most often dealt with the moral issue of affiHation in their dilemmas. Other issues they faced, in order of frequency, were life, governance, law, punishment and blame, sex or eroticism, truth and contract, moraUty and conscience. The results indicated that adolescent characters used both Kohlberg's justice ethic and Gilligan's caring ethic in solving their dilemmas but that both males and females most frequently used Gilligan's caring ethic. The results also indicated that when solving their dilemmas the male adolescents operated most often on the preconventional level of moral development but that females operated most often on the conventional level. The conclusions of this study suggest that English might use YA novels to encourage students' awareness of moral development on Kohlberg's justice ethic and Gilligan's caring ethic by using vicarious models of adolescent characters solving moral dilemmas. 81 The Effects of Birth Order and Sibling Age Differences on Giftedness of Students Venita L. Thomas EdS, Middle Grades Education August 1994 Researchers have studied the relationships between birth order and students' achievement for over one hundred years. It is important for both teachers and parents to be aware of any and all factors which contribute to the academic success of children, in order to plan for the best educational outcome of all students. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between two birth order variables and the giftedness of students in the Carroll County Gifted Program. The two factors which were considered were birth order/only child and sibling age differences within the family. Two hypotheses were made at the beginning of the study. First, it was hypothesized that a greater percentage of gifted subjects would be first-borns or only children. Also it was suspected that a greater percentage of middle- and later-boms would display a wide range sibling age difference within the family. Data were obtained from student biographical surveys and/or from student cumulative record folders. Parents of subjects were notified by a letter accompanying the survey used for gathering the biographical information. Data was then analyzed in regard to both ordinal birth positions and age differences in families of two or more. Analysis was made by percentages of students in each category, and reported by grade, sex, and schools. In all three main sub-divisions (varying sex and total), oldest children comprised the largest percentage. Only children were slightly more numerous than middle- borns. However, taken together, onlies and oldests made up more than 50% of the total in each breakdown by number of siblings in family. Hypothesis #2 concerning wide range spacing for younger horns was not supported by the survey data. Recommendations and implications for future study were included. 82 An Assessment of the Effectiveness of a Pilot Transition Program on the Academic Achievement of First Grade Students at Mount Carmel Elementary School in Douglas County, Georgia Linda T. Watson EdS, Reading Instruction March 1995 This research study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a pilot transition program on the academic achievement of first grade at- risk students. The sample consisted of 22 students in the first grade during the 1994-95 school year. Eleven of the at-risk first graders were in the piloted transition program whereas the other 11 were in a traditional first grade program. The raw data were collected between August 1994 and January 1995 from two parallel forms (A and B) of the Bracken Basic Concept Scale Screening Test given as pre- and posttests. Then the gain scores from the transition and regular groups pre- and posttests were analyzed and compared using the t-test for independent samples. A .05 level of significance was estabUshed to reject the null hypothesis. The results of the study indicated that there was no significant difference in gains between the two groups. Therefore, the null hypothesis stating that no significant relationships exists between the academic achievement test scores based on a pretest and posttest of at-risk first grade students in a pilot transition program and at-risk grade students in a regular program was not rejected. The Effects of Outdoor Instruction on Students' Learning of Environmental Concepts Elaine McGhee Wood EdS, Secondary Education August 1993 A study was conducted to determine whether time spent outdoors affects tenth grade biology students' learning, attitude, or behavior in terms of environmental issues. 83 The control group received all of its basic ecology instruction indoors, using traditional teaching techniques. The experimental group studied the same ecology concepts, but went outdoors on the school campus two days per week. All students were administered a presurvey that assessed their ecological attitudes and their ecologically related behavior, as well as an ecology knowledge test. After the ten week experimental period the same instruments were administered as post surveys and post test. Results showed that only the outdoor group of students improved their environmental knowledge scores significantly. Neither group significantly improved their scores on the environmental behavioral survey or the attitudinal survey. 84 V n y