PROF. CARL COHEN'S tips on fostering student-faculty friendships (Oct. '94 issue) reminded me again why my 18-year-old daughter just began her freshman year at Pomona College instead of the U of M. There is no question that there are some freshmen who will want faculty contact enough and are assertive enough to follow his suggestions. There is also no question that many freshmen will not.
When people asked me why my daughter is not at Michigan, I've been saying that when I graduated, with a 4.0 in my major, I suspected that not a single professor in mv department knew my name. That doesn't mean I didn't have a great experience at Ann Arbor. I did. I also have no doubt that today's freshman will get an excellent education. But the faculty are, after all, the heart of any college. As a parent concerned about getting the best value for my hard-earned college dollars, I cannot say that faculty contact is irrelevant, or only a small part of the college equation. If I were still a Michigan resident the in-state tuition rates would probably be enough to overcome the lack of that contact. But at the "market" rates charged (appropriately) to out-of-state students, a Michigan education quickly loses its value.
I admire Professor Cohen's honesty. The problems he describes are inherent to any large university. But I would hope that Michigan would encourage faculty, not just students, to make that extra effort necessary to establish "warm and cordial" relationships.
Richard Alder
Secretary/Treasurer, U-M BAA
Westland, Michigan
I GREATLY enjoyed your article on Dr. Revelli. I had the privilege of playing for him (and George Cavender) in the marching band for four years and can assure you that while this diatribe may have been longer than most, it was by no means unusual in content.
But tirades at perceived errors do not in and of themselves imply great ability or genius. (Just ask my kids!) As Director of Bands, Dr. Revelli felt personally responsible for the product that was put forth on Saturday afternoons in the Fall. He did not view the musical organization that most visibly represented the University as a group that was beneath his dignity or the dignity of the School of Music. It was just the opposite.
Times change, people change, and society changes. Perhaps the methods with which Dr. Revelli ran his organizations would not work today and it's time to move on. However, for many years now, the administration at the School of Music has done its best to erase the quality of our once great Marching Band. Now, with the passing of this great man, it would be much more intellectually honest if the individuals in charge of the University's bands publicly admitted that they no longer agree with his philosophies and goals.
I came under die influence of this master teacher as a freshman in 1942. Ihe draft had cut into the staff of the School of Music and he was called upon to teach a beginning clarinet class. He was everything described by Mr. Zucher and I felt all of those emotions, but I felt that I learned more about music-making in that little class, and while accompanying a trumpet student of his, than I had learned in my prior 12 years of private lessons.
A few years ago, I attended a rehearsal in which Dr. Revelli worked with a community band. At age 89 he was just as insistent on tone quality, detail and clarity as he was 50 years ago. It was such fun to hear him use the same phrases to get the same results that I struggled to produce--what a dynamo! There cannot be another man like him; however, his priceless legacy will continue to be practiced as it was impossible not to listen and to act on what he said.
YOUR RESPONSE in the October issue to Brad Jolly '86 was belabored, off target and unnecessarily righteous in its PC-ness. Jolly was pointing out a plural/singular agreement error in the sentence "Everyone should decide for themselves," where "Everyone" is singular and "themselves" is not. To avoid male/female pronouns, it is acceptable to convert them into plurals; however, if that is done, both the pronoun and antecedent must still be in agreement. The writer could have said, "All viewers should decide for themselves." But this writer left the antecedent singular, making a grammatical error you didn't
seem to recognize. Jolly was loath to submit that this agreement was a sign of the grammatically incorrect times we live in. That is why he, generously tried to excuse the error by suggesting it might have been caused by the writer's gender sensitivity or the possibility that the viewer "everyone" had multiple personalities, each one deciding separately about liking the artwork exhibited.
I enjoyed the Willow Run reminiscence by Olivia Murray Nichols. It brought to mind Ann Arbor author Harriet Arnow's The Dollmaker, whose characters inhabited those same paper-thin walled apartments during the war.
Janet Gravelin Messenger '65
Evanston, Illinois
Editor's Note: None is more chagrined than I. Thanks also to Burt Brody '70 PhD and Prof. Carl Cohen for their corrective letters.
Pedagogy Reconsidered
YOUR PUBLICATION is always good, interesting, invigorating, insightful! It deserves to be printed on better than newsprint--at least on calendered stock, perhaps on vellum. Usually I am impelled to write, usually I resist. Not now.
Re: Susan Mauldin's letter [on the value of open discussion in education--Ed.] in October: I echo her sentiments, and have been doing so for about 60 years. I was a victim of the new think of '34, espoused by the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota: large lecture classes, conducted by outstanding speakers, with small discussion/quiz sessions led by lesser lights.
Life consists of problem-solving. Whatever your chosen field, problem-solving is where the rubber meets the road. In the classroom, students should be given problems to work out, applying techniques of whatever the course may be. They should discuss, exchange perceptions, argue passionately if not always logically. "Teacher" should moderate, inject occasional fact when overlooked and essential (not all the time), and tell them when time is up. And they should work collectively, because most of us will spend our working lives dealing with others of similar or vastly opposing ideas. They have to learn that being right is not always the way to go, that being right but unable to convince others is valueless. Sometimes it is necessary to suspend argument and wait for a better day. Students should leave the classroom, excited, voluble, stimulated to read, to search, to prove that elusive point next time--or in the dorm or coffee shop.
TODAY I received my Michigan Today. The sight of the News & Information Services return address got me to thinking. I recently opened an Internet account at the University of Montana. Several times in the past month I've wished for some Ann Arbor Internet addresses. If there is such a listing in print, could you please send me the Internet addresses for the libraries (Hatcher, Clements and UGLI) or a library staff listing? If such listings are unavailable, would you please forward this letter to the Library Dean's office with the request for an E-mail response?
John Fletcher '72
Missoula, Montana
Editor's Note: The beat way to get the Internet address of U-M faculty, administrators or staff is to find them in the X.500 Internet directory by name. They can then inform you about any library-oriented E-mail conferences. will send the relevant directories to interested readers.
Brains, Genes and Ethics
THANK YOU for Diane Swanbrow's article "Brain Twister" (Oct. 94). In it she describes Fred Bookstein's technique of measuring biological shape and change. I was immediately struck by the picture you included of Francis Galton's system for classifying profiles of habitual criminals, as I had just glimpsed one like it of Nazi victims at the National Holocaust Museum. Those of us who have had the privilege to sit in on Dr. Bookstein's lectures know how far the spirit of his techniques is from the eugenics mentality:
1. He uses "landmark points" to discern statistically significant deviations from averaged anatomy, not a scheme or typology for classifying people of different races and backgrounds; 2. Morphometrics deals with human pathology and leads to medically relevant solutions--alcohol-abstinence policy, identification of schizophrenics, special care of fetal alcohol syndrome-affected children by social workers--not to withdrawal of social benifits or human rights; 3. Bookstein's studies do not center on issues of race and gender. In one fetal alcohol study, these variables were just two of 150 covariates. The most significant outcome variable was nonverbal intelligence, which is not race-essential.
Bookstein's intent greatly contrasts with Galton's and his recent literary descendants. Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's book The Bell Curve advocates eliminating welfare and affirmative action programs, an act aimed at classes of "less-than-average intelligence," but intruding on racial and socioeconomic groups. Your article depicts Dr. Bookstein as studying disease to help people. He is not driven by the study of classes of people to what is wrong with them, nor does he sacrifice the individual for society. Philippe Rushton's Race, Evolution and Behavior sorts the races by brain size, while Bookstein focuses on clinically meaningful shape distortions. The Pioneer Fund, whose charter promotes studies in heredity and eugenics to "improve the character of the American people" by encouraging the procreation of the original white colonial stock, has supplied Rushton with $441,000 over the last 10 years, a fact that has surely influenced (and biased) his work. These books depart widely from the "client-centered ethos" Dr. Eric Juengst of the National Center for Human Genome Research espouses.
Thanks also for your mention of Fran Zorn in Jon Altshul's piece on University seminars. Few people realize that both Bookstein and Zorn teach in the School of Public Health's Onjob/On Campus program educating professionals in clinical research methods. Your articles show they care about and value others because people are human beings, not simply because of genetic or neurologic wiring.
Stephen Modell MD,'91 MS OJ/OG
U-M Genome Ethics Committee
. . . March 1994
Michigan Today