Poge Six THE MICHIGAN DAILY Wednesday, June 4, 1975 Board candidates debate student issues (Continued from Page 3) the discipline policy by noting that the penalty for truancy, or non-attendance in the schools, is often suspension. "Does that make sense?" asks Maxine Hen- son. "I think it's a waste of time to suspend students for non-bodily-harm offenses and non-disruptive offenses," she adds. HENSON, who has taught school for six years in Mich- igan and New York, says she is concerned about "students going through the educational system . . seeming to come out with very little." Student participation in deci- sion-making, at least at the board level, is currently limited to a non-voting advisory panel. At least one board hopeful, George Wright, would like to see the situation kept that way. "I don't think that students at this age are mature enough to think in depth of all facets be- fore they make a decision," he says. "They make hasty decisions," Wright adds, "that's part of their learning process. And that's fine as long as their mis- takes only involve themselves." But at the board level, accord- ing to Wright, "they're involv- ing a lot of other people, too." JEROME EPSTEIN, an op- thomologist who teaches classes at the University and at East- ern Michigan, says one of his teachers once advised him to become a truck driver. "I have an empathy for the students," he says. "I have a feeling for w h a t they're yelling about. They're angry. They're angry because .there's nothing in it for them now, nobody is stimu- lating them." "We need a system that goes far beyond reading, writing and arithmetic," Epstein continues, "and it's not that simple. We need the elementary basics, ab- solutely. But that's oversimpli- fying it. t's much deeper than that. You teach the basic prin- cipals and neglect all the other things that are necessary in the school and you're going to have the most chaotic school system in the world." Epstein favors at least some degree of student involvement in decision-making. "If we were able to provide an environment where they were interested in what they were doing and could have some input into it, then the guidance of the adult might be a predominating factor which could be modified by student input," he says. BOARD incumbent Cecil War- ner, who is seeking a third term, wrote the schools' con- troversial discipline policy and considers it one of his finest achievements. The fact that it has remained in effect for three years without being aban- doned, he says, is testimony to its favor. But Warner feels the disci- pline policy, in the category of due process, "goes too far. We'll probably change that." Warner also thinks the school system does not deal severely enough with student use of nar- cotics. As the youngest candidate in this year's race, the Human Rights Party's Shelley Ettinger says the schools are "all pretty recent memory for me." ACTIVELY involved with Ann Arbor Youth Liberation, Ettin- ger states, "T know the atti- tudes of the administration and most teachers and most parents toward young people, which is that they don't deserve any rights, they're not capable of choosing how they want to learn and of deciding things about their own education." "We're opposed to compul- sory attendance," says Ettinger, "which puts young people in the category= with prisoners and mental patients." Another candidate, Charles Moody, Sr., finds fault with the school system for being "fail- ure-oriented." "We ought to be trying to turn the schools into success - oriented k i n d s of things," he says. RACIAL FLAREUPS in recent years, especially at the high schools, Moody feels, stemmed from "a feeling that nobody really cared. Students have to feel that people really care." But he adds that "caring doesn't mean that you don't expect any- thing of them." Voicing a slightly different attitude toward disruption, can- didate Bernice Sobin feels that parents should expect discipline in the classroom. "I think that if they really expect it," she says, "that message will get through to the child and you won't have the disruptive chil- dren that we have today." Sobin says "we sort of de- lude ourselves into thinking that (students) should think that they're going to school for fun, which they're not. They behave worse than they would if they weren't given this illusion of a free atmosphere, and they get punished for it." JOHN HEALD feels the pres- ent discipline policy "has pro- vided much improvement over where we were three, four or five years ago." But he adds that he is concerned over "the frequent lack of consistent ap- plication." On another subject, Heald says "it's appropriate for stu- dents to be able to have an opportunity for input, to be able to express their opinions." B o a r d President Clarence Dukes echoes Heald's view on student power, but asks "how do you make a system more empathetic toward the young people it's supposed to serve?" Dukes adds, "I think the board to a man or woman would say 'we want to be understand- ing, we want to give asdmuch latitude as possible.' And yet, when you get down to the actual administering of that board in- tent, it may come out some other way." C# asie z; k i v3eSN . missing out on some of the DAILIES because '~-of delivery mstakes? OR .. . disagree with a bill we sent you for THE DAILY? WE'D LIKE TO TRY TO STRAiGHT- ( / C AN'T IF YOU DON'T LE T US I KNOW ABOUT IT. Monday thru Friday, 10 A.M to 3 P.M. CIRCULATION DEPA 4