Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Feb. 11, 1965, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man - And He May Be Wrong Private School? Last week a Lenoir county group an nounced organization of an effort to provide the service of a private school. As expected reaction to this announce ment was mixed. In spite of a warm response from many potential patrons of such a school its organizers understand very well that the majority of the people feel that no private group can compete successfully with the awesome power and wealth of government. This blind spot, of course, overlooks the first fact of school life, which is that at this moment more than 20 per cent of the children in our nation are already attending private schools and the percentage is growing every school year. But the organizers of this private school effort in Lenoir County realize that theirs is a long and difficult row to hoe, and not even the most optimistic of these organizers expects the ripe fruit oi a complete educational plant to drop suddenly in his lap. Work, money and disappointment — perhaps not in that order — can be ex pected. But this is a determined crew; too hard-headed to accept the premise of “Doubting Thomases” who say “It can’t be done.” It has been done in Raleigh, Burling ton, Durham and Charlotte in our own state and the single city of Atlanta has 49 private schools. And there is hardly a town of any size anywhere in the nation that does not have a private Catholic school. Cath olics feel strongly enough the need for spiritual training of their children that they are willing to make the financial sacrifice to pay public taxes and church taxes to support two school systems. This non-sectarian effort announced last week will test the character of our county in the same crucible. Not News Here For many years anyone presumptious enough to say that negro students learn better in negro schools has been howled down as a racial bigot and a candidate for the imperial wizardry of the Ku Klux Klan. But now one of the nation’s foremost negroes has declared exactly this as the result of an intensive study of more than 1200 negro college students in northern schools. The educator is Professor K. B. Clark of Howard University, whose testimony was considered pivotal in the 1954 de cision of the United States supreme court which ordered racial desegrega tion of public schools. This study completed in 1963 by Pro fessor Clark shows that among 1200 stu dents surveyed those who came from segregated schools in the south had bet ter scholastic records than those from racially integrated northern schools. This is NOT news in our area, nor is it any support of a theory that negroes are inherently inferior to whites; but it is the unavoidable recognition of the fact that there are basic and important differences between negro and white people. Although no one now expects people outside of the South to accept this fact, it is the basis for segregation and it is one of the many reasons why the negro in the south has advanced further in ev ery sphere of life than anywhere else in the world at any time in the recorded history of man. Negroes in the South own more wealth — real estate and personal prop erty — than in all the other lands of the world combined. Negroes in the South own more col lege degrees, hold more college presi dencies, occupy more professorial seats, sit behind more school teacher desks than in all the rest of the world com bined. And all of this in spite of the fact that the South has less than one half of one per cent of the world’s ne gro population. Then agitators say all of this negro affluence in the South has come about in a dimate of brutal and systematic exploitation . . . Nuts! 'Think Not—' There is some virtue in complete frankness. . . Last week a bulletin came out over the signatures of the top executives of two organizations who represent all state workers not employed in the schools. We quote: "Here in brief is the 1965 legislative program of State employees in general, listed in order of relative importance: "SALARIES . . . Our first concern is with a 10 per cent across the board gen eral salary increase. . . . "RETIREMENT.. .Of equal importance is our constant concern with the preser vation and improvement of our Teachers and State Employees Retirement Sys "L0N6EVITY ... Our present longev ity pay plan is little more than a limited recognition of the principle of longevi ty, but as presently administered the re quirements as to length of service re strict this plan to relatively few em ployees, and even those few receive very little benefit..." Not a mumbling word about improv ing services or effecting economies . . . Just, “We want more money, both at work and on retirement and a faster system of pay raises” ... We wonder if the average ignorant taxpayer really knows what the pay scale of these “loyal employees” of theirs really is? We wonder what per cent of those who pay taxes earns nearly the salary of the average state worker? The highest priced state office — as one might suspect — is the home office of the lawyers; the attorney general’s office where the average pay for its 28 workers is $7486 per year or $143.96 per week. The state school board has 116 work ers, whose average pay is $6744 per year or $129.69 per week. The state highway commission has 11, 116 workers whose average pay is $4267 per year or $82.05 per week and most of these are manual to semi-skilled work ers. Foreign Policy The Santa Claus kind of foreign policy the United States has been involved in for the recent past leads inevitably to some very rude awakenings. First, Santa Claus finds himself that there is a bottom to even the biggest bag of toys, and second, the “children” must ultimately learn that somebody has to pay the bills. There is also the further realization that “children” among nations as well as in families, grow up and have to play Santa Claus themselves. There are so called nations all around the world to whom the United States has been play ing Santa Claus for generations. Enough American tax money has been poured into South Korea to move the entire country. . . . more than nine bil lion dollars wasted on an area roughly half the size of North Carolina. And South Korea today is no better off than it was before the first American life and the first American dollar were spent on its “defense.” The classical character in literature who most closely compares to “Uncle Sam” is Don Quixote, the crazy, gallant old man who sat out to restore “chival ry” in a hard and cynical world. Don Quixote is both one of literature’s most tragic and comic figures. “Uncle Sam” in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of many of his own children now occupies the same miser able position. No amount of good intentions can make the savage civilized, nor make the despot release his grip. Friends cannot be purchased and democracy is not for sale. Both have to be earned. JONES JOURNAL JACK RIDER. PUBLISHER PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY THE LENOIR COUNTY NEWS COMPANY, INC., 403 WEST Vernon AVI., Kinston, N. c., phone ja 3 2375. Entered as Second Class Matter May B, 1940, at the Post Office at Trentoh, North Carolina, under the Act of March 3, 1879. BY Mail in First zone—$3.00 Per Tear. Subscription Rates payable in Advance. Second Class Postace paid at Trenton, n. c. PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS BY JACK RIDER Honeymoons generally are of short duration, and for a lot of good reasons. It would appear that President John son’s honeymoon with congress and the press was unusually short. Congress has twice slapped down parts of his foreign policy by refusing to continue to feed the Egyptian mouth that bites and curses the feeding hand. This week the “press” is bellyaching at great length because Johnson has practically eliminated something loose ly referred to as the “press conference.” This really is more a matter of journal istic ego than an actual need for in formation. The times when any startling news is twisted out of a president in such a conference are few, if any. Presidents can easily and casually avoid any comment on any sensitive question, or pass it off with an answer that really does not answer. So the press corps that is assigned to cover such things as presidential press conferences needs this occasional opportunity to speak directly to “The Leader,” rather than to pick up crumbs from the table of his press secretary. This gives the White House correspondent a certain superiority over his less highly placed journalistic brethren, who have to talk with lesser mortals, whose willingness to talk may be greater, but whose words are not hung on so preciously as those of “Our Leader.” I cannot find myself very much in sympathy with either the members of congress who cannot “know in their heart" that Lyndon is right about his fumbling foreign policy or the press that now finds those carefully pursed lips so constantly sealed to any but his cronies of the press. Press conferences can be great for a man with the intelligence of a President Kennedy, whose wit, breadth of knowl edge and control of language permit ed him to use the press conference as a real political advantage of less well equipped persons. Even the warmest supporter of LBJ would not rate him as the equal of President Kennedy in this sphere. John son may be able to handle congress bet ter and to charm the gullible public more thoroughly, but Kennedy had no superior in coping with a room full of egomaniacs; sometimes referred to as “Gentlemen of the Press.” Johnson really doesn’t need the press right now. He recently secured history’s greatest mandate from the people, and he can understandably feel that he is accountable to the people, and not to the press. Of course, the press prides itself on the illusion that it represents the people, when more generally it spends a large part of its efforts in do ing exactly the opposite. And while I’m slamming my brethren of the press I might as well remind that the really good reporter has more than one way of finding out what is really going on. The reporter who per mits himself the luxury of leaning too heavily on any one source of informa tion finds himself completely lost when for any reason that one source decides to “clam up.” But this kind of reporting requires long research, a broad knowledge of his overall subject matter and a wide circle of friends at every level of the subject to which he is assigned. Federal government has grown so big that it is difficult almost to the point of impossibility for any one man to know all of it. This applies to the President as well as to the reporter, so it is better reporting and better politics for each to more or less stick to his own knitting and not to attempt to know everything about everything all the time.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Feb. 11, 1965, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75