Page S-MIR1U)R I1ERALD-Tuesday, January SO, 1070
Some excuse is better than none
Remember your school days?
Especially the ones you skipped, then had
to forge mom’s or dad’s name to an excuse
the next day.
Some of those notea were pretty wild.
Looking back on them I guess we were pretty
Innocent to think our teachers actually
t^lieved the notes.
Bu there are some legitimate notes
written by sincere parents that read even
wilder than the made up ones by the kids. We
recently came Into a reprinted list of actual
excuses received by a school In Greenville,
S. C.
For Instance:
“Dear School. Please askuse John for
being absent on January 28, 29, SO, 32 and
33.”
And this brief note . . .
“Chris have an acre In his side."
And wasn’t It a shame about Mary?
“ .. Mary could not come to school because
she was bothered by very close veins."
And Imagine the pain the teacher felt for
little Johnny who was... “absent because he
had two teeth taken out of his face."
Here’s one written close to Christmas . . .
“I kept BUlle home because she had to go
Christmas shopping I didn'i kiiuw
what size she wear.”
'This next one must have raised an
eyebrow or two. . . .
“Please excuse Glcla. She has been sick
and under the doctor."
blind terrified me, but I kept my cool
Nobody wants the girls shaking fingers at
them and chanting, "Crybaby, cry. Stick a
finger In your eye and tell your mama you
want some pie." I stayed cool until I groped
and stumbled my way oft the school ground.
’Then I let It roll. 1 was In tine voice. And I
Imagine people must have thought an am
bulance or police car was cruising through
the neighborhood.
It seems comical now, but then It wasn’t.
Imagine the thought running through my
fourth grader mind. I had seen a blind
beggar on the street before selling pencils.
My first question to my folks when they
came home from work was, "I won’t have to
sell pencils will I?"
Well, mama got out the eyewash and cold
cloth and put me In the dark for the rest of
the night. Next morning, except for redness.
TOM
MclMTVRe
Poets
Corner
A BOUQUET OF ROSES
(c)1979
There are so many lonely people
In this beautiful world of ours,
I wish I could take each one of them
A big bouquet of flowers.
There are people who are lonely
In the sunshine and the rain,
The dew drops go unnoticed
The song of a bird Is In vain.
’There Is soirow In the snowfall
’There la bitterness In the spring,
There are so many lonely people
Who need the heart tuned up to sing.
'There are so many lonely people
In this beautiful world of ours,
I wish I could take each one of them
A big bouquet of flowers.
VIVIAN BILTCLIFFE
’Ihls one gives the teacher his or her
chance to be rid of a student....
“My son la under the doctor’s care suid
should not take P. E. Please executor him.”
And from Lillie’s mom .. . . “um«
Tr-om acituoi yesterday as she luul a
going over.”
And from Joey’s mom .. . “Please excuse
Joey Monday. He had loose vowels.”
And here’s a couple for the physical
education teacher.
"Please excuse Blanch from P. E. for a
few days. Yesterday she fell out of a tree and
misplaced her hip.”
"Plesise excuse Joyce from Jim today. She
Is administrating."
And the football coach got this one ...
“Carlos was absent yesterday because he
was pla}dng football. He was hurt In his
growing part.”
Patriotism seems to have been behind the
next excuse ....
"My daughter was absent yesterday
because she was tired. She spent the
weekend with the Marines."
And charity In this one . . .
“Please excuse Dianne from being absent
: yesterday. She was In bed with gramps."
And pity poor Jimmy . . .
“Please excuse Jimmy from being. It was
his father’s fault."
Most excuses sue brief and to the point.
But there are some that give full ex
planations, such this last one ....
“Msu^ Ann was absent Dec. 11-16 because
she had a fever, sore throat, hesidache and
upset stomache. Her sister wm also sick,
fever suid sore throat. Her brother had a low
grade temperature and ached slU over. I
wasn’t feeling the best either, sore throat
and fever. 'There must be the flue going
cu-ound, her father even got hot last night.”
I remember one 1 wrote for myself once. I
think I was a fourth-grader at the time. My
problem was that I didn’t go Into enough
detail. My note simply stated, "Please ex
cuse Tommy for being absent yesterday
afternoon as he was struck blind."
"Ihe next morning my teacher was
amazed at my miraculous regsdnlng of my
sight.
What actually happened was that several
friends and I were r^ghouslng at lunch
break and In the excitement one lad stuck
fingers In both my eyes. Tlie thought of being
" ITS (:::WILLEr heS stacked up O/ER la WAROA,'"
Human rights panorama bleak
The United Nations adopted
the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights 30 years ago,
Dec. 10,1948. Commemoration of
this anniversary ought to be a
somber occasion.
During the three decades since
the UN General Assembly
overwhelmingly endorsed this
noble document, the list of
nations ignoring its provisions
has grown at a depressing rate.
Nearly two-thirds of the world’s
4.2 billion humans are denied
some or all of the basic civil and
political rights enunciated in the
declaration.
The historic trends are not
encouraging. The repressive
ideology of Marx and Lenin
continues to score ominous
gains. The Third World has
emerged from colonialism only
to embrace home-grown
oppression.
The United Nations has long
since ceased to be an effective
defender or even promoter of
human rights. More than half its
member states would be
embarrassed by a comparison of
their human rights records with
the standards set forth in the
declaration.
Of necessity then,
responsibility for the defense of
human rights has fallen on the
governments of the industrial
democracies, on private
organizations in the West, and on
scattered networks of
courageous individuals who
resist tyranny in their own
countries.
Among governments, the
Carter administration’s human
rights policy — just reaffirmed
by the President — is the most
striking example of official
action in support of an
Newborn babies do recognize mother’s voice
Until recent times, researchers didn’t give newborn babies much credit In terms of
their development at birth. But research by a UNC-G developmental psychologist shows
that such Infants both recognise and prefer their mother’s voice within three days after
birth.
By STEVE OILUAM
Special To Mirror-Herald
rnmnSam
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Do newborn babies really recognize their
mothers’ voices?
'The question Is one that has been around
for years, lodged In the old wives’ tales that
surround the sweet mystery of mother and
child looking upon each other for the first
time.
Fresh from the womb and new to the
world, infants have long been thought to lack
the capacity to exist as anything more than
little bundles of Joy who function on refTexes
and Instincts and who have limited. If any,
active mental processes.
Not so, according to data being compiled
by a developmental psychologist at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Among the things he has documented Is the
fact that newborns both recognize and prefer
their own mothers’ voices to those of other
women within three days after birth.
Even more surprising. Infants appear to
be able to learn and perform a simple task In
order to hear tape recordings of their
mothers reading stories and they also show i
Indications of having functional memories —
all within three days of birth.
“Until recently, researchers didn’t give
newborn babies credit for much at all In
terms of coming Into the world as competent
little beings," said Dr. Anthony J. DeCasper,
an assistant professor In UNC-G’s Depart
ment of Psychology. ’"They give the Im
pression of being totally helpless.
“’To look at them, most people would
believe that — they can’t talk and their
motor activity Is such that they can’t do
anythlng^ besides lie there. But the things'
they can do, they do very well; they're quite
competent little creatures."
One of the things that babies do best In
their earliest days is nurse, DeCasper said,
noting that "the sucking reflex Is something
that all newborns have Intact when they
come Into the world."
lluit reflex, DeCasper decided, would be
the easiest mechanism to harness In order to
ask the newborns some "questions" about
their capabilities and what they perceived in
their environments.
The "questions" centered on whether the
baby would recognize and prefer the
mother’s voice, whether It would learn to
nurse a “blind nipple" In a certain manner In
order to hear that voice and whether It could
remember the nursing pattern from one day
to the next.
DeCasper's work on InfanU’ perception
has been going on for three years at the
Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital In
Greensboro. All of the subjects — between
150 and 200 of them — have been healthy,
normal babies weighing between six and-a-
half pounds and elght-and-a-half pounds who
experienced normal births and who had
demonstrated no physical problems.
The infants were placed In hospital
bassinets and small headsets were
positioned loosely around their ears. In order
to hear a tape recording of their mothers
reading the Dr. Seuss book, ’ 'To Think That I
Saw It On Mulberry Street," they had to
maintain their sucking speed either at fast or
slow levels. If they did not keep to the
prescribed level, they heard another
woman’s voice reading the story.
As the tiny Infants nursed, their sucking
patterns were monitored by a computer that
controlled which voice would come through
the headphones. The patterns also were
recorded on a graph for further study.
“The great majority of the InfanU - at
least 86 percent - not only preferred their
mothers’ voices, but they were able to retain
the sucking pattern (during Interval Ustlng)
for an entire day," said DeCasper.
“Right now we know that newborn babies
eq>pear to recognize their mothers’ voices
but we really don’t know why or how. Our
future work Is being directed toward the
source of that recognition.”
Among the Implications that can be drawn
firom the research,
Casper says, are that;
+ Newborn babies have the ability to
make distinctions between voices and
speech patterns to decide which they prefer.
In the vast majority of cases, the preferred
voice Is the mother’s which indicates
recognition.
+ Although their physical capabilities are
very limited, the Infants are able to control
their sucking reflex (either fast or slow) In
order to hear the voice they prefer. This
activity Indicates that they are able to learn
a task, even at the age of only 24 to 36 hours.
+ Newborns appear to be able to
remember the speed at which they must
suck on the nipple, an Indication that
memory Is In operation, although limited.
The memory appears to last at least a day,
since most babies are tested twice for the
three day’s they’re In the hospital.
But why should an Infant be able to
distinguish between his mother’s voice suid
that of another woman since most babies,
under normal hospital conditions, generally
don’t spend a lot of time In their mothers’
rooms?
What’s your opinion?
The answer, DeCasper believes, lies in
two hypotheses, both of which he Is currently
exploring In research with William P. Flfer,
a doctoral student In psychology at UNC-G
from North Hampton, N. H.
the ’ol eyeballs were rotating Just fine.
Now, I wonder why I didn’t tell the folks I
had left school early. Dumb, I guess. I wrote
my “struck blind” note on the way to school.
I almost ran away from school that day,
too.
Well, how would you feel to have your
teacher, an old woman In her 30s, chant to
you "Crybaby, cry. Stick a finger In your
eye, etc.?" y|
n
» L t
international standard of ^
personal and political rights.
Inevitably, the administration’s
sometimes clumsy activism has
achieved mixed results. It may
even have proved counterpro
ductive in some cases, the Soviet
Union for example.
Still, for all its imperfections,
the U.S. policy represents a net
gain for the cause of human
rights. Significantly, political
dissidents in virtually every
Communist country favor a
strong American stand on behalf
of human rights. Indeed, many
view this as their only hope.
If nothing else, the Carter
administration has focused ^
international attention on these
issues. This in turn has brought
pressure on offending
governments to ease repression,
if only to improve their standing
in the international community. %
capablUtles InUct at birth that allow them to
distinguish between voices and sound pat
terns. Such abilities, however, would have to
allow Infants to learn about their mothers
very qiUckly - within three days after birth.
’Die other, and perhaps the most ap
pealing, Is that babies learn the sound of
their mothers’ voices while stUl In the womb.
Since the human ear Is well-developed and
functional around the seventh month of
gestation, DeCasper says It’s possible that
the developing fetus "listens” to the
mother’s voice as It reverberates through
the amnlotlc fluid.
"It’s possible that It’s a combination of
both of these ways but we really haven’t
gotten Into It far enough to be able to tell
anything," he said.
Although scientists can’t tell If an Infant
really knows wha t he Is hearing. DeCasper
believes that the technique he has developed
for his research might be useful In
developing procedures to test for congenital
hearing problems, which occur In ap
proximately three births out of 1,000 In the
United States.
“Right now there is no completely
saUsfactory way to assess the hearing
capabilities of newborn babies,’’ said
DeCasper. “This procedure might bei
useful In determining whether Infants are
capable of using the sounds they hear
something that other tesU don’t do right
9
9
One Is that newborn babies have well-
developed perceptual and auditory
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