RUST COMMENTARY: `DO UNTO OTHERS' DURING KINDNESS WEEK

This is Random Acts of Kindness week in our circulation area and beyond. Whether others know what your kindness is or not ... kindness makes one feel good and is the second key of biblical living: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If we could all live by that guideline all of the time, wouldn't life be more enjoyable?

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Another saying we should all try to live by is that it's wonderful what can be achieved if people will concentrate on the goal ... rather than who gets credit for it.

A lot of people could take credit for the recent passage of the Cape school bond issue -- likewise a number of people deserve credit for the Senate/House funding of the Carnahan-endorsed $5 million vocational education package for Southeast Missouri University, Sikeston and Cape.

What's important is not who gets or takes credit ... but that the funding (when signed into law by the governor) will be available to help construction get started at three separate sites.

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SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY received major national publicity when the GEORGE McGOVERN vs. WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY debate was broadcast in its entirety on C-SPAN.

From the excellent introduction by Dr. FRANK NICKEL to the entertaining debate, audience shots and special tribute to his friend President DALE NITZSCHKE by McGovern when he stated. "I know of no finer college president" ... Cape Girardeau was once again placed on the national scene.

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I mentioned in a previous column that I would be sharing some excerpts from a highly informative article from the March 29 issue of the ECONOMIST magazine (one of BILL GATES favorite must-read magazines).

The title of the article was "Education and the Wealth of Nations." It pointed out the importance of education (not necessarily the expenditures on education) of a country's workers (not necessarily its natural resources -- see Hong Kong) to a country's economic well-being. Some excerpts:

"The politics of education is in a confused and peculiar state. All over the world it is taken for granted that educational achievement and economic success are closely linked -- that the struggle to raise a nation's living standards is fought first and foremost in the classroom.

When teachers and educational policymakers start, like everybody else, to seek out the best practice by looking around the world, what will they find? The first thing is a surprisingly large -- and therefore potentially informative -- variation in performance. The next is that this variation has little to do with things you might suppose would explain it: class sizes, hours of study per subject and spending per pupil.

The biggest piece of international research on educational standards, involving schools in 41 countries, was published recently. It compared scores of 13-year-olds in maths and science tests, calibrating the scores so that a mark of 500 was equal to the international average. In math, as it happens, America's score was 500, placing it 28th in the league. England's score was 506, giving a rank of 25. The Czech Republic, with 564, achieved Europe's highest score and a rank of 6. Top of the table was Singapore, with 643, followed by South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.

The Czech Republic spent a third as much per pupil as America. Many of the most generous spenders achieved results that were mediocre or worse. Pupils per teacher and hours devoted to study in each subject were no more closely linked to results. The East Asian tigers scored well (without spending more than other countries), suggesting "Asian values" as the secret of success. But this too is misleading. English students scored almost as well in science as their Japanese counterparts. If "culture" is the key, why should this be so?

Academics are starting to ask why countries as culturally different as Japan and Switzerland do so well. The evidence suggests that teaching methods are the key. In teaching math, for instance, both those countries spend more time on basic arithmetic than on deeper mathematical ideas, emphasize mental arithmetic, rely on standard teaching manuals and favor whole-class (as opposed to group) teaching.

Nobody, least of all their authors, is claiming that such studies are conclusive. So far they are proving much better at saying what doesn't work than what does. But it should be beyond doubt that more, and more detailed, comparisons of this sort are the way to advance the debate on education beyond tiresome quarrels over how much governments should be spending. This just doesn't matter very much. The argument, in Britain at least, has begun to shift to teachers' methods in the classroom. Henceforth it should concentrate squarely on that issue.

Further research will be needed before it is possible to say with confidence what works best. Many teachers and most local education officials will treat such inquiries with suspicion, of course: in most rich countries, unlike the pupils they turn out into the world, they have been sheltered from competition since they left college. Everybody else is part of the new global economy. It's time the schools joined in." -- The Economist

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STATE OF MISSOURI MARCH MONEY: Monthly revenue totals just keep getting larger and larger, with total general revenue collections for March showing an increase of 8.6 percent over last year and year-to-date receipts up 6.8 percent over 1996. Sales and use-tax collections were up 6.7 percent for the month and 4.4 percent for the year-to-date, from $1.204 billion last year to $1.257 billion this year.

Individual income tax collections increased 6.5 percent for the month and increased 8.9 percent for year-to-date, from $2.069 billion last year to $2.252 billion this year. Corporate income tax revenue was up 10.1 percent for the month and up 1.6 percent for year-to-date. All other collections were up 20.4 percent for the month and up 7.2 percent for the year.

Is this a great time to be governor or what? -- Jack Stapleton Newsletter

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No Money for Euthanasia

The House recently voted overwhelmingly (398 to 16) to ban federal funds for physician-assisted suicides. But don't be fooled by the size of the vote. Liberal Democrats argued vehemently against the ban on the floor of the House even though it was largely a symbolic vote. (No federal funds go for assisted suicide now.) Only when they were forced to officially go on the record did they vote our way. This happens time and time again on cultural and values issues. The liberals desperately want to avoid being exposed as cultural revolutionaries. When forced to vote, they retreat. That is exactly why these issues should be brought up over and over again. I believe votes on school prayer would be similarly lopsided in our direction. -- Gary Bauer

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Youth Crime Bill:

The House passed, 286-132, HR 3 to combat violent youth crime and increase accountability for juvenile criminal offenses. It would make it easier for federal prosecutors to try as adults juveniles accused of violent or drug trafficking crimes in federal jurisdictions. The bill would also allow prosecutors to decide when juveniles 14 years or older should be tried as adults for violent or drug crimes in federal jurisdictions -- which happens an estimated 200 to 400 times a year. The bill also aims to entice state governments to treat violent juveniles as adults by proposing $1.5 billion in block grants for states that meet a toughness test.

Clinton attacked the bill this week and said it should ban guns to youths. Let the Senate pass this bill and send it to the president. If Clinton "wants to get tougher" on juvenile offenders ... let his congressional Democrat leaders introduce a separate bill.

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Losing an Ally

Last week was a humbling week on the Hubbell front for the White House. President and Mrs. Clinton have been stung by stories that call into question how much they knew, and when they knew it, about possible hush money paid to former Deputy Attorney General Webb Hubbell. It's now clear that the Clintons' personal attorney, David Kendall, and longtime Arkansas buddy Jim Blair (who helped Hillary Clinton make a killing in cattle futures) were aware of Hubbell's troubles with the Rose Law firm before he left the Justice Department, with Blair warning the Clintons that Hubbell had to resign. The Clintons have publicly maintained for months that they "never knew" of the seriousness of the charges against their old friend. A.M. Rosenthal, a senior figure among New York Times columnists, writes, "As of May 5, 1997, it became impossible for me to believe it happened the way President Clinton and his wife said it had" and that the public must now ask what it is that Hubbell "might have known to make Mr. Clinton endanger his Presidency." On May 5, the Times broke the Kendall-Blair story, and until that point Rosenthal believed the Clintons. Not anymore. -- Washington Update

~Gary Rust is the president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.