Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 95

rtnrB i ki-ItL K4RI.H jl If fef 1 A Arc if i Li rtoiVV III I Mil it mi in K'i nk 1 ROCHESTER 14. II. SUNDAY, MARCH 24. 1953 1M Pests and Poisons On and On Rages the Controve A major controversy has centered for months around the question of whether chemicals used to control pests pose a serious threat to health. It was touched off by Rachel Carson's best-selling boolc, "The Silent Spring," and has drawn strong rebuttal from spokesmen for America's food processing industry, the government, and scientists.

Here is a timely and thorough look at the background of the dispute and a roundup of the varying viewpoints. By BERNARD GAVZER Associated Tress Newsfeatures Writer grade teacher, Miss Doris Ehrlich, looks on from her desk. Later at a campus seminar, Miss Fersko's "performance" will be analyzed from tape by her teachers and fellow students. THE UNIVERSITY IN CLASSROOM At Allen Creek Sehool, class Instruction by student teacher, Jane Fersko, of U. of Col-lege of Education, Is tape recorded while regular second 111 The Expanding University gist who was a fairly obscure editor with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service until she wrote "The Sea Around Us" in 1951, and vaulted to international prominence. It was followed by another highly praised work, "The Edge of the Sea." She received awards and honors, including the Interior Department's distinguished service award. Critics applaud a Bum bi of Education r. I (pas This is the second in a series of special Sunday Democrat and Chronicle reports on the new and developing colleges of the University of Rochester. The first report last month told of the new College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Other reports will deal with other divisions as well as the university as a whole. I 7 i Jl tk I It is a furious argument. Yet it is not one that people talk about all the time. Not in the way they were upset around Thanksgiving in 1959 about poisoned cranberries. Or about Thalidomide last year.

It concerns the killer chemicals. Stripped of side issues and quibbling over minor points, jt comes down to this: Is the poison used in pesticides causing irreparable harm, or is it insignificant alongside the great benefits it brings? There is hardly any argument that every American has some DDT or other related poison in his body. These are the wonder chemicals all born in the last 20 years which are used to kill the pests that compete with man for food and fiber and carry plaques that have killed millions. Once, not long ago, the use of these pesticides was a question that fretted special groups. It was something the Audubon Society talked about.

Or the Izaak Walton League. Or the organic gardeners and natural food fans. They may have preached and screamed, but their voices were small. Now this has changed. Now it is a question being asked and argued with vigor in state legislatures, in the societies and federations of civic groups, in the councils of great industries, in the precincts of scientific forums, in the special -interest journals and the columns of the nation's newspapers, in the departments, agencies, bureaus, services of the federal government, in the courts, in the Congress, in the office of the President.

VIIY? Rachel Carson. She is the trained biolo- SCHOOLS ARE THEIR TOPIC Dr. William A. Fullagar, dean of College of Education, discusses programmed learning units being used experimentally by Robert G. Pierleoni, social studies teacher at Monroe High School.

At the rear are Jerome P. Lysaught, associate lecturer; Dr. Clarence M. Williams, associate professor. rsy ing destroyed; (3) we are using poisons about which we need to know much more; (4) the chemicals have been promoted with prime regard for profit; and (5) the USDA has acted cavalierly in some insect control programs, with poor regard for the rights-of individuals.

Perhaps none of the charges would be made except for the discovery by a Swiss chemist in 1939 that dichloro diphenyl tri-chloro ethane was a fantastic insect killer. It was colorless, odorless, and very, very small amounts of it could last a long, long time and kill many, many different kinds of insects. It was soon known the world over as DDT. Until it appeared for widespread use in 1942, there were six primary chemicals used in pesticides. From DDT a chlorinated hydrocarbon-chemists moved on to other lethal compounds with exotic names: toxaphene, dieldrin, endrin, lindane, aldrin, chlordane, benzene, hexacloride, to name but a few.

Then there was another development, new chemicals organic phosphates which were even better killers Parathio, Malathion, Schradan, Sy-stox. Now there are at least 45,000 different pesticide preparations. "Pesticide" describes the whole family of lethal chemicals aimed at erasing all sorts of pests: Insects (of which 10,000 of the 82,000 different kinds are harmful to man); enemy plants (crabgrass, for instance), rodents, viruses, fungi, bacteria. Miss Carson says they have been used too freely in everything from household bug bombs to crop dusting from aircraft without any deep understanding of the threat to life and the future of man. There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat," she says in explaining whv she wrote "Silent "It Is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate.

The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. HERE, IN FURTHER detail, are her major points, and the responses from industry, government, scientists and others who are involved in the issue. THE THREAT TO MAN "For the first time in i charges Miss Carson, "every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death." She describes the way in which DDT residues on forage could turn up in milk and subsequently pass from a mother to her nursing infant. She tells of animals experiments in which "insecticides freely cross the barrier of the Placenta." the protective sack Continued On Pagt 3M teachers, Fullagar and his colleagues set their recruiting sights high "un-realisticaiiy high," they were told. Today Fullagar points to a full-time faculty of 25.

Twenty two of its members hold doctoral degrees and another is currently writing his doctoral dissertation. As a group, their academic credentials come from among the country's top teaching centers: Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Chicago, Minnesota, Ohio State, and the like. Equally important, in Fullagar's opinion, they received their on-the-job seasoning in school systems from California to Connecticut and from Florida to Saskatchewan. The dean is quick to praise the talents and professional know-how of his colleagues. He speaks with special warmth of two long respected figures in Rochester-area education who now serve on the college faculty: Milton Pullen, former district principal of the Greece schools, and Catherine Sullivan, for some years chief consultant in English and social studies for Rochester schools.

JUT THE STRENGTHS of a university's college of education are considerably greater than the sum of its education faculty. One obvious strength for College of Education students and faculty alike is the presence on the River Campus of outstanding departments in the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences. Some members of the education faculty hold joint appointments in the Col lege of Arts and Science; moreover, most University of Rochester undergraduates preparing to teach in secondary schools actually major in a department of the College of Arts and Science while completing their professional study in the College of Education. To the layman especially if his ideas on colleges of education are strictly-from Rickover it may come as a surprise to find that nearly three-quarters of the courses taken by future elementary school teachers are in the university's academic departments. In the case of pros- Continued On Page 2M widespread Interest among educators.

And the college's most ambitious project the Ford Foundation-sponsored "internship" program in which Rochester, Cornell, Syracuse, and Buffalo universities are participating with upstate school systems is expected to provide a model for similar ventures across the nation. JJKE ITS sister College of Engineering (Sunday Democrat Chronicle, Feb. 17, 1963) the University of Rochester's College of Education has come a long way in a short time. In 1958 it served mainly as an instructional unit for undergraduate teachers-to-be and for teachers master's degrees. Today its educational pro grams run from the preparation of undergraduates through doctoral work.

The college recently awarded its first doctorate in education to Donald Cruickshank, principal of Rochester's School 44; currently some 55 doctoral candidates, primarily from area public and parochial schools and from colleges are studying at the college. In addition, its swelling roster of special training programs, conferences, and workshops attract hundreds of area school people during the academic year, and hundreds more each summer. Upcoming this June is the biggest summer schedule yet, ith a number of new programs soon to be announced. TO DR. WILLIAM A.

FUL-LAGAR. dean of the College of Education, the clue to the college's achievements and the key to its future development as well lies in its faculty. Back In 1958. Dr. Fulla-gar explains, the college had only seven full-time faculty members; many courses were taught by part-time instructors who.

because they held full-time jobs elsewhere, necessarily operated on a "teach and run" basis. The most pressing need of the new college was to recruit additional full-time faculty. Undismayed by the critical shortage of college ed her talent for writing of science ith great beauty and precision. To some people she is Joan of Arc incarnate, come to do battle with government agencies grown cynical with authority and industry hucksters whose only reverence is for the almighty dollar. To others, she is an ambitious, sensation -seeking, scientifically unquali i muckraker spreading fear and ignorance in a bid for power and riches.

But Rachel Carson alone has turned the use of pesticides into a major issue. She did it with her book, "Silent Spring," a work which Justice William 0. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court has described as "the most important chronicle of this century for the human race." THE BOOK begins with the description of an imaginary town. It portrays the town at a season such as we have now a burgeoning spring that is eerily silent because of poisons which have killed off birds and animals.

Then it makes an indictment, naming the major culprits as the basic agricultural chemicals industry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This is an era, Miss Carson writes, "dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged." The decision (to use poisons) is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative." The answers from the industry and government agencies have taken many forms, but there is one theme that is drummed home in each one: Without pesticides there would be pestilence. To Miss Carson, this is no answer. She insists her indictment stands.

"Instead of answering my findings, all sorts of red herrings have been brought up against me," she contends. "I have been attacked in various ways. There is a definite pattern. One part of it is to discredit me. Another is to misrepresent my position.

Another is to ignore the issue and use a soft sell assuring people that all is well." THERE ARE five major counts in Miss Carson's indictment: (1) the poisons threaten the future of man; (2) wildlife is wantonly be- The winds of educational change are blowing strongly through the 78 school systems of the Genesee Valley. In a West Irondcquolt classroom, a math-minded 6th grader explores the algebraic structure of number systems. At Fittsford's Jefferson Road School a ponytailed 10-year old studies the weather via a "teaching machine." At Benjamin Franklin High School, chemistry students are attending college-type lectures and seminars and in six Rochester and suburban schools, up and coming young administrators are serving "internships" a la Ben Casey. And, with teachers and administrators, school boards and parents working to provide better education for the youngsters of the Genesee Valley region, you'll find the University of Rochester's College of Education very much involved, too. This partnership-in-educational-progress between the University of Rochester and the schools of Western New York isn't new.

But since the mid-1950's when the University's Department of Education became the Division of Education and especially since 1958, when the Division became the College of Education the opportunities for strengthening this educational partnership have increased many fold. JX ADDITION, the new college is making itself felt in educational circles beyond its immediate community. In the fast-growing field of programmed learning the world of the teaching machine University of Rochester specialists offered the nation's first regular college course. The College of Educations pioneering "Wide Horizons" program in which groups of area teenagers meet monthly with University of Rochester scholars has been a model for similar projects in other parts of the country. Currently, the new Taft Institute-supported workshop in political education for teachers, a cooperative project of the college and the Genesee Valley School Study Council, is attracting ifcMN i COMPLTERS SCHEDULE CLASSESHow scheduling of her entire senior class at East High School is worked out on a single tape is explained br Dr.

John Schmitt to Carol Chafel, 815 Grand Ate. Looking on are Clayton DeLong, who is registration chairman at East High, and Dr. Byron B. Williams, director of Education College's field services. This is another of cooperative school programs..