The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 93

Harvard turns 350 I Arkansas duo works to push school reform I ft By Robert Marquand The Christian Science Monitor He is one of the so-called "new generation" of Democratic governors one who has put education at the ton of his political agenda. Bill Clinton, Arkansas' youthful governor (this fall, at age 40, he runs for his fourth term) thinks of himself as a "progressive pragmatist" one of a group of younger, dynamic Democrats who are trying to mesh social Ideals (such as equal opportunity) with a public policy that must prove itself to be workable, affordable and accountable. The education reform Governor Clinton has helped to engineer In Arkansas is a case In point. Mr. Clinton persuaded Arkansans to accept their first sales-tax increase In 26 years to help pay for a teacher salary Increase.

He argued that education was vital to the economic and social future of the state. Then, in a controversial move, he demanded that teachers be tested for competency. This type of leadership has put the voluble Mr. Clinton into the national spotlight. In July, he became 1986 chairman of the Education Commission of the States (ECS), a traditionally Influential meeting ground for state education leaders.

At the National Governors' Association meeting last week In Hilton Head. S.C., Mr. Clinton became the new chairman of that body making him the first governor to head both groups simultaneously. Education analysts such as Chris Pipho of the ECS note that the nationwide education reform movement of the last three years would not have been possible without the state dollars and legislation provided by "education governors" such as Mr. Clinton, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Bob Graham of Florida, among others, who "went to every bridge opening and county fair, speaking on the need to Improve schools." In his unique role as joint chair of the ECS and the governors association, Mr.

Clinton said he plans to keep education on the national front burner, adding the problems of Illiteracy and "at risk" youth to the education reform agenda. Given the fact that the economics of oil and the problems of prisons, roads, insurance and trade will be major state Issues in the upcoming years, educators are glad to have Mr. Clinton keeping the political heat on an often-forgotten subject. But as Mr. Clinton himself admits, the fact that he won't forget the issue of education above and beyond political fortune Is in large part a testament to one person: his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Even before Bill Clinton became Governor Clinton, Hillary worked for such organizations as the Children's Defense Fund. She is now on their board. She has since started a group called "Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families." Mrs. Clinton said she feels strongly that "children are increasingly disadvantaged today because of the kinds of stresses they are put under, and because of the way adults live their lives." Her thinking on the subject is similar to that of Neil Postman's in his work "The End of Childhood," which details how the sophistication of the modern world, technology and the divorce rate have crowded in on the time children used to spend being children. "It doesn't matter if Bill is a lawyer, attorney general or governor I'm still going to worry about these things," she said.

Mr. Clinton, in turn, said that Hillary has played "a major role in everything we've been able to accomplish." The words are not rhetorical, given the fact that in 1983 he appointed Hillary to chair the Arkansas Education Standards Committee, which provided the main strategy for that state's reforms. As might be expected, the move cre- ASSOCIATED PRESS1983 Hillary Clinton, in foreground, chaired Arkansas' commission on educational standards; testifying before the commission is her husband, Gov. Bill Clinton. and 27 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once taught here. So did Alfred North Whitehead, Harold Laski and John Kenneth Current teachers Include Jurist Alan Der-showltz, former Reagan economic adviser Martin Feldstein and biologist Stephen Jay Gould. Writers, poets and Journalists studied here: Henry David Thoreau, William Ran- dolph Hearst. H. V.

Kaltenborn, Heywood" Broun, Walter Llppmann, W. E. B. Edwin Arlington Robinson. Gertrude Stein, e.e.

cummings, Eugene O'Neill, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Ogden Richard Eberhart. 1 Among the scores of eminent emissaries' to the business world are former Ford Motor Co. chairman Philip Caldwell, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, and former Chase 1 Manhattan Bank head David Rockefeller. "The Big Time." a book by Laurence Shames, found that 45 percent of the Harvard Business School's class of '49 are now chief executives or chief operating officers of their companies, including Xerox I Capital Cities Communications John-' son Johnson, Rohm Haas Co.

and Bloomingdale's. The legal minds who trained at Harvard Include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Bran-1 dels. Learned Hand and Felix Frankfurter, as well as four of nine current Supreme Court Justices: Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan Lewis F.

Powell Jr. and William H. Rehnquist. It is perhaps in its own milieu of higher education that Harvard's power is felt most keenly. "That's where Harvard has a great deal of Influence," said Mr.

Bok. "We have a great, great many graduates who go to other instil tutions. We seem to get more publicity what we do academically than any other institution I know. That gives us an unusual', amount of leverage in our ability to try new things and have them spread." Top faculty flock to Harvard from around the country. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Oscar Handlin has taught at Harvard for 52 years.

Like others here, he said that resources such' as a library with almost 1 1 million volumes I made Harvard a peerless haven for scholar- ship. In key respects, Harvard has influenced the educational direction of all American colleges. In the late 19th century, Harvard devised the elective system, based on the then-radi-r cal notion that students were the best Judges of what courses they should take, within' -limits. The law school pioneered the "case meth- 1 od," where students study actual cases and consider arguments lawyers on both sides could make. 1 The business school, borrowing from the law school, devised the "problem method," in which students think about how to solve -specific business problems.

In the 1970s, at a time when many said liberal studies had been liberalized beyond reason, the university, under Dean Henry Rosovsky, undertook a major reexamination of undergraduate courses. The resulting. Harvard "Core Curriculum" touched off a na- tionwide revision of liberal arts curricula' that continues to this day. President Bok hopes Harvard's "New Pathways" plan begun last year will stimulate a similar nationwide look at medical school training. The program emphasizes case method and problem solving over the old lecture and rote learning method.

Mr. Bok agreed that Harvard, with Its unassailable position as an academic leader, had occasionally allowed other colleges to steal the march In academic ventures where the risks seemed too great. One such parade that Harvard has been slow to join is computerization. Schools such as Carnegie-Mellon University, Stevens In- stitute of Technology and Drew University have led the way In integrating computers Into campus life. Harvard has decided to re- main "a step behind," said Mr.

Bok. "We would say with computers that don't want to be far behind, but we don't want to be out front. It's too expensive. The stakes are too drastic. With the medical cur- riculum, that's not Inexpensive, but we think we know a little better what we're doing," he said.

Mr. Bok, who has been president for 15 years, admits that great universities usually have an easier time maintaining their preeminence than, say, top corporations. The best students and faculty will always flock to a school reputed to have the best t-students and faculty. "Still," Mr. Bok said, reflecting on of Harvard history, "I think it's an.

impressive achievement. Here It Is all these years later. Some people, will put us down, some will put us up, but 'it's still very much one of the institutions you have to reckon with." By Lee Mitgang Associated Press Cambridge, Mass. Three hundred and fifty years ago, a 30-year-old minister named John Harvard helped finance a new Purl-tan ministry school. Almost Immediately, the college recorded Its first bout of student unrest.

The subject was ale. Harvard's first master, Nathaniel Eaton, was by all accounts a bully, prone to "drive home lessons with the rod," according to a history of the school by Samuel Eliot Mori-son. But the master's most unpardonable crimes involved food and drink. The ale at Harvard was scarce, an unbearable circumstance to a young 17th century gentleman. And students swore there was goat dung In the hasty pudding.

The targets of protest have changed on this oldest of American campuses. Students complain about Harvard's $400 million invested with companies that deal with South Africa's white supremacist government or about the school's decision to award Its Distinguished Public Service medal to U.S. Attorney General Edwin M. Meese III. Tuition has also risen a trifle since the dozen young men In Harvard's first class were permitted to pay with a shank of mutton, a few bushels of corn, or perhaps a saddle or sword.

Next fall, undergraduates (there are 6.500) will pay $16,145 In tuition, room and board. Only a few physical relics remain on campus from Harvard's earliest years. In the Fogg Museum are silver goblets and candlesticks dating to 1644 and an ornate ceremonial "president's chair." Two brass plates on Massachusetts Avenue mark the original site of one of the college's first buildings. And locked away In a sub-basement steel vault In the archives building Is the school's 1 650 corporate charter, the oldest such document in the Western Hemisphere, along with treasures such as Henry A. Kissinger's 1954 doctoral thesis and Harvard's 1916 football calendar.

But as Harvard prepares to celebrate its 350th anniversary with festivities scheduled Sept. 4-7, It Is its influence and cachet, not such historical bric-a-brac, that make this an international event worthy of dignitaries and princes. President Reagan was Invited to attend, as other presidents have at Harvard mile stones, starting with Andrew Jackson at the bicentennial In 1836. Mr. Reagan declined; Secretary of State George P.

Shultz will appear in his stead, and three Supreme Court Justices plan to attend. Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana will also attend, and folk singer Tom Rush (class of. '63) and cellist Yo-Yo Ma (class of '76) will perform. All would acknowledge Harvard's unrivaled ability to stock the nation's boardrooms, courtrooms and virtually every other walk of life with leaders, although those within and without the walls of Harvard Yard differ on the school's Image. President Derek Bok regards the popular view of Harvard as a mighty national force as "rather overblown." "I think It has a lot of influence in the world of ideas and discovery and research and so forth," said Mr.

Bok in his office in Massachusetts Hall, a 1720 clapboard building that is the oldest on campus. "But this kind of 'best and brightest' notion as if there's some sort of Harvard product out there somehow radiating the Influence of the institution in national life I don't think is accurate," he said. Adam S. Cohen, a second-year law student elected president of the Harvard Law Review In February, agrees the college's cachet "is something that people who aren't at Harvard tend to emphasize more." Still, Harvard's prestige clearly must mean something to students who yell, "You'll be working for us someday!" at opposing teams, when Harvard's football squad is losing. Harvard law students are so prized by top firms around the country that some manage to log frequent-flyer bonuses from trips for interviews In the October-November recruiting season.

And It's not every school where a freshman can discover that his or her dorm room was once home to Ralph Waldo Emerson or to a Kennedy. Harvard, let's face It, Is a name-dropper's paradise. Six presidents were Harvard graduates: John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams; Rutherford B. Hayes; Theodore Roosevelt and his cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The faculty has produced 29 Nobelists Mr.

Mitgang covers education for Associated Press. XT 7 s. 7 necessarily the governor. Since she moved with Bill to his home state of Arkansas, Hillary's suburban Chicago background has made her acutely aware of what's happening in the Southern state. "I feel like the move represented a re-entrance to the human condition," she said.

The state is fairly poor, has had a mind-set for years that "you could build a wall around Arkansas and it wouldn't matter," and consequently has never stressed education as a means of improvement. In the 1980 census. Arkansas had the lowest percentage of college-educated adults of any state. "Here, you have a much clearer, up-close sense of what It means to raise kids on $10,000 a year," she said. As a fifth-generation native of Arkansas, "Bill has always known that but it is possible not to see it, living in D.C.

or Chicago." "Much of our discussions now are how to keep our commitment to education alive In our state at a time when the economy Is bottoming out. New York, California and Florida are booming but the country off the coast is having a pretty hard time," she said. These are all issues that were central at the governors' conference. But what Hillary Clinton also hopes she and her husband can accomplish for education Is to remind Americans that learning is not important simply for economic reasons but that It Is a powerful tool for personal enrichment. "Education is not a modern phenomenon," she said, "not a new program somebody came up with as a way to eradicate poverty or help our urban centers it's an inherent value." toward self-deception can lead them to distort scientific knowledge for the sake of making a political point.

For example, suspected or partially proven environmental dangers can be overstated or played down to an extent that neither existing data nor present theory warrants. Advocates of tough regulation of coal-burning power plants as a source of acid rain, for example, have no trouble finding experts to back them up "scientifically." Their opponents, meanwhile, have expert allies who insist more research Is needed to pin down acid rain's cause. The heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide, which is released when we bum coal and oil, may warm Earth and change Its climate. Recently, some scientists studying this possibility have warned that its influence will be felt more quickly than had been expected. Serious warming might come within this century, they say.

It's timei they warn, to begin restricting our use of coal and oil. Yet the computer simulations these scientists use are uncertain and are loaded with assumptions. The data they use are Inadequate. Other scientists working with the same theories and data say much more research is needed to elucidate any climatic danger. And so it goesWhere political, religious or Ideological Issues are Involved, scientists are as tempted as anyone to shade the facts to fit their position.

Which is what you might expect. But, as Dr. Mahoney's work Illustrates, scientists can also be unconsciously misleading even when they try to be unbiased. So beware of scientists whose "findings" owe more to faith than to fact, especially when they espouse a social or political cause. They may only be fooling themselves.

hi A New study questions objectivity of scientists ated big waves within the state, causing educators to wonder if Mr. Clinton was serious about reform. Many politicos called it a fatal political move. Hillary, however, who has her own law practice, proved hugely successful in the job, bringing clarity and dispatch to the reform process, which along with the controversial teacher-testing plan included an anti-dropout mandate that students not leave high school until age 17 and a new high school entrance examination that will go into effect this year. Mr.

Clinton claims that the exam will be "hotter than 'no pass-no play' the recent academic restrictions Texas has placed on high school football players because it demands that students pass a skills test before entering high school. Mrs. Clinton's efforts were received so well that one old-time Arkansas legislator commented, "I think we've elected the wrong Clinton!" Hillary, soft-spoken and not especially "aggressive" in the hard-driving sense, has also proved she can hold her own In the education major leagues. She recently debated premier education analyst Linda Darling-Hammond of the Rand Corporation on the subject of teacher testing, in front of a less-than-kindly audience of classroom teachers. Yet she conducted herself so well and proved such a probing debater that she got a round of applause at the end.

Commenting on her facility for handling issues, one educator noted, "It's easy to see who wins at the breakfast table!" implying that it was not SOCIAL SCIENCE conclusion and clung to a wrong answer longer than did the ministers. Another experiment involved 75 experts who referee research papers for publication in a social science journal. Dr. Mahoney's team sent them a fictitious paper. In some cases, the reported data and conclusions agreed with accepted theory.

In other cases, they challenged that theory. Dr. Mahoney found that the referees' beliefs biased their judgments. They praised the paper if it seemed to reinforce their own views and criticized it and rejected it when their beliefs were Challenged. Finally, the Santa.

Barbara team sent a different group of referees papers with two different sets of footnotes. In some cases, these footnotes referred to other research papers by the manuscripts own author papers which were listed as "in press," awaiting publication. In other cases, the same references were listed under other names. The referees consistently gave higher ratings to the paper that seemed to be based on other work by its author work that had already been accepted for publication elsewhere. Because they thought another scientific Journal had already recognized the author, the referees more readily accepted his work for their own journal.

"Recognition begets even further recognition," Dr. Mahoney observes, even when the work at issue may not deserve it. Dr. Mahoney is interested in learning more about the psychology of scientists and how It influences their work. What he has done so far only begins to explore this Important aspect of the development of scientific knowledge.

But it already emphasizes a trap into which scientists often fail when they speak out on public Issues. The human tendcntt By Robert C. Cowen uinstian science Monitor Nature's mysteries are tricky enough without self-deception to mislead you. Yet even seasoned scientists some times fool themselves. They favor data that support their beliefs.

They may Jump to false conclusions, which they then defend tenaciously. In short, they can have as much trouble as laymen in fitting unwelcome phenomena into their personal world views. Psychologist Michael J. Mahoney, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, has experimented with these well-known peccadilloes of scientists. His findings take the gloss off the scientist's traditional image as a skeptical yet open-minded scholar.

As described in a recent report of Dr. Mahoney's work, three of these experiments highlight various aspects of the self-deception. A set of three numbers 2, 4 and 6 formed the basis of one test. Groups of psychologists, physical scientists and Protestant ministers were asked to discover the rule according to which the numbers were organized by playing a kind of guessing game. They were to think up other sets of numbers and ask the examiner if these fit the rule.

The rule was simple rank three numbers in ascending order. The experiment was structured to show the thought processes by which different people searched for the right answer. Dr. Mahoney found that the social and physical scientists Jumped more quickly to a Mr. Cowen is the natural science editor of tte Christian Scieijte Monitor.

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