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PAGE A6 â€" WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1993 Waterloo Town Square 75 King St. South, Suite 201 Waterloo, Ontario have a feeling, based upon the Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education in 1991, that teaching is slowly being overshadâ€" owed by research in this country. More about this soon. â€" So what‘s with Janko Peric â€" why is he afraid to debate? Mr. Peric, the federal Liberal candidate in Cambridge, called off an allâ€"candidates debate at the last minute last week with some pretty flimsy excuses that has organizers of the event miffed. Mr. Peric suddenly declined to participate only two days before Cambridge‘s Cara Club was to host the debate. His campaign manâ€" ager in Toronto said he wouldn‘t participate unless all official candiâ€" dates were present and until the election was called. Funny, but he didn‘t take that position when he was first asked. If Mr. Peric was really interested in ideas, he‘d debate almost anywhere at any time, instead of using lastâ€"minute excuses. You sure wouldn‘t catch either John English, the Liberal candidate in Kitchener or Andrew Telegdi, the party‘s nominee in Waterl00, playing this game. Agree with them or not, at least they‘d vigorously debate the issues. That‘s why even Cambridge Liberals are embarâ€" rassed about the sudden cancellation. Is it the same in Canada? Not quite. There are a lot less graduate students teaching courses here than in the American Ivy Leagues. But things may be changing for the worse. More and more professors at some of our universities are trying to abandon teaching for research. It‘s a trend we should try to reverse. When I was an undergraduate at McGill in the late ‘60s, I never had a single graduate student teach a class. I was taught by people like Hugh McLennan, Frank Scott, Robert Vogel and Gad Horowitz. They were all considered preeminent scholars. The great professors really still do teach in most Canadian universiâ€" ties. We have to make sure that they keep doing so and that we don‘t slide down the same path the Americans have taken. Are great teachers needed? You bet. If you had any doubts, consider the results of a recent survey of 3,‘ 19 Ivy League undergraduates in the U.S. Eighteen per cent couldn‘t name a single Supreme Court jusâ€" tice; 44 per cent did not know the name of the Speaker of the House of Repr sentatives and 50 percent couldn‘t name their home state senaâ€" Judging by my own recent experience at the University of Waterloo, I can only speak volumes of praise for the teaching in the political sciâ€" inspire curiosity. They raise questions. They leave you wanting to I suspect that good teachers like them also teach in other faculties and other universities at the undergraduate level in Canada but I also "only a step or two ahead of the students in their charge." Stanford has 800 of them, Harvard, 850, Yale, 925, Berkeley, 1,742, and Columbia, 600. This speaks volumes about the American Ivy League schools which charge huge tuition fees and are generally regarded as being the best universities in the world. The only problem is that if you‘re an undergraduate at one of those schools, you‘re probably wasting your money. You‘ll likely never see any of the "big name" professors that make these universities famous because they‘re too busy researching or working with graduate stuâ€" dents. So why go? Good professors seldom bother with such specifics but they try to inspire the curiosity that would lead their students to know the I have often disagreed with Martin Anderson, a U.S. conservative, but I heartily endorse his crusade against professors at prestigious Misplaced priorities These assistants are graduate students who Anderson describes as Fax. No. News Line 886â€"3021 MEANWHILE... Fred Bge? *# # Pete Cudhea (Sports Editor) The answer to racism lies, as most things do, in the hnun.inthndml,ltmworkphe;u,inwplmof worship. Teaching tolerance is a bit more complex than advertising, say, a theme park. Would that it were as simple as simply slapping on a bumper sticker. dJob Creation: Apt advice on a bumper sticker at tenness that is racism. P And heaven help us if the willingness to sport a bumper sticker becomes the litmus test for whether or not you‘re a racist. For anyone with access to the public prints, there‘s the temptation to write breathless, deathless prose about how Hitler and his rabble began. Hardly. That is to trivialize history. This is Canada with a centuryâ€"plus of democratic tradition, someâ€" thing preâ€"Hitler Germany never had. I choose to believe that there aren‘t more than a handful of Kâ€"W folks who would fall prey to the relaâ€" tively few mindless goons who‘ve got the community‘s collective shorts in such a knot. And I‘m loathe to giveâ€"them the thing they crave By the way, it‘s easy to blame our economic malaise for the jackbooted jerks, but that‘s eyewash. Work is truly a fourâ€"letter word to the neoâ€"Nazi hoods. They want nothing to do with gainful employment. Survivors of the Holocaust are aghast at them and insulted by them and understandably so, but I doubt the hooligans are a real peril. The freedoms that are our greatest strength are, alas, sometimes also our weakness. And laws can be tightened only so much without impinging on preâ€" And you also have to wonder how many of our comâ€" munity tubâ€"thumpers are more worried about what other communities think than they are about the rotâ€" Maybe some folks feel good in condemning racism by sporting a bumper sticker, but you have to wonder so rudely interrupted by a heart attack, it‘s sad to see the community so caught up in the antics of a relaâ€" Brian Mulroney‘s gone and that‘s reason for a new national holiday As I was about to say some weeks ago when I was Waterloo Chronicle is published every Wednesday by: The Fairway Group Incorporated w* 215 Fairway Rd. S., $45 yearly in Car = Kitchener, Ont. $90 yearly outsi President: Paul Winkler +GS8T. ag4: The views of our columnists are their own and do not necessari the views of the newspaper. 4 the Albert and Phillip Streets plaza: Make Your MP Work. Don‘t Reâ€"elect Him. A Day to Rejoice: We Canadians are notorious for celebrating meanâ€"nothing holidays like Victoria Day and Civic Holiday but now we‘ve just missed a day worth celebrating in perpetuity. Last Friday, should have been a holiday and every June 25 henceforth, should have been celebrated as BS Day. The initials BS stand, as no doubt you realize, for Brian Separates. Unless, of course, you‘re really a vulâ€" garian. Then it would be Brian Splits Day. Historians may quibble about BS Day but to me, the reason was selfâ€"evident: Himself just ran out of cronies to nudge to the public trough. Thomas Gray, the 18th century British poet, was probably thinking of Brian when he wrote "The path ofthgoryleadsbuttoflnm.'()rmethinglike Loose Leafs: I owe Toronto Maple Leaf fans an explanation. In my last column, an inputting error made it sound as if I were sneering at the Leafs. Perâ€" ish the thought! Although I now must say Pm not thrilled at the new ticket prices. Nineteen dollars a copy for gray seats and standingâ€"room. Wow! It‘s no wonder the Maple Personal Note: About my heart attack: Doctors at London‘s Victoria Hospital did an angioplasty â€" the banwn-m-fln-hanm.wm what they‘d hoped, but they seem optimistic. And so am I. And I‘m grateful, too, for the many gndnesmfiumfamib,m,mundcol- ONCE OVER LIGHTLY