Carolina Journal; Foreign Policy in the Middle East, Children's Software, and Biomedical Ethics

A production of the South Carolina Educational Television Network. Tonight told Carolina Journal a top Middle East expert from Washington shares his insight into that region. And its issues. How do you pick computer programs for children what's best. What should you avoid. And students from Converse College in Spartanburg fill us in on upcoming seminar on biomedical that thanks to us tonight Carolina. Good evening. A few days go by without some mention of the middle and Near East in our media the issues are complicated. The nations and their internal problems are complicated. America's relationships with the region is complicated. Our guest and I will give a colloquium on United States policy in the Near and Middle East tomorrow from 3:30 to 5:00 PM in

gambrel hall at the University of South Carolina. Bobus entered the United States Foreign Service and 1053 has been stationed in Cairo Tel Aviv Israel Jeddah Saudi Saudi Arabia where he was posted as counselor for political affairs under former South Carolina governor John West then ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Before that he served on an Aries task force during the Six Day War. He was attached to the United States delegation to the Middle East peace talks on November 1981 until October 82. Since then he's been with the board of examiners for the Foreign Service. Mr. Bovis welcome. Thank you. Well let's start off with just a couple of questions about the Middle East peace process as almost as it shifts from week to week is as far as what the public can read in the media if someone watches the media carefully and it seems it is if it is shifting sands every week is this how it really goes or is simply our perceptions of the peace process over there.

Well it does shift. However we are very encouraged by what's happened in the last few weeks. We think that there is a possibly a move of some momentum building up than we were which we might be able to get some movement towards peace in the area. What will that form take I know that's a hypothetical question until they actually say who's going to meet who where. Well. That those questions haven't been ironed out yet but we are encouraged by the fact that King Zayn has said he is willing and looks forward to prompt and direct talks with Israel. We are also encouraged by the fact the prime minister of Israel as I restated in the rather emphatic way Israel's desire to negotiate with Jordan the form that it has to take must be direct talks. There is no short cut way of finding really true peace in the area without direct talks between the parties to the conflict.

Does Mr Paris have sufficient strength in his country in the Knesset to carry forth a peace without. Losing his government. Well I think so. He certainly has the strength to explore the possibilities and perhaps arrange a way for a meeting with King Hussein. I think the important thing to bear in mind is that once this process began I think we will see a new dynamic in the area and that will all kinds of possibilities on both sides. What will that what about the new that dynamic what would that mean. Well I think the people in the area are yearning for peace on both sides. This is true in Jordan and it's certainly true in Israel. The thing is that a lot of them really don't dare hope for it and I think once the process starts then we will see growing interest in both countries and I think that will lead to all kinds of flexibility and lead to new initiatives and new proposals on both sides.

This may seem a naive question but why is the area so critical to the United States interest. Well there are several reasons. One reason of course is that so much of the oil over the world is situated there. Not that we the United States is dependent on it that oil is a matter of fact. Our dependence dependency on imported oil has dropped considerably over the last several years. But that oil is important to the industrialized world and particularly Europe. We also have commercial interests in the area which are important to us. We have cultural interests in the area. We have an affinity with the state of Israel for example because it's another Democratic state and a member of the United Nations. And many of our citizens in this country have relatives there. It's also a strategic area. It's the crossroads between Europe and Africa and Asia and because it is it's such a strategic location it is important to us.

Throughout history it's been that crossroads and throughout history there have been conflicts of varying types going back thousands of years. Are we naive to expect any sort of peace that would last any length of time given the history of the area. No I don't think that's naive. I think it's possible to work out a peace that will be lasting It doesn't mean that we will have problems in the area because there is no area of the world that's really free from problems but this conflict that is going on between. Arabs and Israel since over the last 40 years we think can be resolved and we can get to arrangements in peace arrangements between Israel and its neighbors. Well you'd think that would happen. You're saying that direct talks between the parties no United States role in those talks. No Soviet role.

Well we certainly envisage a U.S. role. As a matter of fact we've been actively involved in trying to arrange peace talks. Our role is mainly as a facilitator a mediator. That is we try to get the parties together. We try to work out agreements between the two when they reach impasses. We are in a position to suggest reaching mechanisms of bridging proposals to help get over the gap or narrow the gap between the two. As for the Soviets it's hard to imagine what constructive role they could play in the area at this time. Particularly since they don't have relations with Israel and it's hard to imagine that the Israelis will accept them in a peace process in the absence of diplomatic relations. But they are supposedly even this week discussing that possibility of a stab at re-establishing diplomatic relations. At least the Press reported.

I have not seen that they actually engaged in discussions I know that there has been some expressions of interest on both sides. Whether that will bear or come to fruition I really don't know. What difference will that really make if they reestablish relations. Well it depends on the circumstances in which the relations are re-established. It could be very important for Israel for example if it means that the Soviets are willing to let Jews out of the Soviet Union. As you know immigration Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union has blocked been blocked for a number of years and that would be a very important consideration for Israel. What's in it for the Soviets. Well I think the Soviets would like to find a way into the area and if they think that this could get them some role in the peace process this may or may be an attraction

for them. Let's shift gears just a little bit and talk about your present role with the foreign service. What is it. Well I was with the secretary's policy planning staff for two and a half years and I've just now gone over for the last three or four months to work with the board of examiners that is we are looking for new candidates for the Foreign Service. As you know we have an annual examination the written examination which is given in December. Those candidates who succeed in the written examination are then given an oral examination in the spring. And out of all those who are successful we take about two hundred a year and we take them from all around the country and I'm here to try to interest students at the University of South Carolina and this. What is the total number of applicants at the beginning of the process roughly.

Well it's quite high. I don't want to over emphasize that we did have last years something like twenty eight thousand who applied for it. We had about 20000 take the exam and the written exam is quite rigorous We had a going about thirty six hundred to pass the written exam. But a well-prepared college student could expect to do well in it I think. And what type of person are you looking for. Op those 200 people who will begin careers for the Foreign Service looking for all types in the foreign service we need political officers so that means we need people who are expert in international relations and history and political science. We need economic officers so that means that we're looking for people who have a good grounding in economics. We are looking for administrative officers. Therefore if you have a good background in business administration that helps the consular officers law is a good background for that or

business administration. We're looking for information officers. And here you might find that people who have majored in journalism. Or English literature and the arts make good candidates there. You have to have fluency in another language is not a requirement. It is a requirement for advancement in service. We don't require that you have it when you come in and we can give you that ability after you come in. What about yourself you're a Florida graduate. That's right up there. How did you get from Florida to the Near and Middle East so well. That's one of those things I was interested in the foreign service I've always been in the foreign service I took the exam and thinking like everybody else that I would go to Europe. But when I came in the disk they said do we need people in the Middle East and so they trained me in Arabic and in training in Hebrew and

off I was. Been there ever since. Yes. My whole career has been in the Middle East. Well will you be going back. After all really probably next year I'm due for assignment again overseas next year and so it's quite possible that I'll go there again. So I would be looking for you. Thank you. Thanks. Our guest has been veteran foreign service officer Eugene bulbous. Next computer programs for children. He's a professor of education at the University of South Carolina. And you know this

time of year everyone has computers are being hyped in the in the press is a good Christmas present. But you know the old adage if you don't know what you're going to use it for. Don't worry about buying it. We'll be talking about programs for young children younger children. And ones that work well and maybe a little bit about ones that don't work well. Yeah because the software the programs or what you're using for you know I brought a few things with me today. These are a couple of programs that are used with young children in fact some of these you notice that one that you're holding is recommended for the four to eight age group and this one is similar with this one in fact is put out by the Weekly Reader series which is what 20 years ago used to receive little paper want and now it's through an electronic medium. These things are available and what I wanted to do is give you a chance and your viewers a chance to see what some of these things are like we have one of them I want to go to you just so it's called clowning around and what you're seeing on the screen right now is a little clown and it's asking you to make a selection by pressing the space bar.

You can move around and make one pick that person and says Do you want sound and I'll say no I will skip the directions this time I think I've learned how to play this. But what it wants us to do here is to select a category to play with and I've just done that. And this is basically the puzzle. What they're going to show us in that little section on the left hand side of the screen is kind of like a game that used to be known as concentration. They're going to show us what some figures are behind them and you can see this is developing some memory in this visual discrimination skills. They're showing us various types of sea life. And I'm hoping that you're memorizing where each of these are because as you can imagine what they're going to do after they show us where all of these are is. They're going to test this on our memory of where each one of these line is some of them are a little harder to discern or even name now that they've shown us the clown has done his little dance. And in a second they should be going off the screen. So we'll see that. There they go. And now we're asked to select them so they're going to show me so that they show me

something some form of life there on the bottom. Do you remember where that one is. I'm not sure I do on trial that's what I want. I move the clown up to level 1 and I point at the number one and it says sorry Tom or I will. How about there was number three and those three I don't know if I'm going to get every one of these and so you have about 12 I go down 12 and point and I missed that one. And it's keeping track at the end of this little session here and it's going to tell me how many of them I got right. How many I got wrong an improvement this is just one level. Now what age range for this again. This was recommended for ages four to eight there and it would depend on the particular child whether one would be ready for this. Also I need to point out that we can't do justice to something like this in a small segment. These programs are multi level in other words they can start at one level. They come with materials inside in fact this one as you can see comes a little advertisement and then how to Lowe's it load it how to use it how to learn from.

So the parent purchasing one of these has some form of a guide as to what they can do with this someone struggles most of these programs from what I've written it works best when the parent works with the child rather than the child being plopped down in front of this and thinking the child can walk their way through and maybe an older child who's familiar with computers can do that. Yeah. I'm sure there comes a point where the child can deal with this independently but certainly at the beginning it's an activity that should be shared not only between the parent and child but the parent the teacher. If a lot of these things exist in the store and frankly they're fairly expensive they'll run from 25 to $50 I believe this package that I'm showing you cost in the 35 to 40 dollar range. They have a short life the student the child is going to get tired of using it so my recommendation would be for the parent to speak to the teacher and not wait maybe a child doesn't need memory skills such as this and the teacher may realize that this child needs some math practice and they might lead the teacher. I'm sure in the coming years it's going to be able to point the parent to resources that exist in the specific area that the

child has deficiencies in where the child getting used to a program like this. There are graphics obvious and make it interesting and they're learning a lot a lot about the computer. It's not related the program the how the keyboard works where the letters are on the keyboard at the return key does various things or even how to load a disk with supervision. They're devoted to their developing a mindset which is getting them used to using the machine. Keeping them from being afraid of it. One of things that I notice in my job training teachers and using computers with students is students show no reluctance to the computer. It's not a threat to them. They don't worry about it the student sits at the computer and they work away at it. An adult usually pulls their hand back a little and is very afraid of doing things and programs such as this and I'd venture to say that some of the arcades have something to do with keeping children familiar with electronic devices. Well in one sense they're in command the child is in command of this complicated that. That brings up a really good point some of the software controls the child. Some of the software allows a

child to control it that maybe the thing that the parent ought to look for the ideal software the ideal computer programs are the ones that are going to grow with the child. One of my criticisms of a program such as the one I've demonstrated is that it is not going to grow the child the child is going to outgrow it at some point. And in a sense the program controls the child it makes them go through the paces. There are many other software packages that are much more open ended and these packages not only do they grow with a child that only can be used with 5 or 6 year olds but up to 18 and 19 year olds. But they also allow the child to control the computer. How can you make those decisions because for we're using an Apple computer now but other computer brands are so much software available. Once you start looking for young children and the bank's expense factor comes in also. Mike if I was going to give a bottom line I would say go to the school. If your child is attending or going to attend and find out what computers are predominantly used in the classroom. That way whatever you've purchased is also likely to be used in the classroom as well.

Coincidentally Apple is used in a roughly 50 percent of the schools in South Carolina so that's a likely one but there are many school districts that use other brands the RadioShack brand the Commodore brand and it would behoove the parents to go to a particular school talk to the teacher and find out about what computers mean used. You brought another software package here. Now let me give you an example of one of the things that I would call an open ended software package. This particular program is called Logo to load it into the computer by the way it's really as simple as putting it in and turning on and off the computer letting it in from there on out. The software should explain itself. It's going to take about 40 seconds to load up so I'll give you time to explain what logo is. That's a separate computer programming language. Yeah logo is actually a language devised specifically to use with children in fact one of the researchers at the University of South Carolina Katherine and I hope which is worked in a program teaching logo to elementary

five year old kindergarten age students and seeing the difference between Logo and their cognitive development versus other types of more structured software packages and logo has been successfully used with very young children and I've used it with geometry teachers in high school and it also provides a challenge you can see on the screen here that we are now on the logo screen and logo is. Really a language of a turtle and what you're seeing on the screen right now is something called the turtle and children type in commands. F-D 50 stands for forward 50 so it's minimal typing. Right. Ninety is what I just typed in. And in doing this a child can basically create drawings on the screen and finish them off a teacher or parent may assign them a task of drawing a box which is what I'm trying to do right now. And the child can experiment and move the turtle through turtle steps to do that. This can become very involved by using other commands.

The child can create various types of pictures for instance. Now I'm going to shorten the command for creating a box. By actually giving it a name. Which I've just done and now that I have boxed named I can refer to it. And in just a second we can produce the other patterns and see what this one goes for us. There's the box. You can see what I'm doing there. I've drawn that box and I'm repeating it's drawing 36 times. So with a very simple command it was a very very quickly you typed in exact. The idea behind logo was to give the child the tools to explore and play and develop concepts like a child's learning there is something about geometry in a very intuitive sense that the numbers that I put up there are thirty six and ten have something to do with geometry and that I defy people to come in and look at that particular drawing and say well that's just a series of boxes that were drawn out and that's a very complex drawing that can be broken down into simple parts

that's the philosophy behind level. But what's it trying to do what's the logo language you're trying to teach children about computing. It's trying to bring children to a computer in a realistic way. That is the language is structured in the same way that the languages of computers more sophisticated computer science use is structured and it's allowing those children to explore in an environment that's based on a computer logo started physical It started with an actual mechanical turtle that sat on the ground and moved around and did these drawings on the ground and then it was abstracted to go on the TV screen. So we have just a couple minutes left we have time to look at one more a little bit. You can do have another one which is oh I guess you'd call in the game category. This one borrows from the our electronic arcades and get some practice in subtraction skills. Again this is an elementary level maybe grade 3. But it gets practice in subtraction in a very arcade oriented

style. And this is the typical loading on process. Pressed any key to play and here's what you're going to see. You see stuff on the bottom there and I change the numbers and shoot down little characters that are coming at and you guessed what's happening. Your heart pounds faster is the name you notice I practice this all afternoon and it would make a fool of myself. As they come down at you further if it takes you a while to do that. Eventually they're going to hit you. If I sit here and shoot them this is the time drill by the way. And you just get a certain number of questions. Well our interviews of sort of the time Drew I think it's going to follow up right at this point yes. OK. But those are just a few programs and there are so many that are available little literally dozens or hundreds of years out there definitely from the very simple to the very complex. I guess we'll

do this again to get into some more of the programs but the basic points again very quickly are going to shopping for children shopping for my number one point of view speak to the parent speak have a parent speak to the teacher and get advice from that point of view that would. Be it. Thanks. Our thanks to Dr. Ed Dickey Professor of Education University of South Carolina next a look at assuming our biomedical ethics in Spartanburg. While medical ethics incorporate some of the toughest ethical dilemmas of our time and our lives for newborns who care is kept alive by extraordinary means at great expense to the crisis of the elderly and the terminally ill who are sustained by technical

means. When does society decide those incredible machines be turned off. Who makes that decision. And this is simply one ethical area. There are many others. We have to guess to talk with us about an upcoming seminar on biomedical ethics to be held at Converse College in Spartanburg. Dawn Randall and Susan Somers both are students at converse. And if I have this right. Let's see. Both of you are involved with probe and probe is the series of seminars at Cobbers. Talk a little bit about probing about why you picked biomedical ethics. Well probe is a series of lectures that is held every other year and is sponsored by mortar board which is a national senior Honor Society. We choose our topic in the in the off year that we don't get that we do not sponsor the seminars. Therefore last last year's group of more board members chose the

subject and now we are presenting presenting it this year in probe. We invite national renowned speakers to come in and give our lectures and we usually choose a an issue of common interest and the current issue is who inform the community in the college. Certainly biomedical ethics is complicated. It's a tough one that if someone saw where they are now at some point in their lives it might affect them. And as we go further along in our society it's affecting more and more people. What about this from your work with preparing this edition of pro. How has it affected you. You're thinking on its rise a lot of questions in my mind. I really didn't think I'd have to deal with as I say that 75 percent of all people now will be dealing with it saying your mother could go in the hospital you might have to put her in some kind of intensive care. You

may be having wanting to have a child and not able to conceive it so there are so many issues. And if you're not aware of them it's hard to really make decisions about them even if you are aware of the decisions don't necessarily come easy that's true. It's five of the different ethical question she's involved in. But it's certainly a lot easier to make decisions when you are aware of what the different issues are. So what about the sort of people coming in for the seminar. Well we have Dr. Callahan Dr. Dan Daniel Callahan who is the co-founder and director of The Hastings Center in New York. He will be our king keynote speaker on Wednesday evening. Tomorrow evening at 8:00 o'clock I converse and then we'll have a panel. Thursday evening at 8:00 and the panel will consist of Dr. Larry Churchill who is from University of North Carolina Dr. killer and Dr. Charles Fitz and both of them are from the Medical University of South Carolina.

What response have you had from students of four. Well you know how it is to get students to respond to some things but it's certainly an issue of interest to students and I'm sure we'll have a large turnout we've also contacted the community censuses for not just our college community but the community at large. And we've had a lot of responses from churches and from pastors of churches and doctors in different Zick civic organizations. So it's starting tomorrow night. Our thanks to both of you for coming down to us from here to here from Spartanburg. I hope you have a good ride back and good luck with pro this year. I thanks to Dawn Brundle and Susan Somers both at Converse College tomorrow and Carolina Journal State Attorney General Travis Medline will be the guest live at 7:30 the phone lines will be open your calls your comments your questions. That's Travis bad luck tomorrow at 7:30. Join us. I want you.