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This article comments on the position papers in the June 1967 issue of Rural Sociology. The author asserts that the papers are a mark of growing maturity of the rural sociology profession. It took years before the state universities and colleges assumed the dominant role of that they have achieved in the development of rural sociology. Contributions of the early sociologists to the applied field are presented to emphasize their historical value.

This paper attempts to show that the myth of the primal horde is of use in that: (1) It helps to account for behavior that is observable at formal meetings, (2) sheds some light on the earlier socialization process and (3) can give some insight into the operation of wider social groupings. This obviously is a formidable task, beyond the scope of any one paper. The author discusses the university seminar of the formal kind where there is a chairman and sometimes a vote of thanks. He hope to show that the myth of the primal horde not merely explains what goes on but can even be said to describe to some extent behavior at such meetings. There is also an attempt to show how the ideas first used in the context of the university seminar can be applied to formal settings that are apparently very different namely those of the military parade and the religious service. Formal behavior, according to the view expressed here, owes its significance to the triumph it celebrates. It must therefore be essentially unstable for where the triumph is too complete there will the need for defensive morality be dissipated.

The article offers the author's insights concerning personnel management abroad. The author explores the concept of cross-cultural approach of anthropologists and theory of communication developed by Bell Telephone Co. He states that cross-cultural approach has been applied in various fields including sociology, education, and literature. He says that the original papers and books on communication theory are strictly for the people having mathematical bent. Furthermore, the author associates the cross-cultural approach and communication theory in explaining personnel management in terms of their use in the interpretation and communication of beliefs on personnel problems.

One of the sociologists standard procedures is to introduce controls for background or so-called "demographic" variables. When one finds a relationship between two attitudes or perhaps an attitude and some type of behavior, he will often control for factors such as age race, sex, education, religion, or occupation of father. Controls may be introduced more or less routinely as though the rationale for their use were clearly understood or obviously apparent. The purpose of this article is to examine the nature of this rationale. Few sociologists admit to a direct theoretical interest in "demographic" variables per se. Usually, if not always, a background factor such as sex, religious denomination, occupation of father, or type of home community is employed merely as a convenient indicator of some other variable which may be very imprecisely defined. The rationale in comparing males and females, whites and Negroes, or Protestants and Catholics is usually that each of the categories will, on the avenge, have been exposed to different socialization experiences of one kind or another.

A study of families with children attending special summer schools for agricultural migrants during 1962 and 1963, as well as previously published data, show that families enter migratory farm labor to improve the family income through employment of the children. The parents' low evaluation of formal education contributes to their willingness to engage in this work, The consequence for the children is severe educational retardation, which is supported indirectly by farmers who have integrated migratory families into their operations and by laws dealing with farm labor. The factors leading to youth employment in agriculture are similar to throe that led to youth employment in industry at an earlier period. The short-run educational outlook for migratory children is bleak, but long-run prospects are more hopeful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the fall term of 1953-54, the Departments of Agricultural Education and Rural Sociology at North Carolina State College began a cooperative program of working with student teachers in the field. The purposes of this article are to describe, to evaluate briefly, to indicate problems encountered and the way they were handled, and to point up plans for future developments in this cooperative programs. The study has found that systematic study of the various phases of the community is essential for the student teacher.

Nineteen pairs of rural neighborhoods were matched and compared on their acceptance of 30 school practices, an index of 25 farming practices, and 4 elements of organizational participation. In each pair, a neighborhood homogeneous in its ethnic and religious composition was matched with a neighborhood that was heterogeneous in its ethnic and religious composition. Ten farm families in each neighborhood were randomly selected, and one of the heads in each family personally interviewed by a trained interviewer. Five male heads and five female heads in each neighborhood were interviewed. The neighborhood was considered the unit of analysis, and the mean score of the ten interviewees was designated as the acceptance value for each neighborhood. Heterogeneous neighborhoods were found consistently more favorable toward a majority of the educational practices and indices. Statistically significant differences in favor of heterogeneous neighborhoods were found on educational goals, aspirations and attainments, and on the index of adoption of farming practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lag in the development of rural sociology in Australia is analyzed in terms of Australia's history, geographical location, and class structure. There are indications that the time is ripe for a more extensive development of sociology and progressive education in Australia. By means of comparing Australia and the United States, the trend for a sociology adapted to Australia is charted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses issues related to science education in a changing society. The article mentions three promising trends basic for the effective science education in the 1970s: individualized instruction; interdisciplinary programs; and an increasing emphasis on the social implications of science. The author recommends to develop a continuum in the process of curriculum development which include: analysis of student need and interests; formulation of instructional objectives; screening of instructional objectives to detect if they are consistent with an operational philosophy of education and modern learning theory; selection of major instructional objectives that are consistent in their relationship to each other; and development and selection of instructional materials.

The article describes the seventeenth century historical setting as giving rise to modern scientific epistemology and suggests some implications of interest to science teachers. The author discusses the conflict between the scientific revolution and an institution which relied upon deductive logic and Aristotelian premises proved to be most dramatic. The rise of bureaucratic governments interested in extending the empire of control, colonies, commercial competition, and defense led to the conception of a policy based upon the reason of the state.

Differences between residential institutions may be greater than existing theory on the subject would have one to believe. The study describes the development of a questionnaire to assess the ways boys in approved schools perceive their social environment. Considerable differences were found between schools and it is concluded that approved school training is not homogeneous form of treatment. The differences could be explained by a number of factors. First, the questions could have been answered differently if schools had differed in the percentage of boys faking good or faking bad. A second source of spurious variation could have been tendency for some boys to agree with any statement favorable or unfavorable. A third source of variation may have resulted from halo effect. Thus while the act of faking good or faking bad would have involved a deliberate effort on the part of the respondent, it is also possible for a respondent to genuinely believe that all is right, or alternatively everything is wrong, with his surroundings. There is an evidence of large differences in the way approved schools are perceived and have produced a questionnaire for measuring these differences. This or similar questionnaires may play a useful part in the increasingly important field of cross-institutional research.

This article discusses current student discontent in terms of the "politics of the knowable," the possible social effects of a view of reality. The author argues that the current revolt--itself but part of an age-old revolt--is bolstered by an ideology that is by no means so weak that it can be wholly disregarded--particularly in the social, as opposed to the natural, sciences. Some students feel that a university career but renders them fit for capitalist consumption, tailors them to dummydom, seduces them with an appeal to cupidity, thus endowing them with the status of a kind of organization courtesan--a rich, kept amenity of the status quo. The present system is felt to be excessively vocational. Individuals are turned out to meet pre-determined ends-not to expand. These ends are resented. They are felt--to put it kindly--to be beside the Point. They are felt to be "irrelevant," of use neither to society as seen by them nor to the individual. Syllabuses are accused of being too detailed studies are accused of being too rule-bound--both are held to be symbols, not of professional rectitude, rather of social decadence. It is clear that students do not mean by "relevance" what one might have thought they would.

The article discusses teaching in an affluent society or an industrial society. The teacher-missionary is a familiar figure in every modern society, gentling masses, spreading the gospel of citizenship, making the nation in fact. This historic role of the teacher-missionary has never been subjected to systematic sociological analysis. The prestige of the teacher' office and the social and intellectual characteristics of the profession are closely bound up each with the other and with opportunities for teachers to develop the personal influence over their pupils implied in the notion of leadership, which depend on the state of relations in the wider society between generations and between family and school. The point about the affluent society is that by its influence on all these interrelated matters it presents formidable obstacles to the successful exercise of institutionalized leadership in teaching. Indeed, it precipitates a crisis in the teacher's role which is a familiar feature in the U.S. and in this country incipient and potentially severest in the secondary schools.

We describe some training designs, exercises, and procedures that nave been used in laboratory training for organizational development in schools. We have selected and developed these methods over some years to serve as components in a training strategy that focuses on teaching, legitimizing, and making normative a specific procedure for group problem-solving. A vital adjunct is training in specific skills in face-to-face communication. These processes are illustrated by descriptions of actual interventions in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Types of sensitivity training groups are distinguished according to their general orientations, practice and aims. Observations are made on the Esalen, Tavistock, and NTL approaches as well as on some sources of the different approaches and suggestions as to their advantages and disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the present situation and development in the social sciences in Great Britain. The social sciences in general, and in specifically, had a long pre-history. An intelligent observer in the year 1800 would not have had a word for sociology, and would not have known the phrase social science. Economics, and to a lesser degree politics, were firmly established in the universities before 1939. The importance of politics in the conduct of administration and the making of policy was recognized. The experience of economic depression was productive of a diffuse belief in planning which resulted in a new readiness of mind to accept social research. In 1945 this resulted in a growth of demand for social science education and information. All the social sciences grew steadily in the following years. Partly through the encouragement of UNESCO, national associations came into existence in such fields as politics and sociology. They were no novelty in economics. Social administration as a subject of study advanced with the growth of a welfare state. But the real revolution was to follow, and it still continues.

The article is aimed at the examination and untangling of the part of the web of concepts concerning interrelations between education and economic development. The article focuses on social versus private returns to education. The total social return may be larger or smaller than the sum of individual returns viewed in isolation from each other unless a correction for these interactions is made. Distinguishing between private and social returns is not the same as distinguishing between market and non-market, or real and psychic returns nor is it related to the distinction between education as consumption and as investment though these several distinctions often tend to be partially confused with each other. In each instance there are difficulties of measurement and each has time dimensions that are often neglected. Even in dealing with the consumption-investment distinction, classical theory tends to measure along time scales rather than to incorporate time into the core of the analysis. Analysis of private and social returns to education in particular, clearly necessitates exploration of process of change through time, for it is in these changes that the largest discrepancies arise between the summated individual returns and the social total viewed as an entity.

The subject matter of sociology in college education. Sociology today is a generally accepted course in under-graduate curricula, but nobody can say what the proper subject of sociology really is. Some teachers hold that this is clue to the fact that sociology as a science is so young that it has not yet succeeded in circumscribing its area, but that in due time the true meaning of sociology, will emerge out of the growing compilation of figures and facts. Others accept the situation without scepticism or challenge, taking one of the textbooks of sociology and following the guidance of its author, or discussing all problems of actual interest in the field of the social sciences which do not have any other adequate place. They aim at drawing general conclusions from a broad variety of experiences. The results obtained are extremely meager, colorless, and trivial. They have brought about the opinion prevalent among social scientists who are not sociologists, that everything sociologists have to say is a bundle of banalities and that sociology is a science which tries to prove what everyone knew before anyway.