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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 is concerned with the influence of the policy of local education authorities upon educational attainment. We suggest that the influence of local policy has been neglected in the sociology of education and hypothesize that policy variables are likely to be of major importance as determinants of attainment. Evidence drawn from correlations of policy, provision and social-class variables with each other and with various measures of attainment tends to validate this suggestion, and indicates that two `policy- models' of local authority activity may be appropriate: viz, the elite-orientated authority model, in which resources are differentially concentrated on a sponsored elite with consequent high attainment of this elite; and the egalitarian authority model where resources are more evenly spread throughout the school system with consequent `inferior' attainment of an elitist kind, but where the evidence suggests there is higher overall attainment of the total school system product. It would also appear that the determinant of the policy set pursued by an LEA. is the social class background of the area it covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the practical utility of measures of college environments. It aims to review how environmental measures have been used and suggests how environmental measures could be made more useful. The questions that researchers hear suggest the scope of purposes that environmental measures are asked to serve. These purposes may be grouped into several major categories of decisions for which environmental information may be useful. These include decisions among institutions, decisions within institutions, decisions concerning people, and decisions concerning nonpersonal resources.

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]

This article views on the research about the sociology of education. In general, the studies included were restricted to actual research reports centrally concerned with the school and its processes and confined primarily to the American society. Such reviews are valuable, but unless some original research was part of the review, it was not included. The review in this article has attempted to accomplish two objectives. First, to provide the reader an acquaintance with the current status of research in selected areas of the sociology of education. Second, to indicate the relative importance of research findings in these areas as they may contribute to a deeper understanding of the external and internal dynamics of the institution of education.

The author of this article discusses a problem of synthesis, in how to integrate school and society. In any historical period, the curriculum and the social organization of the school system must be such that the knowledge and the skills learned in school, and the attitudes acquired by the pupils in the course of their learning shall enable as many of those pupils as possible to participate effectively in the political, social, economic, and cultural life of the society in which they will grow up as adults.

The article discusses living as an educational process and the role of education in enhancing the zest of living of life. It informs that it was found that the theory was as completely lacking as was the practical teaching for the cultural educational ideal. Thus cultural educational theory had no practice built upon it. And the sporting or gaming practice of life had no theoretical foundations. What seemed to be wanted therefore was a superstructure of true cultural practice for existing cultural theory and a foundational theory for the game-view of human life. It was maintained that two ways of looking at our life were clearly visible, life could be for education on the one hand, or education on the other could be merely to enhance healthy zestful experience and make life more sensitively and sensually intense. The latter aspect was at least a hundred or more times as popular as the former and in all probability would remain throughout human history as the more popular appeal, it needed therefore to have an ideal provided for its practice.

The article explores the contemporary system of teacher preparation and development in the U.S. The author asserts that current teacher education condition is close to the disequilibrium that professional educators can no longer afford to deny that the unusual amount of teacher-role strain signifies a degree of individual and societal disequilibrium. Further, the author characterizes the kind of education program needed in contemporary society as one that would focus on a basic core of conceptual elements.

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.