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86 Carrol l V. Hess racial reconciliation ; elimination of poverty ; modernization of laws and public codes; improving the quality of the environment ; main tenance of public order under newer structural and social systems and conditions ; adequate health services ; better transportation and com munication ; and, finally, the human desire for beauty, dignity, and well-being. Adequate progress toward these goals can come only from citizens whose understanding is in perspective with the times. Science and education must be as uniquely organized for the purposes of social innovation as they had to be for technological innovation. Our land-grant universities were developed during a period in hi� tory that demanded expansion and application of the biological and physical sciences. The agricultural and forestry colleges, with their experiment stations and cooperative extension services, were among the great innovations in American social and economic history. This system of research and education through the invention and intro duction of new technology was an important instrument in our de veloping nation. The very technologies that freed us-or many of us from hunger and want has helped create major social issues and con flicts. Thus we must consciously seek the proper place in agricultural and natural resources curricula for the social disciplines to contribute to an understanding and of the social issues arising as a kind of tech nological backlash. Technology has thus been a mixed blessing, by no means as yet subjected to effective social control. Furthermore, there have been few if any periods in which our social structures have been more critically challenged for their internal inconsistencies and inequities. Thus, the social sciences are directly charged with the study of a society that is today in turmoil. Social sciences, as used here, refers to economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, geography, and psychology . The social sciences focus on man's behavior and the ways in which he interacts with his fellowmen through social, economic and political institutions to implement his aspirations and values. Thus it is to the social sciences that man must tum if he is to assert his dominance over his technology and face constructively the manifold social issues of our time. Without reasoned and objective approaches to these matters, we can rely only on expedience and luck to avoid chaos. The Committee recognized that agricultural and forestry colleges are properly concerned with professional education. At the same time, the student must live his professional and personal life in an ex plosive world with its unresolved issues. While education in the social sciences cannot always yield immediately applicable social knowledge,
SO C I A L SC I EN CES 87 it is vital to alert students to the man-created conditions that will persistently impinge upon the practice of their professions and their lives in the community. Notable recent improvements in secondary school education have occurred in mathematics and biological and physical sciences, de velopments that have not been matched in the social sciences and humanities. Thus colleges and universities have accordingly been faced with the increased burden of sensitizing students in these dis ciplines to their changing social milieu and assisting them in inter preting it. Although modem society has profited from the advances that have been made in the physical and biological sciences, it has become in creasingly difficult to adjust old institutions or to establish new ones that take full advantage of the new technology. The pressures created by our burgeoning populations have placed special emphasis on land use conflicts and on the need for increased understanding of the complex socioeconomic culture in which we live. Modem facilities and students alike are concerned about an educational process that produces graduates filled to the mortar borad with"scientific" facts, but who fail to understand the nature of man and of the institutions man creates in his attempt to optimize his individual and societal goals. There is growing awareness that an agricultural and forestry "pro fessional" is more than a "technologist." It is widely recognized that he must be an educated man who can adapt rapidly to changes in both technology and social goals and that to meet this challenge he needs a more liberal type of education than has traditionally char acterized agricultural and forestry education programs. One response to this need is the growth of two-year programs that produce tech nicians who free the professional to concentrate on decision-making, policy formulation, and public planning. The variety of subject matter and career opportunity in agriculture and natural resources encourages some flexibility in developing social science training for agricultural students. The social science contribu tions to the production-technology or business options, for example, may be very much applied in nature, serving an "instrumentation" function. On the other hand, it may be wiser to use social science courses to create a philosophical background that will help students appreciate both the biological science teachings and the application of them in the service of humanity. Likewise, in the natural resources area there are special needs.
88 Carrol l V. Hess "People problems" involving political action, aesthetics, use pref erences, and qualitative judgment have replaced the old questions of sustained yield, habitat, manipulation, and methods of inventory. This transition is especially evident in outdoor recreation, a newly emerging field of resource management. As a result, educators in re source management are calling for greater social science input to their undergraduate programs. In short, today's graduate of agricultural and natural resources management programs works largely with complex problems re quiring a broad interdisciplinary background for their solution. He must be able to communicate with, and understand, something of the methods of engineers, planners, and social scientists who contrib ute to the analysis and solution of his problem. The undergraduate in agriculture or natural resources must have increased exposure to key subject areas in social science if he is to help these teams of specialists achieve their full potential. R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S The Committee emphasized the need for flexibility that would allow a student to add new disciplines, including the social sciences, in line with the increasing maturity of these students in professional colleges. Social science courses taken early in the bachelor's program expose the student to a new fund of knowledge as to how social scientists perceive the world, as well as sensitizing him to a wider range of vo cations and life styles. Flexibility also permits the student to fashion a program compatible with his specific professional needs and goals. The Committee specifically recommended that undergraduates in agriculture and natural resources devote 1 5 to 20 percent of the cur riculum to the social sciences, that the courses extend in depth in at least two of the six social science disciplines, and that the general education experience in the social sciences be similar for all profes sional specializations. In most instances, the recommended 1 5-20 percent allocation to the social sciences represents a significant increase, but one that is justified because of the greater progress made at the high school level in the biological and physical sciences than in the social sciences. Little hope exists there for any change in emphasis on the social sci ences, thus leaving it up to the colleges to meet the social science needs.
SO CIAL SCI E N C ES 89 The Committee felt that today's baccalaureate candidates in profes sional schools should emphasize more social science if they are to be prepared for the world in which they must practice. The inevitable reduction in professional courses that occurs seems justified on grounds that the present level of professional over-specialization at the undergraduate level has been won at the cost of sacrificing a solid general education, basic-science exposure. The Committee argued against excessive open electives because of the tendency for students to utilize those within their major. Thus, a broadened program that encourages use of previous free elective credits outside the major seemed essential ; still a maximum of 3Q-36 percent of total credits in the major was recommended. The Committee went still further and suggested specific courses in applied social sciences for certain ''vocational or job-oriented" pro grams-for production-technology options, for business and industry options, for education-public administration, for graduate school preparation. Suggested courses were group dynamics, policy formu lation, political and economic development, business law, personnel management, developmental psychology, social and cultural change. The report also includes a descriptive summary of how each of the six social science disciplines relates to and can contribute to the undergraduate education of students in agriculture and natural re sources. Finally, the Committee encouraged communication among faculty members in agriculture and natural resources with their colleagues in the social sciences and throughout the university to effect the best possible combination of existing, restructured or new courses in the social sciences.
6 The Junior College E R N EST TA R O N E There seems to be a very healthy interest in the junior college vis-a vis its relationship to and meaning for agricultural education. I and other junior college people have great concern for the relationship of our curriculum with the four-year institutions. Most junior college in structors are working under less than ideal conditions in trying to re late to the four-year institutions, and junior college people very much want cooperation from the four-year colleges in order that the best possible job may be done in the interest of the students. There is a need for the four-year institutions to recognize the junior college, its phj.losophy, the job it is trying to do, and how it relates to the four year programs. The junior college has diverse functions-the transfer function, the terminal (occupational) function, and the counseling function, the last being considerably better developed than in most other types of institutions because of the variety of students it tries to serve and the needs that they have. There is much misunderstanding of the junior college movement, which leads to a number of "myths. " This is evident in the names sometimes given to the junior college-"high school with ash trays," 90
