Agriculture and the Undergraduate (1992) / Chapter Skim
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27 The Social and Ethical Context of Agriculture: Is It There and Can We Teach It?
27 The Social and Ethical Context of Agriculture: Is It There and Can We Teach It?
Pages 237-244
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From page 237... ...
Values summarize the accumulated folk wisdom by which a society organizes and disciplines itself. And values are the precious reminders that individuals obey to bring order and meaning into their personal lives.
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From page 238... ...
Neither families nor communities feel as strongly about inculcating a given set of norms in their young as was the case in more interdependent communities generations ago. As these Uundernormed" students approach the universities or colleges of their choice, they are subject to the posture of modern science that tries to ignore or avoid dealing with social or ethical norms as much as possible.
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From page 239... ...
1 learned more about American social and ethical norms during 2 years of postgraduate study at London University than at any other time in my life (but I started from the basis of a strong liberal arts undergraduate education) Many of the faculty in schools of agriculture had a single response to the Big Green issue that was a non sequitur to the rest of society.
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From page 240... ...
Would they temper the science-only approach7 How arrogant might their science-only approach be7 Would they recognize the importance of public perception and trust and know what they are based on7 Would they be able to identify and assess countervailing social and ethical concerns even when one side appeared to have all the social and ethical weight in its favors Could they make decisions on the basis of both science and nonscience7 AS another example, how would our students deal with the "circle of poison" issued Again, scientific and factual information appears to be on one side, which is pitted against social and ethical concerns on the other side, whose proponents suggest we stop the production of unregistered chemicals for export. However, even social and ethical norms can be of widely different scopes and contexts.
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From page 241... ...
What sorts of individuals fit the bill? Keith Kennedy, Jean McKelvey, Jean and Ken Robinson, Dan Sister, and Milton Barnett at Cornell University; John Axtell, Bruce McKenzie, Deborah Brown, and Don Paarlberg at Purdue University; Emerson Babb and Bob Peart at the University of Florida; and Bill Chancellor and Sylvia Lane at the University of California at Davis have done this for earlier generations.
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From page 242... ...
Some of the major aspects involve agriculture's special relationship with the natural world, the value of labor, the place of community, and the inherent value of rural life.
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From page 243... ...
Scientists responded from the perception that if the public were only adequately trained in science, they would recognize the need for these chemicals and the safety of their use. This type of logic often errs, because the scientific community fails to recognize that we are dealing with public perceptions that may or may not correspond to scientific facts and that may correspond more closely to information from sources believed to be trustworthy.
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From page 244... ...
There is no question that the social and ethical context of agriculture is one of the least understood and least taught areas of the curriculum for agricultural students. This session provided a discussion of the issues involved and provided insight into teaching about the social and ethical context of agriculture.
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