Making Education Relevant to Vital Social Change: The Higher Learning and Our National Destiny.

By-Cheek, James E, Making Education Relevant to Vital Social Change: The Higher Learning and Our National Destiny. Howard 0111/.1 Washington, D.C. Pub Date 17 Jul 69 Note-17R; Paper presented at Conference on American Education, Washington, 0,C July 17, 1969 EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$0,95 Descriptors-*Educational Obiectives, *Higher Education, Institutional Role, Leadership Responsibility, *Relevance (Education), *Social Change, Social Values, *Student Opnion It now seems clear that the decade of the seventies will be a new era of vital social change during which the US will be forced to come to grips with the issues of war, poverty, and racism. Today's student unrest already indicates that a new order is emerging Moderates seek change through reform and militants seek it through revolution, but both groups embrace the ideology of relevance and want colleges and universities to respond more aggressively to current social issues. If the demand for relevance in education is a demand for responsiveness, then institutions of higher learning must change from within and assume a leadership role, boldly asserting themselves as catalysts to set new directions, clarify ;mai issues, develop new knowledge, and devise new techniques to transform disorder into order. Higher education in the US may be characterized today as the "disaster area" of the social order. To remove this image and to make the institutional structure more appropriate for life during and after the seventies, educators could change the process of determining who has access to higher learning, renew the learning environment, remove barriers between campus and community, and reevaluate the whole apparatus of courses, grades, and credit hours. Modern students will take over the post-modern US one day, not by revolution but by inheritance, and the impact of higher education upon society today will determlne the character of the society that is turned over to them. (WM)