A FRESH LOOK AT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY OR

MILKING THE SACRED COW

A dialogue by
Natalie Rudolph and Norman Waecker

Cook College Commencement
30 May 1974

R: As the first class to graduate from Cook College, many of us are left with mixed feelings about the transition from CAES. Many were apprehensive about the consequences of these changes.

R: This College has always been a pace-setter. Initially called the College of Agriculture, it was a land grant college founded under the Morrell Act of 1865. Ten years ago, it incorporated environmental studies into its research and teaching programs. As the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science, it was able to provide basic research data, practical advice, and manpower to a state whose farms and fields were rapidly losing ground to industry and urban sprawl. As the state continues to change, this college is changing too, to keep pace with these new needs.

W: Training people to apply their understanding toward practical problems has always been the thrust of the land grant college. Is this unreasonable as an approach to education in the future?

R: NO! Because Cook, as CAES did before it, exhorts us to investigate, apply, and communicate!

W: This transition has not been easy for this class, who spent three years as students of CAES. As a matter of fact,

R: One mother received a despairing letter from her son last fall:

W: Dear Mom: I'm leaving school. I'm just not happy here. Nobody likes me. The kids don't like me, the professors don't like me, the secretaries resent me, and even the janitors hate me. I want to come home.

R: She wrote back: You can't leave school. You're needed there, You're a leader; you're important. Besides, you're the dean; you can't leave!

W: When we looked around us, we found that many of our academic programs and curricula--including our own--had been phased out. The college doubled in size over the past four years. This has led many of us to fear the depersonalization and fragmentation which is visible in larger colleges.

R: The university president's committee to study effective resource allocation in the university recommended that our animal science center be abolished and that many of our student services be centralized and provided on some other campus. This is something the students and faculty have vehemently opposed.

W: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

R: Pressure from key power figures in this state nearly put a ring through our nose as we attempted to make and enact critical decisions that would determine the future of education in this school and in this state. Elitism and parochialism among the various colleges of this university have blocked cooperation and discouraged students who want to take advantage of all the human and physical resources available within the university complex.

R: In light of all the problems arising from the transition from CAES to Cook College, why was this metamorphosis necessary?

W: A change, for a change.

R: A difference that makes a difference.

W: The problems of technology have never been problems of science alone, for science does not exist in a vacuum. We currently have the technology and skills to solve many of the problems facing this country and others. Why aren't these solutions being implemented? Why aren't they working? Because technological solutions have been proposed in a social and economic vacuum, to a society that was not prepared to adapt to a radically new lifestyle. Because legislators and economists, trying to meet their budgets, eliminated the wrong things. Because in the name of political expedience new programs have been launched and old ones aborted, before research dollars were allocate to evaluate their long-term affects.

R: It is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be one hundred percent right. Theories do not have to be right to be enormously useful. Even error has its uses.

W: Science and our social habits are out of step. The only was we can match them is to understand both. We are an inning behind in the game; we don't readjust our thinking until changes have already affected us. Society is changing, and the pace of life is accelerating. If we want to adapt to these changes, we should learn to plan more imaginatively. We should think not in terms of shuffling and recombining old systems, but designing completely new ones.

W: Cook College incorporates this idea, at least in theory. Its new programs of study, we are told, are not interdisciplinary. They are integrated. In other words, they don't just combine two traditional disciplines. Rather, they integrate a broad base of technical information with a background in the social sciences. In this way, we will not only know what kinds of solutions to propose, we will also know how to implement them.

R: The new programs in environmental planning and design, for example, include courses in design, architecture, and the plant sciences, as well as courses in administration, public policy, and social organization.

R: These are the programs that we need in order to cope with an increasingly complex society. Unfortunately, however, this need has not been recognized by those who design educational policy for this state and for this university. They seem to lack confidence in this innovative curricular structure. They have made a token investment in an educational system designed for tomorrow. But they still buy heavily into the traditional system programmed for instant obsolescence.

W: During the Restoration, science and the arts shared the same language. Today, they share the same silence. It is our business to remake that one universal language--to unite science and art in a common understanding.

R: This is a school dedicated to studying man and his environment. If we are all to be united under a common theme, we need a consistent approach.

W: The types of courses that this college develops, the teaching and research personnel that it attracts, and its administrative direction, are all critical for maintaining the validity and effectiveness of Cook College. Now that the groundwork has been laid, it is critical that it be followed up with sound decisions. Instructional programs must not only deal with the known, but must also make provisions for dealing with the unknown, the unexpected. They must teach not only data, but also new ways to manipulate it. They must teach when to discard old ideas, and how to replace them. The key to adaptability is making both consistent and successful choices.

R: The technology of tomorrow requires individuals who can make critical judgments, who can weave their way through novel environments, and who are quick to spot new relationships in the rapidly changing reality.

W: In other words, another school of science or another school of liberal arts would just be a living anachronism. We need a new type of curriculum altogether. For example, we need a curriculum that looks at both environment and pollution, along with law.

R: Should we allow industry to continue to defy environmental control legislation, or should we demand clean industry?

W: We need to understand medicine and genetics, as well as the psychology of human social systems.

R: Should we convince people to limit the size of their families?

W: We need more data about agricultural science, and also about economic and political realities.

R: Are people starving because there is no food, or because of the politics of supply and demand?

W: Let's study engineering and technology, as well as people's adaptability to changing lifestyles.

R: Should technology serve man, or rule him? For example, what happens when the electricity fails?

W: The sciences and the humanities are two complementary approaches to the problems of man and society. Both are needed together to develop an approach that is meaningful, practicable, and ethically sound.

R: Science is the search for order, and art is the search for beauty. One who sees beauty in order can be both scientist and artist.

W: Here we are, for example: two students with different interests, different philosophies, different backgrounds--different genders--but with a common goal: concern for Cook College as a reflection of the needs of a changing society. We need an ethic which is moral and which works. We can compromise on practical policies, but not on morals.

R: We now have the technology to solve many of the problems facing man and society, but it has to be fit into a societal framework. We know what to do with our wastes so that they won't poison our rivers and pollute our atmosphere.

W: We know how to produce enough food to feed every person alive on this planet.

R: We know how to prevent many serious diseases that still kill thousands of people each year.

W: We know how to limit our population so that it will grow in tandem with our abilities to support it.

R: We also know how to develop strains of pathogenic microorganisms which are capable of wiping out an entire community in a matter of days.

W: We know how to make an atomic bomb that will kill millions of people with the push of one button.

R: The same knowledge and understanding can be applied to peace or to war...

W: ...to the betterment of a few men, or to the betterment of mankind.

R+W: Which will it be? Now, that's our decision.
            Thank you.