RELIGIOUS TEACHING AND INFLUENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY∗

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each section describes a group of findings which have been reported in PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS together with titles of these works so that those who wish may go to the original source.

This column is written as a service to religious educators by the Union College Character Research Project. All abstracts are used with permission of the periodical, PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS. The abstract numbers are Volume 35. Number 1, February 1961 and Volume 35, Number 2, April 1961.     

UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN EASTERN EUROPE∗

For the future, academic management training programmes should focus upon needs expressed at institutional level without reference to national co‐ordinators; however, some national networks could and should be exploited in support of institutional objectives. A distance learning project for university managers would benefit from co‐operation with local expertise. Where this is unavailable, distance education should first concentrate upon building up a local organization for distance education so that costs will not be prohibitively high. Present funding schemes favour academic rather than administrative/management links; therefore, trainers must adopt imaginative approaches in order to create opportunities. Amongst these are management training linked to academic visits and management and administrative training tied to industrial liaison and brokerage.

     

TRAINING THE ADMINISTRATOR∗

Twenty‐two teachers were asked to give their opinion as to the ability being tested by each item in two multiple‐choice examination papers. Agreement appeared to be rather low, particularly from one of the papers, but a rigid statistical analysis was impossible because of the difficulty of deciding upon acceptable criteria. The opinions of the teachers were correlated with the facility values for the items and the coefficients obtained appear to support the Bloom taxonomy.     

SELECTING THE APPRENTICE∗

This paper reports an investigation into the attitudes of 200 mixed secondary pupils from both rural and urban schools towards programmed instruction as a teaching method and towards geography, as a subject studied in this way. Pupils in their second year in each school were divided into experimental and control groups matched on the basis of achievement, verbal and quantitative aptitude tests. The attitudes of both groups towards geography and programmed instruction were pre‐tested by questionnaire. The groups then underwent two different learning sessions for three weeks. Despite more positive attitudes shown initially by the control group to both geography and programmed learning, the experimental group later performed better and showed more favourable attitudes towards map reading than those taught by conventional texts, this being even more so for boys. Reasons for the results and certain features of the study are discussed.     

THE GARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE CHURCHES∗

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each section describes a group of findings which have been reported in PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS together with titles of these works so that those who wish may go to the original source.

This column is written as a service to religious educators by the Union College Character Research Project. All abstracts are used with permission of the periodical, PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS. The abstract numbers are Volume 35. Number 4, August 1961.     

A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 1915‐1958

The subject of this paper is the evolution of the Theobgical Faculty in Pavia from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 18th Century. At the down of the Modem Age, the Medieval educational model underwent a deep crisis, mainly for extemal reasons. The educational model promoted by the University, based on open access and ment, no longer fulfilled the expectations of an increasingly closed society, jealous of its privileges. At the same time, internally coherent educational programmes were offered by the schools and colleges of the new religions orders, which were both rigorous in moral education and open to the new cultural orientations of Humanism and the Renaissance. As a conseequence, the University lost its central place to become an element within a complex System of educational institutions. It was only during the last decades of the 18th Century, under Austrian rule, that the University regained its central role: with the closing of the religious schools, the University became the only institution allowed to grant legal degrees.     

DO UNIVERSITIES HELP THE ECONOMY? THE CASE OF THE DEMOCRITUS UNIVERSITY OF THRACE

This article analyses the relationship between a dispersed‐campus regional university in Greece, the Democritus University of Thrace, and the local economy. The author is led to conclude that little connection or balance exists between the financial consequences of the operation of the university and regional development. The presence of the university has increased consumption without having created new jobs or research areas linked to the social structure or to the economic needs of the region.

     

THE LYCEUM MOVEMENT IN AMERICAN EDUCATION, 1826–1845

One of the earliest American reeducation programs designed for the transformation of political attitudes and the inculcation of American democratic ideals among Germans came into being shortly before the end of the Second World War. Initiated by the Special Projects Division of the War Department in 1944, this top secret experiment in reeducation brought together a group of university professors, including philosopher Thomas Vernon Smith from the University of Chicago, at selected prisoner‐of‐war camps in Rhode Island and Virginia. Consistent with his faculty colleagues. Smith drew heavily from the liberal arts tradition and classical humanism to teach his German charges about the plausibility of the “democratic way of life. “ The relatively brief initial foray by Smith into the reeducation of Germans under captivity revealed American aspirations and democratic ideals for the new German citizen of the post war era, elements of which subsequently reappeared in the activities of American Military Government on German soil. Not the least significant in this endeavor was the formation of a German citizenry supportive of American interests, a foundational goal of the Special Projects combining reform idealism with “Realpolitik”.