Social-Civic Orientation

Abstract

T HE area of study designated as social-civic in the curriculum of the General College, University of Minnesota, consists of two core courses-Current History and Contemporary Society-and a number of contributing courses whose function is to explore further the avenues of social, political, and economic insight exposed by the core courses. Its evolution as one of the four basic areas to deal with life relationships has differed somewhat from that of the other curricular divisions, since the College has had, from the beginning, a relatively large number of subject-matter courses in the social sciences. Before the curricular revisions which brought into being the four orientation areas in I938, sixteen separate courses in the social sciences, grouped into four comprehensive areas for examination purposes, were offered students in the General College. One of the significant effects of this dispersion under the earlier setup, as discovered in a study made by Miss Ylvisaker, co-ordinator in the area, and Mr. Pace, evaluator, was that students were failing to appreciate or understand the interrelationships among economic, political, and social problems; that is, the fundamentally associational nature of modern society.' That this failure to make logical connections was not characteristic of General College students alone, or of college students in general, but was also marked among young adults who had attended the University of Minnesota before the existence of the General College, was shown in the detailed study made of 950 former students of the University.2 In these studies student and young adult alike showed markedly inconsistent attitudes toward fundamentally related social issues. They reacted to social or political or economic problems as specific rather than interrelated problems. Toward some issues their attitudes were predominantly liberal; toward others, strongly conservative. They disapproved, for example, of chiseling in business, yet objected to ministers who preached about it and to government's attempts to regulate it. They approved of consumers' attempts to better their lot and of government's