George D. Stoddard

The Long Step from Research to Practice

Practice in any profession is forever with us. Research in any field, including the field of research, is the delicate flower. It is no classified secret that high authority in Washington, faced with a demand for economies, put a low value on brains and originality-on pioneering in research. Basic research in Mr. Wilsons view was something for the birds. But none of us should feel complacent. In the profession of education to which we all belong the lag between research findings and their general acceptance is often one of decades. It may average out, according to Paul Mort, at 50 years. My purpose this evening is not to deplore this situation, and certainly not to defend it. Rather I will try to bring out the underlying factors. Granting some overlap, I have managed to identify ten sets of difficulties and, to balance the equation, some possible remedies. Let me say at once that I do not hold that research outcomes should finally determine our scale of values. Ten thousand persons may prefer the peony to the pansy without diminishing the strength of the reverse preference. At the same time, facts, theories, and statistical inferences do affect our choices. They have a way of restructuring value systems. If you believe (as many people do not) there are nasty germs in stagnant water, you will hesitate to drink it and you will pay for water purification. If you abhor certain types of mosquitoes because of what research has revealed, you will act accordingly. If you dislike illiteracy, you will favor schools. No, that is not a non sequitur. Four thousand years of history confirm the correlation between ignorance and a lack of formal instruction. Research simply says: If A, then B. However, values get associated with means as well as with the ends sought. In fact, when this does not happen we can be thrown into confusion and hypocrisy. Intuitively we deduce morality from practice. The Faubus mob in Little Rock has not only contempt for Negroes; it has contempt for human rights as an abstract

State-wide Planning for Postwar Educational Needs:

I N PREPARATION for this report, I asked the commissioners or superintendants of public instruction of all the states to write me briefly concerning their postwar plans in higher education. Replies received from about threefourths of the school executives indicate that such programs are, for the most part, the responsibility of institutions or boards at the higher levels. In some cases, an all-state commission appointed by the governor was found to be engaged in planning in relation to special problems; more rarely, the whole of public and private education, from elementary school to university,