| Abstract: | It is well known that sociological investigations, as a rule, lead to findings expressed in terms of correlations. Most data available on "student activism" fall into this category (it being illegal to conduct experiments with riots as the independent variable). The dangers involved in interpreting correlations as cause-and-effect relationships are equally well known, ideologically inclined investigators with strong social and political views being particularly ill suited for such a semioracular exercise. I suspect it was his ideological preconceptions that caused Seymour M. Lipset's (see record 1971-02248-001) self-admitted failing in 1964-65 to determine correct causes of organized student protest and violent confrontationist politics; and, having read his new article (Lipset, 1970) on the same subject, I fear the same hobgoblins were at work again. As on the previous occasion, Lipset again breathes life into the disconnected fragments of correlational bones and comes up with a living animal, different from last time but of the same species, again a creature of the same old cosmic plan that he carries in his left pocket. In general, his article seems more critical of the existing social order than of unruly students, and its author gives no practical advice regarding the kind of curative and preventive action that would relieve the current social crisis and check students' behavioral excesses. There is, I submit, another way of interpreting the phenomenon of student violence and social turmoil in general--a way that indicates both the form of the required remedial treatment and the feasibility of its immediate and direct application. This approach, in a way, makes use of Voltaire's insightful observation that "Enthusiasm is not always the companion of total ignorance, it is often that of erroneous information." Specifically, I suggest that the academic community is being heavily propagandized and that many students (and faculty members) have an appallingly inadequate historical understanding of the existing social, political, and economic situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
