A Foggy View from Olympus

Abstract

In the United States in 1957 a fresh intellectual excitement emerged within the field of educational administration; high hopes were held for the potential contribution of theory‐oriented research. But in retrospect from 1967 the promise of the decade does not appear to have been fulfilled. Vast Federal funding has proven to be only a mixed blessing. An obsessional preoccupation with “change” has diverted efforts away from basic research, has induced intellectual homogenization within the academic community, and has bombarded administrators with so many exigencies that their planning efforts have been increasingly concentrated upon short‐term perspectives, at best. Never before have politics, education and welfare been commingled so incestuously. Four serious concerns that must now be dealt with in our graduate programs are: the mythology of human motivations; the juggernant of “the Technological Society”; the mythology of change; and the impact of existentialism upon modern man.