Relevance in Bibliography of the Humanities

Abstract

MUCH has been written concerning relevance in higher education since the late sixties when our universities were serving as battlegrounds in which alienated and hostile young people expressed their dissatisfaction with what they regarded as the establishmentarian power structure. The universities as we have seen were completely unable to cope with such displays of anger on the part of their charges and were immobilized for days and even weeks in some cases as a result of their failure to take meaningful action at a time when such action may have proved fruitful. Pervading our memory still is the chaotic frenzy of the period culminating in the ultimate horror of Kent State University. Even though the violence now has passed and the university has once more become relatively quiet, the institution will never be the same since a great and costly lesson has been learned. For one fleeting moment, the roles had been reversed and resolute groups of college students had become the instructors while professors and administrators sat in attendance of the wisdom they imparted. The lesson was simple but it had an impact far greater than anything before or since in the annals of academia. The message was that the students were entitled to a relevant education and that their accountability to the instructor was equalled in importance by his accountability to them. This was the legacy of those violent days of the sixties, and like it or not, it purports to be with us for a long time to come.

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