It i!, too bad th,H the coruemporJry preoccupation with "rcle\'ance" i~ '-O often expressed in pious plati-tudes which inhibit thinking, mask its meaning, and invite either cynicism or 'tcntimcntality. Rt>leva11cr has become the password of those who care. The word now has such .Ill Jura of sanctity that to question it seems m, irrc\'crenl :t!, to ha\'e negative thoughts about mother Im e. Yet rt:lc, ancc is so important a concern, M> pregnant a notion, that it merits close sci utiny. E\'cry Lime I encounter the word I think, "What do you mean-'rcle,ance'?" Socrates !,aid that the un-examined life is not wonh living. Well, the unex-amined word is sc.arccl) worth using either. You c-..in get away with it. of course, but not if you gen-uinely mean to get through to '-Omeonc. M) annoyance with the frccw heeling using of relevance mounted until I dc,·cloped a wmpulsion to try to come to grips with it. \\'hat I h,1,·e produced docs not satisfy me. But pnhaps my think piece wi II stimulate others' thinking.

The apo!,tles of rcle\'ance use the word fervently. It seems to give suhstancc to a host of ineffable )earnings. I too feel the impulse behind picas for rcl-ernnce: it is the dual need to cope with our personal confmion in the face of ambiguities and to overcome

What Do You Mean-"Relevance"? Edith K. Kleinjans

our impotence in the f,1ce of social catastrophes. It is J craving nc, er fully satisfied because change perpet-ually

questions they're not ,t!>king, providing knowledge they don't need. But then came the uncas} thought that the pincushion ju!>t might come in handy-might, in fact, become nearly imlispensable-sometime later. So my first answer wai. dearly too facile.

Still, there was a helpful due: wlirn n k11owledge meets a 11eed, you hm•e n rrlr1 •1111cr. (I ha\ e been taken to task for using the fully word need, but I couldn't find another word big enough to encompass everything from personal anxieties to social nece!>si-ties. I also use knowledge rather lomcly, to co\'er C\': if what I learn in political science this morning cc1n be used in c1 demon-strc1tion at the Legislature this afternoon; if what I learn in psychology will help me influence my parents or my girl in my interest this evening; if what I read in litcr.iturc satisfies a cr,1\'ing for spiritual sustenance or helps me un

A "KNOWLEDGE"

(A fact, a skill, a con-cept, a principle, a method of inquiry, an artifact or a compo-sition, applied or pure research, a hypothesis or a metaphysic)

PERCEPTIONS OF RELEVANCE

Rt!lcvancc is perceived where a knowledge 1s seen to meet a need . (The time, place, and pt:rson lines can be moved up or down separately, making different tirne-place-

person combinations.)

PERSON LINE

PLACE LINE

Outer Space

I

TIME LINE

INCONCEIVABILITY

I I GeneraHzed -- Remote --Centuries

"others'' l hence '",t____ -----t'-:,

Them Far Decades I hence

Near Soon

~ IMMEDIACY

I Here

A "NEED"

(Physical, emotional, psychological. intel-lectual, esthetic, ethi-cal, or spiritual)

6

The perspective from there is still seH-centered in a sense, since relevance is seen with reference to one's in-group. Or he can move on to his "you"-the person he encounters or knows, who matters to him in lesser or greater degree. By the time a knowledge seems rel-evant to him because it may have a payoff to "them," he has moved from selr-centeredness to altruism. If "they" arc halfway around the world (remote distance) or yet unborn (remote time) and he can per-ceive the potential relevance of his knowledge in pro· viding lever.ige for meeting their needs, he has gotten out of himself and his own time and place to future orientation and true humaneness. (Actually, this knowledge may simultaneously be meeting his need too: he may be getting emotional, intellectual, or spiritual satisfaction from it. They say that self. centered persons arc often unhappy, and that helping others is the cure; there may be truth in that.)

We do seem to be able to think ahead, to look for solutions to others' problems elsewhere sometime in the future. The search for solutions to problems of conservation, pollution, population, education arc ev-idence of the "they-there-then" orientation. To the degree that we seek to find new knowledge or to apply contemporary knowledge to meeting those needs, then, we can perceive relevance well outside the "me-herc-now" circle.

I am dissatisfied with Ill) model because it doesn't take care of gradations or magnitudes of relevance: it fails to differentiate between triviality and signif-icance. It is tempting to order the kinds of knowledges and the kinds of needs into "lower" and "higher" ranks a nd then to conclude that the relevances are trivial at the low t:nd, significant at the high end. This I cannot do. Knowledge of a simple fan ("I can get free at a clinic a coil thal will keep me from having babies") may meet an emotional need (release from the anguish of fear ) to a mother of a h:ilf-slarwd brood. Knowledge of a rudimentary skill (sharpening tools, repairing biq c.les) ma) be enough to meet the physic .ii nel•d frn !imtenance for a man a nd his fam-ily. Is my urgl.' 10 understand, lll) desirl.' for a thing of hc,mly, "higher" than the need of that woman or that man?

Still, let me c.ite wme examples to show what I mean by magnitudes of rl'le,·ance. Boiling teakettle!i rJip their lids. Whal is rele,~llll about that? Well, when it happens, the racket is annoying. That is one level. Th{' entrt'preneur ma) find it commenially relevant: if he manufattures 1eake1tles with liule hnlt'~ in their

6

lids, he stands to sell more keules and make a good profit. That is level two. The inventor sees the lid flipping, thinks "Propulsive power!" and creates an engine that relieves men of back-breaking toil.

Again, mold gets into bacteria cultures and ruins them. This fact had only a bothersome kind of rel-evance to microbiologists-they had to throw the things out and stan fresh ones-until it occurred to Al-exander Fleming that if common mold kills bacteria, it might have medicinal propenies. That flash of in-tuition became magnificently relevant when it cul-minated in the development of the "miracle drugs"-penicillin and the other antibiotics-that ha,·e cured perilous sicknesses and saved uncountable lives.

Gandhi saw people squatting listlessly aboul, and conceived a stratagem of peaceful mass non-compli· ance that has had immense relevance to oppressed people in many nations.

How do you show these measures of relevance in a picture? It seems that relevance is magnified when it has import for more people in more place!i or for a longer time. But "the greatest good for the greatest number" sells short those who belong to "the lesser number."

While I was pualing mer these quest iom I looked elsewhere for light, and I got quite a bit right in Ill) own house. First I asked Se\'Cnteen (who is quite now· oril.'nted hut has a ph ilosophit,il bent) whether he thought whal he studied in school \\'a!i televam. His rather quic·k retort was, "\\'ell, i\Iom, if in 'ichool a kid is forced to an action [!,tudying, I presume] for which he does not Sl.'l' a cotheqm·m·e, he'll be poor I) motivated." He thought a bit and ,,·em on. "He has lo see the seq11r.11a. It is the !it·qut·me that gives mean-ing, just as images in sequenn• g i\'e mt•aning: Truck. Truck runs. Truck nms wild." So I drc.:w this mil:

Motivation ++ac tion++consequt'. nn·s

.md asked, "You rne,111 tht• three h a\'e to be con-nected?" He wrote down the figure / and sa id, "That'., called the i11trgt·r~~im't it? \\'ell, the three have 10 he one," and we tom luded that rdt·,,111cc.: ill in the con-nectedness of moti\'l'S, a< t!>, and conseque11res: the) have lO match, to ha\'e intcgt it). Without the ronnec-lion you get distortion: the dis< 01111e ctt·d act is an ir-relevance in fact if not in perrept ion. \\'l' examined the pans of the S< hl'lllt' and sa\\' what happl'ns when people focus 011 on\} one of thl' lhree. The cmt· who is all bound up in his motha1 io11s may ht· an idealist, an ideologul', or a f,mali< (") ~hall do what is nght

and hang the consequences!"). The one hellbent on action is the ..ictivist-Don Quixote with a savior com· plcx leaping headlong into the breach with no n.•gard for results. The one who looks only to consequences is the pragmatist-the most useful of the lot, certainly, because he will set the course of his action by cal-culating its consequences, and the prrn,pe(tive results could be sufficient motivation. But the congruence of the thrl'e brings harmony-the part!> arc relevant to t~..ich other and the meaning uf the act emerges.

Thirteen wandered into the kitchen one night, and, seeing me preoccupied, wondered out loud what I was thinking about. So I tried my question on her, not sure she would understand. She said simply, "Well, I think that we get our education in little blocks, and then we ha\'c to put the bloLks together in our own pattern."

Fifteen mad(· a pun first. "Ohl 'Rclcvance'-like Ike and Boot!>?" (her uncle and aunt). Her next question wa!'> simply, "To?" Then, "What? The world situation? h ha!> to be relev,mt lo something: to your life, 10 you, to your sunounding1-, to just people; to both the ptescnt and the future." So I asked, "\\'ell, dot•s what you study in school have rdevancc to any of these things?" She thought ,1 moment, then said, "I don't know yet bt•caust I h,1,·en't hat.I anything to try it out on. I haven't hct•n able tu test it out yet. IL be-comt·s rl'levan t ahe1 w;u d~ heL,.1t1se you stun noticing things more. \'ou t.lun'L rt'all) know before you Man."

All this had hem going on while my hu,;b..ind was away. Afrer he got b,u·k I tried him on the rclevanrc of knowll•dgt• and ht· said it was one's amwer to the qt1l'Stiu11 "So what?"

These \\'t•te fre,h and differing pt'r!>penives but not i11, acts, ,m -,1111011g knowll'dgt·s of \,II ious kinds -hc1,,·1·1·11 kno\\'k·dge and t•xp1•1 it·11tt· -ht·1w1•1•11 kno\\'ll'dgl' and dt·< i,;ion.

.'-)o \H' h;1d fi\'l· pt·r,p1:ni,es cm ll'k,amc: -,IS llti]ity- prt''>l'lll OI flllllll' -a'> intl'g ritr of pt t ,on;d !,did and t ondm L -,1., a < oht·1t·nt d!''>ign of in11·1wm t·11 knowledge,; -,I'> pU'd in the crucible

of !"X)ll'I it·nn· -.1s a11 t'Xl'>lt1111,il impt·1atin·. i\l} modd had to do ,dth the usefulness of know!·

ed).?;e in 111t-eti11g ncetb. Does rele\',lllte c4ual w,e•

fulncss? Broadly, yes, if "need" includes such im-practical matters as the lust to know and understand (my inquiry into relevance is rclc\'alll to me), or an esthetic craving (scientists like "elegame"), or a will to meaning- the need Lo impose order on the chaos of our experience.

Seventeen went beyond my knowledge-needs formula, putting relevance into a framework where personal meaning comes from relating action to its motives and to its wmequences. His scheme hints very strongly of an ethical dimension, suggesting that the morality of an act must bt: j udgct.l in 11•latio11 to the motives prompting it and cakulation of the probable consequt'nces of doing it. Negatively, an act is irrel-evant if iL is not in harmony with one's ideals or with its likely outcomes.

Thirteen got at something I had missed: that con-nections have to be made or aealrd. My model was only about perceiving rele\.ance, as if the con-nections were all neatly laid out waiting to be stumbled upon. But her foLUS was on relevance as the weaving together of ~trant.ls of knowledge into a co-herent pattern. We Jive with a plurality of knowl-edges but work toward a unit of meaning. Where is that el usi\'t: unity? Arc our knowledges the spokes uf a wheel whose hub is the human condition? Or is thert· unity in the imerdcpendenccs in the fabric of our knowing?

FifH·en 's point- that one can't really know what will ulLimatcly he relevant and what will not, and tha1 Olll' mw,t "test it out" in order to know is a poilll m,Hlt· h} J. Bronowski in hi!> little book, Snenrr and H11ma11 Va/r1r.~:

The luhit uf ll·~ting ,Ille..! < one, ting the < orn cpl h) w,

us. If we arc serious, we must be sensitive to the ob-ligations knowledge imposes; we must come to grips with that simple question, in which case we must with rigor and persistence discern the trivial from the sig-nificant, work to make our knowledge yield up its rel • evance, and obey the imperatives laid upon us by that relevance.

I don't know now whether I can pull together all the fragments of my inquiry into a cogent summary. I think I can say broadly what I think relevance is, draw some of its par.imeters, and even point to some disciplines to which the honest seeker after relevance must submit if his sincerity is to be credited.

A Definition: Relevance is a link forged in the mind; it is not a natural attribute of facts. Hence "finding" relevance is making fruitful connections. It is rarely a happy accident; it is more often work-the creation of a new thing by way of an adventure of the mind. It is making knowledge out of information or experience by connecting it to something else in such a fashion that it becomes meaningful or consequenceful. Rel-evance is what distinguishes knowledge from informa-tion.

Peter Drucker calls knowledge "the systematic or-ganization of information and concepts." Knowledge in our time, he says, is "making apprenticeship ob-solete. It substitutes systematic learning for exposure to experience." And in our "knowledge economy," knowledge is information put lo work. "What matters ... is whether knowledge, old or new, is applicable. What is relevant is the imagination and skill of who-ever applies it, mther than the newness of the in-formation." Knowledge, by either of his definitions, is relevance, simply by virtue of its connectedness, with· in its own system or to some purpose outside it.

Cle-.irly, then, merely wanting relevance will not produce it. Desire may prompt, emotion may power, intuition may spark the search, but relevance is the grail at the end of the pilgrimage, the reward sought and won, not the door prize one gets for paying the price of admission.

Properties of Relevance l. Relevance is particular, not general. "Is this rel-

evant?" is as stupid a question as "Am I related?" The clue is in the to. The one who seeks or pro-motes relevance had better specify the object of his preposition, the purpose of his proposition.

2. Relevance is plural, not one, simply because the combinations of connectibles arc infinite. I have sug-

8

gestcd a range of linkables: knowledges and needs; motives, actions, and consequences; knowledge and other knowledge; knowledge and experience; knowl-edge and decision. The list can be expanded.

3. In a given instance, relevance is unitary; it is oneness-sequence, harmony, pattern, system. It is combining disparities into an "integered" whole. From two dots you make a line, from three a tri-angle, from five perhaps a star. The person unwilling to exert himself to connect the dots will never see the picture.

,J. Relevance is fluid, mmsitory; it has a temporal dimension. People change and times change. What one digs at twenty may not be what consumes him at forty ; and today's gift may be tomorrow's curse, for every solution generates a new problem. Henry Ford gave us mobility; we got congestion and smog. Guten-berg gave us print; we got paper overkill. The physi-cists gave us atomic energy; we got a fearsome weapon. Television gave us a medium for communi-cating ideas; we got soft soap and hard sell. We taint what we touch, and we need tomorrow to correct today's ills, but we shall no doubt spawn new ills as we go. In a sense, then, relevance must always be new, nibbling at the edges of our future; even the old, proven relevances must change their coloring to fit the times and the cases.

5. Relevance is intrirate. Even to establish what (if anything) A implies for B requires imagination, skill, and persistence. But C, D, and E cannot be left out of the equation. For an example see Robert L. Heil-broner's book on the struggle for economic develop-ment, The Great Ascent. He details the grimly inter-locking factors inhibiting development: climate, rain-fall, and resources; "postage-stamp" farms, low pro-ductivity, Jack of capital; habit, attitude, and tradition; ignorance; corruption; the proliferation of people; endemic disease. And examine his set of imperatives which must be coordinated if a poor country is to be-come richer, is to "pull itself up by its own boot· straps." They include enhancing agricultural pro-ductivity, creating a labor surplus for starting small industry, accumulating capital for industrial equip-ment, controlling population, securing foreign aid and generating foreign trade, and planning and regulating the whole development process-to say nothing of battling inertia. Clearly, in a situation so complex, many kinds of knowledge are relevant, but their inter-connections are awesome in their intricacy.

6. Relevance is condilional. The answer to "Is A relevant to B?" is "It depends." h depends on whether, after painstaking examination, a fruitful con-nection can be established. Some information mJy be so trivial that the answer to "So what?" is ''Nothing." Hans Selye writes: "Facts from which no conclusions can be drawn are hardly worth knowing."

7. Relevance is tentati,•e; it needs to be reality-tested. The hasty ones who make mer-rapid connec• lions, basing a course of action on an unwarr.inted assumption, can reap the whirlwind for a whole so-ciety. Richard Hofstadter, in his wittily written history of anti-intellectualism in American life, asserts that the whole life-adjustment farce in schooling 1s attrib· utable to leaping into action on some very flimsy "scientific" evidence about what 60 per cent of chil· dren "need." Joseph J. Schwab tells us we shouldn't be surprised when our young people demand instant solutions to formidable social problems: we have fos-tered that expectation by feeding them a "rhetoric of conclusions" in the name of education, so of course they don't know how arduously "answers" are come by.

8. Relevance is unpredictable; no one knows for sure what will prove to have relevance and what will not-for the individual or the race. The history of science is replete with instances of sheer " foolish-ness' ' that turned out to be relevant beyond anyone's capacity to conceive. (Take for one example Louis Pasteur's silly notion that little invisible bugs make people sick.) We know what has been relevant-what fruitful connections have been made in the past-and what sorts of connections arc being looked for or tested now. But NOW is the dividing line between what has been known and what will be known. And what will be known lies in the future, whose shape we do not know-we can only speculate about it.

There seem to be three speculative schools among (uturologists. One group says the future will be like the present, only more so. This group projects present trends and arrives at statistical probabilities. A sec· ond group believes that the only sure thing about the fuLUre is that it will be radically different from the present. These predict changes and discontinuities. A third group proposes setting an image of the sort of future we want, and then planning and directing changes accordingly. Given this range of prospects, what kind of knowledge, what kind of schooling will be relevant? (This question I want to come back to later.)

9. Rek\'ance is various in its magnitudes, all the way from "I dig it" to "Thi!. has fantastic implic.1-tions for the whole human race!"

Relevance is individual: there arc ..is many notions of it as there are persom.. This fact suggests that rel· e\"Jnce cannot be prepackaged and doled out in schools. Examples may be given out of the past, po· tential connectiom suggested. But in the last analysis, personal relevance i!i each individu..ils' to create for himself.

Relevance is social, but only if it is first individual; that is, if someone (or someones) chooses to make it social. And this i!i more complicated because it re-quires not only thinking, but also judging and doing. To a single individual, thinkmg something relevant mflhes it relevant so f,u .is he is concerned, even if it is sheer fantasy b) others' standards. But the moment one proposes to appl)• knowledge, to make of it an instrument whose use affects one other person (or a thousand or .i million), he is obliged not only to think, but to plan and to do. From that moment he is in the social sphere, the realm of ethics, and in that realm values come into conflict. (Heilbroner poses one such value dilemma for the poor countries: plan or perish. Translated, that means economic progress with authoritarian manipulation of persons, or mass starva-tion without it as people proliferate faster than food production increases.)

10. Relevance, then, has an ethical dimension. Now that knowledge is power, knowledge makers and users have a new moral obligation: they must make ethical judgments. There was a time when the axiom of science was "Follow truth wherever it leads." That was before Hiroshima.

Bentley Glass insists that scientists are morally ob-ligated not only to proclaim the benefits of scientific devclopmenls (this is usually managed with flair and vigor), but also to warn of risks, distinguishing care-fully between what is established "fac.t" (on which professional associations may justifiably speak with a single voice) and what is personal opinion (on which, I am convinced, professionals ought properly to speak out as private individuals-having, to be sure, a certain competence), and to present for public consideration the quandaries begotten by scientific discovery and the amplification of human power. This burden now begins to fall poignantly on biological and social sci· enlists.

Once such ethical judgments are made, if knowl·

9

edge is to be instrumental, planning and doing follow. And, however tender-hearted and well-meaning the do-gooders are, they arc constrained to be both hard-headed and far-sighted-that is, rational and dis-ciplined enough to devise workable strategies, and cal-culating enough to foresee and forestall perverse con-sequenc:es over the long haul of implementing those str,11egics. That the generation of emotion has a use-fol function in sharpening our sensitivity and alerting our rnnsticnc:e I do not doubt our humane instincts ought to be aroused by stupidities and injustkes. Heat serves a purpose, but it is no substitute for light.

11. Finally (and most significantly to me), relevance is existential. It is what one makes it. Sincerity and good will arc not enough if one is serious about wanting his learning to be relevant. In the last analysis, relevance is one's personal answer to the question "So what?". One may answer "l don't know" or "[ don't care" or "I can't be bothered." Or he may answer, with feeling and cktermination and in-tellect, 'Tm going to figure it out and do something about it."

Yet, for all the ambiguitie!>, relevance is necessary in both senst:i.-of personal ml~,ming and of social con-~l·qucml'. This mud1 M't:tn!> clear. Persons and so· c ietics an· conf uscd. There is an uneasy sense of dis· IOl~Hion, of frustration, bl•causc of disronncttions. 'I11t' sheer magnitude of our problems, the pressure of time, impose the imperative to seek and establish new rn1mer1iom and 10 implcmcm solutions. The mag-nitmle of the problems means that the search for rel· cv:mt cour~e, of action dem.mds an effort of equiv-;tlcnt magnitude, ming the pooled expertise of many people of differing abilitic~ and specializations collab-orating in problc:m·i.ol\'ing Mructures 10 make their l..nmdcdge productive.

II is prnii,d} here that detachment is relevant. Thl'Sl' d.1y, objlTti, ti} is maligned as itrclcvant: it is i.aid t ha1 ont: mml he emotionally "in\'olvcd" to be rl'lc\'ant. I don't bl'iic, l' it. One i), impelled to art ion hec·a use he la res- of cou rsl'! llu t if he want!> to do i.mnething productJ\'l' about the mc!>s, he assumes a

disciplining themselves in the acquisition of existing knowledge, in expanding its boundaries, and in find-ing its relevance-its meaning or its uses-for the solu-tion of those inane problems we all care about.

What I cannot sec as relevant is the conviction of some that the residue of injustice justifies more in-justice, that the remnants of barbarism countenance the proliferation of barbarities, that archaic unreason sanctifies the rejection of reason. I can only judge irrelevant those who claim to aspire to a loving, just, and peaceful world while they add corruption to cor-ruption, cruelty to cruelty, hypocrisy to hypocrisy. Where there is no congruence between what is pro-fessed, what is done, and what is produced, there is no relevance. The regeneration of human society can only be accomplished if dedicated and able persons, yeastlike, permeate and raise it Of course it's a lot more fun to heave rocks than to build, but it's the cheap way, the flashy way-and it only brings down the house. The challenge is to get into the act, to join forces with those of any age (including mine) who work for beneficial change. George Wald, biologist, teacher, and Nobel prize winner, said at MIT, "I don't think there are problems of youth, or student problems. All the real problems I know are grownup problems." Of course! Let us then stop regarding each other as problems and join forces to find intelligent, workablc-"rclcvant"-solutions 10 those "grownup problems."

But I think the young who crave relevance are en-titled to all the help they can get from their puta-tive mentors. ([ decline, you understand, to accept the blanket indictment of my generntion as stupid, uncaring, h}lmcritical, and ineffectual, just as I refuse to write off the gcner,Hion we have produced as be-nighted, arrogant, deluded, or immornl.) They may of course reject our relevance-what we think matters; yet I believe we owe it to them to honor their intent by attending to, challenging, and wrestling together with ideas in the faith that out of the thrust and pull of encounter and deliberation new connections-new meanings, new uses-may evolve.

As for relevant schooling, of what sort is it? The present seems to be full of problems; the future is unpredictable. Schooling, then, it seems to me, should be of a kind that prepares a person to cope with what• ever comes-that gi\'Cs him leverage to manage the un-predictable by knowing how to find ' make relevance. For that, I think it is most important to get under• standing. I think this is what our young people are

Testing/ application

Experience Phenomena

~ Knowledge-Le., systematized conclusions

Process-Le .. disciplined use

of intellect

J

really asking for- and they want to get it expen-entially.

We had a long spell of "life adjustment" schooling designed to meet "necds"-immediate, personal needs -when it was thought more important to help children learn how to keep heahhy than to know biology, to experience rnthcr than to understand, to ..idapt to life than to order it. Mori.! recently systematized knowledge -a set of neat abstr..ictions from life-has been taught, on the quite reasonable assumption lhal eJch school generation should not ha\e to reinvent the wheel, that systematized knowledge would save a lot of lime and energy, a lot of trial and error. Unfortunately, schooling became too separated from the "stuff" it was really about.

Now, if I am hearing correctly, students arc saying they want a kind of exi~tential combination; the} want to be in touch with "real life," to abstract their own generalizations, to get knowledge which then has ap· plicabilit y to "real life." And this seems sensible enough. We have long since written off co,·er..ige of subject mailer as impos!>ibk anyway. How about a kind of schooling in which stu

(

a ho< lm,1h, ( of/1 i.:1·