THE TASK OF DRAWING TOGETHER USEFUL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT RESEARCH on problems of education in Latin America is at once an attractive and a disagreeable task. It is attractive because the kind of effort exemplified by this publication seems to imply increased attention to the need for research. It is disagreeable because of the obvious paucity of research, lack of a dynamic role for research in the educational process, disjointed and unrelated effort in the research that does exist, and misunderstanding of the nature of research and its function in a social field. The views expressed here are critical of research—its goals, its conduct, and the mechanisms for integrating it into educational development; but, hopefully, the observations made can be of use to enhance the research potential in this important sphere of activity.

In this decade, sociological and anthropological studies of formal education in Latin America show signs of vigorous growth and promise of substantial future developments. The leitmotiv running through most of the social scientific research on education is education and social change or, more specifically, education and economic development and social progress. There is still no strong evidence of a concerted, cumulative development in this area despite heightened research activity and the fact that scholars are more regularly communicating and integrating their efforts. To the contrary, it is more common of researchers to appear oblivious of the prior or related work of other scholars in other centers of research. However, the common cause of a relatively narrow range of concern has produced a concentration of effort and many-faceted attack by scholars from many disciplines on these problems that promise potent developments in theory, understanding and discovery.

SECONDARY EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA HAS NOT RECEIVED A GREAT DEAL of attention by researchers and English language journals. Most of the research readily available in the U.S. is of a descriptive nature; that which is more specifically focused is reported in a wide variety of national and organizational journals difficult to collect. This review attempts to suggest representative studies from a variety of sources in order to give the broadest coverage possible in a short paper.

Over the past two years, the editor of LARR has received several inquiries from scholars as to the procedures for acquiring permission to travel to Cuba. To his certain knowledge several scholars have made successful trips. For the benefit of those who may not know about the regulations, we are inserting a letter from the State Department to Dr. Howard Cline which he has kindly turned over to LARR and which clearly outlines the procedures to be followed.

Literature on the latin american university is largely of a polemical and speculative nature, generally devoid of empirical grounding and theoretical significance. Research, in the sense of a systematic quest to enhance our powers to understand, predict, and control relationships among variables, is of recent origin. Parker (1964), in a review of over two hundred U.S. doctoral dissertations written on Latin American education, noted that few studies were concerned with university reform or the influence of universities on social, economic, and political improvement. Lipset (1966, p. 153), in a general survey of literature on university students in underdeveloped countries, observed that the influence of university studies, patterns of recruitment, modes of teaching on intellectual, professional, political and cultural standards and aspirations or the assimilation of students into the various spheres of adult activity is still terra incognita.

As the title indicates, this review of research in latin america covers a wide variety of topics. It can, however, be subdivided into three main divisions : (a) counseling, guidance, and student personnel work, (b) research dealing with disabled and/or handicapped persons, and (c) studies dealing with cultural-attitudinal-value influences within Latin American education as they affect counseling and guidance and special education-rehabilitation.

Economic and political relations of the soviet union with the countries of Latin America are on the increase. Annually expanding cultural and scientific relations serve to stimulate the growing interest of the Soviet people in Latin America's rich historical background, its distinctive culture, and the present day problems of that part of the world. Russian interest in Latin America extends over a long period of time. I should like to emphasize, therefore, that this interest in Latin America and the life of its people is not a passing fancy and did not develop overnight. This interest has its own history. Permit me to recount a few facts.

We offer the following contribution by Frank Bonilla in this section: 1) because, despite its important message, it does not fit appropriately in the other regular sections of LARR, and 2) because it deals positively with the problem of U.S. research in Latin America, touching upon the repercussions of Project Camelot, reactions to which have previously been allocated space here.

A recent and steadfastly optimistic study of U.S. foreign policy and democratic politics observes matter of factly that “American government frightens and bewilders its friends and its enemies alike.” At the moment, evidence again mounts before the world that we are not only prepared to take the lives and freedom of others on dubious provocation (as in the Dominican case) but also to seriously jeopardize institutions at home on which our own freedom rests. Along the way we have played freely with the careers and life chances of individuals with and without their knowledge or consent. In view of this, there would hardly seem to be any ground for persisting in the belief that reasonable men abroad will continue to look to us for support in rationally pursuing their own political advancement. If there is any reason for believing that we have not morally written ourselves out of a share in these tasks, it rests primarily on the realism, forebearance, and enduring optimism of men abroad who care profoundly about the quality of future political life in their own nations. Having repeatedly experienced political regressions of their own, they may view our own present difficulties with some magnanimity and a differentiating sense of the complex internal forces that have produced them. The Americans to whom these remarks are addressed are thus Americans in the large sense of men of the Americas, and particularly those who continue to hold to the hope that research based social science knowledge can prove a major resource in the achievement of useful human purposes in this part of the world. However, because given present circumstances the action of U.S. social scientists may yet have the capacity to decisively transform and revitalize the prospects for such work rather than continue to disfigure and compromise them, much of this appeal is directed to Americans in this second more restricted sense.