caa a22 4500 386310181 CHVBK 20180307111542.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1988 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0896082800000131 doi S0896082800000131 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0896082800000131 Brumback Richard A. Florida Atlantic University Teaching Public Administration in a Post-Literate Society [Elektronische Daten] [Richard A. Brumback] As we move farther into a condition of "post literacy” in our society (a condition where reading and writing have been displaced by television and video as the primary sources of mass entertainment and communication), the problem of students entering universities and even graduate programs with substandard communication skills is becoming more pronounced. In addressing the problem, despite frequent references to the "art and science of public administration,” there seems to be far too little emphasis on communication skills. Most public administration schools concentrate on the behavioral and management sciences—while largely ignoring the equally important communication techniques upon which our students' competence and effectiveness will be assessed in their careers. We aid and abet the problem by failing to recognize those skills, or lack of them, in our program guidelines. The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration calls for specialized areas of study—management, program analysis, and policy analysis—that seem to assume a firm grounding in communication skills; but that assumption is so often incorrect. The science of public administration can only take us as far as systematizing our search for information. Effective evaluation and interpretation of that information rests in the ability to use it persuasively. It is the normative evaluation of information, mostly absent from scientific inquiry, that is so important to effective public administration. And the normative interpretation of policy conclusions is largely contingent on persuasive ability, alacrity in the use of the art, not the science, of public administration. Copyright © American Political Science Association 1988 Political Science Teacher Cambridge University Press 1/2(1988), 1-4 0896-0828 1:2<1 1988 1 PST https://doi.org/10.1017/S0896082800000131 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0896082800000131 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Brumback Richard A. Florida Atlantic University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Political Science Teacher Cambridge University Press 1/2(1988), 1-4 0896-0828 1:2<1 1988 1 PST CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge