Frontiers for Social Work: A Colloquium on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the School of Social Work of the University of Pennsylvania [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512808087

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F R O N T I E R S FOR SOCIAL WORK

Frontiers for Social Work A Colloquium on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the School of Social W o r k of the University of Pennsylvania

Edited by W .

WALLACE WEAVER

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania

Press

© 1960 by the Trustees Published

Library

of the University

of

Pennsylvania

in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi

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FOREWORD T h e School of Social Work of the University of Pennsylvania has been active for half a century. T h e years since 1909 have brought many changes in the atmosphere of American life which have done much to shape the history of this school. It had its origin as an outgrowth of a course of training in child helping directed by the Children's Bureau of Philadelphia. At that time the nation was in the early years of realizing new responsibilities for social welfare. For generations most of the problems in this area had been considered private concerns to be dealt with by privately supported charitable agencies. However, the dawn of the twentieth century brought an impulse to different ideas. These were the years of the Progressive Era. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and their supporters represented new thinking. Society must take more responsibility for the cure of social ills. Government must take on new functions of social control. Likewise in the fields of social science, in sociology, psychology, and political science and in certain fields of medicine including psychiatry, there was an increase in knowledge which could be applied to social ills and maladjustment. T h e Square Deal of Theodore Roosevelt became the New Freedom of Woodrow Wilson and these were fol5

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lowed by the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. During these years, state and local governments assumed more and more interest in the welfare of the citizen. During this half-century the School of Social Work has advanced in directions pointed out by this increase in public interest in welfare. T h e sights of its faculty have been raised to the level necessary to educate those who wish to minister to the manifold ills of society. Its faculty has moved forward from preoccupation with the problems of training in the dynamics of worker-client relationship to the initiation of programs for a broader study of society and for training in research. T h e professional school through these years has become more closely associated with the University departments engaged in teaching and research in the social sciences. T h e University of Pennsylvania presents these Anniversary Lectures as contributions to the literature of the profession of social work, believing that their breadth of view illustrates significant growth in the understanding of the problems of society which engage the dedicated attention of this profession. R O Y F . NICHOLS

6

PREFACE It is a noteworthy achievement in our day when a school of graduate education for the relatively young profession of social work reaches the milestone which marks fifty years of growth. T o plan a program appropriate for the commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Work in 1959, President Gaylord Harnwell appointed a committee composed of members of the University's administrative officers, of the faculties of several Departments of the University, and of the Advisory Board and faculty of the School itself. I cherish the experience of having been the chairman of this appreciative and enthusiastic Committee during its year of deliberations and then during the execution of its plan. T h e Committee early established a common theme for all of the events: "Widening Horizons in Social Work and Social Work Education," thereby guiding us toward the proper use of a historic occasion—to assess the past, affirm its achievements, and move forward toward a beckoning future. Among the various events planned was the presentation of four major papers, their contents to be related to the four areas of curriculum in the educational program of graduate schools of social work, namely: Research, H u m a n Growth 7

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and Development, the Social Services, and Social Work Practice. In the choice of our major speakers we delineated our conception of the breadth of these areas. For Research we asked Ewan Clague, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who some twenty years ago had been the first director of the School's Research Department and a stimulating "reporter" for the students of the dramatic events then taking place in Washington as the new Social Security program was brought into being. For the second area, H u m a n Growth and Development, we searched for a scientist who might conceive of man's human destiny as in large part a matter of his own moral choices. T h u s we selected Dr. Paul B. Sears, Director of the Conservation Department of Yale University, who became known to us as the author of articles on Nature and Moral Choice. For the speaker to represent the area of the Social Services Ave had no difficulty in making the choice—Karl deSchweinitz, formerly Director of the School, the first Secretary of Public Assistance of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in more recent years author of several outstanding books and articles about people and process in public welfare. Our fourth and final speaker would of course be our illustrious Dean, R u t h Smalley. We knew that the unusual range of her experience in social work would make it possible for her to identify the particular significance, for both practice and education for social work today, in what the previous three speakers had presented. Because of her familiarity with current professional issues she would be able to point to the crucial questions which are appearing on our horizon, and give us the "courage of our convictions" to search for appropriate answers as we move into our second half-century. 8

PREFACE

T h e first two papers, those by Dr. Clague and Dr. Sears, were presented in connection with gala social events which were attended by friends and associates of the School in January and in May, 1959. T h e last two papers were respectively, the keynote and closing address of a week-long Alumni Colloquium, in June, 1959, the final event of the commemorative series, entitled "Frontiers of Social Work." Other papers which were presented at this Colloquium by alumni and faculty are being separately published as a volume of the School's Journal of Social Work Process. T h e Committee believes that, together, the four papers which comprise this volume demonstrate the vitality of the social functioning of one of society's most recently developed institutions, and give heartening assurance of mankind's capacity to be creative in meeting its ever-changing concepts of need. ROSA

WESSEL

Chairman

9

EDITOR'S NOTE In 1915, when the School of Social Work was six years old, Abraham Flexner set forth, at the forty-second meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, the criteria of a profession. Nearly two generations later, and after many classes of graduates the School takes modest pride in a review of its contributions to professional maturity. It has been said that man does few other things so badly as his efforts to do good. T h e profession of social work is unique in its proposal to make philanthropy rational and secular. In the perspective of a sociologist, the Fiftieth Anniversary of the School of Social Work is one of the rites of passage by which a "calling" becomes a profession. These papers present the challenges of those who launched the School, and those who are now on new frontiers, shaping the trends. When Flexner asked, "Is Social Work a Profession?" he expressed some doubts. In 1959, there is promise that the new profession is approaching its majority. Social work education is moving toward parity with the academic standards of the University community. Friends of the School share with its faculty, students, and alumni a pride, without complacency, in the attainments of its first fifty years. This slender volume is published as a reference in the transition to greater excellence. W . WALLACE WEAVER 11

CONTENTS F O R E W O R D by Roy F. Nichols P R E F A C E by Rosa Wessel EDITOR'S NOTE I. E C O N O M I C M Y T H A N D F A C T IN SOCIAL WORK Ewan Clague II. N A T U R E A N D M O R A L C H O I C E Paul Β. Sears III. T H E P A S T AS A GUIDE T O T H E F U N C T I O N A N D P A T T E R N OF SOCIAL W O R K Karl deSchweinitz IV. T O D A Y ' S F R O N T I E R S IN S O C I A L W O R K EDUCATION Ruth E. Smalley 13

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I Economic Myth and Fact in Social W o r k Ewan

Clague

I T WAS BOTH WITH P L E A S U R E AND WITH A STRONG SENSE

OF

obligation that I accepted the invitation to participate in the celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Pennsylvania School of Social Work. T h e obligation arises from the fact that this month marks an anniversary of my own—the twenty-eighth anniversary of my first connection with the School. It was in January, 1931, that I joined the faculty. T h a t was my first real association with social work. Prior to that time I had nothing more than a layman's knowledge of welfare agencies and the social work profession. It was not any interest in social work but rather my concern with the economic problems of that day which influenced me in deciding to come here to Philadelphia. As a labor economist I was intensely interested in unemployment and its consequences; and the School presented me with the opportunity to do some practical research work on this subject. 17

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I owe a debt of gratitude to the School for the opportunity of the ensuing five years to study unemployment both in theory and in practice. This experience laid a firm foundation for my later work in social security and in labor statistics. But, in addition, the experience broadened my knowledge of the whole field of welfare work. T h e association with the faculty and the students gave me a sympathetic understanding of the social work profession, a new skill in writing, and a deep respect for social work education. Since that time I have thought that the coordination of theory and practice in education for social work represents the highest form of educational techniques. So my association with the Pennsylvania School truly represents a landmark in my own career.

Mythology in the Depression In discussing the subject assigned to me, I would like first to reminisce for a while on those olden days, so far removed in time and circumstance from where we are today. T h e r e is an advantage in reviewing the longer past, because time has sorted out fact from fancy, and thus now enables us to see some things more clearly than we did a quarter of a century ago. Later I shall return to the present and offer some interpretations of the future. T h e very first myth that confronted us in 1931 was that private charity could and would handle the problem of unemployment. I recall being in New York the previous year when the community put on an intensive program of "Block 18

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Aid." Surely, neighborly helpfulness has long been an important form of mutual aid, but it is hard to imagine a more ineffective form of community assistance. Since the poor live mostly in one block and the wealthier citizens in another, such a program could scarcely represent any equalization of burdens. Here in Philadelphia, thanks to such social work leaders as Karl deSchweinitz and J a c o b Billikopf, a communitywide program of unemployment relief was already in operation. Furthermore, a broad-gauge system of work relief was instituted. T h e early studies which I conducted for the Community Council and the School of Social W o r k were largely made possible by local work projects. I can also recall vividly the vigorous money-raising efforts of the business community in the spring of 1931. Yet within less than a year it became obvious that there was no system of private charity which could conceivably handle the problem of unemployment. T h e myth which developed next was that relief of the unemployed was fundamentally a responsibility of local government. B u t the City of Philadelphia was not far from bankruptcy, and the local poor boards throughout the State of Pennsylvania had no resources which would enable them to cope with the problem. Inevitably the localities had to look to the State for financial assistance. It did not take more than another year to demonstrate that this problem was beyond the capacity of the States also. T h e y had to turn to Washington. T h e Federal Government at first offered loans to States and localities, but this was only an empty gesture. When a reasonably adequate unemployment relief system 19

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was finally established, it turned out to be substantially a Federal financial responsibility. It took only a short time in Washington to explode another myth, namely, that a public works program could provide work for the employable unemployed. One feature of the Federal Government's business recovery legislation in 1933 was the creation of a Public Works Administration with a substantial appropriation. Such a step had been recommended in the aftermath of the 1921-22 depression, but nothing had been done about it. But when action was taken (1933) the results were disappointing to the most hopeful advocates of such a program. Public works require advance planning, they are painfully slow in getting into active construction, and their capacity to absorb the unemployed is decidely limited. It became quite clear that the PWA program, useful though it was for general public purposes, was scarcely making a dent in the unemployment load. It was then that Harry Hopkins sold the idea of a "made work" program in which the work projects were specifically tailored to the capabilities of the unemployed. T h e first of these programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps, under which several hundred thousand young men were sent out to work in the national parks and forests on projects of conservation, fire prevention, and so forth. Soon afterward there was created a Civil Works Administration, which became eventually the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Many useful and valuable projects were conducted during the life of the WPA—throughout the country today you can see bridges, school buildings, parks, other community facilities, and so forth, which were constructed under that program. And many white-collar projects produced researches 20

ECONOMIC MYTH AND FACT IN SOCIAL WORK

and reports which are still useful today—for example, National Research Project on Productivity. Given the cumstances under which the W P A was established, there never any justification for the accusation that it was a gantic boondoggle."

the cirwas "gi-

Schism in the Ranks T h e social workers at that time were critical of the WPA program, and a rift developed between them and the WPA administrators. Social workers were not opposed to the work projects as such; in fact, they strongly supported them. T h e i r objection was to the disintegration of a unified unemployment relief program. In exchange for generous financial support for the work program, the Federal Government eliminated all financial assistance for the so-called "unemployables." While theoretically this policy represented a logical division of functions between the Federal Government and the States or localities, in practice it was a setback for general assistance. It put the emphasis on legal categories of need and fragmentized the whole problem. On behalf of Harry Hopkins, it must be said that the Social Security Act had been passed, although it was not yet in operation, when WPA was begun in the autumn of 1935. Action had already been taken to sort out the aged, dependent children, and the blind. So the breaking u p of the relief problem had already begun. T h e works program completed the break. As a consequence, for the past twenty years this illogical split has been continued and needy people who can21

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not fit into the legal categories are denied the benefit of Federal aid, which is so generously provided to the special classes of needy.

Hopes for Social Security T h e final important long-run step taken in the 1930's was the establishment of the social security program. This was designed as the eventual solution of the problem of poverty. This was no myth; the social security system today is firmly established, and many of its objectives have been achieved. However, there were some miscalculations—risks which were overestimated and hopes which were not realized. For example, the unemployment experience of the 1930's sharply limited the unemployment compensation system. T h e actuaries estimated that it would take 2.7 per cent of payroll, plus some additional employee contributions, to finance a system of modest weekly unemployment benefits for a duration of some sixteen weeks. T h e postwar record of the 1950's has clearly shown that the original calculations were far off the mark. Taking the State unemployment insurance systems as a whole, an employer contribution rate of about one-half the original 2.7 per cent has proved to be adequate for benefit durations approaching twenty-six weeks and with no employee contributions at all. Had the actuaries been a little more optimistic at the beginning, the unemployment insurance system might have been more effective today. In fact, the social security program as a whole did not develop as fast and as extensively as originally hoped. In the 22

ECONOMIC MYTH AND FACT IN SOCIAL WORK

preliminary report of the Committee for Economic Security in January, 1935, it was announced that a further study of health insurance would be issued shortly. But the plans fell through; such a study was never issued by the Committee, and the only developments in health insurance within the government have been the passage by five States of temporary disability insurance and the addition to the Old Age and Survivors' Insurance program of permanent disability at age fifty. There were some hopes of the 1930's which have been fully realized. It was thought then that unemployment insurance might be not only a protection to unemployed workers and their families but also an instrument for modifying the extremes of prosperity and depression. This hope has been realized. It has been especially noted in the business recession of 1958 that the unemployment insurance benefits, coupled with the retirements paid under old-age insurance, have been a major factor in sustaining consumer purchasing power. As a device to counteract a business depression, these social security payments have decided advantages. T h e unemployment benefits take effect immediately, as soon as unemployment develops; they grow in volume as the need increases; they decline as business recovery takes place. Most economists now give a high ranking to social security as a method of helping maintain economic stability and growth. I have reviewed the record of the past in order to emphasize the extent to which policy-makers at any given time must make the best decisions they can in the light of the knowledge at their disposal. In the decade of the 1930's there were not many statistics available on the condition of the nation's economy. There were many economic myths in people's 23

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minds, a great deal of misinformation. T h e lesson for the future is that we must have more statistical information on the behavior of the economy, on the characteristics of unemployment, and more analysis of economic conditions, so that our decisions will be better than those we made in the past.

Transition and Contrast We are now at the beginning of 1959. Many of us here tonight can recall similar gatherings a quarter of a century ago. I Avas working part-time in Washington, loaned by the School for a survey of the statistics of the Federal Government. Occasionally, I gave an evening lecture, a report from Washington, open to the public as well as to the School. What a different world it is today! T h e n we discussed the bank closings (my reputation as a prophet survived for years because I ventured to predict that all the banks would be closed); now we discuss price indexes and inflation. T h e n the overriding economic problem was unemployment; now we study manpower requirements and skilled labor shortages. T h e n we wondered if we would ever achieve full employment; I am just now reviewing a new book entitled No Major Depression in Our Lifetime. And how much better off we are today! We are just now emerging from our fourth postwar business recession. In none of the four has unemployment averaged over 7 per cent of the labor force for more than a few months. Do you remember that Sir William Beveridge's first definition of full 24

ECONOMIC MYTH AND FACT IN SOCIAL WORK

employment was 93 per cent of the labor force? Later, he changed it to 97 per cent; and there have been many postwar years in which we came fairly close to that figure in the United States. I am not dismissing lightly the severity of the unemployment we have recently experienced, or the amount we are still suffering in 1959. I want only to emphasize the distance we have traveled since the dark days of the 1930's, and to show how high our employment standards have become. So, too, it is with wages and incomes. Average weekly wages in manufacturing industries have risen over three and onehalf times since 1939. T h e n the average weekly wage was only twenty-four dollars a week; in December, 1958, it was eighty-eight dollars. Even though there has been a doubling of the cost of living, the average factory worker has a substantially higher standard of living than he had in 1939; and there are 60 per cent more of them at work. Other classes of wage and salary workers have also attained higher incomes. Total labor income (wages and salaries) has increased from forty-seven billion dollars in 1939 to 250 billion dollars at the end of 1958—more than five times as high. In these figures, allowance must be made for the rise in the cost of living, and also for the additional workers in the labor force now; but with all these allowances, the well-being of the average worker is far higher than it was twenty years ago. Dr. Fred Dewhurst and his colleagues, in America's Needs and Resources, estimated that in 1950 only 6 per cent of the national income would be required to bring every family in this nation u p to a minimum level of health and decency; and about half of the deficiency was due to ill health. They also estimated that by 1960 only 4 per cent would be re25

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quired. It doesn't take much of a projection to show how near we are to solving the problem of poverty in the United States.

Social Work in Prospect Does this mean that social workers have worked themselves out of a job? Does it mean that departments of public welfare can be abolished, that schools of social work can be closed, that private philanthropy is outmoded? Not at all. Individuals and families are still unable to adjust themselves to many of the problems engendered by our industrial and commercial life. T h e r e is scarcely a problem of the 1930's which is not still with us in some form. We cure one disease and encounter another. We solve one problem and discover two more. You as social workers need have no fear that your profession is becoming obsolescent. But I am not going to pursue the specific needs for your professional services. Nor shall I attempt tonight to project your occupational outlook. What I was asked to do here tonight is to outline some of the more important economic developments affecting social work now and in the future. So what are the problems we face today, what are some of the myths now current, and what are the economic facts upon which we can base our social policies and programs? Need I repeat that this is a much more difficult task than to review the past? T h e myths of the 1930's now stand exposed, but those of today are still good doctrine to many people. How can you disprove a myth except as the passage of time 26

ECONOMIC M Y T H AND FACT IN SOCIAL WORK

undermines its foundations? And how can I be so sure that my appraisal is now correct, when in the past I have often been mistaken? All I can do is to share with you the tools of analysis which I myself use, asking that you use your own judgment as to their value.

Population Explosion One of the most far-reaching facts about the United States (and the whole world) today is the explosive increase in population. T h e Bureau of the Census has recently made a new series of future population estimates for the United States. These new estimates are a revision of those they made five years ago. For 1980 the prospect is for a population of at least 231 millions and possibly as much as 273 millions. At this moment we number about 178 millions, so the lowest increase in a little over twenty years is likely to be more than fifty millions, and it might be nearly one hundred millions. Another twenty years at that same rate of growth would bring us to the year 2000 with between three hundred and four hundred millions. And then what next? Dr. Philip Hauser, one of our leading population experts, pointed out recently that a continuation of our present birthrate (twentyfive per one thousand population) could produce a billion people in the United States by the year 2050. Of course, these are only guesses based upon recent trends. W e can all recall the mistakes of the 1930's when some population statisticians predicted for the United States a stationary population of about 160 millions by 1980. T h e y were 27

F R O N T I E R S F O R SOCIAL W O R K

misled by the shrinking birthrates of the depression, and mistook a cycle for a trend. And they could be wrong again. Perhaps a devastating war, a prolonged depression, the spread of birth control, or the operation of some other factors will radically alter the trend of population in the United States. But as of now the long-run outlook is sharply upward. One myth which is widely current today is that a rapid increase in population is an unmixed blessing. Look at the headlines in the popular journals—"the coming boom of the 1960's"; "more babies mean more housing"; "invest in an expanding economy." Population and prosperity have become firmly linked in businessmen's minds. T h e recent new-year forecasts could generally be paraphrased as follows: "We are just coming out of the shadows, but the future is bright and clear." T h e stock market is currently expressing popular confidence in the outlook. I am not ready to dispute this outlook, but I can point to some economic facts which should lead us to a more sober appraisal of it. Over a century ago economists discovered the law of dimishing returns. If people multiply in relation to land and natural resources, then the pressure of population tends to reduce the share of each man in the total product. Already there is increasing concern about the loss of good farm land to the expanding cities. Home sites are displacing crops. Water is becoming a major problem in many parts of the country. Scarce raw materials are being used up. T h e Paley Commission nearly ten years ago called attention to the increasing dependence of the United States upon foreign raw materials to keep our economy going. We are now an exporter of farm products and foods. With an expanded 28

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population, we might have to become a food-importing nation.

Competition in the Labor Force T h e increase in population will also generate labor problems on a vaster scale than heretofore. In the first half of the 1960's, the young people (under twenty-five years of age) in the labor force will increase at a rate of about six hundred thousand a year. T h a t is, there will be that many more teenagers entering the labor force each year than will graduate out of the group at age twenty-five. These youngsters have been a school problem in the 1950's; they will constitute a potential employment problem in the 1960's. T h e increase in young workers will be paralleled, but not quite matched, by the continued growth in the numbers of older workers over forty-five years of age. T h e middle group (twenty-five to forty-five) will be practically stationary. So in the job market we may expect competition between the young and the old. T h e latter will be trying to protect their jobs and skills by various collective bargaining devices (and possibly by new legislation), while the young people will be striving to open up job and career opportunities for themselves. In the fast-changing industrial scene of today, this job competition could create some new employment problems. Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell recently issued a booklet on "Our Manpower Future" which highlights these coming labor force developments. T h e r e may be some serious shortages of skilled workers at the same time that 29

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there are substantial surpluses of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. And the problems of older workers can cut two ways. At one extreme they may be trying to protect their jobs from the young; but at the same time they may constitute an unemployment problem, if and when they are laid off. Many older workers lack the educational requirements for new, more highly skilled jobs and occupations. Some of these older workers are less adaptable to change—some can't or won't move, for example, while others (perhaps for health reasons) must move to another community. Regardless of how the economy goes, there is almost sure to be a continuing and growing problem of older people in the American economy.

Women in the Labor Force T h e above discussion is couched in terms of men, but in this, as in other fields, women cannot be ignored. One of the most significant developments of the last half-century has been the growing participation of women in the nation's economic life. It is true that women have always worked and that they have been an important factor in our economy. But the shift that has occurred in the last few decades is revolutionary. Half a century ago many women worked in agriculture. I recall an early experience of my own. My mother went out in the fields to shuck corn for a neighbor. Her four children, two to seven years old, went along. We even shucked a few ears ourselves. She earned some money, but 30

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she had her children with her and she wasn't very far from home. She quit work in time to get back to prepare my father's supper. Today only a small fraction of working women are engaged in farm work. Yet women now constitute fully onethird of the total labor force, and their proportion is steadily increasing. In 1957, according to the Bureau of the Census, twenty-nine million women worked outside the home at some time during the year; and one-third were women with children. Only a few of these jobs were at or near the home. T h e r e is another point of interest about working women —the proportion over thirty-five years of age is increasing. This is due in part to the greater leisure available to women because of the mechanization of the home. But it is also certainly due to the increasing need for women of those ages to earn their own livelihood. T h i s could be expected in the case of single women who are pursuing work careers and are self-suporting. But the chief expansion is among other classes of women—married, widowed, divorced, or separated. Altogether, despite the economic growth of our economy and our rising standard of living, a surprisingly large number of older women have to earn their own living for several decades prior to retirement. These women constitute a potential pressure group either for jobs or for earlier retirement rights. T o summarize on population growth, there is no assurance that in the long run it will make us a wealthier nation. T h e economy will expand and total production will increase, along with the population. But this could slow down, or even bring to a halt our rising standard of living. This would be a new experience for the American people. T h e key economic factor which can offset the law of di31

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minishing returns for an increasing population is productivity; i.e. the efficiency of the productive processes in the economy. If the economy grows only as fast as the population (about 1 Vz per cent a year in the United States), then there can be no improvement in the standard of living of the general population. T h e rise in the economic well-being of a people is determined by the rate of productivity improvement in the economy.

Revolution in Agriculture In the period since the end of World War II there has been a technological revolution in American agriculture. T h e average annual rate of increase in output per man-hour on the nation's farms has exceeded 6 per cent per year cumulative. This achievement is the result of better seeds, more fertilizer, new varieties of farm products, more labor-saving machinery, better farming methods, and so forth. T h e performance of American agriculture has been one of the wonders of the economic world. In half a century the number of people engaged in farming (farmers plus farm workers) has been reduced by five million persons, while during the same period the population has increased by eighty-five million, or about 90 per cent. Agricultural employment constituted only about 9 per cent of the civilian labor force in 1958. Nor is the trend over yet. We expect for some years to come a continuation of the decline in agricultural workers. T h e remainder of the economy has done only half as well 32

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as agriculture during the last ten years, the approximate average rate of productivity increase being about 3 per cent per year cumulative. However, in manufacturing and in some nonmanufacturing industries this rate of improvement has existed over the longer past. For manufacturing industries alone the long-term rate has been close to 3 per cent per year. T h e peak of manufacturing employment occurred at the end of 1943, when the total was about eighteen million. We have never reached that level since. T h e postwar peak in the summer of 1953 employed only 17.5 million. T h e figure for December, 1958 was 15.7 million. Yet there is no doubt about the fact that we are producing far more manufactured goods than we did in 1943. Another significant development has been the shift from goods production to services in the American economy. In 1919, immediately after World War I, approximately twothirds of the labor force was engaged in the production of goods—agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction. Only one-third was engaged in the production of services—trade, transportation, government, and all other kinds of service industries. Today there are scarcely any more persons employed in goods production than there were forty years ago. In fact, if allowance is made for the shorter hours of work per week, there are actually fewer man-hours now devoted to goods production than there were at the end of World War I. On the other hand, we have had a tremendous expansion in service employment, which caught u p with goods-production employment in 1954, and in 1957 was nearly four million ahead. Throughout the years the workers displaced by productivity in industry and agriculture have found jobs in the service industries. In one sense, the 35

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK growth of employment in these industries reflects the rise in the American standard of living. Only in a wealthy and expanding economy could such a large proportion of the labor force be employed in producing services.

Outracing Diminishing Returns? T h e critical question which faces the American nation is whether these past performances can be continued into the future. W i l l these rates of productivity increase b e continued? Will productivity gains always outrun the law of diminishing returns? O n the positive side there is reason for hope. Billions of dollars are now being devoted to research, a far higher proportion of our national income than ever before. I n fact, research could be considered one of our most rapidly expanding industries. Furthermore, the time between the creation of an invention and its eventual commercial use seems to be getting shorter. Certainly there are no direct signs of a slowing down in productivity. It is true that there was a marked slackening in the prosperity years of 1956 and 1957, b u t so far as we can see at present these were only temporary interruptions of a long-term trend. B u t there is another side to this picture which requires special attention. T h e r e are several factors which operate to produce what I might call the " a t t r i t i o n " of productivity, factors which will operate in the future to dampen down the rate of growth. O n e is the gradual decline in the effective working hours per worker. As consumers we live twenty-four 34

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hours a day for 365 days a year, or a total of 8,760 hours. A standard workweek of forty hours for fifty-two weeks produces a total of 2,080 hours per year, or less than one-fourth of the total. But this working time is further reduced by unemployment, sickness, vacations, holidays, shorters hours per week, and many other factors. Of course, the working hours are increased for those who work overtime, hold two jobs, work during vacation, and so forth. Nevertheless, on balance, the trend is downward. During the past half-century the effective working hours of the American labor force have certainly been reduced as much as one-fourth, and perhaps as much as one-third. T h e productivity statistics are usually expressed in manhours, so they overstate the influence of productivity gains in raising the standard of living. It is the output per manyear which really determines what we can consume. Any marked decline in effective annual working hours will surely limit the rise in our living standards. I must emphasize two points, lest this statement be misunderstood. One is that part of the reduction in working hours in the past has actually stimulated productivity. During the critical summer of 1940 the workers in war industries in Great Britain were induced to work sixty-four, seventytwo, and even eighty hours per week under pressure of the emergency. More munitions were produced as a result. But it turned out that this spurt was only temporary. It was soon found that a worker could produce more output in a week of fifty-four hours than he could in seventy-two hours. From a strictly engineering point of view there was an optimum number of hours per week, considerably less than a man might work temporarily. In the United States in the 1920's 35

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it was discovered that the eight-hour day in the steel industry was in general superior to the twelve-hour day from a productivity point of view. However, not all reductions in hours are productive. When the optimum point is reached, further reductions in hours result in some loss of potential production. How serious this will be depends on how far below the optimum the working hours fall, and how much potential productivity is lost.

Leisure vs. Luxury A second point is equally important. Increased leisure can be in itself a feature of the standard of living. People may prefer to have fewer goods and more leisure to enjoy what they now have. T h e reduction in hours in the last halfcentury has certainly been due in part to the voluntary choice of working people preferring more leisure to more goods. Do you recall the idealistic picture of the primitive society in which the happy natives picked bananas off the tree and then slept in the shade? We know that this picture was greatly overdrawn, but there was a modicum of truth in it. Leisure was preferable to work. I read somewhere recently an economic dissertation on the subject of the labor supply among natives in Africa today. T h e subject was the need to acquaint the native with the consumer goods of a higher civilization, so that thereby some new and urgent wants would be created in his mind, which in turn would lead him to work hard to satisfy them. In other words, we would reverse his present 36

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inclination and induce him to prefer goods to leisure. Professor Galbraith, in his recent book, The Affluent Society, argues that in the American economy we have already gone too far in the production of goods, and that a shift in the direction of more leisure would be an advance in our civilization. I am not going to enter into a discussion of the fundamental objectives of our civilization. I want only to point out that we must make a choice—more leisure and less goods or vice versa. There are two other kinds of attrition which are important enough to warrant mention here. One is the relationship between the active labor force and the total population. I mentioned earlier that an increasing proportion of women are entering the labor force. T h e mechanization of the home is providing more leisure for homemakers and more of them are entering the labor market, at least on a part-time or partyear basis. T h e effect is to expand the proportion of workers in the population and thereby increase the nation's output of goods and services. However, on this point, too, there are countervailing trends, which may become much stronger in the future. One is the increasing length of the education process and the gradual raising of the age of entry into the labor force. In an agricultural economy, and in some industrial countries, youngsters of ten, twelve, and fourteen years of age enter the labor force permanently. We in the United States have pushed these ages up to sixteen and eighteen years. Higher education has raised it to twenty-two years and even higher. This is excellent; but it does lengthen the period of economic dependency of young people. At the other end of the scale, the increasing length of life 37

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK is causing a steady increase in the length of time that older people live beyond the age of retirement. T h i s retirement period, which averaged about three years a half century ago, has doubled since then and is steadily increasing. It has been estimated that in a few decades the average length of life of workers in retirement may be as much as ten years. I n the meantime, the effect of specialized old-age pension systems in our economy has been to accentuate the trend toward earlier retirement. At one time, seventy years was fairly typical, then sixty-five; now it becomes possible at sixty-two, sixty, and even fifty-five or earlier. Once more, the caution must be expressed: the high productivity of the individual worker cannot be translated directly into a rising standard of living for the whole population if there is a persistent decline in the proportion of workers in the total population. T h e last point I wish to make in this connection concerns war and defense. It is recognized in actual wartime that the standard of living cannot rise, because a high proportion of the nation's production must be diverted to war, where it is shot away and lost. In peacetime, there is no such direct destruction. However, the expenditures for guns are not available for butter. Again, we must recognize that we have to make a choice. T h i s is not an argument against defense expenditures. Maybe they ought to be higher than they are now in order to achieve the protection needed. My only point is that goods and labor devoted to arms are not available for consumption. In recent years, about 10 per cent of our gross national product has been required for defense. T h i s is not exceptionally high. In some countries it has been much larger; in Soviet 38

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Russia today it certainly is larger. But the productivity gains of the economy, as measured by the output per man-hour, cannot be converted into rising consumer standards of living without making a deduction for the cost of defense.

Social Work and the Demographic Crisis I feel impelled to mention briefly the international situation with respect to social workers. Through the United Nations and its constituent organizations, as well as through private welfare agencies, social work has become deeply concerned with countries throughout the world. For the International Conference of Social Work held in T o k y o last December, I was asked to prepare a paper on the relationship of population and social welfare in the United States. Similar papers were to be prepared for other countries. I am eager to get these papers as soon as they are available. T h e program itself led me to think some more about the international aspects of population growth. If our prospective situation here in the United States is sufficiently serious to lead us to make some careful analyses of population problems, imagine how much more critical the problem is in many more heavily populated countries. In these countries the birth rate is higher than it is in the United States. T h e population has been kept down by the high death rate, especially in infancy. Now, through welfare activities of various kinds, efforts are being made to save the children, to heal the sick, and to reduce the death rate. But the immediate consequence of these measures is to increase 39

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK sharply the rate of population growth, which might even exceed the rate in the U n i t e d States. B u t most of these countries have n o such vast unused resources as the United States. In most of t h e m the cultivation of the land has reached an intensity completely unknown in this country. Many populations are at the level of bare subsistence. T h e i r food requirements alone absorb a high proportion of their total labor force. T h e r e f o r e the rate of productivity increase is far lower than in the United States. In fact, there is likely to be a close race between population growth and productivity gains. T h i s means no rise in the standard of living at all. Every improvement in productivity would b e immediately counterbalanced by the upward surge of population. All heavily populated, underdeveloped countries are faced with this dilemma. T o improve productivity and increase their rate of economic growth they need capital, which means machinery, equipment, tools, and so forth. B u t at a subsistence level of consumption they cannot set aside the savings which are necessary to create this capital. In other words, they can't get started. O n e solution is provision of the capital requirements from the outside. T h i s is why, practically without exception, these underdeveloped countries are eager to borrow their capital from the outside. T o some extent they need outside aid even to maintain m i n i m u m levels of consumption. B u t unless this foreign capital promotes their productivity sufficiently to exceed the rate of population growth, it is not solving the problem. Communist countries face this same problem. N o doubt they would like to try solving it in the same way, i.e., by 40

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obtaining outside aid. However, a ruthless dictatorship can force a high rate of economic growth in a manner which would not be possible in a democracy. T h e y can do this by deliberately cutting consumption to absolute minimum levels and creating their new capital from their own efforts. T h e effect of this is, at best, to hold down the population and to prevent a rise in living standards; at worst it may mean occasional famines with tremendous losses of population through starvation and disease. Social workers as a group cannot do much about capital investment or the programs for industrial development. However, they have a duty to consider those methods of social welfare which will contribute most to the rate of economic growth in a nation. Welfare measures are not necessarily unproductive. For example, better education and training could produce a better labor force, which could enhance the productivity of the nation. On the other hand, there are welfare measures suited to a large and highly productive nation like the United States which would serve the best interests of an underdeveloped country. T h a t would be another speech. In closing, I want to emphasize again that the social work profession has both a domestic and an international responsibility. You are needed both at home and abroad. It is to be hoped that schools of social work will develop trained and competent social workers who can assist in the effective development of social welfare throughout the world.

41

II Nature and Moral Choice Paul B. Sears

I APPRECIATE SINCERELY T H E HONOR OF BEING ASKED TO TAKE

part in this notable anniversary celebration. Having had some experience in parts of the world where human distress abounds and where there is little or no trained personnel to alleviate it, where its relief is left to chance and impulsive sentimentality, I can understand the importance of your enterprise. Please accept my congratulations and best wishes as you proceed to complete the century of service, now half past.

Culture and Values Because of your training you already understand the character and importance of human culture, so central to the problem I am to discuss. W e are just now so dazzled by the spectacular advances in physical science that we are in 45

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danger of overlooking the revolution in social science that has resulted from a new approach, an approach which assumes that every group of people develops its own pattern of behavior and values and that each such pattern has its own internal logic. T h e s e patterns can only be understood and, if necessary, modified by getting inside of them. It is in the use of this simple but powerful intellectual tool, in place of external compulsion, that the hope of applied social science now rests. It was the practice in the older universities to draw a sharp distinction between knowledge which involved man and that which concerned nature. T h e r e were faculties of moral history and philosophy, of natural history and philosophy. T h i s separation is a dangerous one, as may be seen by observing the effects of malnutrition upon behavior. T h e critical decisions we make today must be made in a far broader context than was once thought necessary. T o use a homely example, we reproach a man who acts like a grouchy bear toward his wife and children at the breakfast table. But we know, too, that his behavior may be the result of purely physical phenomena such as eating, drinking, or overexertion. T h i s does not relieve him of blame for his bad conduct—it merely widens the focus to make him responsible for better care of his body as well as his immediate behavior. T h e same principle applies at all levels of human relationship, up through those charged with the awful responsibility for the destinies of nations. Decisions must be illuminated by the fullest possible understanding. It is for this reason that the science known as human ecology is so vitally important, for ecology deals with the interrelations of life and the 44

NATURE AND MORAL CHOICE world it lives in. M a n k i n d has still a long way to go before it achieves a sound and permanent relation to the world i n which it lives. How well it succeeds will depend largely upon how well it understands the system of which it is a part. I t has been o b j e c t e d that h u m a n ecology includes almost everything, since m a n ' s environment comprises not only the earth beneath h i m and the atmosphere around him, plants, and o t h e r animals, but his fellow humans as well. A t first sight any discussion of such a c o m p l e x and involved range of factors may seem like an almost hopeless order. B u t science has an excellent record for facing difficult challenges. T h e r e are two good rules to guide us in tackling any large and complicated problem. Y o u can either break it u p into manageable pieces and tackle t h e m one at a time, or you can study it and think a b o u t it to see whether it shows some k i n d of pattern. Actually we have to do both, but this evening we shall try the second approach. After all, that is what the mathe m a t i c i a n does when he uses calculus instead of a r i t h m e t i c and letters instead of numbers. T h e chemist, too, managed to learn a great deal a b o u t complicated organic compounds long before he had his present knowledge of the detailed behavior of atoms.

T i m e and Process O u r business today, then, will b e with pattern and perspective. So let us b e g i n with t i m e , for ecology deals with process, and processes go on in time. W e know now, thanks to radioactivity measurements, that the planet on which we live is at least three billion years old. H a l f of that t i m e went by before 45

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any evidence of life, in the form of fossils, was laid down. Roughly then, earth is twice as old as the record of living things, which began, say, more than a billion years ago. Against this tremendous span of time, our own species seems incredibly young. The first evidences of human beings cannot go back more than a million years at the most. T h e earth is three thousand times as old. Not only, then, are we the products of an immensely long period of pre-human evolution, but we owe our survival to the fact that evolution had stocked the earth with the modern forms of plant and animal life upon which we must depend. The vast amounts of stored surplus— wheat, eggs, and butter—that we have on hand should not trap us into a false sense of security as to the vital importance of green plants and the organisms that they support. During the long pre-human past the gradual concentration of mineral deposits, essential metals, and fossil fuels that sustain our modern economy also took place. Today we are dissipating them as recklessly as though we thought they would last forever. But quite as important as the slow development of necessary things for our use has been the organization of the environment into a working system of orderly processes. T h e beautiful operation by which sea water is distilled upward into the clouds to fall upon the earth as rain and make its leisurely way back to the sea is one such process. It is during this interval between rainfall and re-entry to the ocean that water is available to sustain all life on land. Soil and vegetation, themselves an expression of process, tend to steady this return flow and render it of greatest use, meanwhile shaping, yet stabilizing, the landscape. T o o often in human history we have interfered with this 46

NATURE AND MORAL CHOICE process in various ways, speeding up the flow of water and destroying the balance which initially favored us. During this past winter I visited the sparsely populated area of dense tropical jungle that has overgrown the vast ruins of the ancient Mayans in Guatemala. T h e r e we observed the splendid work being carried on by the expedition from the University of Pennsylvania under the leadership of Dr. Ed. Shook at T i k a l , where magnificent temples and carvings are being uncovered. It is obvious to the trained observer that this was once a region of fertile limestone soil. It is equally obvious that this soil has been washed down to fill the scores of basins that once held lakes of clear water, themselves no doubt a vital part of the vanished economy. Through wrong practices this gifted people wore out their welcome on the land.

Ecosystems W e speak, in our technical moments, of ecosystems. T h e s e are the patterns of living communities that have been developed through the long interaction of organisms and environment. It is through them that solar energy is fixed into organic compounds which sustain all life. T h e y also, as I have noted, regulate the flow of water, stabilize the earth's surface, and result in the formation of soil. Most important, they are so organized as to use energy to keep their own system in sound working condition—like an industry which invests some of its earnings in plant maintenance and improvement instead of spending all of its operating net in dividends. It is a common but serious mistake to look on a forest as a mere assemblage of trees, or a prairie as a patch of grass. Each 47

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is in truth a highly organized affair of many species, including animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, and hosts of microorganisms that are as essential as they are invisible. T h e net result is one of constructive economy of energy, use, and re-use of materials. Here is a clear model set forth to guide us in our own use of land when we remove the natural cover. But instead of following it to secure unity through variety, we too often develop a unity of monotony, sterilizing and reinoculating wide stretches with a single species, such as corn or wheat. T h e remarkable thing about natural ecosystems is their resiliency. Our forests rebound from the devastation of hurricanes and our prairies survive long periods of drouth, thanks to their variety of composition and sturdiness of organization. W e cannot say the same for our mass-production fields of today. It is a risky business to put all of one's money on a single horse. I have given these instances to show that the earth is habitable for us not only because of the things it yields but more profoundly by virtue of great natural processes that have made these things possible. And this points up a principle in human ecology—the need not only to avoid depletiiig the things we need but to prevent the deeper danger of disrupting natural processes.

Agricultural Society Against this background, let us resume our perspective in time. Only yesterday, some ten thousand years ago, men learned the art of domesticating plants. After hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering in scattered 48

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bands, it at length became possible, thanks to gardening and agriculture, to have leisure time for something beyond the search for food and for our ancestors to live in larger groups, villages, towns, and ultimately in cities. T o this fact we owe the arts of civilization and the beginnings of recorded history. W h e n I was taught history, or indeed when I read it, my attention was seldom called to the fact that centers of power — R o m e , Babylon, ancient Israel, Egypt, and Mexico—came into existence by virtue of a highly productive area. It was years later when I learned that as each great center grew in strength and numbers, so did its pressure on the land which made it possible. Under this pressure the land, except where renewed by flood as in the Nile, began to suffer. Meanwhile population, increasing beyond the equilibrium point, furnished more hands than there was work to be done. M o n u m e n t a l structures, elaborate ceremonial, h u m a n sacrifice, and war have been among the measures used to meet this classical problem of unemployment, sister of overpopulation. But war has had another function than making use of idle hands or—as we often think—gratifying the ruthless ambition of potentates. It has been an expression of the need to make up, by territorial expansion, for the lessened production of originally fertile centers of agriculture and population. If we ever see a modern nation whose power rests on mineral wealth going to war for access to mines and wells beyond its borders it will be merely an extension of a very ancient pattern. I learned at first hand something of the acute distress in western Europe, whose raw winters are tempered by the use of oil heat, when shipments through the Suez were shut off. And I cannot be complacent when I recall that the United States today, with less than 10 per cent of world population 49

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK and not more than 10 per cent of the habitable land in the world, is consuming some 60 per cent of the world's mineral production. T h e causes of conflict lie far deeper than the perversity of men in power. Science and Abundance Between three and four hundred years ago—a tiny fragment of human time and an infinitesimal span in earth history—began another great change in man's affairs. T h i s was due to the formulation of the method of systematic discovery which we call science. Fundamentally it was an expression of the creative instinct of the human mind, but men were not slow to see its practical advantages. Less than two centuries later-—say by 1 8 0 0 — t h e applications of physics, later of chemistry, geology, and biology, had given rise to the Industrial Revolution. T h i s revolution intensified the effects of agriculture and other arts upon population and leisure, although at first its benefits were most unequally distributed. Mass production had its birth when Eli Whitney showed a committee of the Congress that interchangeable musket parts could be made with precision. W o r l d population, which had remained steady at about half a billion, then doubled in three centuries, now doubled in one. Political and religious concepts were shaken and, most important, a new idea began to gain ground. Previously mankind had accepted the notion that struggle and scarcity were its lot. Now there developed a belief that abundance, with a minimum effort, was the normal order of nature. T h u s were the columns in the ledger reversed. Debtor became creditor, with the world owing each a living— and a good one! 50

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In this excitement men overlooked the most profound lesson of an event whose centennial we celebrate this year—the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Some saw in this doctrine merely a release from old restraints and justification for ruthless competition. But its essential point is that life and environment are inseparable. Living beings are an expression not merely of their own innate properties but of the natural world in which they have developed. A reasonable inference is that mankind should proceed cautiously in dismantling the system of which it is inevitably a part. One might even quote an old and rugged saying, "It's a dirty bird that fouls its own nest." Meanwhile the applications of science have continued to accelerate. Science as a source of perspective has been all but forgotten in our enthusiasm for its immediate utility. It has been applied, out of all proportion, to the fabrication of consumer goods out of raw materials. Such is our facility in this respect that a vast amount of energy goes into making people want the things we produce so readily, whether they need them or not. People have always been willing to use time and energy to get things they could live without—such as sea shells, bright feathers, skulls, and jewels. But never before have they had such a range of choice, so persuasively urged. The modern American is like a child with a great open box of candy.

Space for Living T o continue our perspective in time, the last six decades, during which I have had the privilege of being alive, have 51

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witnessed an acceleration in tempo nothing less than terrific. In the United States both population and life expectancy have doubled. We have participated in four wars, two of them of world dimension, and been more than passive onlookers at a fifth, the conflict between Russia and Japan. We have learned to apply fossil fuel in the internal combustion engine, increasing our rate of travel by at least a factor of ten and a consequent living area by the square of that figure. An individual who can travel thirty miles in an hour has open to him an area of nine hundred square miles for his choice in that length of time. These developments have speeded up the consumption of raw materials, both renewable and nonrenewable. It is safe to say that more iron, aluminum, oil, and coal have been used since 1900 than in all previous history. The demand for water alone—once considered a free good—has increased to such a point that everywhere I travel I find communities deeply concerned about adequate future supplies. And there have been other effects, harder to get at but suggested by many evidences of increasing strain. Privacy and quiet, with leisure for reflection, are at a premium, despite shorter working hours. Wordsworth said, " T h e world is too much with us." What would he say now? A friend who makes recordings of bird songs reports that it is almost impossible anywhere to escape the sounds of throbbing motors. But in a way the most curious and sinister development is what I may call the paradox of space. As our numbers increase each individual demands and gets more space. Urbanités move into suburbia, where they enjoy a brief period of elbow room until the city, with its asphalt and concrete, racket and taxes, catches up with them. Fewer farmers farm bigger farms. Paren52

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thetically and speaking from experience, this wanton abdication of decent rural living is based upon faulty machine design and heavy sales promotion. Whereas in Denmark, with suitably patterned implements, a good living can be made off of sixty mechanized acres, our farmers are so oversold on heavy equipment that they must have five times that area to stay in business. T o mention the word "space" today immediately deflects our attention from its most vital aspect—the space around us, within which we live. O u r ancestors used to look upward, hoping to deserve a place in Heaven. W e look outward into an infinite world of planets, stars, and nebulae, often and unbelievably thinking of it as a place of escape in case we muck up this potential paradise in which we are now living. Billions of dollars are going into the venture. Let it be clear that I as a scientist have no quarrel with curiosity, however far it ranges. But equally as a scientist I do quarrel with o u r willingness to neglect matters of greater priority that sorely need our attention. And nothing now is more urgent than the use of our utmost intelligence and skill to deal with the problem of growing numbers within a finite space. O n this hangs not only the f u t u r e of o u r supplies of food and water but the very question of the quality of human existence. T o me this problem of the quality of h u m a n life in the future comes near the heart of the problem. By it I mean not only the quality of people but of the existence that will be possible for them. It happens that science advances by making measurements; but how do you measure quality? Not surprisingly, many forecasts of man's f u t u r e concern themselves with trying to compute, in terms of available energy and materials, 53

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how many people the earth can possibly feed. Far less attention has been given to the space that will be available, although this can be fairly measured. Very little is given to any estimates of the kind of life that will be possible for those who survive. It is difficult to agree on what constitutes the good life and even more difficult to apply measurement to the concept. Complicating the problem is the assumption that human population will continue to increase indefinitely, that human beings can be conditioned to accept almost anything, and that science will certainly get us out of any jam we get into. If our population continues to increase at the present rate there will be less than one acre per person to provide living space, food, fiber, recreation, and employment two centuries from now. What will science have to offer in the way of human values then?

T h e Balance of Nature T o counter this proposition it is necessary to state another assumption—that of the dignity and importance of the human individual. Proceeding from there, we can get some guidance from science. All biological experience confirms the fact that no species of living organisms can continue to multiply indefinitely without coming into some kind of balance with its environment. And while we know that human beings can survive when all those things we associate with the good life have been lost, they do not accept this fate passively, but struggle to better themselves. And finally, it is wiser to use science to keep us out of trouble than to bail us out, once we are in. W e know, too, that whether we study molecules, plants, or 54

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animals, there is a progressive loss of freedom and increase of stress as numbers of individuals increase within a limited space. The earth, vast as it is, is finite in area. And however vague our concept of the good life may be, I know of no one who would associate it—in our culture—with diminishing freedom and increased stress. Even the promises of communism begin with the assurances that eventual abundance and freedom from restraint will come to pass. John Stuart Mill long ago pointed out, in a neglected chapter called The Stationary State, the ultimate necessity of some kind of equilibrium between man and resources. Natural communities, as I have observed earlier, exemplified this condition of an open steady state—using energy to develop and maintain a balanced, continuing organization. A few modern economists are showing that, after a human community reaches a certain optimum size, depending upon circumstances, any further increase represents liability, not asset. Overgrown towns, burdened to pay for schools and other public services which their economy cannot support, are current examples. In Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland, France, and Italy are

struggling to keep population growth, by one means or another, under some kind of control. In the Orient, India faces the same, almost hopeless, task as a matter of official policy. Here and there, in our own country, a few voices are bold enough to suggest that perhaps the good life does not depend upon the multiplication of consumer goods but might be achieved by a far less wasteful and consumptive economy. Perhaps the rising vogue of small, economical motor cars is a hint that public opinion is aware of this fact. Thus human ecology carries us back to a problem older 55

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK than recorded history—that of the meaning and value of existence. It is this quest which should be served by our applications of science and enlightened by our increasing knowledge of the universe. W e still have the choice between technology as our slave or master. What kind of a world do we wish to fashion for the future? T h i s question we cannot avoid except at our peril.

T h e Quest for Order I lack the knowledge and wisdom to do more than suggest a few simple steps. T h i s eternal quest for order is a challenge to each of us and must continue so long as men breathe. It calls for the widest range of talents we can muster. And it must take off from where we are, where we are face to face with reality. I regard it as nothing more than sensible political sanitation for each responsible citizen to learn to see what is going on around him and take some responsibility for guiding affairs, not in the light of immediate expediency but with the knowledge that he must help shape the future. It is a commonplace among biologists today that man, through his power to adapt his ways, is in charge of his own future evolution. I would add that he is also in charge of the destiny of his environment. T o that end he must be able to read and interpret his environment. For this he needs a far more convincing experience of science than he gets today— not only that he may understand one of the great creative manifestations of the human mind but that he may be able to interpret realistically the world in which he lives. 56

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T h e Neglected Artist And finally, may I emphasize the importance of a neglected man, the artist. I have mentioned the challenge to all ranges of talent—philosopher, technologist, and scientist, to which I would add the m a n of law, finance and administration, and the craftsman. W h e n I speak of the artist I do so in the broadest sense. His role is at least a double one. T h e environment of the f u t u r e is a problem in design, and design is his business. But to make design effective calls for it to be dramatized, as any smart sales manager can testify. Again, to catch and dramatize the aspirations of humanity is the business of the artist, be he poet, painter, or architect. I have called the artist a neglected man. By this I do not mean that many artists go hungry, although some do unless they have other sources of income. I mean that we have failed to appreciate his importance, to remind him of it, and prepare him for it. He needs, of course, to discipline his eye, his ear, his hand and tongue, and his skill with words. But he also needs profound knowledge and understanding of the world. However solitary his genius, he needs communication. T h e one thing I miss in much of what I see and hear is any grasp of totality—not any lack of facility. Like many of the rest of us in this confused and noisy world, the m o d e m artist (when not examining his symptoms and talking to himself) often seems bemused by the random path of atoms and the principle of uncertainty. T h e eternal problems of struggle, organic form, growth, and fulfillment seem not to interest him; yet it is these which he must help us to comprehend and express. It is the privilege of a great university to be universal, to 57

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take part in creating wholeness in its sons. T h e mere mechanics of departmental organization are such that this is not always easy. But the presence here today of such a considerable group, willing to take time from busy lives to enlarge their scope of interest, is an encouraging sign. What we really want, we can have.

58

III T h e Past as a Guide to the Function and Pattern of Social W o r k Karl

deSchweinitz

W H A T E V E R T H E COUNT O F OUR INDIVIDUAL YEARS, W E O F THIS

company—faculty, trustees, students, alumni, and friends of the School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania—have reached that momentous and fascinating age, the age of history. W e can now look back upon a past of half a century, which in turn is part of a far more distant perspective, extending through nearly all the five millenniums of recorded human experience. As a school we are still young, but as a concern and function of society we are very old.

Humanitarian Concepts T h e humanitarian concepts from which we stem can be traced to the farthermost years of antiquity. Fifteen centuries 59

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before Christ, the Egyptian noble, speaking from his tomb in the ritual of his time, assures the gods that he has done what they like: I was a father to the orphan, a husband to the widow, a protection from the wind to the shivering.1 Ours is indeed a deeply rooted function. So too the pattern we try to follow in our performance. Witness, the Vizier Ptahhotep, writing nearly forty-five hundred years ago: If thou art one to whom petition is made, be calm as thou listeneth to the petitioner's speech. Do not rebuff him before he has swept out his body or before he has said that for which he came. A petitioner likes attention to his words better than the fulfilling of that for which he came. . . . It is not [necessary] that everything about which he has petitioned should come to pass, [but] a good hearing is a soothing to the heart. 2 Coming closer to the present we find St. Benedict in 528 A.D. prescribing some of the qualities to be desired in a receptionist: At the gate of the monastery let there be placed a wise old man, who knoweth how to give and receive an answer. T h e n recognizing human frailty and the need for a constant coverage of intake, he adds: 1 W . M. Flinders Petrie, Social Life in Ancient Egypt (London: Constable 8c Co., Ltd., 1923), p. 75. 2 James R . Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1955, Second Edition), p. 413.

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And whose ripeness of years suffereth him not to wander. 3 A millennium later, in 1531, the Provost of St. Martin reports what the city of Ypres required of the men who were responsible for helping people in need: First of all they shall be like common parents to the poor of our city and bear toward them such fatherly favor as they should do to their adopted children. . . . And that they may better content many men's minds it shall be convenient that twice in every week they meet and sit together in a house that every man may be suffered to pass through . . . where they shall gently and without any sour or grim countenance receive all that make complaints. 4 One need not go nearer to the present than this to demonstrate the store of precept and example that is retained for us in the reservoir of the past. What use are we making of this great repository? Unfortunately history is low among the "musts" of education for social work. With a few exceptions, of which this school is emphatically one, the past has little place in today's curriculum.

Organization Men Is this an indication of the extent to which we are reflecting rather than contributing to our cultural environment? 3 The Rule of St. Benedict, ed. and tr. by D. Oswald Hunter Blair (Fort Augustus: T h e Abbey Press, 1958, Fifth Edition), p. 149. 4 Frank. R. Salter (ed.), Some Early Tracts on Poor Relief. Forma Subventions Pauperum. 1531, tr. by William Marshall, 1535 (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1925). pp. 52, 54.

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"American society itself is largely ahistorical in outlook and consequently indifferent to the 'dead past,' " writes John C. McKinney in a symposium on the development of sociological theory since World War I. 8 His comments are confirmed by Howard Becker and Al vin Boskoff, the editors of the volume: "Most instructors [in sociology], particularly those of the younger generation, have little antiquarian [sic] interest and their students have less." T h e preface from which this quotation is taken begins: " W e don't know where we're going, but we're on our way," is a sentiment that spoken or unspoken describes many of our day to day activities, not only those in these United States but throughout the world.®

Does this also describe the current state of social work? I hope not, but some of the trends in our profession are not wholly unrelated to what is happening elsewhere. Such a trend is that described in an article in the January issue of Social Work. " T h e cult of the technician is spreading in our field," writes Alvin L. Schorr, Family Life Specialist in the federal Social Security Administration, "those professionals who really feel alienated from the broad purposes of social work—to help reconcile men to their society and their society to men— and who practice a technique like case work or even community organization for its own purposes alone." 7 John C. McKinney, "Methodology, Procedures, and Techniques in Sociology—The Historical Procedure," in Howard Becker and Alvin Boskoff (eds), Modern Sociological Theory in Continuity and Change (New York: The Dryden Press, 1957), pp. 228-229. 6 Ibid., "The Editors' Preface," p. lx. 7 Alvin L. Schorr, "The Retreat to the Technician," Social Work, 4, No. 1, (January, 1959), p. 29. 5

62

THE PAST AS A GUIDE Even more disturbing is the implication that social work may be succumbing to the enervating influences which, as Mr. Schorr points out, many commentators feel are inherent in "the growing bureaucratization of our businesses and organizations and the people who work for t h e m , " and that there are social workers who along with "other professionals and employes" are discharging their "allotted function, not seeking to act or think beyond it—or seeking and becoming frustrated." 8 If this is our disease, for disease it is, then, indeed, we are in danger. How can a social work not clearly conscious of itself and of its significance as a social force serve any effective purpose in the world of today? How can it take an appropriate place in that interdisciplinary commonwealth, the university, membership in which demands a confident and well-founded awareness of the nature of one's profession?

T h e Function of Social W o r k What, then, is our function? W h a t does the community want of us and what do we expect of ourselves? W h a t is our necessary c o n t r i b u t i o n to the society of which we are a part? And what is the pattern of social work, the framework within which we do what we do, the form and methods of our actions, and the kind of professional persons we aim to be? I n seeking an answer to these questions let us consult both the remote and the recent past, for the function and pattern of social work have developed through two stretches of history, the one s I b i d . , p. 32.

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spanning more than twelve centuries, the other less than one hundred years. Thus commencing, we arrive at our first observation, namely that the oldest recorded concern of the social and political society in which our American culture has its origin is the problem of poverty, and the earliest welfare function is the relief of need. Our evidence is a letter addressed to Gregory the Great by St. Augustine in 597, the year in which he and his company of missionary monks brought a highly sophisticated Mediterranean civilization to an underdeveloped country in the North Atlantic. T h e letter asked the Pope how the "things given by the faithful to the altar" should be apportioned. Gregory in reply indicated that one in four parts—later one in three—should go to the poor. 8 Shortly thereafter the tithe, already a moral obligation, became mandatory in canon law. Since the Church was a state, it is not inaccurate to say that for more than thirteen centuries we have had in principle, though often neglected in practice, a formal, prescribed, compulsory provision for the relief of need, a function first of ecclesiastical government and then, with the legislating of the Poor Law, between 1536 and 1601, of the civil government. This system, which the English colonists brought with them to North America, was for one hundred years almost everywhere in this country the only organized agency of assistance. In the United States philanthropy did not precede government; it followed government. But whether under one or the other auspices, the relief of need as a recognized function of our society is as old as our recorded history. 9

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the Bristish Nation, Introduction by D o m D a v i d Knowles. Everyman's Library, N o . 479 ( L o n d o n : J. M. D e n t & Sons, Ltd.; N e w York: E. P. D u t t o n & Co., Inc., 1910, last reprinted 1954), p. 38.

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Definition and Delegation Second, the helping of the poor has always been a defined and delegated responsibility. I n the parish it was o n e of the specified duties of the parson. In the monastery, which in contrast to the parish was a voluntary agency, t h e r e was the almoner. So too with the king. It is in the court of Oswald of N o r t h u m b r i a (633-641) that we meet o u r first welfare officer. T h e Venerable Bede tells how o n an Easter day the king a n d his guest, Bishop Aidan, had sat d o w n to d i n n e r and were a b o u t "to p u t forth their hands to bless the b r e a d " w h e n " t h e r e entered suddenly his thegn to w h o m was committed the charge of receiving the poor, and he informed the king that a m u l t i t u d e of poor people come f r o m all quarters was sitting in the streets begging some alms of the king." W h e r e u p o n Oswald "at once ordered that the food placed in f r o n t of h i m should be broken u p and divided in portions a m o n g them." 1 0 T h e official whose authority was such that he could interr u p t the king's Easter d i n n e r was a constituted m e m b e r of the royal household d u r i n g a large part of the middle ages, notably in England after the Conquest. T h e duties of the king's alm o n e r are described in Fleta, "a treatise on the law of the English people," written a n d issued in the reign of Edward I (1272-1307): He is to gather u p the fragments diligently every day and distribute them to the needy; he is to visit for charity's sake the sick, the lepers, the captives, the poor, the widows and others in want and the wanderers in the 10

Dorothy Whitelock. (ed.), Bede Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation; in English Historical Documents, gen. ed., David C. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), Vol. I, c. 500-1042, p. 626. G5

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countryside and to receive cast horses, clothing, money and other gifts bestowed in alms and to distribute them faithfully. He ought also by frequent exhortations to spur the king to liberal almsgiving, especially on Saint's Days, and to implore him not to bestow his robes, which are of great price, upon players, flatterers, fauners, talebearers or minstrels, but to command them to be used to augment his almsgiving. 11 It is significant that the j o b description of the almoner went beyond a routine administration of relief. H e was to urge His Majesty to generous and discriminate giving. H e was to act as the conscience of the king. So also in early colonial America, the almoner of the community, the overseer of the poor, not only administered outdoor relief but in the absence of any institutional facilities, called upon the neighbors to provide shelter for the aged and nursing for the sick.* In his marshalling of these services, he was our first practitioner of community organization, bringing the cause of those in trouble to those who might be of help. Welfare has thus long been recognized n o t only as a function of the community but as the task of a specially designated personnel.

Spokesmen for the Poor T h i s brings us to our third observation. T h e r e have always been spokesmen for the poor. T h e relief of need as a function has not been a spontaneous creation. It exists because in al1 1 "Of English G. O. 1955), • Not

the Office of Almoner," in Fleta: A Treatise on the Law af the People, ed. with a translation by H. G. Richardson and Sayles, Seiden Society (London: Book II, Bernard Quaritch, Vol. II, Chapter 23. to be confused with the later practice of auctioning the poor. 66

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most every generation there has been a humanitarian leadership which has taken the affirmative in a community characteristically divided for and against the poor. Usually we identify this leadership with our own century or its immediate predecessors, but spokesmanship is deeper in our tradition than these more recent years. W e have yet to find a greater capacity for empathy than that exhibited by St. J o h n Chrysostom in his plea for charity to beggars, or a more deliberate effort to assure justice for the poor than that made by Charlemagne, or a broader visioned or more generous philanthropist than Alfred the Great, of whom his friend, Bishop Asser, wrote that "except for him alone the poor had no helpers throughout that kingdom, or indeed very few." 1 2 Like Alfred, the spokesmen for the destitute and the oppressed have often seemed to speak in vain, but in their persistence the foundations of social welfare have been built. Less familiar in the long past has been the use of method. T h e idea is old, centuries old in the counsel of philosophers like the Egyptian who knew that a good hearing is soothing to the heart. So also in the fourth century A.D. we hear St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, saying, Let there be method in our giving, so that the poor may not go away empty nor the substance of the needy be done away and become the spoil of the dishonest. Let there then be such due measure that kindness may never be put aside, and true need never be left neglected. 13 12 English Historical Documents, Vol. I, op. cit., Asser's "Life of King Alfred," p. 275. 13 A Select Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Second Series, New York: T h e Christian Literature Company, 1896), Vol. X . "St. Ambrose. Some of the Principal Works of," p. 55; "On the Duties of the Clergy (De Officiis)," Book II, Chapter X V I .

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T w o centuries later, Gregory the Great, out of an experience in the administration of relief unrivaled in his day, placed a similar emphasis upon method. His ideas may have been adopted by Charlemagne and were quite certainly applied by Alfred the Great who was fond of paraphrasing Gregory's famous dictum: Do not give little to whom you should give much, nor much to whom you should give little nor nothing to whom you should give something, nor anything to whom you should give nothing.1,4 With a few such exceptions there is little evidence in the long past of any methodology of help, but we must not overlook Juan Luis Vives, writing in 1526, who in his theories about the treatment of mental disease anticipated Pinel, Tuke, and Rush by two and one-half centuries: Remedies suited to the individual patient should be used. Some need medical care and attention to their mode of life; others need mild and friendly treatment, that like wild animals they may gradually grow gentle; others instruction. There will be some who will require force and chains, but these must be so used that the patients are not made more violent by them. Above all, tranquility must be introduced into their minds, for it is through this that reason and sanity return. 18 T h e r e have been in the past other advocates of method but, as we all know, a systematic approach to people in trouble has English Historical Documents, Vol. 1, op. cit., ρ .275. Juan Luis Vives, Concerning the Relief of the Poor: A Letter addressed. to Senate of Bruges, January 6, 1526, tr. Margaret M. Sherwood (New York: The New York School of Philanthropy, Studies in Social Work, No. 11, 1917), p. 19. 14

18

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been the contribution of later times. Our inheritance from earlier days is first a firmly based acceptance of the relief of need as a social function, an established responsibility of government, but also a philanthropic activity; second a personnel delegated to the performance of that function; and third, an inspiring tradition of spokesmanship for the poor. II Then within the last hundred years the ancient and deeply founded concern of our society about individual poverty expressed itself in a surge of creative vigor and invention, initiating a new era in social welfare. In the United States that era opened with the establishment of two institutions, the state boards of charities and the charity organization societies. In the origin and programs of these two movements we can see the commencing function and pattern of what was to become social work. "What we want is, first, a knowledge of the fact," wrote Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe answering a request from the Governor of Massachusetts for his views about "improvements in our method of public charities." "Second," continued Dr. Howe, "a board or central commission whose duty it shall be to collect and diffuse knowledge, to prevent abuses, to protect the rights of paupers, and to establish as far as may be a uniform and wise system of treatment of pauperism over the Commonwealth." Then that great spokesman for the poor and the handicapped urged "the justice and necessity of having all questions and all systems looked at a little from the pauper standpoint."Ιβ 1 8 Laura E. Richards (ed.). Letters and Journals of Samuel Howe (Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 1909), Vol. I, pp. 509, 511.

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Gridley

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK Boards of Charities T h e r e followed on October

1, 1863, the

Massachusetts

Board of Charities, a commission of citizens with an employed secretary, its power that of institutional inspection, study, reporting, recommendation, and publication. By 1874 there were boards in nine states. T h a t year these boards organized an annual conference with published proceedings, expanded it in 1879 to include state and local, public and private agencies with welfare functions. T h e members of this Conference on Charities and Correction, today the National Conference on Social Welfare, immediately began exploiting their common experience, assembling facts, discussing methodology, and seeking to arrive at generalizations. In initiating an organization thus proposed and thus operating, the state boards of charities had begun the institutionalization of social work. T h e y had asserted responsibility for an area of funded knowledge and special practice. W h a t would grow to be a profession had been born.

Charity Organization Movement If social work owes its origin to the action of the state boards of charities in starting the National Conference, it was the charity organization societies which, sharing with the state boards a concern for the development of social policy, gave to social work its characteristic integration of a philosophically oriented programing with a systematic, methodologically based practice, addressed to the community as well as to the indi70

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vidual; the welfare of o n e conceived as inextricably involved in the welfare of the o t h e r . Looking backward f r o m today to the second a n n u a l r e p o r t of the P h i l a d e l p h i a Society for Organizing Charity, 1880, o n e can identify in two eloquently optimistic paragraphs the twin objectives of a n e w discipline. First, T h e p e r m a n e n t redemption and recovery of the poor from their poverty and debasement—not alleviation b u t cure—not help to live in poverty, b u t a strong h a n d to lift the poor out of poverty by their own otherwise undeveloped or unemployed resources. 17 a n d second, T h e acquaintance of workers one with another, of relieving agencies and societies with each other's methods, of private p h i l a n t h r o p y with public order until all the h u m a n impulses of society are harmoniously directed to the suppression of its wrongs and the help of the impoverished. 1 8 I n this call for the r e h a b i l i t a t i o n of the individual a n d the organization of the c o m m u n i t y was t h e c o m m e n c e m e n t of the central f u n c t i o n a n d p a t t e r n of social work. T h a t charity organization enormously overestimated the power of the individual to d e t e r m i n e his economic destiny does n o t d e t r a c t f r o m t h e d o u b l e principle it instituted in those b e g i n n i n g years. Consider the detailed completeness of the p r o g r a m i n t r o d u c e d f r o m England t o the U n i t e d States at Buffalo in 1877: the district agent, employed to get the facts a b o u t the individual a n d to 17

Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity, Second October 1, 1880 (Philadelphia, 1880), pp. 9 - 1 0 . ™Ibid., p. 17.

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Report,

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organize the necessary material relief; the neighborhood committee of volunteers and representatives of charities and churches to decide what should be done; the friendly visitor to exercise a rehabilitating influence upon the individual in need, and the central council of the society with its program of citywide planning and action. Here in the making was a social case work, a community organization, and a group process all integrated in one practice. Incorporated in this program, however, was a negative factor —the familiar COS opposition to governmental assistance. Doubtless this was inevitable in the part that protest against "the inefficiency and corruption which pervaded city outdoor relief" 1 9 played in the origin and progress of the new movement; but whereas the State Boards attempted to improve government from within, the charity organization movement applauded from Philadelphia, New York, and certain other cities, responding to a mounting public criticism, abolished their administrations of assistance. In setting out to demonstrate in these communities that a system of voluntary organization could solve the problem of need, and in opposing elsewhere the extension of this form of public service, our predecessors made a fateful decision. As a result, almost all the commencing practitioners of the new profession lived their formative years under the aegis of philanthropy. Local government would not have been ready or organized to include them, but from the start of the COS there was a disassociation in thought and feeling from the public service. Except for the boards of charities, whose lay and emReport to a Citizens Meeting in Philadelphia June 15, 1878, quoted in Edward T . Devine, The Principles of Relief (New York: T h e Macmillan Company, 1915), p. 301. 19

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ployed personnel were few in number, and an occasional other agency, social work, was exclusively identified with the voluntary forces in the community. T h a t was in the spirit of the times. T h e idea that a systematic organization of the community and a friendly guidance of the individual in need would solve the problem of poverty, with little or no recourse to government, had an enormous appeal. "Those were dull days for thoughtful people before the Society for Organizing Charity was founded," wrote the daughter of one of the participants in the new movement. "When the public mind was first aroused and stimulated to organized effort in Philadelphia . . . my mother responded eagerly, and she has often spoken with deep feeling of the relief experienced in the strength of continued and well directed forces." 20 20

Pamphlet, quoted in a letter from Walter P. Townsend, 1958.

T h e Hegemony of the Elite A whole echelon of civic leaders was similarly affcctcd. Men highly placed in the professions and in business, women concerned about the welfare of their communities, intellectuals, persons of culture, deeply interested in the world of their day, undertook to translate the idea of charity organization into an effective social service. In one of those amazing concatenations of demand and supply they found for the executive leadership of their organizations a galaxy of men and women, their counterparts in civic, cultural, and intellectual interests. These incipient social workers came from many fields of activity b u t they exhibited a common characteristic. They were clergymen 73

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who heard a call to practice the social mission which they preached, newspaper men who wanted to do as well as write, women who saw a new and dynamic way of engaging in community service, and university professors who sought an opportunity to move from the academic to the operational. They shared with the philanthropists who recruited them a concern for a disciplined approach to the problem of individual poverty and a vision of a total community organized to this end. They had an urge to translate theory into action and they combined a feeling for the ideal with a recognition of the real. They met great opposition. In part this opposition came from people to whom the substitution of considered giving for a spontaneous alms was repugnant; in part it was due to persons who felt that too much responsibility was placed upon the poor for their poverty, and that increased assistance from the community was indicated. With the expansion of social work into the field of social reform there followed the conflict seemingly inherent in the advocacy of measures for the eradication of social ills like child labor, bad housing, and infant mortality. This was an occasion of controversy different from the opposition engendered by COS philosophy and practice. It came from persons who saw their own special interests imperiled, and it increased as the number and variety of social services grew. Starting in 1886, the settlements had begun speaking for the poor of congested urban neighborhoods and urging needed reforms. Their activities were augmented by the national programing and legislative agencies which appeared in quick succession at the turn of the century. On all counts social work was born and thrived in battle. 74

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Utilitarian Research and Professional Education In seeking to improve the lot of the underprivileged, social workers began to employ research as a means of pointing to specific evils and of supporting remedial and preventative measures. It was a utilitarian research, characteristic of a personnel aiming to realize ideals through action, and practically minded. Witness in 1907-08 the Pittsburgh Survey, which under the leadership of Paul U. Kellogg, contributed notably to the elimination of the twelve-hour day in the steel industry and the vast improvement in living and working conditions in that community; the studies which Florence Kelley and the Consumers League made to support with human facts the Brandeis argument in 1908 before the United States Supreme Court in defense of the constitutionality of the Oregon ten-hour law for women; and the use which Julia Lathrop made in the Children's Bureau of research as a weapon in the campaign to reduce infant mortality. T h e employment of research as a tool was a logical application of Dr. Howe's "a knowledge of the fact." It was also one manifestation of a kind of thinking that had been expressed at the very beginning of the state boards and the charity organization societies. In 1880 David Otis Kellogg, secretary of the then new Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity told the American Social Science Association that Charity has its laws which can only be detected by a study of past experience. It is therefore a science—the science of social therapeutics. 21 The Rev. D. O. Kellogg, "The Principle and Advantage of Association in Charities," Journal of Social Science, No. X I I (December 1880), Part I, pp. 86, 87.

21

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T h e following year, George Robinson, president of the Illinois Board of State Commissioners of Charities spoke in similar vein to the recently formed Conference of Charities and Correction: T h e care of the unfortunate is really a profession; it may almost take rank with the learned professions—so great and varied is the information upon all subjects required for its highest development.. . . [The] Boards of Public Charities . . . have to consider not only the practical but the scientific aspects of the questions which command their attention. 22 Consistent with the point of view thus expressed was the emphasis of the pioneers of social work upon training, initially an in-agency, in-service training. By 1890 the administration of charity was soundly enough established as a vocation to cause H o m e r Folks, who had just completed a year of graduate study in preparation for teaching, to change his plans and enter the new field. He was among the first, if not the first, of our outstanding leaders, deliberately while in college, to choose social work as his life career. His youthful optimism, expressed in 1893, "philanthropic work is to be a profession," 23 was vindicated five years later when the New York Charity Organization Society offered the summer course which eventuated in the first school of social work, soon followed by schools in Chicago and Boston. 22

George S. Robinson, " T h e Utility of State Boards of Public Charities," Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (Boston, 1881), pp. 67-68. - 3 H o m e r Folks, "College Graduates in Benevolent Work," International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893, Seventh Section: Sociology in Institutions of Learning (Baltimore: T h e Johns H o p k i n s Press, 1894), p. 22. 76

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Then, in 1909, came the start of the school which is now celebrating its golden anniversary, the School of Social Work of the University of Pennsylvania. Within a decade this school met with fourteen other schools to form the Association of T r a i n i n g Schools for Professional Social Work, today the Council on Social Work Education. 24 In 1921 the American (now National) Association of Social Workers was organized. T h u s only a little more than four decades after 1879, when the Conference of Boards of Public Charities became the Conference on Charities and Correction, social work had emerged as a profession, its practice founded in social case work, in group work, social administration, community organization, and research directed toward social change. It had become the operating component in a wide range of social programs from the helping of people in trouble to the improvement of social and living conditions.

Ill At this point in our review of the past we are not far from times and occurrences of which persons here tonight can say, "I know because I was there." We have come close to the edge of history and the place where contemporary comment and appraisal begin. Some of us will remember how in the days of o u r novitiate, our more experienced elders would say in "jestearnest" that it was the duty of every good social worker to work himself out of a job. Aware of the spread and vigor of the 24

Katherine A. Kendall, "Education for Social Work," Social Work Year Book, 1954 (New York: American Association of Social Workers, 1554), p. 171. 77

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movements for the improvement of social and living conditions, they were venturing to look forward to the time when perhaps poverty would be abolished and there would no longer be need of social work. Today we anticipate with even greater confidence the ultimate conquest of destitution, but we subscribe to the reverse of the assumption of our predecessors that the elimination of want would mean the elimination of the social services. Not the least significant development in social welfare during the first part of the twentieth century was the recognition of social work as an essential factor in the life of the good society.

Social Work in Many Fields Led by the hospitals, beginning in 1905, closely followed by the public schools, a vast congeries of institutions devoted to the maintenance of mental and physical health, the development of public education, the administration of justice, and other activities had begun to include social work as a functional element in their services. During the First World War, the American Red Cross had viewed the men in the armed forces through a new perspective, seeing them as members of families and as persons affected by other determining relationships and occurrences in the community, and had inaugurated Home Service and related programs. T h e same basic concept reinforced by experience in medical and psychiatric services brought social work in significant volume to the Veterans Administration in the middle twenties. Those years also saw the development of child guidance with its social work component. 78

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In the Second World W a r came Army social work. As early as 1918 the formation of the National Association of Community Chests and Councils had symbolized the decision of the civic and economic leadership of our cities that the voluntary social and health services were essential to the total welfare and that to maintain them was the responsibility of business and industry, of management and labor, as well as of philanthropy.

Public Social Work Meanwhile, a dramatic change was taking place in the attitude of our society toward the relief of need as a function of government. T h e shift once started, though long in coming, took place rapidly. As late as 1901, Cooperation, the official organ of the Chicago Bureau of Charities, had announced with great satisfaction that R e p o r t s f r o m the p r i n c i p a l cities of the U n i t e d States i n d i c a t e a steady progress in the d i r e c t i o n of the abolition of p u b l i c o u t d o o r relief. A l r e a d y all the cities of the first class with the e x c e p t i o n of C h i c a g o h a v e wholly a b a n d o n e d this f o r m of c h a r i t y . 2 5

But within ten years came the first mothers' assistance legislation and in 1919, the decision of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity to limit intake was the admission, in deed as well as in word, that charity organization could not solve the problem of poverty. T h e n , in 1930, 1931, and 1932, the most comprehensive effort ever made by philanthropy to attack the Cooperation, 1901).

25

Vol. I, No. 9 (Chicago Bureau of Charities, March 2,

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problem of destitution proved to be unequal to meeting the need for unemployment relief. W e were at last convinced of the validity of the decision made in the sixteenth century that only civil government could hope to provide a basic maintenance for the poor. Social work now moved into new and greatly expanded territory. T h e slow trickle of pioneers into public welfare became a flood; and public assistance and public child welfare grew to be the largest area in the practice of our profession, with public assistance today standing next to public and private child welfare, which has the highest percentage of representation in the National Association of Social Workers. This great extension of social work under governmental auspices was accompanied by a movement across and beyond the borders of poverty. By the thirties child guidance had commenced serving, in the same clinic, both the very poor and families of middle and upper incomes. Marriage counseling under Philadelphia leadership was demonstrating the value of social work disassociated from any economic implications. In the forties the family societies symbolized the spread of their services to the general community by adding to their clientele people who could pay a fee. T h e n came the upswing in Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) to remind the country that poverty in its most complicated form still constituted the supreme challenge to social welfare. Between 1948 and 1955 in continental United States, families receiving assistance where the father was estranged increased by 50 per cent. In the summer of 1955 divorce, separation, desertion, and unwed parenthood represented 53 per cent of the ADC case load, a development accentuated by the increas80

T H E P A S T AS A G U I D E

ing absorption of orphanhood by survivors' insurance. 28 I n the spring of 1959 the n u m b e r of A D C recipients, though not the amount of assistance payments, had passed the number of old age assistance beneficiaries. ADC is now in volume the major public assistance program. 2 7 I n its complex of financial, housing, cultural, and personal problems and in the n u m b e r of children per family, it represents the greatest concentration of social difficulty we have ever faced. At the same time experience with juvenile delinquency shows that the disinherited are to be found on every economic level. We are in the midst of a new impact of h u m a n need in the court and in the ADC program while the neighborhood is once more being recognized as a point of decision in determining the kind of society we shall have now and in the future.

Postulates of Social W o r k These developments which are contemporary as well as historical suggest four points for comment. First, whether the service be governmental or voluntary, the mandate in Avhich social work has its origin and its continuing growth comes from the community. Social work began to develop in agencies formed by citizen boards, responsible for making sure that the necessary service was performed. It is significant that the largest experiment in a practice of social case work open only to a feepaying clientele, the A r t h u r Lehman Counseling Service, was 26

Saul Kaplan, " S u p p o r t f r o m Absent Fathers in Aid to D e p e n d e n t Children," Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 2 (February 1958), p. 3. 27 Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 22, No. 3, (March 1959), T a b l e s 14 a n d 16., p p . 34, 35. 81

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founded by laymen and is conducted under citizen auspices which recognize in reporting and in other ways its responsibility to the community. Social work lives in, through, and for the community. Like Antaeus, whose strength was renewed whenever he touched the earth, social work gains in effectiveness the closer it is identified with the public from which it springs and which it serves. Second, the forerunners of social work, the men and women who promoted the state boards of charities and the charity organization societies, saw spokesmanship and social reform as an integral part of the service which they were conducting. They not only entrusted the day by day operations to a vocationally oriented personnel; they also looked to that personnel for the support, in fact and in experience, which they needed in their efforts to effect specific social change. Civic leader and social worker formed a team. Thus the social worker also engaged in spokesmanship which, founded on practice and a funded knowledge, grew to be a social statesmanship, paralleling the civic statesmanship of the civic leader. Looking back to earlier times, the elders among us this evening will recall how when one wanted to learn what was what in city or neighborhood, he went to the executive of the COS, or the children's society, or the settlement. That person knew. He was not only informed. He was realistically minded. He was concerned with what Miss Richmond called "the practical next steps" toward social advance. 28 Kenneth Pray was supreme in this form of social statesmanship. Not the least of his contributions was his "genius," to quote from last February's citation, "for reconciling things as they should be with things as they 28

Mary E. Richmond, The Long Foundation, 1930), p. 615. 82

View.

(New York: Russell Sage

THE

P A S T AS A G U I D E

are." 2 8 O f that tradition is Dean Smalley, combining in rare degree broad vision, well founded knowledge, the ability to recognize what is practicable, and to perceive the appropriate time. A social statesmanship is far more than a passive consultantship. As one reviews the past he sees that if initiative originated in the community, it also came from the profession.

The

strength of the social services has been in the complementary action toward social advance of lay citizen and social worker. Such action has been a characteristic both of the local social agency and of our state and national social welfare organizations. At the same time the social worker speaks through his professional association, the National Association of Social Workers. Its statements and the implementing activities constitute an institutional spokesmanship, a function not unlike that performed by the A F L - C I O , the United States Chamber of Commerce, or the American Medical Association. T h a t other professions and occupational interests speak in this way makes it all the more important that social work should compete in the same forum, but this kind of activity is not special to social work.

Case and Community What is special is the responsibility which the civic leadership and the professional staff of operating social services take for 2 9 K e n n e t h L . M. Pray, Citation of, University of Pennsylvania, February 7, 1959.

83

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making the connection between the case and the community, in which the case becomes the initiating factor in social change —change which ranges from federal legislation to the slightest improvement in the service which the agency offers to its own clientele. A current illustration is the J u n i o r Village Project in the District of Columbia. Its start was the case—the increasing number of dependent children entering a temporary reception home and the increasing length of their stays. A social worker in the Department of Public Welfare raises the question; an imaginative civic leader sees its significance: she heads a committee of fellow citizens which appoints a creative social worker to direct an operational study. Committee, chairman, and director together make a step by step appraisal of the facts. Poverty in its economic, environmental, and cultural aspects and implications is recognized as basic. Poverty in Washington then becomes a subject of extended, continuing treatment in the newspapers of Washington, but at the same time immediate changes in public policy and social administration are prescribed in terms of what is applicable in the here and now of agencies and community; the changes are already in process. Where social advance is effective in the social services one can almost always trace it to this kind of team work, citizen and social worker moving together in the exercise of a civic statesmanship. Great emphasis is being laid today upon recruitment for social work as a profession. T h e r e is equal room for recruitment for civic leadership in the social services, a recruitment which will indicate the necessary qualities and the opportunities for significant contributions to social welfare. A third point for comment is the intra-institutional character 84

T H E PAST AS A GUIDE of a substantial part of social work. N o t a few of u s are within the hospital, within the clinic, w i t h i n the school, w i t h i n the court, within the army. In this environment we are p a r t of a larger program where the final determinations are those of another profession. W e are sheltered f r o m the i m p a c t of the general c o m m u n i t y a n d the stimulus that comes f r o m the challenge of the average m a n to whom o u r premises m a y b e foreign. We gain, as d o the voluntary agencies within the c o m m u n i t y chest, the ease of not having to j u s t i f y o u r function a n d pattern to a general p u b l i c , b u t w e lose the i n d e p e n d e n c e a n d invigoration inherent in d e b a t e a n d d i e urging of our cause. T o b e sure d e b a t e continues, b u t it is interprofessional, a far more closely knit association than our r e l a t i o n s h i p with the general community. T h e security a n d the d a n g e r lie i n o u r compatability with the psychologically oriented professions. T h e r e is the seduction to likeness and, correspondingly, the risk of a loss of self direction a n d of o u r identity. It is fortunate that social case work had been soundly established as a broadly b a s e d practice, part of the m o r e inclusive discipline of social wTork, with a substantially f o u n d e d educational system, a national association of schools of social work, and a n a t i o n w i d e professional organization, b e f o r e we received the full impact of the psychiatric whirlwind. W e tottered for a while from the force of the cyclone, b u t we recovered our balance and were the stronger for the experience. W h o that was at A t l a n t i c City in 1919 will forget the jammed-to-the-doors-and-window-sills m e e t i n g when Jessie T a f t spoke on the " Q u a l i f i c a t i o n s of the Psychiatric Social W o r k e r " ? Even in the midst of the storm she was able to m a k e a calm appraisal of what was h a p p e n i n g a n d to point to the essential, unchanged function of social work. S a i d D r . T a f t : 85

F R O N T I E R S F O R SOCIAL W O R K

My conception of the new case work which perhaps has always been the unconscious method of the born caseworker, but which owes its coming to consciousness largely to mental hygiene and psychiatry, is that of a social technique such as may be had in any good training school combined with an understanding of human psychology which enables the social worker to deal with the personality of the patient in his social setting as intelligently and constructively as the psychiatrist deals with it in the hospital. 30 Such leadership was our salvation, and so too was the fact that although community organization and group process were then unconscious methods, social case work felt the strength of the broader professional foundation of which it was a part. T h e support that comes from being of a larger whole is the more important in those sectors where the mutual satisfaction of inter-professional relations tend to place emphasis upon likeness, and where the social worker may be welcomed to a blended practice in which the opportunity for exploration and discovery in his own special function may be lost. One characteristic of social work which is as relevant in the institutional microcosm as in the community at large is spokesmanship expressed in the movement from the case to social change. W h o does not agree with Edith Abbott that "the social worker's lot is cast with the country's disinherited people." 31 Who are the disinherited? Certainly they are the victims of Jessie Taft, "Qualifications of the Psychiatric Social Worker," Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, Atlantic City, 1919 (Chicago: 1920), p. 595. 3 1 Edith Abbott, Frontiers of Social Progress, (Lincoln, Nebraska: February 15, 1939), p. 9. 30

86

T H E PAST AS A GUIDE poverty, injustice, and physical handicap; b u t does not disinheritance take place whenever the individual leaves his own familiar setting and finds himself helpless in a strange environm e n t , court, hospital, army? T h e tendency in any institution is to organize in terms of what appears to be operating convenience. O u r problem in the discharge of o u r function of representing the concern of the c o m m u n i t y for the individual is the m a i n t e n a n c e of the rights of patient or client when he is exposed to the impersonality of over-all procedure, and the translation into revised processes of what our experience shows should b e changed. T h i s responsibility is part of all administration, but it is peculiarly the province of the social worker.

Social W o r k in the University C o m m u n i t y T h e f o u r t h point for c o m m e n t as we view the function and pattern of social work is the significance for social work of its m e m b e r s h i p in the university. H e r e is a choice and privileged e n v i r o n m e n t where o n e can have a meaningful relationship n o t only with representatives of other professions whose practice touches the field of h u m a n relations but with the whole c o m p a n y of the arts, t h e sciences, and the humanities. N o one who has enjoyed such interdisciplinary association—and

I

speak newly come from eight thrilling years in the University of California, Los Angeles—will fail to testify to the stimulating, fascinating, growth-inducing advantages of life and work in this broadly ranging setting with its diversified content. T h e opportunity is great and challenging. It demands of us that we know o u r function and the pattern through which it is 87

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK expressed, and that we be able to c o m m u n i c a t e with o u r fellows in t h e university, for they have still to k n o w us a n d we to k n o w t h e m . O u r problem is to recognize the point at which likeness begins to bring diminishing returns, and difference must m a k e its c o n t r i b u t i o n . Social work is like the rest of the academic c o m m u n i t y in its organized and e v e n t u a t i n g curiosity,

its

emphasis on workmanship, and its passion for truth, not only in seeking to get at the root of the m a t t e r b u t also in striving to b e aware of and to control the never-to-be-eliminated subjective in the getting, selection, and appraisal of fact. G r a d u a t e teaching, particularly in the field of practice, is a logical d e v e l o p m e n t of the discipline of social work; and if anything, we more t h a n m a t c h the a t t e n t i o n w h i c h o u r colleagues in o t h e r departm e n t s give to this art. T h e r e is this special emphasis. W e see teaching as an integrated process. W h i l e each teacher is responsible for an area of knowledge and practice, he is also expected to be aware of what every other teacher is teaching. E a c h part of the c u r r i c u l u m is p l a n n e d and taught in relation to every other part. T h e incorporation of any one subject in the professional e q u i p m e n t of the student largely depends u p o n how all the teachers appreciate that subject and see relevant use for it. T h u s a school can point to t h e i n c l u s i o n of social security in its p r o g r a m , b u t place it in a forgotten corner. I t is only as social security is recognized throughout the faculty as m a k i n g an essential c o n t r i b u t i o n to the education of the student that it can be said to have a p l a c e in the curriculum. So, too, with all other subjects. O u r s is a focused education, with each school, however, having its own emphasis. T h e essence of our difference from o u r colleagues in the 88

T H E PAST AS A GUIDE university is that the function of the scientist is detached observation, b u t we move toward education from the midst of engaged operation. H e r e we are not so different from any profession which bases its teaching in an area of practice. T h i s fact of engaged operation influences the direction of much of o u r research. O u r founders were intellectuals who wanted to translate theory into action, the i m m e d i a t e and the practically eventuating. W e still hold to that predisposition. W h e n in a recent class in the history of social welfare I expatiated upon the program which J u a n L u i s Vives proposed for the relief of the poor, the first q u e s t i o n , almost a chorus, was " W h a t did he do a b o u t it?"

Engaged Operation I n social work, c o m m u n i c a t i o n is characteristically insepar a b l e from research. I f we are true to our pattern we will recognize that we are different from many academic investigators. T h e y report to t h e i r colleagues; we to the community. W e l i k e to say that a research is most successful when its findings and r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s have been incorporated in the process, so that the report becomes a record of past accomplishment. W i t h comm u n i c a t i o n so vital an element in social work it is not illogical t h a t both the profession and the c o m m u n i t y should be concerned at the development of the inscrutable i n o u r terminology. O t h e r disciplines which do n o t have so close a relationship with the everyday c o m m u n i t y can appropriately use the short cuts of a special language. W e cannot, a n d when we do we b e c o m e precious and are slanted from reality. 89

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This is not to say that we should not enter the frontiers and engage in a non-eventuating, basic research, but that our special contribution has been and probably will be in the area of engaged operation. What has been characteristic of education for social work has been a widening search into areas of relevant applicability. We seek the contributions of other fields. If we have one fault above all others it is our quick acceptance of the authority vested in other disciplines and our tendency to ask that authority—psychiatrist, psychologist, anthropologist, sociologist—to apply his findings to our purposes irrespective of his understanding of what our purposes are. There is occasion to develop social workers with the kind of scope which will make it possible for them to bring together in meaningful relation the facts and principles of other professions. This will usually call for interdisciplinary cooperation such as is illustrated in the Committee on the History of Social Welfare, with its membership of historians interested in social welfare and of social workers interested in history, an association which is already beginning to bear fruit. We have yet to surpass the contribution of Virginia Robinson's Changing Psychology of Social Case Work. That book, outstandingly significant in the literature of social work, took materials new to our field and to most of the world and drew upon them, integrating them with our own experience, to lay a foundation for practice which, while stemming from psychology, became social work. Let us not fail to cultivate the ability to assemble knowledge from other fields in its significance for social work. We will do this best if we do it ourselves. May I again urge our difference as well as our likeness as a contribution to the dynamics of education, repeating Cardinal New90

T H E PAST AS A G U I D E

man in his discussion of the scope and nature of university education: A liberal philosophy becomes the habit of minds thus exercised; a spaciousness of thought in which lines seemingly parallel may converge at leisure, and principles recognized as incommensurable may be safely antagonistic. 32 As in the university, so also in the community, social work has the difficult task of discovering and maintaining its identity. Pressure toward conformity seems to be a characteristic of our culture, even in professional activity. Social work faces the danger of yielding to a comfortable imitativeness at, quite possibly, the price of an inconsequential product. Is it not the responsibility of each one of us, whatever his field of specialization, to examine the nature of his function and to determine wherein it is like and wherein it is unlike other services and disciplines? W h a t is characteristic of our ways of thought and action, of our objects and objectives, and of ourselves as people—for people as well as programs exercise a determining influence upon the development of a profession?

Inevitable Change In engaging in this kind of exploration we would do well not to disregard the testimony of history to the inevitability of change, keeping something of the tentative in our thinking, but 32 John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Scope and Nature of University Education (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.), pp. 212-213.

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at the same time not ceasing to be decisive in action. Therein is the paradox that breeds a sense of proportion. I would hope also that we might rid ourselves of the fetish of status, status which is sought through attention to form instead of through concentration on substance; that we would spend less time in asking others what they think of us and that we would devote more attention to thinking on our own account. Such study as we undertake should proceed "from the basis of the whole." 33 and certainly "the whole" includes the past. T h a t past, both in its remote centuries and in its recent years, points to the problem of poverty, the helping of those in need, and spokesmanship for the disinherited as our most deeply rooted concern and function. It shows the foundation of our discipline in a service to the individual in his social relations, person to person, person in the group, person in the community. It reveals an extension of this service beyond the borders of economic insufficiency to other forms of trouble, thus broadening the area of our social responsibility. It testifies to our characteristic emphasis upon the helping of persons with an awareness of its bearing upon the community as a whole. It recognizes the value of our approach to facts from the vantage of engaged operation, of our traditional urge to combine the ideal and the real, and to move from the case to the community toward the achievement of indicated social change. It bids us engage in the exercise of a social statesmanship. Thus, the past. What has the present to say? Are the findings of history relevant? If not, what do we propose as the function and pattern of social work? It is not enough to be on our way. W e must ask and answer the question, whither and to what intent? T h e past can 33

Mary E. Richmond, The Long

View, op. cit., p. 615. 92

T H E PAST AS A GUIDE be a guide, b u t there is also the f u t u r e — a f u t u r e which challenges us to new e x p l o r a t i o n , to a c o n t i n u i n g reassessment of our professional objectives against the b a c k g r o u n d of history, a n d to an unceasing discovery and rediscovery of the n a t u r e and purpose of social work.

93

IV Today's Frontiers in Social W o r k Education Ruth

E.

Smalley

N O W , AT T H E END OF THIS W E E K OF COLLOQUIUM WHICH HAS

held so much inspiration for us all, I wish I could throw away the paper written with the full pressure of the ending of the school year upon me, and write again out of the recreated self to which you have all contributed so richly in these five remarkable days. But of course that cannot be. None the less, everything that has been experienced by each of us in Colloquium Week is forever a part of us and will be used in all we undertake as we return to our individual responsibilities. I would like to make just one observation which has been with me so powerfully as I have listened to the papers and discussion from Monday last through today. Each of you who spoke, whether you were returning to your school three or twenty-three or thirty-three years after your experience in it, 95

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has had something strong and sure which you have taken from the School and which is still animating what you are doing, something recognizable, consistent, running through every paper and contribution, and—equally important—each of you is using what he has, and himself, in a highly individual way to try new things or new ways of doing old things at some frontier. Furthermore, and perhaps this is most important of all, each of you has asked more questions than you have answered, and has shown an intent to pursue your questions, in concert with others, in order to find as yet undiscovered ways of making social work ever more effective as a constructive force in our times. Nothing could have given your faculty, past and present, more heart and encouragement for continuing our task of education for social work. W e are graduating knowers and doers, but best of all we are graduating questioners and learners. And now to my paper. W e have heard of frontiers in social work where you are practicing so valiantly and effectively. Are there frontiers, too, in social work education? And if there are, what are they and what do they ask of us, practitioners and educators alike? Any frontier holds challenge. What is beyond the known invites exploration. It is not only in "Aprille" that "priketh hem nature in hir corages," and "longen folk to goon on pilgrimages," pilgrimages into the not yet discovered or fully realized. Seven young men, selected from among many applicants, await the call to make the first trip to the moon, with the same questing spirit which led their forebears to set out on a journey that brought them to our shores, and yet others to push back the western boundary of the thirteen colonies until it reached the sea. 96

TODAY S FRONTIERS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

Frontiers in Social Work Education Frontiers are of many kinds: of space, of knowledge, of artistic creation. A frontier is a "not fully explored region whether of physical space or thought or sentiment." Since to extend knowledge is to create new knowledge, which in turn leads to still further discovery, the possibility of intellectual frontiers beckoning and inviting men who willingly and eagerly respond to their call feels limitless. What leads to the expanding of known frontiers is, at bottom, curiosity. "Curiosity," says Gardner Murphy, "is not only a tool in the discovery of needed truth, it is in itself one of those satisfiers that lead on and on to fresh delights. T h e hunger for discovery rather than practical gain was the mother of both science and philosophy, and though science today is often deflected from the satisfaction of curiosity into the production of competitive tools of many sorts, the flame of curiosity, once kindled, cannot be put out." 1 It is the flame of curiosity that lights the efforts of us all to see around the bend. WTiat we are curious about strikes deep into what and who we are, and what, consequently, we have chosen as the field for expression of our creative efforts. T o each in his own sphere there will always be a frontier that wants exploring if he has the vision to see it, the wisdom to comprehend it, and the heart and the will to push beyond it. Today's frontiers in social work education, the particular field of human effort which concerns those of us who are here tonight, were never so sharply defined or so inviting of and demanding exploration, or, perhaps, so it has seemed to each ι Gardner Murphy, Human Potentialities (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1958), p. 3. 97

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explorer in his time. However, let me speak of certain events which make this period a particularly significant one for inquiring into the nature of those frontiers and for extending them. Social work education, as everyone in this room knows, is less than a decade older than the School of Social Work whose fiftieth anniversary we celebrate this year—a short time in the history of a profession and education for it yet long enough to provide some perspective upon it and to have built a body of experience capable of being examined. Then, too, the kind of problems with which social workers deal, problems inhering in situations of stress in the relationship between man and his society, are today particularly compelling of human attention and effort. Social workers are recognized increasingly as possessing what is requisite for practice in their "traditional" fields of operation, and in fields which are only now discovering that the commitment, knowledge, and skill of the social worker are significant for the realization of their own purposes. Faced with our ability as schools of social work to fill with our graduates only approximately one-fifth of the positions now known to require professional social work competence, we have tried to define certain tasks within certain fields of practice, notably public assistance and child welfare, that required something less than full professional education. Yet the just completed examination of the Public Social Services as part of the Curriculum Study of Social Work Education, to which I shall shortly refer has, in the words of the Director of the Council on Social Work Education, "conclusively proved that social work personnel in public assistance and child welfare fields need the best that social work has to offer. . . . Clearly this study has shown," continues Dr. Witte, "that the workers in these fields 98

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are confronted with a range of problems as complex and difficult as any to be found in any other service in our field."2

Increasing Demands for Social Work At the same time that we are asked to man social work positions in these and other traditional fields with qualified social workers, and to devise ways to use fully qualified professional personnel to supervise and otherwise assist staff without professional education to function within them, we are being called upon to supply social workers in greatly increased numbers to such frontier fields for social work practice as corrections, the vocationally handicapped, and emotionally disturbed children in residences and institutions designed for their care. W e are being asked to continue to prepare personnel with skill in the basic and primary social work processes of social case work, social group work, or community organization; and others with skill in the secondary or facilitating processes of supervision, administration, and research. As social work practice finds possibilities for the use of group work method in agencies and institutions where social case work has been the basic or only social work process, and for the use of social case work method in agencies whose basic service process has been group work, social work educators are asked to consider the implications of such developments for social work education. Must all social workers be prepared to be equally proficient in the two primary processes of social case work and social group work? Or will it suffice, and is it preferable, for social workers to continue to be prepared Ernest Witte, "The Curriculum Study: Some Personal Observations," Social Work, Vol. 4. No. 3. (July, 1959), p. 11.

2

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in one basic practice skill, but with understanding of both the principle common to the three primary skills and their differentiating characteristics as well? T h e program for this Colloquium is illustrative of frontiers in social work practice which compel us to examine frontiers in social work education designed to prepare for such practice. Our times are pushing us, our professional field is pushing us, to graduate increasing numbers of increasingly well, and to some extent differently prepared men and women, to serve in old and new ways in traditional settings; and to enter into fields of practice where social work has had a less well-defined and accepted place. New developments in practice call for new developments in education for practice. This is inevitable in any profession. However, changing demands of practice on education occur at a particularly rapid rate in a profession concerned with individual-social stress situations, in a socially stressful period. In addition to these forces outside of social work education, there are events within professional education for social work itself which invite us to identify our frontiers and seek to reach beyond them.

Curriculum Developments A three year study of the curriculum in schools of social work has just been completed under the auspices of the Council on Social Work Education. T h e as yet unpublished thirteen volumes of some 2,400 pages are known to have identified issues and suggested recommendations for change in the current pattern and program of education for social work. These recido

T O D A Y S F R O N T I E R S IN SOCIAL W O R K

EDUCATION

ommendations compel the attention of the entire profession. T h e cessation of accreditation of specializations within social work education, and the agreement of all member schools that accreditation shall be for their total programs only, have resulted, among other things, in the formulation by all of the major fields for social work practice* of statements describing what knowledge, attitudes, and skills are necessary for practice in a particular field; and what, central to a specific field, are yet necessary aspects of education for all professional social workers. These documents constitute rich resources that bring the present requirements of professional practice in all of its major fields before social work educators in an organized and readily accessible way.

Influence of the Social Sciences Social work educators are further impelled to define and extend frontiers in social work education by the impact of social scientists in various fields, but particularly perhaps by sociologists and anthropologists, who have been seeking in recent years to make their knowledge available to social work; and to whom social work has been turning increasingly for fresh insights, formerly sought rather exclusively from psychiatry and * T h e m a j o r fields for social work practice are family welfare, child welfare, public assistance, psychiatric, medical, p u b l i c health, education, corrections, group-serving, and community p l a n n i n g agencies. (As listed in a m i m e o g r a p h e d report by C o m m i t t e e on Specializations in Social Work Education, on file in office of Council on Social W o r k E d u c a t i o n , 345 E. 46th St., New York, N.Y., 1958.) 101

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psychoanalysis. This is in part an inevitable and potentially vastly rewarding and enriching result of social work education now being placed within universities, but it is also the result of members of academic fields seeking a field of practice for themselves, wishing to make their knowledges immediately useful in meeting the problems of our day. This impress of new knowledge and new knowledge-bearers again forces social work to examine what it presently is and does, what of that which is currently being made available by social scientists seems useful for the accomplishment of its own purposes, and how such knowledge can best be integrated into what is appropriate for social work education. Our own school of social work has an added incentive and occasion for examining itself in the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. T h e backward look leads inevitably to the forward look. Where now, and what next? T h e Educational Survey, just completed, of the University of Pennsylvania, of which this School is part, has resulted in searching inquiry into every aspect of the University's program, including the program of the School of Social Work. This Survey adds greatly to the profit with which we can presently examine our own and other social work curricula. So circumstances combine to make this week in June, 1959, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, a particularly propitious time in which to consider today's frontiers in education for social work. I summarize them as: the increased demand for social workers in traditional and new fields; the increased demand for known social work skill and for new combinations, uses, and levels of social work skill; the present movement within social work education to examine itself through its just completed curriculum study and its compila102

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tion of statements of practice prepared by all of the major practice fields; the close relationship with social scientists who are seeking to influence social work practice and education and whose assistance is being sought by social work practice and education; and in our own School, our Fiftieth Anniversary occurring within the context of our university's self study and critical examination of every phase of its program as an institution of higher learning. All of these factors have influenced what I shall have to say of the issues which press for consideration in social work education today. In defining them I have been stimulated by the insights and viewpoints developed in the major papers which have been presented in connection with this anniversary year. By design, each paper, with the exception of the one focused on our own School's history, 3 has concerned itself with one of the areas of the curriculum: T h e Social Services, Human Growth and Behavior, and Social Research which, together with the Practice and Method areas,4 comprise the curricula of all accredited schools of social work.

Light from the Colloquium I should like to refer briefly and suggestively only to ways in which these papers have illuminated all of our frontiers, through casting fresh light on the nature of the profession of Virginia P. Robinson, "The University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work's Perspective 1909-1959," Journal of Social Work Process, Univ. of Pa. School of Social Work, Vol. X I (1960). 4 "Curriculum Policy Statement," in Accreditation Manual (New York: Council on Social Work Education, 1952), Sections 3540-3546. 8

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social work, the nature of the present day world within which it functions and seeks to function, the nature of "man" whom the social worker seeks to help or serve, using himself, a man, as instrument of that help, and the nature of the special contribution our own school has made to the theory of social work practice and social work education, over the long sweep of its service to the profession, as one of its several schools. In the light of these fresh insights I should then like to present crucial issues pressing for resolution in social work education today, together with my own views on the directions for their resolution toward which our present knowledge points. Those issues which I shall describe as "Today's Four Frontiers" are (1) the time structure in social work education—that is, the problem of when in the higher education spectrum social work education best begins, together with some questions and thoughts about its nature at its "farthest end," the doctoral program; (2) the organization of the curriculum areas with emphasis on the specific place of field work in relation to class learning; (3) the problems and opportunities posed by the necessity for continuous examination and assimilation of knowledge developed outside as well as within our own professional experience; and (4) the special demands and requirements of research in our field with its implications for the teaching of research method in both the Master's and doctoral programs. I turn first to the illumination shed by our Anniversary papers on social work education generally, and speak now of their clarification of the nature of our profession. Mr. deSchweinitz has said, "Our survival in the University depends on our knowing what we are." Stirringly he placed before us the long sweep of social work as an expression of human concern for fel104

TODAY'S FRONTIERS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION low human beings, the early and sustained development of governmental responsibility for social work, the necessity for social work to keep intimately related to the society which develops, supports, and discontinues the institutions within which it is practiced. He reminds us of our responsibility for speaking to the needs of individuals and groups within society whom it has been our long and proud tradition to serve, and for the development and influencing of social policy through which they may be best served. H e warns against concentration on the development of techniques divorced from a concept of social accountability and social responsibility which makes and keeps social work social, and the techniques themselves, effective in accomplishing social purposes. T h e r e are immediate implications i n what M r . deSchweinitz has so beautifully said, for the re-infusing of social work curricula with a sense of history, and specifically with a sense of social work's history, and with fresh appreciation of the human needs with which social work is concerned; the social institutions through which it has sought and presently seeks to meet human need; and the necessity for constant evaluation of the institutional forms through which social work makes its contribution. Mr. deSchweinitz speaks to our keeping social work as cause, and helping our students to take it on and make it cause, so that the fire of their predecessors, rekindled in their own hearts, may warm and light their present efforts. H e inspires me to say that he need have no fear that the development of technique will supersede or be in competition with social cause or social purpose so long as technique or, as I prefer to call it, skill in social work process is conceived and taught as a means for realizing social purpose as that purpose becomes concrete and real in some social agency or social institution. 105

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Purpose in Social Work T h e whole purpose of the social worker, whether social case worker, social group worker, or community organizer, the whole reason for the development of his skill, is to make some social purpose, as manifest in the function of some social agency, come true for the supporting community and for the clientele served. This view of the nature of social work process, and the development of theory to support it, has been the contribution of the School of Social Work of the University of Pennsylvania, first formulated in the inspired teaching and writing of Dr. Virginia Robinson and Dr. Jessie Taft, and reinforced with social theory as elucidated by such men as Karl deSchweinitz and Kenneth Pray. And the nature of the world within which social work is seeking and will seek to make its contribution? Both Mr. Clague and Dr. Sears have cast light here. Mr. Clague reminds us that our high standard of living will not continue automatically. T h e sharp present and projected rise in population, the increase of service workers over producers of goods, the early retirement age, the fewer working hours per worker, and the long period of financial dependency of our young people are affecting the kind of world in which we live. These changing socio-economic conditions require that human choices be made as to what kind of world we want. What will we spend our money for? Will we choose more leisure and less goods—or more goods and less leisure? Mr. Clague gives us a vista of the possibility and the significance of determining fact about the nature of the world in which we live, of the place of research, of scientific discovery in our lives, and, also, I add, in our social work curricula. But, like Dr. Sears, he emphasizes what research cannot as well as 106

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what it can do. It cannot make the choices which will determine the kind of world we will have. It can tell us what the choices are, it can give us information that will make those choices more susceptible of realization. Dr. Sears, in making this point and developing it still further says, "While it is true that most of our important decisions . . . are made intuitively, they can and should be made in the light of a realistic understanding of man's place in the scheme of things. Further, once the choice is made, the knowledge of science can be infinitely helpful in making it effective." In bringing us fresh insight on the nature of man from the vantage point of his own "place in the scheme of things," as a physical conservationist, Dr. Sears has said, "Man is the only known organism that can make profound changes in his way of life without undergoing some kind of physical evolution. He accomplishes this by modifying his patterns of values, and, as a result, is now responsible for his own future evolution." " T o meet this responsibility," continues Dr. Sears, "he needs all the knowledge he has and can get. Nor will it be easy to apply such knowledge, for custom and law have been made in the light of the more limited knowledge of earlier times." It is precisely this view of man as not only responsible for his own future evolution but capable of it that supports a theory of social work practice which releases human power in a way that facilitates, through the medium of a human relationship, man's making his own crucial decisions in situations of social import. T h e same view of man underlies the development of educational theory that induces and furthers psychological development, which assures the use of knowledge for professional purposes. "Man and his environment," says Dr. Sears, "are inextricably 107

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bound together . . . failure to respect environment brings penalty with it. Whatever else he may be, man is a physical body and a living organism. All of the lessons of biology indicate that no form of life can expand in numbers and wants indefinitely without coming to terms with the limits of environment. There is no reason to think that man is an exception. Nor is there reason to think that he is an exception to the physical principle that stress and loss of freedom increase in any dynamic system as the individual particles within it increase in numbers." This is reminiscent of what Mr. Clague had earlier told us. T h e facts of science and the prognostications that science makes suggest increasing stress between man and his environment, both his physical and human environment. This, in turn, points to, among other things, an increasing need for social work and social work skill in helping individuals and groups deal with their stressful situations, as well as to some hard and long thinking about the kind of social and institutional change which is needed to reduce stress.

Goals and Theory Dr. Sears' concluding remarks are at once sobering and evocative: "A proper goal then should be to determine not how many people can possibly survive on this planet, but rather to consider what kind of life will be possible for those who do.. . . It need not be feared that a stable society, i.e., a society in harmonious working balance, internal and external, must be a stagnant one. The earth and its inhabitants will continue to challenge all of the creative impulse we can muster, and the 108

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likelihood of satisfying these impulses should be far greater in a society whose value and behavior are in reasonable accord with natural law." When we let Dr. Sears' remarks open new windows we look at what we call our "Human Growth and Development" sequence of courses in schools of social work in a new way. W e see the importance of students coming to a philosophical and spiritual appreciation of man as well as an understanding of him as a physical-psychological-social organism. W e see the importance of the contribution to our understanding of him of a vast array of knowledges from many disciplines: anthropology, biology, sociology, psychology, economics, history, and political science. No single psychological theory can contain all that needs to be both appreciated and understood about man and how he grows and develops, uses inner and outer resources for his growth, and deals with stress, both internal and external. Perhaps Freud's greatest contribution lay in giving us what Gardner Murphy has described as the "courage to face ourselves." But neither Freud nor any other man or school of thought has all the answers to what we face. Dr. Sears' words move us to quickened appreciation of the necessity for social work education to build psychological theory rooted in natural law, which can serve as a base for affecting human nature, through the use of relationship, in the direction of making important social choices. T o such theory building many from many disciplines have already contributed. T h e genius of Otto Rank, with his deeply human appreciation of man as a creative force, inextricably related to his environment, animates the teaching of this School in a special way. Others on whom we presently draw heavily include Gardner Murphy, psychologist, who described man as the "kind of 109

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animal who lives from one crisis to another and it is his nature to surmount them"; Toynbee, historian, with his concept that only by meeting challenge can man raise himself to a new level of creativeness; Corner, embryologist, who sees each embryo as "owning and operating itself"; and Sinnott, biologist, who writes of the "biology" of purpose and speaks of human individuality and personality, the ego itself as "simply one manifestation of the remarkable process by which living matter pulls itself together into integrated and organized self-regulatory systems."5

Dynamic Theory A comprehensive theory of human nature supported by such scientific fact as is available, illuminated by philosophical wisdom, and warmed by the insights of literature and the arts, is basic to the development of theory of social work helping processes and educational processes in social work. Its beginnings have been laid and are continuing to be laid by this School. It is one of our great frontiers and awaits still further development. It is to be anticipated that the curriculum study to which reference has been made will be helpful to schools in extending this frontier. T h e point I should like to stress is that what is taught in this general "Human Growth and Development" area of the curriculum, and the method by which it is taught, should have pertinence and usefulness for what social workers need to know and become in order to do what social workers need to do. T h e nature and requirements of the social work Edmund W. Sinnott, " T h e Biology of Purpose," American of Orthopsychiatry, 22 (July, 1952), p. 466. 5

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profession have relevance for this part of the curriculum as they do for all parts. T h e fruits of learning in this area as in the "social services" area must find their immediate connection with the methods or practice area, and their immediate use in the development of skill through field work. T h i s can be assured in part through reassessing the appropriateness to the needs and requirements of the professional social worker, of "human growth and development" content presently taught, its teaching method, and the professional fields from which its teaching personnel are drawn. Required also is the provision of a kind of advising and other structure in the school which furthers the integration by the student of all his learning, and which keeps all of his teachers related to each other as well as to him.

Functionalism in Social Work Every explorer brings to his own frontiers the resources and perspective which derive from his personal history as well as those available to him at a particular moment in time. So this School's faculty have the rich resources so brilliantly and movingly focused for our use, this anniversary year, by Dr. Virginia Robinson in her paper on the School's history. 8 As we moved through the years, our special emphases shifting not only in response to the changing times and demands of social work practice but in relation to the dominant personalities currently teaching in the School, two vigorous spirits evolved, conceptualized, and taught what was to be this School's greatest arid β

Virginia Robinson, op. cit.

Ill

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK most enduring contribution to social work practice and social work education. Dr. Virginia Robinson and Dr. Jessie T a f t were our theory builders, builders of theory underlying social work practice and of theory underlying the "development of personality" or human growth, conceived and taught in a way that has immediate relevance for social work practice. T h e theory of practice evolved by these two remarkable women, who truly stood at a frontier, was based in the immediate purposes or functions of social agencies as they express some aspects of the purpose of the total profession. T h e social work helping processes were conceived as embodying the use of the function of specific social agencies as an instrument of helping. At the same time, the social work helping processes were conceived as requiring an understanding and use of the principles of psychological growth in order that agency service might be made available through the medium of a relationship in such a way that the service had the best possible chance of being used for community and individual welfare. Similar principles underlie the educational theory which was developed in this School. T h i s theory has already had unmistakable impact on all social work practice and social work education. One frontier for all schools of social work is to find a way to use and develop further this kind of practice and educational theory, which is so indigenous to social work.

Four Frontiers W i t h all of the circumstances in mind which make this a particularly auspicious time to examine our frontiers in social 112

TODAY'S FRONTIERS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION work education, and with the contributions of our Fiftieth Anniversary speakers and their implications for new directions in education freshly before us, I should like at this time merely to point to four frontiers which presently compel our attention and urge our pressing forward. 1. Time

Structure

in Social Work

Education

O u r first frontier asks us to examine the time structure for social work education. I understand that one of the recommendations of the curriculum study to which I have referred is that education for social work be conceived as a continuum, beginning with the junior year in college and extending through doctoral study. T h i s is a radical departure, since from its inception social work education has been exclusively graduate education, or, to speak more precisely, professional education on the graduate level. All that we know of developments in undergraduate education generally points toward a strengthening of its liberal arts emphasis; a diminution, and perhaps eventual elimination of professional and preprofessional components in any field. Such developments would urge us away from pushing social work education back into the undergraduate years. But more compelling in dissuading us from such a course should be our own knowledge as social workers of the demands made on us, as a profession, which require broadly educated men and women with a keen and developed sense of the history of mankind; some understanding of the nature of the physical and social forces which have shaped him and which he is helping to shape; of his artistic and scientific achievements; and of his long struggle to find and create a place for himself in a world, a universe, whose boundaries have expanded in our 113

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK lifetime almost beyond the limits of our imagination. Basic or core requirements for all undergraduates, in whatever college, assure some foundation in the social sciences as they do in the humanities, the physical sciences, and the behavorial sciences. I t has not been established that a major within any one of those quadrants is preferable to any other as a base for social work education on the graduate level. Professional education which is truly professional and not technical or vocational, based on a full four-year liberal arts program, seems to me to be the only way of assuring the quality of personnel possessed of the vision and wisdom to make the contribution our society has a right to expect of social work, and which social work at its best is well qualified to make. At the other end of its continuum, the postMaster's or doctoral programs in social work education require continuous study and judicious experimentation. W e have made significant beginnings in defining and offering doctoral education in social work which both carries the Master's graduate further in professional competence and enriches his professional contribution through relating him to other disciplines on which social work draws and to which it contributes. W e have made significant beginnings in identifying the nature of the research training and the nature of the research requirement in dissertations appropriate for the social work doctoral candidate, both those majoring in social research and those whose major is in some other social work process. More remains to be done in the whole area of doctoral education in social work. Here indeed is a frontier which I shall merely indicate. Hopefully, our School will join with others, over the course of the next several years, in continued exploration of the range and nature of curricula appropriate for the Doctor of Social Work degree. 114

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2. Field Work in the Basic Curriculum A second frontier in social work education invites us to consider the structure and organization of the two-year Master's degree or basic professional curriculum, with special reference to the place and nature of field work within it. T h e three areas of the social work curriculum to which I have earlier referred, were defined by a curriculum committee in 19527as: The Social Services, Human Growth and Development, Social Work Method and Process, or the Practice Area (including research as a component of the education of all social workers, but emphasizing, at the Master's level, the development of skill in one of the primary processes of social case work, social group work, or community organization). This plan of curriculum organization has served us well. I see no present reason to alter that basic structure but rather to vitalize and enrich each content area, to assure its relatedness to the purposes of social work and its connection with the disciplines on which it draws as it draws on its own experience. I emphasize the importance of continuously evolving and evaluating not only knowledge content but teaching method which best leads to the development of professional skill for realizing social work values and social work objectives. But it is the place of field work in education for social work which must occupy us all in the immediate years to come if professional work is to retain the vigor and usefulness which has won it recognition, along with other professions, as being needed by and contributive to our times. Said Mr. Clague in the first of our anniversary lectures, "The association with the faculty and the students [of the Pennsylvania School of Social Work] gave me a sympathetic understanding of the social work 7

Accreditation

Manual,

op. cit., Sections 3540-3546. 115

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profession, a new skill in writing, and deep respect for social work education. Since that time I have thought that the coordination of theory and practice in education for social work represents the highest form of educational technique." So it seems to many of us whose roots, like the roots of our profession, and education for it, are in practice. So it seems to educators in schools of law, of medicine, of clinical psychology, and of psychiatry, who are just now developing in their own fields, or reexamining and extending, or making more effective this pattern of education, which has long worked so well for social work. T h e place and nature of field work in social work education are being challenged now. Efforts are under way to make it more "academic," to reduce its place in the curriculum to part of a single year of graduate education, to be followed by a year of what is described as a practicuum year whose exact nature and relation to any school of social work remains to be defined. Some current experiments with field work are in the direction of reducing its demand on the student for immediate development of skill in practice within a social agency under the kind of supervision which social work and social work education have developed so superbly. T h e substitution of a measure of "observation" for the giving of service, as a requirement of the beginning student, the further requirement that he relate to many members of the agency staff, with less intense and sustained relationship with his own supervisor, and the attempt to plan a sequence for his learning in the field which comes perilously close to a learning about doing, rather than a learning through doing, are of great concern to many of us. This is not to minimize the necessity for examining field work freshly, for improving its 116

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nature, and for strengthening its connection with other parts of the educational program. It is the direction of the experimentation, not the fact of experimentation, which causes me some distress. It is the seeming attempt to make life more ordered than it is, to fail to respect and find a way to use fully in the education of the social work student the "life" quality and reality of the demands of practice as they come alive in the field. T h e abandonment, or devaluing, or distorting of the nature of field work, so focal in social work education, would indeed give some credence to Mr. deSchweinitz' fears that social work is forgetting what it is and that social work education will lose its place in the university unless it remains true and appropriate to the purposes and nature of social work. A university's whole existence is predicated on the concept of diversity within unity. T h e way to justify the place of a professional school within a university, and to insure that it both profits from and contributes to its place there, is not to make it "just like" a graduate school of arts and sciences but to develop its own distinctive excellence, its intellectual excellence, as a professional school. 3. Continuity of Intellectual

Relationships

Our third frontier requires us to find a way for continuously relating the developing knowledges of related disciplines to social work knowledge, and of communicating to social work students what is now known and what is being freshly discovered in these fields. This is not an easy task. It has peculiar difficulty, first, because so many disciplines have relevance for social work; second, because there are so many divergencies and schools of thought within each of the several disciplines; and third, because the best method for incorporating such knowl117

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edge in social work education has not yet been found. Many approaches have been tried. Professors in various fields, whether anthropology, sociology, law, psychiatry, or medicine, have been invited to give courses in schools of social work with various means employed for assuring or attempting to assure the relatedness of the content presented to social work education. Sometimes a social worker has served as chairman of the course, interspersing various lectures of his own or leading discussion on the application of the knowledge being presented to social work. Sometimes there have been sustained relationships, through planned conferences, between the visiting professor giving the course and a designated member of the social work faculty. Sometimes there has been little or no connection between the course and its instructor and the rest of the curriculum and faculty. Then that content has remained a little island of knowledge, a unit unincorporated and unassimilated in the gestalt of professional knowledge and skill, the development of which is the whole aim of a school of social work. Such a volume as The Sociology of Knowledge, by Werner Stark, is suggestive of the richness of knowledge which is not only available but capable of underpinning and greatly enriching education for social work. Stark quotes Child as saying, "Insofar as an individual is an individuality he cannot merely accept the influences of the social contexts in which he functions, he must transform, and he does transform them." Helping an individual to transform the social context in which he lives is not only the purpose of social work but is central to the nature of the method it has developed to achieve that purpose. "Freedom there is, but it is always freedom in society, not out of it," writes Stark. He refers to the seeker of truth (among 118

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peoples foreign to him) as needing to be more than an intellectual, more than an ascetic, though he must be an ascetic of a kind. "Asceticism alone will still be unavailing, for self-discipline even at its highest and best remains merely a negative qualification. What is ultimately decisive is the presence or absence of a spirit of caritas or agape, of that loving willingness to meet the other on his own terms, that positive preparedness for self surrender in the face of realities and values different from one's own without which nothing human, whether individual or social, will ever yield its secret to him who searches for it." 8 If this is true for the seeker after truth, how much more so for the one who seeks to help others find their own truths, make productive use of their own freedom in society, and transform their own particular social contexts through, first of all, transforming themselves? I have quoted these fragments just to suggest the kinship of one field of knowledge, as represented by one imaginative and scholarly man, for social work. Consider other insights in the general field of sociology, and developments in other disciplines which also illuminate the task of the social worker and the knowledge he must have to fulfill it. However, I would like to suggest that social work has evolved its own body of knowledge and has built its own theory, a process which, as is true in all fields, is in a continuous state of development. Social work education is not and must never become a compendium of a little of this field of knowledge and a little of that, to be somehow put together and jangled around in the heads of its students. T h e task for social work in its Master's programs is not to keep Werner Stark, The Sociology of Knowledge (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1958), p. 306. 8

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adding bodies or bits of knowledge from related fields to its own, but for its faculty to keep conversant with developing knowledge in those fields and to undergird and enrich their own teaching of social work knowledge thereby. T h e best method for doing this has yet to be discovered, but it is a discovery which must be made. And it must be carried out secondarily to and simultaneously with the social work educator's drawing freshly and continuously on social work practice as it changes and shifts, illuminates and gives direction to what is necessary in social work education. Independent reading by faculty members will do much. Planned seminars have been tried and found effective. Here indeed is a frontier for social work education. T h e caution of this explorer is that in the excitement of our discoveries in various fields, we must not cross over into someone else's territory and get lost in it. Rather we must find a way to bring our new riches to our own frontiers and make them available within the context of education—that is, social work education—specifically oriented to the development of professional social workers. In the foreseeable future there remains a place for content taught, within the Master's curricula, by instructors from other disciplines—always with responsibility taken by the school of social work for furthering its integration and the integration of its instructor within the general pattern and program of the school. Yet the preferred and primary way for enrichment of Master's degree or basic professional social work education by other disciplines seems to me, as I have suggested, to be through the social work faculty's continuous enrichment of itself. At the doctoral level quite another situation obtains. Here the social work student can best pursue related disciplines selected in the 120

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light of his own special interests, with non-social work students in those disciplines, as part of his own advanced education in social \vork. Undergraduate students who are to become social work students can best study with all other undergraduates within the general context of the liberal arts college. 4. Research and Education Our fourth and final frontier asks us to examine freshly the teaching of "research" as part of social work education, at every level, within the Master's and at the post-Master's, including the doctoral programs. Social workers are practitioners. T h e i r education must lead to the development of skill for effective practice. Yet a strong research component in the social work curriculum is necessary for two reasons: First, because communication of the philosophy and nature of scientific inquiry inculcates a caution, respect for fact, and most important of all, a spirit of discovery which is part of any scholar's armamentorium; and second, because some beginning skill in the use of research method is necessary for every practicing social worker. T h e social work practitioner must at once give direct agency service, and participate, from time to time, in operational research, undertaken by the agency on whose staff he serves, as a way for furthering its effectiveness. As a social worker he is required to be at once philosopher, inquirer, researcher, and practitioner. I t is a hard demand, but not impossible of attainment as testified to by the history of social work and education for it. It is a requirement which asks social work educators to discover the best way to teach research as spirit, attitude, and discipline as well as method. T h e social worker is asked to leam to question, continuously to examine the very theory he must 121

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK act upon in the immediate moment. This, too, is a hard demand not only of the practicing social worker but of the social work educator who must develop persons of such capabilities. T h e teaching of research at the doctoral level involves yet other issues. Here social work researchers are prepared—social workers whose practice will be exclusively in research. It is from these graduates and from the faculties of schools of social work that we must expect our greatest advances in theory building and in the extension of theory, as well as in contributions to basic knowledge with relevance beyond social work practice. It is from these graduates, too, that we expect direction in operational research leading to the improvement of social work programs and practice. In addition, doctoral students who are not preparing to be researchers but rather to engage in direct practice or in supervision, administration, or teaching, require advanced training in the principles and methods of scientific research as part of their doctoral work. Only so can they give the leadership expected of them, not only in their practice in whatever field but in the extension of knowledge, undertaken either singly or in concert with others, on which the future of the profession rests. T h e range of kinds of dissertations appropriate for social work doctoral students has not been finally determined. Significant contributions to the field have been made through studies involving the analysis of quantitative data and through studies which were descriptive, which applied known knowledge to new situations, or which elucidated in detail and supported illustratively theory nowhere else clearly formulated. T h e teaching of research in the Master's as in the Doctor's program must be related always to what is sound teaching of research method in any part of a university, and to what in con122

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tent, method, and emphasis is particularly appropriate within the context of a school of social work.

One Frontier We have faced our fourth and last frontier. As I perceive them now, with the perspective derived from undertaking their definition, they seem to me truly to constitute a single frontier in education for social work, and perhaps as significant a one as we shall ever face. This frontier requires us to consider whether education for social work is to continue to be professional education on a graduate level, having close connection with and responsibility to the profession for which it is preparing, or whether it is to become considerably more academic in character. Should the latter choice be made, its nature might well be such that it could properly begin at the undergraduate level and continue throughout all of its phases with primary focus on students "knowing" rather than "becoming in order to be able to do." Let me make it very clear that "becoming in order to be able to do" requires the acquisition of knowledge, and knowledge of high order whose mastery demands the most exacting intellectual discipline. It also requires the development of motivation and capacity for extending knowledge. But education with professional focus is animated always by a purpose which gives it unity, direction, and vitality. That purpose is that it is designed for use—for immediate and specific use in professional practice. I have presented these differences in concepts of education for social work sharply to highlight what the differences are. 123

FRONTIERS FOR SOCIAL WORK

How we choose in this important matter will determine the way we face and cross the four frontiers to which I have referred: the time structure of education for social work, or where, and how, in the educational continuum it begins and ends; its organization and structure with specific attention to the place and nature of field work within it; the selection of knowledge from other disciplines and the design of a method for continuously integrating such knowledge in social work education; and the place and nature of the teaching of research as spirit, method, and discipline. With a clear purpose of conducting educational programs that are truly professional in character, we have the opportunity to persevere in building something that is uniquely our own, drawing on the rich resources of the universities in which we exist and on our own experience and accumulated store of knowledge. It is our primary responsibility to develop, and to find the way for imparting through appropriate method, knowledge which is social work knowledge and theory which is social work theory, basic to the practice of social work in all of its processes. So shall we fulfill our responsibility not only to the profession for which we prepare but to the universities of which we are part and to whose scholarly and intellectual pursuits we shall then be in a position to contribute out of our own distinctive scholarly and intellectual professional content and character.

And in Prospect T h i s then is our great frontier whose crossing asks us to examine the four which I have presented in this paper. T h e r e are others visible to other eyes and these I have described present 124

TODAY S FRONTIERS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION themselves differently to others who approach t h e m . N e w frontiers there will always be so long as we walk this road. N o one person and n o one school will make all of the discoveries that advance us along the way we travel. It is a privilege to be one school of many whose j o i n t efforts may result in a closer approxim a t i o n to the u l t i m a t e goals we hold in c o m m o n .

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