[50] Ibid., 1919, p. 100.
[51] Ibid., 1918, p. 126.
[52] Ibid., p. 136.
[53] Conference, 1918, p. 287.
[54] R. W. Kelso, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 22, No. 1.
CHAPTER V
THE TESTIMONY OF THE SCHOOLS
There are some fifteen schools for the training of social workers,[55] independent institutions or university departments. The younger among them have not followed at all closely the organization or practices of the older[56] and all work in close co-operation with local social work agencies, farming their students out with these for practice work and drawing lecturers from the agency staffs. The varied curricula of the schools seem therefore to offer direct evidence of what is considered in their respective regions, the most necessary equipment for social workers.
Only three school catalogues venture any characterization of the tasks for which their courses equip. Toronto gives the most inclusive. “The sense of social obligation and interdependence has grown greater as our social life has grown more complex. The more social conditions have been studied, the more apparent has it become that many of our worst evils are due to the lack of the science which should direct and stimulate the sense of our solidarity. In recent years governments, municipal and other authorities, industrial corporations and voluntary associations of all kinds have been compelled to make ever-extending provisions for industrial protection, social insurance, public health service, housing improvement, recreation and various other forms of organized social effort. All these activities have created the sphere of a new profession, that of the trained social worker.” Here are the familiar “sense of social obligation,” the reference to a “science which should direct and stimulate this sense,” the “ever-extending provisions” prompted by it and, unmentioned but obviously implicit, a constant concern with things subject to amelioration: “protection,” “insurance,” “service,” “improvement,” “recreation”—these are the substantives in its main statement. The Ohio catalogue itemizes the demands of social service on a training school[57] but the only generalization to be deduced from the list is that they all imply a purpose of rescue or amelioration. The Simmons characterization confines itself entirely to emphasizing the implications of the word “social”[58] and the Missouri school opens its catalogue with the discouraging statement that “it is impossible at the present time to construct a satisfactory definition of social work.”
This exhausts the slender sheaf of direct comment. For further enlightenment we must analyse the offered equipment itself. The nature of the training given will predict the nature of the work expected to follow. There are a great many courses offered and the variety not of nomenclature only but of apparent content is enough for bewilderment. Classification of the courses according to the type of preparation they seem to offer does however sort them into three main groups.