A. Courses which introduce the student to the social sciences and the methods and concepts on which these rest.
B. Courses which offer information on the field of social work both past and present.
C. Courses which equip specifically for certain social work tasks.
In the first group, that of courses introducing the student to the social sciences, their methods and concepts, fall sociology courses of various sorts, courses in (1) general sociology, (2) the history of institutions, (3) theories of social progress, (4) the value of norms of income and opportunity for a given level of civilization, (5) the means of “social control.” Here also belong courses in (6) general psychology, (7) social psychology, (8) statistics and (9) economics.
In the second group, that of courses offering information on the general field of social work, fall courses on (1) the nature and mutual relations of contemporary social work undertakings, (2) the history of philanthropy and (3) current social problems. Here ought also to be put (4) the courses offered by five schools in the causes of poverty, because poverty has been an age-long challenge to philanthropy and is still the proximate occasion for a great part of social work.
For the third group are left courses in about forty subjects pertaining to special fields or special methods. These subjects overlap and interchange material but yield to classification as preparatory for work in eight or nine fairly distinguishable fields.
- Work in the interest of the public health, mental or physical.
- Organization of community groups on various scales in both urban and rural areas.
- Work in connection with industry.
- Work in the interest of children.
- Work with people socially handicapped because of race or recent immigration.
- Work in connection with the enactment or administration of social legislation.
- Work with defectives.
- Housing.
A ninth field may be made of social case work, as when it appears under such titles as “family rehabilitation,” but it must also be recognized as a technique more or less utilized in six of the eight other fields. There remain a few other technical courses such as those in record keeping.
The schools, all but four,[59] arrange their courses in departments varying in number from two to ten. Altogether seventeen different fields are indicated by the several schools and under them are variously grouped the forty subjects taught.[60] These very involved curricula dealing, as they do, in such staggering propositions as the nature of progress and the causes of poverty, and seeming in their explicit statements unanimous in nothing which might serve the cause of definition do give certain collective testimony.
In the first place they are agreed that social work comprises a variety of separate callings demanding differential training. The differential training is not the result of specialization after receiving a common training. Most schools while requiring a certain amount of common background for all students recognize no general course and require every student to enroll in one or another department.