What the Pre-Social Work Student Can Get from a Study of Groups

T HE timeliness of the query "What can the pre-social work student get from a study of groups" was emphasized recently in a group of students who were entering upon a shorter course of training preparatory to receiving appointments as social investigators. The term "investigator" is used here advisedly since it must be clear that a case worker cannot be turned out in three months, even though the training consist of both theory and practice and be given under first-class auspices. And this was particularly apparent in this group. These men and women were all unemployed, many of the more mature students having been teachers in elementary and secondary schools. Practically every one of the thirty-odd members of this class was a college graduate but only a few had had any previous training in the social sciences. Consequently, the problems of child welfare, the need for mothers' aid, the struggle between capital and labor, shifting rural and urban population groups, trends in race relations, the place of the family in the social structure and the life of the individual, were as hazy and meaningless to them as were the history of the English poor law or Miss Richmond's Social Diagnosis. And how can one teach public welfare administration or the fundamentals of case work procedure, much less turn out a full-fledged social worker, to a student who has never made a close study of social and economic groups, their structure and function in society, and their responsibility to the individual as well as the relationship of the individual to the group? In cases like this, the teacher finds himself again and again making references which are meaningless to his students and having to stop for excursions into by-paths in order that the matter in hand may be made reasonably intelligible to the class. If we consider the field of social work roughly in two divisions, (i) work with groups; and (X) the adjustment of the individual to his social environment, it is clear that knowledge of the background and activities of groups is essential in both types of work. In the first place, whether organizing a boys' or girls' club, a group of immigrant mothers, an industrial group, a playground with its varied activities, an Americanization class, or any other of the multitude of group or community activities, it is self-evident that the work cannot be organized intelligently or carried on successfully unless one knows intimately the groups with which he is working. Anyone who has had experience in community organization, or has been a resident in a social settlement will readily bear testimony to this fact. Groups whose backgrounds are too unlike do not work well together. And this includes not only intimate contact groups such as the home and family, the neighborhood, occupations, church affiliations, but also those larger, less personal relationships such as nationality, race, religion, labor organizations, political parties, and others. And this becomes more apparent as we contemplate the behavior of individuals in the group, especially since the problems of the individual and the group are inseparably bound together. Constructive and preventive work with the individual