The Contribution of the Undergraduate Sociology Department to Education for Social Work

SOCIOLOGISTS in undergraduate departments of southern colleges and universities have continually been making contributions to the education for social work. During the past twenty-five years the social work pattern in the South has undergone revolutionary changes. As a result of the lack of an adequate number of professionally trained social workers, early sociologists in undergraduate departments were forced into positions of leadership to assist in the formulation of welfare programs. Fortunately, most of these sociologists were aware, as Lynd says, that "within each single culture, people tend to learn from each other many common ways of interpreting experience and defining situations ... and thus learned in any geographical location, to assume a pattern -tight or loose, clear or blurred, but none the less a pattern of sorts."' It was their task to help form this new pattern of social work which was to evolve from the changing social scene and the demands of the people. Since few laymen understood the cultural lags of the South, it was necessary for sociologists to explain regional and community deficiencies and to fit social work ideals into the framework in which they were teaching. Some of these early teachers of sociology were well aware of the philosophical backgrounds of the old South which were later so excellently clarified by Dr. Howard W. Odum in Southern Regions. Almost daily in their student and lay contacts, they realized that such philosophies which have since been explained as "the dominance of the few commonly assumed to be superior; the resulting responsibility for the welfare of the dependent; the religious coloring of action and policies, the stern hard doctrine of punishment for the criminal; and the ideologies of self-righteousness" ;2 could not fail to come into conflict with the new progressive welfare programs. They accepted part of the task for interpreting the new order not only to their students but to laymen and legislators. They attended the state conferences of social work, recognizing them as almost exclusively civic conferences but knowing that through them much needed social legislation could be promoted. These earlier sociologists in undergraduate departments watched with delight the introduction of and recognition of the professional worker in the southern region. In many instances they were called upon to contribute to the training of the first filId workers. There were first the civilian social workers of the Home Service Department of the American Red Cross. These were for the most part local young people who had to be trained for rural as well as urban work. Six-week and threemonth institutes for training were established and the sociologists were called upon to lecture before these groups. From these Red Cross beginnings, some few private family welfare agencies developed, but for the most part communities returned to their pre-war patterns. There they remained until the depression forced them to recognize relief needs and the Federal Government entered the scene with the tremendous Emergency Relief Administration program. This was in the early thirties when the social welfare situation was chaotic. Thousands of workers were needed and each state, in fact each county, chose its workers in its own way. Personnel varied from the relief client investigator in many backward counties to the professionally trained workers in the urban centers. Some sociologists were drafted for service by their states not only to assist in the training program of the workers but for the actual administrative work in state and county offices. Colleges assisted by offering special training courses for these workers and many of the better prepared workers were sent to professional schools. From this Emergency Relief Administration program there finally emerged the permanent Federal Social Security program which was eventually adopted by all of the states. Through this program, the state departments of public welfare were more or less standardized and specific standards suggested * Read before the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Southern Sociological Society in Atlanta, Georgia, April 4, 1941. 1 Robert S. Lynd, Knowledge for What (Princeton University Press, 1939), p. 54. 2 Howard W. Odum, Southern Regions of the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 1936), p. 137.