Recollections
This section includes articles written from a variety of points of view, and some personal recollections relevant to the history of American social welfare programs, issues, and personalities.
- Experiencing Aging: A Social Group Worker’s Self-Reflection - Catherine P. Papell, MSW, DSW, Professor Emerita, Adelphi UniversityThe concept “experiencing aging” is different than ‘’aging’. It is a proactive state of being. It is not theory. Rather it is what exists uniquely in the mind and heart of each elderly member. Group workers are ever seeking to find it in their group members and to help the members find it in themselves and in each other.
- Framing the Future Social Security Debate - Larry DeWitt, Historian, U.S. Social Security AdministrationHaving recently completed work on a documentary history of the Social Security program1, several insights suggest themselves which might be useful in framing the (inevitable) future debates over Social Security policy. The first and most salient realization is that to a remarkable degree the policy debates in Social Security seem to contain some hardy perennials.
- Fred Berl And The Spirit Of Social Casework - Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland School of Social WorkThe few people who were lucky enough and plucky enough to escape the horror that Hitlerism and Stalinism brought to this world made great contributions to America. While much of this history has been written for social scientists, the same cannot be said for social workers (Boyers, 1972). I knew some of them.
- George Bush and the Americans with Disabilities Act - Edward Berkowitz, Ph.D., Professor of History and Public Policy and Public Administration and Director of the Program in History and Public Policy, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.Not historians but rather partisan politicians in the middle of contested campaign, Harkin and Hoyer perhaps did not understand that the ADA was indeed an exception. The acceptance of the ADA by President George Bush and his administration was far from grudging.
- Gilman, Daniel Coit - Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland School of Social WorkDaniel Coit Gilman is most known for his contributions to American higher education. This paper presents information which shows that he developed practice principles that are still valid, opened Johns Hopkins University to a wide range of social welfare education and activities, and educated several of the most important founders of professional social work.
- Group Approach with Physicians Working in a Medical Intensive Care Unit in a Public Hospital - Aaron Beckerman, Ph.D. and Martin Doerfler, M.D.In the fall of 1979, under the leadership of Jerome Lowenstein, M.D., a Humanistic Medicine program was initiated at New York University Medical School. The purpose of the program was to provide medical students and physicians an opportunity to discuss and examine the non-medical aspects of medical education...
- History of Social Work Education and the Profession's StructureAn examination of the profession’s history, especially the development of education can help in understanding current issues related to its unity and what is the most appropriate role for the social worker. It won’t solve them, that will take a strong resolve by the current profession.
- Impressions of Great BritainDrawn together by their common dangers, the people of Britain have discovered that they have problems common to all classes. This discovery, together with the sharing of suffering, has tended to lessen somewhat the gaps between rich and poor, nobleman and commoner. The British are centering much of their thinking, too, on how to provide full employment and adequate housing when war has ended. The principal recommendations included in Sir William Beveridge's Report on “Social Insurance and Allied Services” are being enacted into law to give Great Britain full social insurance coverage under a system far more complete than that now in operation in this country. A Ministry of National Insurance, incorporating the present Assistance Board, has been formed to administer the new plan which will provide for everyone without exception against sickness, unemployment, accident disability, maternity, old age, and even death. Included in the plan also is a system of family allowances whereby every family, regardless of need or station in life, will receive five shillings or one dollar weekly for each child, after the first, until the children become wage-earners.
- Jane Addams and Wilbur J. Cohen - Edward Berkowitz, Ph.D., Professor of History and Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, Washington, DCIt is one of the ironies of social welfare history that Jane Addams died in 1935, the same year that the Social Security Act was passed. It is tempting to see that year as an important watershed.
- Lindeman, Eduard C.: A LetterIn order to make matters more explicit, I shall now state my chief reasons for being an anti-Communist: (1) on philosophical grounds I belong to the American tradition of pragmatism of which William James and John Dewey were the chief exponents. This philosophy is experimental and non-authoritarian and is definitely opposed to the dogmatic German philosophy of Hegel, and out which Marxism arose. (2) on moral grounds I am opposed to Communism because it teachers the immoral doctrine that good ends may be achieved through the use of evil means; it practices conspiracy and falsehood and thus, through the employment of such means, produces gross immorality; (3) I am a believer in cultural pluralism while Communism advocates the cultural uniformity. I believe in diversity because I believe in freedom. (See THE DEMOCRATIC WAY OF LIFE BY T.V. SMITH and EDUARD C. LINDEMAN, published last year by The New American Library.) (4) I believe in what may be called the Judeo-Christian ethics which is founded upon the conception of human brotherhood and love. Communism, on the contrary, preaches hate and conflict. There are many other reasons for opposing this malevolent movement which has perverted so many millions but the above are fundamental.