It is surprising to know how little has been accomplished in social work. However, the general public may never know this since the results are hard to measure, and social workers don’t believe in measuring their work. One example is the failure of the War on Poverty of the 60s, where we spent millions fighting poverty and still lost. In this post, we will explore the many social work myths and see why they fail in spite of so many efforts.
The first reason why social work fails is because it tries to postpone traditional values with:
- Emotion: Social work programs portray the poor as downtrodden victims of bad landlords, employers, teachers, merchants, clinics, police, etc. They are said to be trapped, have fallen through the cracks, or are down on their luck. Factors like being drunk, having committed felonies, and having never worked or gambling their money away are never considered.
- Relationships: Another one of the social work myths is that the poor can only be motivated to improve through a close relationship with the social worker. This creates unreal and patronizing relationships, which often backfire.
- Psychology: Since each social problem has some deep psychological origin, it is taken to such lengths that the poor are relieved of responsibility.
- Values are relative. This includes things like the fact that one cannot impose middle-class values on people in the ghetto. Though this sounds reasonable, middle-class values are transnational and universal.
- Society is wrong: Society is often seen as oppressive, exploitative, hypocritical, and racist. Though this outlook is tolerated in college, it is impractical in the real world.
- The poor are victims: Social work says that the poor should be helped to come up with values without being prejudiced. However, this is an extremely indulgent and blank approach as it postpones traditional values and does not hold the poor accountable.
- No negatives: If there are positives, there should be negatives. Likewise, if there is reward, there is punishment, pride/shame, joy/pain, success/failure, love/hate, etc.
- No authority: The poor are often kept away from authority, discipline, and punishment. This results in turmoil and complete disorder.
- No humiliation: Even the smallest teasing is considered a humiliation.
- Lure the poor: Social programs have become so appealing to the poor that they want to join. But this may lead to society’s values being eventually rubbed off.
- Equality: The approach that everyone has to be included, and progress together is naive and allows the bad apple to ruin the whole bunch.
Understanding Through an Example
Consider a picnic for poor youths from the inner city. Most of them don’t have any skills or interest in preparing food and making arrangements, and they are also not asked to do so. Some of them show up, while others don’t. Some expect everything to be done for them, while others complain. Some of them have awful table manners.
Suppose a baseball game is organized. There is often cheating, screaming, bullying, and profanity to win. There could be injury, verbal abuse, property damage, fights, the chance of getting kicked out of the park, embarrassment of the staff, and annoying others nearby, which increases ethnic or class prejudice. However, the next day, the staff just laughs off everything and talks about the growth, relationships, fun, and colorful stories.
Where Do They Fail?
Social workers often speak psychobabble and just spend a lot of time developing relationships with the youth in hopes of rubbing off some values. However, there is a lack of basic literature. Whatever there is, it is just unreadable or worthless. The poor are only portrayed as miserable when many of them are happy, and some are happier than the social workers.
Most of the programs lack definition and management, which leaves the poor stagnated; though the window dressing keeps changing, the work stays the same, and the social workers become disillusioned. However, there are a few good programs that have swum against the nonsense, doing thankless work and producing incredible results, but the media and academia are constantly criticizing them.
What Do Experts Say?
Henry Hazlitt, one of the best-known economists of the 50s, supported this claim, which is evident by his complaining that social workers never defined poverty, talked as if anti-poverty is a recent effort, pitied the pauper but not the worker, never had to face the disastrous results of social programs, coddled the poor despite their agency’s contrary policies, never summoning up, working to make everyone equal by leveling down, ignored the reasons of poverty, preened themselves on compassion, and most importantly failed to differentiate between poverty caused by misfortune and caused by folly.
Final Thoughts
The only way social work can work is by dropping emotion and guilt and being realistic. It needs to use plain language, rate programs, and literature, and find out how non-professionals can be effective in helping the poor. It should focus on instilling traditional values and making the poor work before being eligible for job training.
