The
Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock begins this overview of social services in
America by considering the “biggest mystery” of his childhood, namely, “how my
father survived his.” Husock’s dad was
an orphan living in a scruffy Philadelphia neighborhood during the Great
Depression. The answer his dad provided
was “The Agency,” a private, largely volunteer organization that stressed norms
over material provisions -- a message often delivered to the elder Husock by a
widow who rode in a chauffeured Cadillac across town to encourage principles
like self-control, honesty, and good manners.
By
contrast, today’s social service message is that “institutional barriers are to
blame” for the plight of America’s “marginalized” individuals. In the words of a recent textbook, “Social
Workers recognize the extent to which a culture’s structures and values may
oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create or enhance privilege and power.” Consequently, social workers should “engage in
practices that advance social and economic justice.” Husock’s book documents this fateful
transition from the structure and philosophy of “The Agency” to massive
government programs that focus on material provision, social issues, and the
amelioration of existing maladies (e.g. drug addiction and broken families) rather
than the formation of character traits that prevent those maladies from
arising.
Five
prominent figures are employed to chart Husock’s road toward our cultural Hades
-- a path paved, to be sure, with good intentions: Charles Loring Brace, Jane
Addams, Mary Richmond, Grace Abbott, and Wilbur Cohen. A sixth figure, Geoffrey Canada, provides a
contemporary example of the type of organization Husock hopes will flourish to help
reestablish “Middle-Class Values” among a burgeoning social services population.
The
norm-centered focus of the Juvenile Aid Society that saved Husock’s father was
pioneered in the latter half of the 19th century by Charles Brace’s
Children’s Aid Society which began its privately funded mission of instilling
the values of education and civility in thousands of newsboys, bootblacks, and
other waifs who roamed the streets of New York City. Beyond supplying lodging homes and living
necessities, Brace sought to influence the character of children who possessed
no vision of a better future. Brace thus
became a “missionary of bourgeois norms” that provided the means for achieving
a good life. A major aspect of Brace’s
effort involved “orphan trains” that relocated 120,000 children to Midwest farm
families -- not as servants but as family members who would learn the same
morals and habits as their parents. Brace, who died in 1890, noted that “our whole
influence is moral” and shunned assistance “which doesn’t touch habits of life
and … character.”
Much
better known than Brace is Jane Addams, founder of Chicago’s Hull House. Addams’ approach to social work began, as it
did with Brace, with modeling and encouraging behavioral norms and habits for the
poor immigrants with whom she lived. Over
the years, however, Addams focused more attention on government-funded
assistance and political issues (a living wage, workplace safety, child labor
laws, etc.). Indeed, in 1935 Addams won
the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy of that expansive goal. Meanwhile, the task of instilling positive
character traits began to be derided by the crusading Addams as “incorrigibly
bourgeois.”
Mary
Richmond, who herself (unlike Brace and Addams) came out of difficult
circumstances, attempted to preserve the character-focused approach of Brace
while also emphasizing the need for significant material assistance. Her “friendly visit” vision of social work stressed
professional “diagnostic” methods employed largely by trained volunteers
working with private organizations. This
non-governmental approach that retained an emphasis on moral norms was
abandoned completely by the Abbott sisters, Grace and Edith, both University of
Chicago graduates, Hull House residents, and fervent advocates for government
assistance programs. The capstone of
their efforts was the Social Security Act of 1935 that included an Aid to
Dependent Children component.
The
final nail in the coffin of a character-centered vision of social work was
administered by Wilbur Cohen, “the consummate federal bureaucrat” who earned
the sobriquet “Mr. Social Security.” Cohen,
who had no close connection with the population affected by his policies, saw
poverty purely as a product of economic circumstances whose solution was to be
found in a variety of “social insurance” programs. Cohen’s lasting legacy was achieved via LBJ’s
massive Great Society welfare system that focused overwhelmingly on providing
material “entitlements” and dealt with existing, often intractable, pathologies. But to Cohen’s dismay, “social services
increased along with benefit levels,” and many of the problems those material benefits
were intended to solve (e.g. illegitimacy) increased dramatically.
Husock’s
new model for social services follows the structure and philosophy of Geoffrey
Canada whose Harlem Children’s Zone project grew out of his own experience of
the violence and cynicism inculcated in youngsters by hardened mentors who saw the
system rigged against them and scoffed at the foolishness of seeking anything beyond
immediate gratification. Canada’s
privately-funded project focuses on young kids not yet corrupted by the negative
influences around them and has grown from one block to more than a hundred. His urban oasis provides a stark example of a clean,
graffiti-free neighborhood and demonstrates what can be achieved by embracing
“middle class values” such as self-discipline and education.
While
Husock’s overview of social work’s abandonment of moral norms is instructive,
the hope he places in admirable efforts like Canada’s seems unrealistic. As Husock himself admits, the world of social
work represents only a fraction of the cultural input that shapes individual
perspectives and habits. And Canada’s
work, even multiplied by dozens of similar projects, represents a small
fraction of the services delivered by state and federal government
agencies. Put bluntly, the cultural
input of all social service workers pales in comparison with that of mass
media. Husock mentions rap music in one
sentence, noting its banishment from Canada’s model community. Yet rap is a cultural item whose negative
influence by itself dwarfs all the unquestionably positive work done by Canada
and similar projects. Now add to rap the
drumbeat of cynicism promoted by Hollywood, academics, politicians, and the
mainstream media. While morally-focused social
projects are certainly saviors for the thousands they touch, the idea that such
projects will significantly move the broader cultural needle in the same
direction is naïve.
Attorney
General William Barr’s recent Notre Dame speech accurately summarized the massive secularist
attack on religion and traditional values over the last half-century – an
attack that includes but goes well beyond the world of social services. The success of that attack is poignantly
summarized by Planned Parenthood’s indignant response to New York City’s
“moralistic” campaign to discourage teen pregnancy: “It’s not teen pregnancies
that cause poverty, but poverty that causes teen pregnancies.” This anti-moral economic determinism is now
deeply engrained in American culture.
Without
a “fundamental transformation” of the mass media’s constant condemnation of personal
moral judgments – without a drastic change in its lionizing of hedonistic
pursuits that “push the envelope” beyond every prior boundary of decency – without
a rejection of its reflexive division of society into privileged and victim groups -- without a
massive intellectual and moral shift on the part of educators, the
entertainment industry, prominent intellectuals, and folks in electronic
communications, the prospect for significant improvement in the culture at
large, including its ever-expanding social services arena, seems bleak.
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in
Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to
Say?" is also available on Kindle
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