Update 10/15/07 - George Will offers an article on the same subject here.
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Click here for a major report prepared by the National Association of Scholars. The Executive Summary can be found here.
Update 9/20/07 - Peter Wood, the executive secretary of the NAS, offers a commentary. Excerpts:
The NAS report, “The Scandal of Social Work Education,” tracks the ideological requirements for becoming a licensed social worker. You may have thought social work was about helping the unfortunate. No; up-to-date social work is about combating “poverty, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and ageism” by advocating “social and economic justice.”
. . . Moral reservations about abortion? Doubts about gay adoption? Emily Brooker, a traditional Christian student, sued Missouri State University in 2006 after it brought her up on charges for
refusing to lobby the state legislature in favor of homosexual adoption. Who has ever heard of a course requirement that forces students to lobby on behalf of a teacher’s pet project? Missouri State wisely settled.
Another student, Sandra Fuiten, was told by her social work program at the University of Illinois that she would have to choose between becoming a social worker and opposing abortion. She chose her conscience, and quit.Schools of social work force students to take loyalty oaths to fringe political claims, march through a gauntlet of down-on-America courses, and carry out assignments that seem like hazing rituals aimed at weeding out any conservatives that snuck through the admissions process. Go to the University of Washington school of social work and you may be required to write about the effects of “cultural imperialism on Muslim communities, both within the United States and abroad.” Take “Words Beyond Walls” at the University of Texas school of social work and you’ll be required to submit your writing for review to prisoners serving life terms. The University of Michigan’s social work program will teach you how to challenge “oppressive structures” through “political action.” . . . (more)
Peter Wood, incidentally, is author of A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now about which I have blogged before here and here.