[WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

[Toby Bartels]

Clutch wrote:

>Mav quoted Clutch:

>>"Social workers are widely hated."

>>"Social workers are trained to treat their feelings and gut instincts as
>>more important than reason, rationality, and respect for the human dignity
>>of those they seek to help."

>>"Social workers are the foot soldiers of the ivory tower social engineers
>>that governments and big businesses hire to keep the masses under control."

>Looks like Clutch is telling the honest truth, to me.

It *looks* that way?
Surely you remember if you were being honest when you wrote it!

>Instead of erasing what he says, try to provide factual
>counter-views.  Bet you can't.

I did social work for a year (1999 to 2000).
I was not a social worker as such -- I wasn't hired with that job title,
or on the basis of holding such a degree or certification, which I don't hold
-- but I worked with several people who would qualify.
It was a private, nonprofit agency (Ortolan88's sense 2),
although it worked to some extent as an affiliate of the local government.

I was not trained to trust feelings over reason.
Furthermore, I was specifically instructed to respect human dignity.
Now, since I was just a temporary worker, with no degree or certification,
perhaps I didn't receive the training that you refer to above.
But if the social workers that were my bosses (and trained me)
did receive such training, then why didn't they try to pass it on to me?
In particular, why did they stress the importance of human dignity to me,
if they had been trained to disregard it?

The organisation that I worked for definitely trusted the government too much.
That is, they assumed that laws passed by "progressive" legislators
were well intended and should not be thwarted,
although had no compunction against working around
amendments passed by "conservative" legislators.
(For example, we would gladly try to get people on food stamps.
But we'd also try to find a way to make them qualify,
even if a prima facie reading of the guidelines suggested that they didn't.)
It even ran Head Start (a nationally funded public preschool programme)
*for* the local government, although I wasn't involved in that.
But ultimately, the assumption was to trust the people we were working with
over the government (although not, unfortunately, over one's coworkers).

I don't think that anybody there liked big business.
We didn't have businessmen on the board of directors.

>Social workers are trained for years to
>be really rapid and effective communicators.  This, plus their training
>to lie without compunction, and their unaccountability to the court
>system, gives them an incredible edge in defending themselves against
>factual accusations.

So what's your factual basis for the training to lie without compunction?
And do you have statistics on the wide hatred?


-- Toby