The Challenge of Education to Social Work: The Case for Minority Children

Abstract

system is analyzed and critiqued, as is the role of social work within that system. Analysis is presented using in stitutional perspectives to explain the functional relationship between edu cation and the oppression of people of color. The author finds education culpable in the massive undereduca tion of minority children and social work powerless to prevent it. The rele vance of educational reform to the goals and purposes of social work in the broader context of fairness and equity is explained. The author recommends changes in social work practice and policy that will give the field a larger role and stronger voice in the reform of education. Education in the united States is in crisis, and this fact has enormous consequences for the social work profession. At the root of a host of social problems and problems of per sonal functioning is an educational bureaucracy that has failed to deliver promised benefits. In recognition of this crisis, the past decade has witnessed calls for educational reform from a variety of sectors and at several levels of government (Goodlad, 1983; National Commission on Excellence in Educa tion, 1983). These concerns have be come more pressing largely in response to putative losses in educational attain ment among nonminority children. The undereducation of minority children is arguably an equally serious if not a greater threat to the strength and well being of the U.S. economy, for these children will make up the bulk of the adult labor force in the next century. An underclass of poorly educated minority children would likely drain social, health, welfare, political, and economic