"The Known and the Used" in Child and Youth Care Work

Abstract

The career of Jerome Beker at the University of Minnesota, where he arrived in 1978, parallels changes in the centers of influence in youth care work in the U.S. Presently the power, momentum, and funding in local and national leadership circles around youth development and youth work resides in private institutes or in non-academic units of universities. The former Center for Youth Development and Research (CYDR) at the University of Minnesota, because of its core focus on integrating theory and practice, would still struggle today, even if it had survived. Much of the work of private initiatives represents everything that is problematic in youthwork and youth development: Ignorance about the history of youthwork and youth development, allowing them to pretend that they were there first; a mismatch of method and hoped-for outcomes—information without meaning, classroom without practice, implementation without mentoring, marketing without pilot-testing or evaluation, training for individuals without context or culture, psychology without morality and politics, short-term expectations of results— and a short attention span. Further, these initiatives are promoted with the illusion that youth development, healthy development, and positive youth development are new ideas. Jerry’s work, in contrast, testifies that there is a tradition. In the first volume and issue of this journal, published in 1971, Jerry described one purpose of the then named Child Care Quarterly as “promoting healthy development” (p. 6). Gisela Konopka used the phrase “youth development” in 1954, in her book Groupwork in the Institution, the first professional practice use of the phrase that I know of, although it