“Far from regarding the mixed composition of races in this country as unfortunate, I regard it as fortunate and as an advantage of which not enough use has been made,” Dr. Abraham Flexner, who recently resigned as director of the General Educational Board of Rockefeller Foundation, told members of the graduating class of the Training School for Jewish Social Work at the graduation exercises on Monday.
“Every one of the alien stocks brought to this country their own native culture. Short-sighted reformers think they will help matters if they were to disintegrate these racial groups as fast as possible. To destroy their contribution would be to take away something imporant from our too-barren civilization. If the folk-lore and the cultures of these races were obliterater, the country would lose instead of gaining.
“Short-sighted people would think to Americanize these alien races and would by their premature dissolution destroy their standards of conduct and picturesqueness.
“There is no subject on the face of the earth about which more nonsense has been spoken than the subject of racial characteristics,” declared Dr. Flexuer. I doubt if there has ever been anywhere a Nordic race on the face of the earth. It is just as absurd to apply the terms Christian, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic or any such single term to this nation.
Eighteen students received their certificates in the auditorium of the Federation Building, 71 West 47th Street. Addresses were made by Felix M. Warburg, chairman of the executive committee of the school who presided, Maurice J. Karpf, director of the school and Dr. Solomon Lowenstein, executive director of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies.
Mr. Warburg addressing the graduating class in behalf of Louis E. Kirstein, president of the school who was absent, declared that the members of the board of trustees of the school stood for adequate professional recognition and dignity for the work.
“We shall strike for this recognition and dignity in two directions,” said Mr. Warburg, “personal appreciation of professional capacity, and financial compensation worthy of professional preparation and effective work. The School will do all it can to foster these two aims to the end that out of this new profession the Jewish communities of this country may receive trained, effective, intelligent and loyal service. Unless these things are achieved the School will be a failure. We recognize our obligation, we have accepted the challenge and we shall look to you to help us meet them.”
The social sciences present peculiar difficulties and upon social science the schools of social work must ultimately be based, Dr. Flexner said in his address. “If you are to make a contribution towards this end, you must continue to be social students of social problems; continue to be stimulated by every concrete experience; to study critically this situation with which you are practically called on to deal. There are routineers in law and medicine despite the fact that these are admitted to be professions. They are admitted to be professions because they have an established technique and an established literature. To the extent that your work is that of the scientific student or practitioner of law or medicine, you will have contributed towards making the social science real science and towards making social work a real profession.
“This institution is specifically a training school for Jewish social work; in other words, for social work among the Jewish communities throughout the country. You are aware of the discordant opinions held respecting the so-called foreign element within the so-called American people. As a matter of fact, the American nation is made up of a great variety of racial, religious, political and social strains so that no single comprehensive title nor anything else can accurately or truthfully describe it. Nay more, everyone of the stocks represented in the American people has made to this country its own unique contribution in the establishment of native culture. Our own literature, philosophy, and art will be enriched if pains are taken to preserve the essence of each of these national cultures.
“These groups naturally form separate communities within the larger American cities. The members of each community exercise positive and beneficient influence in holding these groups together for the time-being so that their traditional standards of conduct and behavior are not too suddenly disrupted. You are Americans as well as Jews. You must therefore mediate the gradual transformation of the Polish, Russian or German Jew living in these communities in the Russian, Polish or American Jew who retains everything that is valuable, beautiful and rich in his native setting and yet observes everything that is essentially important or worthwhile in America of which he and his family are to become citizens.
“In dealing with your speciffc problems you will need tact, insight, sympathy. For your real task is to substitute ties of one kind for another set of ties and in the process to save for American citizens all that is beautiful in the literary background of the Jewish communities in which you work,” Dr. Flexner said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
