Most historical descriptions of the relationship between tutors and students in early American higher education have tended to emphasize elements of consensus and community. Historians such as Morison and Smith have suggested that the relationship was basically close and cordial, characterized by shared values and fostered by the small, homogeneous nature of the institution. While not discounting the basic validity of this description, current research has begun to examine what one scholar has characterized as the “rising curve of collective student disorder.” By focusing on conflict as opposed to consensus new insights are provided about collegiate institutions, their modes of reaction to and acceptance of change, and a truer picture of their effectiveness as agents of society emerges. Moreover, by this approach students themselves must be taken seriously as more than passive recipients but rather as a force in their own right of institutional and even societal change.

In October, 1832, William C. Woodbridge noted with alarm a phenomenon that was “producing in our own country, at this moment, a scene of contest, and slander, and falsehood, and violence, which should make the patriot tremble, and the Christian weep.” The source of this catalogue of evils was the encouragement of competition — or “emulation,” as it was then termed — in American schools. The most dangerous form this encouragement took was the awarding of prizes for scholarship. Woodbridge, though more alarmed than most, was not alone in his denunciation of emulation; the effects of competition were discussed in the new journals of education, in manuals for teachers, at teachers' institutes, and finally in normal schools throughout the 1830's and 1840's.

The history of social work education reflects the dilemmas of a profession which promises simultaneous attention to the social well being of individuals and of society as a whole. Necessarily social work is affected by society's value system, by the country's socio-political structure, and by economic and technological conditions. All contribute to changing definitions of “social well being” and lead to decisions about ways in which well being will be sought at any one time. Schools of social work have recognized a dual obligation: They have undertaken to educate professionals to the complexities of both individual and institutional change processes. Writing in 1945 one leading educator put the matter this way:

Several years ago, my then graduate students David O. Justice, David Kelly and I took random samples of the major biographical encyclopedias for Germany, France, England and the United States. The entries we considered were those for males born 1810 to 1899, who might have reached advanced educational institutions between about 1830 and 1930. What we were chiefly interested in is the level and type of education enjoyed by these eminent men; but we also looked at their fathers' occupations and at a number of other characteristics.