Maintaining Traditions of Practical Wisdom: Not Becoming a "Fool."

edited 091719

Practical wisdom is not musing about how someone else in a hypothetical situation ought to act. It's about "What am I to do?" -- right here and right now, with this person. A practically wise person doesn't merely speculate about what's proper; she does it.
-- Schwartz, B & Sharpe, K Practical Wisdom. The Right Way to Do the Right Thing. (2010) New York: (Penguin) Riverhead. p.7.

Ever noticed how many of the things we purchase come with assurances of "foolproof" usage? Why is that? Probably because, in order to save money, we purchase things that need assembly, or finishing of one kind or another, yet we are unlikely to have the familiarity with the objects involved to know how to avoid technical problems with them.

Those of us with a lot of schooling like to believe that having read abstruse texts and done difficult mathematics has somehow made us clever and handy when dealing with physical objects in the real world. Why waste money on completed items, or hire presumed "experts" -- likely a person with a few days instruction -- to assemble them for us, when we can do the job ourselves?

But just try, for the first time, to do any of the following:

a. digging a round hole one foot deep;
b. baking a soufflé ;
c. hammering a nail into a board;
d. assembling a small multicomputer network with peripherals.

We would do well to start off with some ancient wisdom: nothing is as easy as it looks. The few days' instruction that the kid at the hardware or electronics store gets is a few days more than we have. But, rather than take a few days to consider and prepare for what has to be done, we -- not wishing to "waste time" -- rush ahead and, if we are lucky, do a barely passable job.

If we break something, we put it back into the box and take it back to the store, telling them that "it came that way." The merchant, without objection, takes it back -- he has insurance (or warranty sales) covering such losses; and, a sale is a sale, the profit being substantial enough to cover several replacements -- for which they get credit from the manufacturer anyway. "Practical wisdom" often trumps even "honesty."

Social obligation can suppress personal virtue. Ruth Benedict in The Sword and the Chrysanthemum. (1946) Boston: Houghton, gives an example in the Japanese complaint, "I lost my virtue by fulfilling my obligations." This is offered as explaining why, in a "normal" movie plot shown to Japanese subjects of Benedict's research, a teacher shields his wealthy yet thieving mother from opprobrium, accepting the blame for the theft of school funds. This, in turn drives the teacher's wife, taking their young child with her, to commit suicide (and murder) rather than live with the familial shame. Filial piety, in some cultures, trumps many a personal consideration. (Consider the fatal feuding between the Hatfields and the McCoys. See also Honor Killing. Serving the Idols of the Tribe.)

"Modern" cycles of short-term use and replacement, "planned obsolescence," keep much of the economy going. But if fashion, alone, can't make you "upgrade," foolishness, e.g. mechanical ignorance, or deliberate planning, even, will. (Just think of mobile phones, "finished" and sold encased in slippery glass.)

But planned obsolescence or planned fragility works not only for mobile phones, DVD players, IKEA furniture, or automobiles or houses -- "fixer-uppers" -- , but also, increasingly, for medical care, law, scientific research and education. (See Schwartz & Sharpe, cited above, throughout.) Political and market, rather than disciplinary, considerations are at work to "fool-proof" the professions.

In education, unlike in other public service professions who know better than to wash their dirty laundry in public, there are always crusading "reformers" who are quite willing to point out who the fools are: thus we have recurrent attempts at "teacher-proofing" the curriculum. (See see On The Viability Of A Curriculum Leadership Role )

The success of this approach can be judged, for example, by the fact that, despite great hoopla and hype, Teach for America has yet to take over even small minority of public schools. It is the rare dilettante who has the patience, the dedication, to pursue expertise.

Even more painful for the greater majority of Americans to contemplate is, in these early days of the 21st Century, how dilettantism, not to mention rank incompetence has undermined vital functions of our national government.

But public service professionals, themselves, tend to shy away from rigorous resistance to the inroads made by those who would dilute professional norms and judgment for the sake of easy political and economic gain.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Minimizing Politicization in Public Service Decision-Making


Cordially
--- EGR

Professionalizing Teaching: what would it take? by Gary K. Clabaugh, Ed. D.

Many occupations long for the positive regard that accompanies being a profession. For example, cosmetologists, social workers, physical therapists, and teachers all claim to be professions. But are they?

Fortunately we have time-tested criteria that can help us distinguish professions from non-professions. Years ago, in his classic Education as a Profession Myron Lieberman carefully developed major characteristics that provide us with a practical working idea of what is meant by a profession.[1]

Here are Lieberman’s characteristics of professions accompanied by comments on how well teaching fits.

1. Professionals perform a unique, definite and essential social service.

A teacher’s services are generally essential, but less definite and unique. After all, lots of people teach besides schoolteachers. Consider the teaching done by parents, scout leaders, clergy, corporate trainers, drill instructors, and so forth. In contrast one is required to be a physician to perform heart surgery, treat cancer, diagnose neurological disorders, etc. In a similar vein, we go to a dentist, not the local hardware store, to have a broken tooth repaired or a cavity dealt with.

There is no practical way to restrict every type of teaching to trained, licensed specialists.

2. Professionals emphasize intellectual techniques in performing their service.

Physicians rely on a scientifically derived knowledge base and chiefly work in a one on one environment. Attorneys rely on statutory and case law generally also in a one on one setting. Although teachers do have access to scientific knowledge, it certainly isn’t as detailed or agreed upon as that employed by physicians. Moreover, teachers in secondary schools typically deal with well over one hundred youngsters per day while elementary teachers typically teach more than twenty. This is important because the broad range of individual differences in such groups makes it very difficult to employ anything other than mass production techniques. This, in turn, limits the application of scientifically derived knowledge. For instance, how well could a physician apply his or her knowledge if they had to simultaneously diagnose and treat 20 to 35 patients at one time?

3. Professionals undergo a long period of specialized training.

Teacher training is brief, relatively easy and competes with other course work at the undergraduate level. Aspiring teachers are never required to attend a specialized and rigorous graduate school that is the equivalent of medical, dental or law school.

Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that the present weak-kneed process of teacher education could ever be strengthened to resemble med school. More likely teacher education will grow even easier as state officials, anxious for cheaper more compliant help, create still more so-called alternative (easier) routes to certification.

4. Professionals enjoy a broad range of autonomy both for individual practitioners and the occupational group as a whole.

Today’s factory-style schools emphasize efficiency and productivity in order to reduce costs. This assembly line approach severely limits individual teacher autonomy. And this is especially true in the growing number of schools where teacher behaviors and lessons are scripted. Moreover, teaching as an occupation is subject to detailed control by the various state governments as well as, at least in recent years, the federal government.

It seems highly unlikely that state governments will turn over much if any of this to the occupation as a whole — particularly when that occupations is organized into two rival unions both of whom are on the Republican Party’s “s” list.

5. Professionals accept broad personal responsibility for judgments made and acts performed within the scope of their professional autonomy.

In recent years state and federal officials have been pushing for greater teacher responsibility — they call it “accountability.” But these same officials are certainly not expanding the scope of teacher professional autonomy. As a matter of fact, as their demands for greater accountability accelerate, they decrease limits on teacher autonomy via, for example, ever more high stakes testing.

This is a difficult position to be in and certainly does not bode well for teacher professionalism.

6. Professionals emphasize the service to be rendered, rather than their own economic gain, as the basis for the organization and performance of the social service delegated to the occupational group.

This may seem ridiculous in view of the stark difference in physician and teacher compensation. Nevertheless, physicians are forbidden from putting their own income above the vital interests of their clients. For instance, prescribing useless therapy that profits the practitioner. That sort of thing is considered malpractice and is subject to professional censure. The same holds true for other clear-cut professions such as dentistry and law.

Thanks to their lack of autonomy teachers are rarely in a position to place their own economic gain over the services they render. Consequently there is little need, much less opportunity, to organize prevention.

7. Professionals are members of a comprehensive, self-governing organization of practitioners.

State control of teacher certification erases any possibility of teacher self-governance. Right now there is no way for teachers to even approximate this goal. Worse yet, teacher trade unions not only fail to even try to govern the occupation, they all too frequently engage in knee--jerk defense of plainly incompetent teachers.

How likely is it that teachers will gain the power to govern themselves, set standards for entrance into the occupation and exercise meaningful quality control? Presently, I think there is little or none.

8. Professionals employ a code of ethics that has been clarified and interpreted at ambiguous and doubtful points by concrete cases.

For example, the American Medical Association employs a very detailed code of ethics that clarifies a wide range of issues such as inter-professional relations, social policy issues, hospital relations, confidentiality, professional rights and responsibilities as well as patient-physician relations.[2]

Various efforts have been made to establish an unambiguous and enforceable code of ethics for teachers but most are vague and largely celebratory. For instance, the Association of American Educators, the largest national non-union teacher association, the National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union, and the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest, all have created such codes. But they frequently rely on sloganistic purr words that are subject to a wide variety of interpretations and none of them are employed in daily practice.

Conclusion: teaching fails to fulfill any of the above criteria. What is more, there is no hope it will in the foreseeable future. Should it be this way? No, not in my judgment. But it is what it is, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. What would it take to professionalize teaching? Nothing short of a full-scale revolution in the way we conduct schooling in America.

For additional consideration of this topic, see School Reform via Teacher Professionalization: Is it Cost-effective?.

Sincerely, GKC

REFERENCES

1. Lieberman, Myron., Education As A Profession, Prentice Hall, 1956.

2. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics.page

Higher Academic Education: a Road to Servitude?

The farm laborer and the artisan are in a state of servitude, and have to do what they are told, but that is where it ends.

But the courtiers of a tyrant ingratiate themselves with him and beg favors of him, and the tyrant, seeing this, requires them not just to do what he says but to think the way he wants them to and, often, to anticipate his desires.

It is not enough that these people obey him, they must also please him in every way, they must endure hardship, torment themselves and drive themselves to the grave in carrying out his business; his pleasure must be their pleasure, his taste must be theirs, they must distort and cast off their natural disposition, they must hang on his every word, his tone of voice, his gestures, his expression; their every faculty must be alert to catch his wishes and to discern his thoughts.

Is that a happy existence? Can that be called living? Is there anything in the world less tolerable than that? And I do not mean less tolerable to a man of valor, a man of natural goodness, but simply endowed to a man with common sense, or just someone who has the appearance of a man? What way of life is more abject than one bereft of possessions, in which one's comfort, liberty, body and life depend on someone else?

– E. De La Boetie (circa1548) A Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Technical and Skills Education, known also as Vocational Education, has long been a dumping ground for students whose benighted teachers and school counselors have thought them to be “not suited” for higher “academic” studies, when, in many cases, what they lacked was maturity, docility, or refined manners.

The great irony of this 21st Century is that along with an ever increasing ardor for college life, high school graduates do not, in increasing numbers, come to the university with what many consider the requisite level of preparation to succeed at their studies.

Parents and students have been oversold on the idea that finishing college with a high G.P.A. is automatically the road to a good life, a future in the Seat of Command and Respect. But unless students acquire needed economic skills along the way, the likelihood is that they will end up, at best, in a large organizational environment, perhaps, even with a comfortable salary. And they will spend their lives “playing office politics,” catering to the whims of higher-ups, rather than producing desired goods or services. (Think of the cartoon, Dilbert -- it is not, by any means, based on pure imagination!)

This is what has happened in public education where politicians, courts and other distantly situated "tyrants" endeavor to remove the last vestiges of professional decision-making from those most closely connected to schoolkids.

To examine these issues further, see "Tracking" in Public Education: preparation for the world of work?


Cordially
--- EGR