It's not such a new idea, really.
For centuries, only men could practice medicine. They prated on in Latin about the "four humours," treating with precious jewels and bleeding their patients to death with regularity. The best practitioner in town might be a woman, but if she were ever caught: break out the marshmallows, boys, there's going to be bonfire in the town square tonight.
And how did one become a doctor? Why, by memorizing the pratings of (start ital)other(end ital) "doctors," of course. You wouldn't want to roll up your sleeves and use the scientific method to figure out which treatments actually (start ital)worked(end ital). One simply memorized the writings of the great Galen.
It's taken a long time for the concept of "merit" to overcome the notion that certain self-anointed, self-perpetuating groups were "entitled" to their hegemony over given professions.
Even in our own country, as diesel and electric locomotives replaced engines requiring wood or coal, America's powerful railroad unions gave us a new word -- featherbedding -- by threatening to bring the nation's transit system to a halt unless their contracts continued to specify that every train must still carry a union "freman," charged with the heavy responsibility of shoveling non-existent coal into a non-existent boiler.
And now comes the latest attempt to protect the hegemony of a discredited, ineffective, but vastly costly guild, providing a mediocre service which consumers still "buy" only because they're required to do so by law:
Upset that many urban school districts have responded to teacher shortages by resorting to the issuance of more emergency, temporary or alternative teaching certificates to college graduates who have not put in their time studying "pedagogy" at some flim-flam "college of education," the National Education Association (the nation's largest teachers union -- and one that's coincidentally dead-set against "merit pay") called Wednesday for an almost complete ban on the hiring by government schools districts of teachers who "lack full credentials."
The nerve of these administrators! Hiring people to teach Spanish, Japanese, or Physics based on the mere fact they know Spanish, Japanese, or Physics, with no regard to whether they've gone through the years of "Ed School" conditioning required to understand that it doesn't matter whether phonics appears to work on a (start ital)practical(end ital) level -- one must still teach reading via the "whole-word," look-and-guess method. And how do we know this? Why, just count the number of Ph.Ds after the names of the folks who recommend it!
On the other hand, hire "any which one" off the street, and they'd soon be teaching our children that the U.S Constitution calls for a government "limited" to those powers "specifically delegated." Can you imagine filling children's heads with such ideas, penned by testosterone-poisoned slave-owning white males? Why, such a laughable doctrine would ban pretty much the whole welfare state ... including the public schools!
Wait, it gets better. Bob Chase, president of the NEA, straightforwardly admits this is all part of a plan to drive up teacher salaries (from the present average of $35,000 -- not counting benefits -- which the NEA considers "low" for graduates who chose the School of Ed because they couldn't make the grade in Animal Husbandry.)
Many who have "abandoned the profession" because of these "low" salaries will return as this measure further artificially restricts hiring, and thus inevitably drives salaries upward, Mr. Chase figures.
One more thing: Mr. Chase on Wednesday also proposed adding what in most states would be a new requirement for "teacher certification" -- graduation from a teaching program accedited by Arthur Wise's National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. (Though Mr. Wise's outfit is the principal accreditor of schools of education, only some 500 of the nation's 1,300 teacher training programs are currently accredited.)
Have I got this right? The plan calls for a stronger stranglehold to guarantee that (start ital)every(end ital) teachers college must now uniformly impose the same long-discredited methods and notions. But beyond that it would purposely create (start ital)larger(end ital) teacher shortages, as part of a scheme to artificially drive teacher salaries (start ital)higher(end ital), in order to soak the taxpayers for even (start ital)more(end ital) money, for a "product" that's been dropping in quality every year, till today's high school graduates ring up your order by pushing the button with the picture of the cheeseburger on it.
Oh, what a good plan. Thousands of featherbedded railroad firemen, now happily in their graves, roll over and give this one a big "Thumbs up," Bob.
By the way: Time for your afternoon bleeding.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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