Every year, Lake
Superior College in Wisconsin publishes a list of words the school believes
should be removed from general use. The 2014 list included the words ‘selfie’, ‘twerking’,
‘hashtag’, and ‘twittersphere’. It’s
hard to argue with those choices; words that are over-used, words the
uncritical mind wields to impress others, words that eventually make you wince
when you hear them.
I look forward to the College’s list each year and
almost always agree with their choices. Yet, there is disappointment. Year after year, they fail to select
the one word I believe to be in the most dire need of oblivion.
The word is ‘professionalism’.
This omission may be because colleges and
universities are among the worst offenders when it comes to its abuse.
North Americans like to remind themselves now and
then that they’re members of an egalitarian society. There are no peerages (in
spite of what Donald Trump may believe) and we’re all free to find our place in
the sun, even if the truth of that statement lives more in mythology.
The fact is, we will accept almost anything EXCEPT
equality. We’re ever quick to
compare our status to the next person’s.
We believe strongly in a pecking order. It’s human nature, we’re told.
Historically and throughout the world, money and
title have been the arbiters of status. But our North American democracies spurn the use of titles and
money lost some of its cachet when better communication techniques revealed a
disturbing number of the really wealthy were also untutored clowns with both
appalling taste and manners. And -
although the signs are not propitious at the moment – our middle class provides
a huge chunk of citizenry for whom status is a confusing and muddled issue. Apparently, simply belonging to the middle class isn’t enough.
Greater distinctions were required. We needed other
criteria. And we found some. At any given time, we’ve used
clothing, physical fitness, education, religion, service clubs, body
mutilation, and tastes in music to differentiate us one from another. These measuring sticks all had value,
no doubt, but they lacked a certain something. Maybe they were simply frustratingly incomplete. For
instance, we were conditioned to believe Ivy League schools were elite, Then
someone pointed out that their exclusivity was essentially based on exhorbitant
tuition fees and the provision of glorified babysitting duties for the wealthy’s
indolent spawn. And at what point
do your tattoos stop being tasteful and slip into wretched excess? And if you were a classical music
buff, did that mean you had to defend Stravinsky?
It was then that someone noticed doctors and lawyers
– the so-called professionals.
Professional. It was a
great word, stirring thoughts of thorough training, ethical standards and
competency. Who wouldn’t want to be called a professional?
Well, that’s when matters began to heat up. Where was it written that the word was
exclusive to doctors and lawyers? Doctors and lawyers didn’t have a monopoly on
the word. Why couldn’t it be used
in a wider sense? No surprise, it didn’t take
long for that idea to take root.
Use of the word ‘professional’ spread quickly. After all, it does conjure up visions of
capability and in an era where the marketing of skills takes precedence over
the actual delivery of skills, having someone believe they’re hiring a
“professional” seemed a definite grabber.
The stampede began in earnest with social workers and
educators. And for good
reason, it should be said. Both
practitioners were reasonably well-educated and both were grossly
underpaid.
Here you are busting your hump for peanuts AND the quality of your end product is
almost impossible to ascertain.
Simply getting your students to pass the curricula or getting an abusive
spouse to swear off violence apparently doesn’t convince society to be more
generous with tax dollars.
What to do?
Elevate yourself, of course. Set yourself ABOVE the fray, as it were.
Call yourself a PROFESSIONAL! Maybe this will convince the funders to
sweeten the pot. You can support
this move by inventing an arcane language that makes sense only to you! And they thought doctors’
prescriptions were unreadable!
So, presto, they all became professionals simply by
calling themselves so. And,
curiously, no one objected.
Before you could say jiggery-pokery, out came various
manifestos outlining a road to exclusivity and standards for acceptance into a
league of professional teachers and social workers, standards that coincided
beautifully to those already possessed by whoever prepared the manifesto.
Overnight, the ranks of professionals swelled. But the process had just begun.
Teachers and social workers may have led the way but
the practice spread – with unseemly haste – into virtually any and every career
choice: bus-drivers, investment
counselors, nurses , nurses aides, mechanics, realtors, media-types, bankers, and
even your supermarket manager AND all the assistant managers. Think about it; even your neighborhood
hit man was referred to as a professional.
One could suggest there were no amateurs or laymen
left.
So what, if the end result was an improvement in
quality of work performed and a way to eliminate incompetency? Wasn’t that what doctors and
lawyers had been doing all those years?
Well, they were weren’t they?
But the inherent problems with all this
self-aggrandizement soon appeared. As any observant doctor or lawyer could tell
you, establishing the cloak of professionalism won’t ward off incompetency or
guarantee quality. What it does do is create a limited supply and a
homogenous group that tends to talk and act the same way. In fact, the issue of competency is
pretty much ignored in the evaluation processes. What is really aspired to is an improved social stature and,
if you’re lucky, a better salary.
Still, the results have been mixed to negative. Most nurses deserved the appellation
and a good realtor was hard to find among the army of agents stumbling through
an easy-to-get-into-easier-to-get-out-of profession. But bankers, it was discovered, were simply clerks with an
extraordinary tolerance for routine manuals that told them when to get up and
when to go to bed and everything in between. On the other hand, a good mechanic deserved all the praise
society could muster. Unfortunately, he was also thinly scattered throughout
his arena.
Paradoxically, we now live in a world in which being
good at what you do has little to do with being ‘qualified’ to do what you
do. Excelling at a job is a
personal goal and too often that truth gets lost in the push to ‘market’ a line
of work as ‘professional’. When we
describe our work as our ‘profession’ we’re technically correct. But when we describe our work as
‘professional’ we steer into the realm of marketing and we all know that in its
murky world, what you see isn’t always what you get.
It’s time to consign ‘professionalism’ to the scrap heap. Time for something new. Want to REALLY set yourself above the crowd? Just do the job right.
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