Thursday, October 13, 2011

Missouri Education Watchdog: Life Learning - The Lost Art

Missouri Education Watchdog: Life Learning - The Lost Art:

Life Learning - The Lost Art



Professor Lois Weiner worries about the deprofessionalization of teaching. This is a new word that gets flagged by spellcheck every time, but I thought this was the best definition of it:

The process by which members of a high-status occupation lose the facility to have autonomous control over its internal affairs and the behaviour of its membership. Deprofessionalization also results in a loss of the monopoly of the members of the profession to have exclusive rights to do certain kinds of work and a loss of control over the expert knowledge that, before deprofessionalization, was not available to the general public.http://www.answers.com

Perhaps the greater tragedy of the 20th century (yes I meant 20th) was the professionalization of teaching. In the 19th century teachers were sometimes criminals who could find no other work.