Trego's Mountain Ear

Colleges – and even high schools – exist to provide credentials. Probably the highest example of credentialism is the MD or DO – but most of our programs boil down to taking the correct group of classes, achieving a certain minimum score, and acquiring a credential. You pretty much have to get the credential to get the interview that gets you the job. In this simplification, there isn’t a lot of difference between the bachelors, masters and doctorates in the academy and the classifications of apprentice, journeyman and master in the skilled trades (take plumbing or electricity for examples).

There are a whole lot of jobs where I lack the credentials to even apply. We’ve developed a credentialed society, and sometimes the benefits of the credential seem hard to find. Sometimes the requirements in terms of work experience seem like gatekeepers. And more frequently, people are asking what is the value of the credential.

My credential is a Ph.D. in sociology. If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people who recommend against getting a degree in sociology. I suppose I’m lucky – I got a job in the subject, and retired working at the same topic that interested me as an undergrad. Other folks have other credentials. I’m reading Neil Howe’s book about the fourth turning – and his jacket blurb identifies him as a demographer holding graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale. There are a lot of ways to get the title of demographer – his was, obviously, different than mine.

After retiring, I’ve spent a few years on the local school board – and teaching jobs are open only to the certified. I started with the belief that certification in special education brought with it some incredible teaching skills – yet as I left the board, I left with a strong suspicion that we had hired people with the credential to evaluate our students, but once the evaluation was complete we wound up with teacher’s aides who did most of the actual teaching. I knew Dave Peterson – and saw more than one of his students go on to graduate and become teachers. But those years of closer observation showed me that Dave was a special teacher – but that wasn’t directly related to a special education certificate. At the Libby Campus of FVCC, I worked in the Academic Reinforcement Center with Connie Malyevac. Connie was a better teacher than I – I watched her reach out and find ways to get students on track, students who were beyond my reach. I was good – Connie was great. It wasn’t a question of credentials – she simply had more ability to reach out and bring students back onto the path.

Remembering those days when I Worked with Connie makes me understand why we need to be moving into some different forms of credentials that reflect ability. I’m looking at the SAT – the Scholastic Aptitude Test is now reducing the length and complexity of statements to which students respond and from which they determine the correct information. These are the questions my students referred to as “story questions.” The real world has too much information – much of the problem of thinking is just deciding the data that is relevant to the problem.

I’m glad to have had the University system as a place to work – but I could see how it was breaking down and no longer providing valid credentials. I think on Howe’s work – where his credentials are more the Ivy League degrees than the topic – and I recall the Whorfian Hypothesis. Benjamin Whorf was a Chemical Engineer (MIT BS and MS) who studied the Hopi language and came up with the idea that people experience the world based on the structure of their language. This link shows that MIT still remembers (web.mit.edu.allanmc.www.whorf.scienceandlinguistics.pdf )

Benjamin Whorf’s name moved into social science fields because of his competence in linguistics, while his credentials were degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. Perhaps it’s time for us to start looking at developing competence over credentialing?