Before moving here to Winston Salem, a friend bade me farewell with “now you’re one step closer to becoming a certified expert.” We both half-laughed, and acknowledging the sad half-truth of his statement, I mumbled something like “screw you.”
His reference came from a passage in The Unsettling of America:
“The average—one is tempted to say ideal—American citizen now consigns the problem of food production to agriculturalists and “agribusinessmen,” the problem of health to doctors and sanitation experts, the problems of education to school teachers and educators, the problems of conservation to conservationists, and so on.
The beneficiary of this regime of specialists ought to be the happiest of mortals—or so we are expected to believe. All of his vital concerns are in the hands of certified experts. He is a certified expert himself and as such he earns more money in a year than all his great-grandparents put together. Between stints at his job he has nothing to do but mow his lawn with a sit-down lawn mower, or watch other certified experts on television. At suppertime he may eat a tray of ready-prepared food, which he and his wife (also a certified expert) procure at the cost only of money, transportation, and the pushing of a button. For a few minutes between supper and sleep he may catch a glimpse of his children, who since breakfast have been in the care of education experts, basketball or marching-band experts, or perhaps legal experts.
The fact is, however, that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world. He has not the power to provide himself with anything but money, and his money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstance and the power of other people. From morning to night he does not touch anything that he has produced himself, in which he can take pride. For all his leisure and recreation, he feels bad, he looks bad, he is overweight, his health is poor. His air, water, and food are all known to contain poisons. There is a fair chance that he will die of suffocation. He suspects that his love life is not as fulfilling as other people’s. He wishes that he had been born sooner, or later. He does not know why his children are the way they are. He does not understand what they say. He does not care much and does not know why he does not care. He does not know what his wife wants or what he wants. Certain advertisements and pictures in magazines make him suspect that he is basically unattractive. He feels that all his possessions are under threat of pillage. He does not know what he would do if he lost his job, if the economy failed, if the utility companies failed, if the police went on strike, if the truckers went on strike, if his wife left him, if his children ran away, if he should be found to be incurably ill. And for these anxieties, of course, he consults certified experts, who in turn consult certified experts about their anxieties.
The program I started last week is an admirable one in many ways. It seeks to improve education by shaping good teachers–not just taking any student and churning out any teacher, but choosing top students with an array of talents and so laboring to restore respect to the title of “teacher.” Rest assured they tell us, in a year you’ll walk into a classroom and think I know what I’m doing. Beyond classroom effectiveness, the program’s goals are to make us “researchers,” “teacher leaders,” “developing professionals,” and “experts.” Indeed, in a year my research will be published. I’ll be the next step closer to becoming a certified expert.
While I admire these goals in theory, I disagree somewhat with the method. I don’t wish to become a certified expert. I fear that developing my “expertise” might diminish my variegated awareness–cultural, ecological, poetic. My brain will be slinging jargon instead of slang, seeing subjects instead of beings.
But shall we agree on the goal? Let’s create a culture where the most witty, driven, gifted people view “teacher” as a role to which to aspire.
Would this not require a cultural shift, and a large one? In my eyes, trying to use labels such as professional, expert, and researcher as a means to accomplish this goal is counterproductive. These are the same labels that litter every nook of our specialization economy. They’ve been applied in myriad casual and reckless ways as to have lost meaning. Precisely for this reason, “certified expert” is not actually redundant. Anyone can be a researcher, expert, or professional, and so in order to retain at least a shred of meaning, the true researchers and experts have to find an additional means of certification by which to distinguish themselves. Undoubtedly my research will have to undergo such review and certification.
Wouldn’t a more appropriate way to recruit better, original, witty teachers be to use better, original, witty language? Why not teachers as poets, culture jammers, mystics, mathletes, and innovators?
I’m considering conducting my research on how educational research and standards have altered both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of their own roles and value in classrooms. Of course, conducting it as objectively as possible, I may find that teachers actually feel more purpose and value when branded as experts rather than feeling like the most “impotent unhappy citizens in the history of the world.” Should such findings be the case, I still doubt I’d subscribe to the term myself, but rather go on teaching my contrary methods and leave the research to better, more qualified certified experts.
–MKS
Raw Skimmed Milk 