Next Steps, Including Positive Resolutions

“The world loves talent but pays off on character.” John W. Gardner
“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Paul Romer

In early December 2015, I posted to this blog a rather lengthy essay on the future of the professions. Initially, I had thought that I would get a few comments, respond to those comments, and then move on to the next blog. Instead, I received several dozen substantive comments, many of them worthy of a response. And so, revising my plans, I instead posted a series of responses at two week intervals, each one keyed to a specific theme. Now, while this series of responses is coming to an end (although the blog will continue), I’m offering some general comments on what may lie ahead in the professions.

From one vantage point, it may seem that the need for traditional professionals is on the wane. I reject this conclusion. Indeed, I think that we need more better trained and more thoughtful professionals of the traditional sort, not fewer. But whatever the supply and demand for traditional professionals—physicians, lawyers, professors, engineers, architects, etc.—there is every reason to believe that in the future we will need new and better kinds of professionals. The world may be getting smaller, but populations are getting larger, individuals are living longer, careers are more varied, and norms from diverse cultures are abutting and all too frequently crashing one another. It will take a soul far more optimistic than mine to believe that these challenges will take care of themselves.

Far more likely, in my view, that individuals with new forms of knowledge and expertise will be needed. And, just as is the case in the current milieu, we’ll need to be able to separate the experts from the pseudo-experts and, of course, from the ever-lurking charlatans. We may need to invent new professions or radically reconfigure and re-combine the existing clutch. Just as examples, we may need individuals expert in translating across cultures, in dealing with new phases in the life cycle, and in balancing digital and offline lives. We will need to adjust to a situation where professionals move readily between their chosen profession and the entrepreneurial sector—and this fluidity, while attractive to the individual, may pose significant challenges for the society that must do the sorting. (Is she a doctor, or the head of a start up? Or both?)

Of course, despite these changes, individuals need not—indeed they should not—abandon the traditional values and orientations of the professions. They can elect to spurn the attractiveness of a high salary and glamorous living conditions in favor of a commitment to a modest existence in which their energies are directed toward the greatest needs of society. A sense of “calling” can be powerful.

Moving beyond individuals, we can expect challenges to those institutions that must provide a home to a rapidly changing set of characters. As Eric Liu puts it, we need to invent new entities that ensure civic responsibility, vouch for quality and integrity, and have a distinctive culture as well as shared rituals across the generations. And perhaps, as well, there may need to be the dawning of a new, shared consciousness—call it religious, spiritual, or political in the ancient classical sense of that term. (Let’s hope that we don’t need to wait until a global crisis for this to happen.)

Since I am an educator who has been associated with a school of education for almost fifty years, it is appropriate to ask about the role of education in the preservation of the professions, in the training of the professions, and across the life cycle. Young aspiring professionals need to know the traditional roots and values of their respective professions, while at the same time become knowledgeable about the new pressures and myriad opportunities associated with professional life in the 21st century. Well-crafted media presentations may be helpful—not only ones that portray the occasional hero or the occasional knave, but ones that capture professional lives in their fascinating and idiosyncratic complexity. No doubt, some of this knowledge, some of this understanding, can be obtained on the job and, perhaps, online.

That said, from my perspective, there is no ready substitute for a “liberal arts” introduction to the professions in general, and to one’s aspiring profession in particular—and that can and should remain central in schools of professional education. Such a professional education will be much easier to effect—and to effect well—if we preserve a traditional liberal arts education of three or four years before the launch of avowedly professional education.

This aspect of professional education, sometimes called values education, is one in which I believe. It is most effectively assimilated through contact with individuals who embody those values—whether those persons are self-employed, belong to a partnership, work for a corporation, or teach at a professional institution. Individuals moved by the arguments put forth here can and should serve as role models for aspiring professionals. That said, I also believe that reading key texts—especially ones devoted to ethical dilemmas and the ways in which they have and could be approached—and having the opportunity to discuss and debate these texts is a valuable and in fact an invaluable experience. Courses for undergraduates on the nature and the importance of the professions could balance the current mania for courses on business, finance, and entrepreneurship. I hope that, in a modest way, my original essay, the numerous thoughtful responses, and my series of ten postings can contribute to a needed “education in and for the aspiring professional.”

Thanks to commentators Anne Colby, William Damon, Laura Easley, James Hunter, Mia Keinanen, Mindy Kornhaber, Charles Lang, Harry Lewis, Eric Liu, Seana Moran, Amelia Peterson, Peter Sims, and Dennis Thompson.

This is the tenth and final post in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.”

Other Perspectives: A Global (as opposed to American) View

In one sense, my original essay on the future of the professions, as well as my commentary to the respondents, is quite parochial. My personal experience has been largely in the United States, with a smattering of knowledge of other countries and continents. Both the positive characterization of the professional landscape and the various threats that I’ve delineated may not be relevant to other parts of the world. Indeed, even the textures of pre-professional eras may be quite different; for example, it would be helpful to understand in which ways were Chinese mandarins like American professors, or shamans in traditional cultures like contemporary physicians, or leaders of ancient tribes like lawyers of today. Choose your pairings!

An associated question: what happened when the American or European versions of professions affected (or, if you prefer, invaded) other parts of the world? After the Second World War, American variants of law, medicine, and journalism became models for much of East Asia. But the transplants were not—and probably should not—have been en bloc. Indeed, when it comes to journalism, American latitudinarianism far exceeds that found in most other reportage systems. And then there is the question of co-operation across borders, which is much easier when the same norms apply between countries, but more often than not, they don’t. What journalists readily report on in the United States could lead to a legal suit or an arrest in other parts of the world.

Another consideration: when out-sourcing of jobs enters the picture, one confronts challenges of training, judging, and combining expertise from around the globe—or, more likely, the challenges that arise when those different kinds of expertise collide. For example, imagine the situation if practices that are illegal in the United States are handled by a service call station in India, Brazil, or China; if there is not a strict algorithm in place for each conceivable situation (if there were, why use human beings at all?), there is little reason to think that any arising issues will be solved in the way that they would be in the United States (or in Western European countries). And in the case of legal disputes, conclusions reached in extra-territorial centers might be considered invalid by conservative judges, who (like the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia) argue that foreign legal systems should not even be consulted by American courts.

While acknowledging the legitimacy of the critique that I have touched upon only a part of the contemporary professional landscape, commentators from other countries have put forth more hopeful pictures. Gökhan Depo, a Turkish citizen living in Finland, points out monetary considerations are far less prevalent among professionals in Finland and that, in general, Finnish society is characterized by far less inequality. The occupational landscape is much flatter; the phrase “winner takes all” is alien to most of Finnish society. And Thijs Jansen, a scholar working in the Netherlands, reports that professionals there are mobilizing to sustain the core practices and values of their chosen vocation. Perhaps, contra Justice Scalia, we can learn from these northern European societies.

Thanks to commentators Gökhan Depo, Stephen Gardner, Thijs Jansen, and Norman Ornstein.

This is the ninth in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.” 

Disaggregating the Professions: General Comments

Among professionals who commented on my initial essay, lawyers were by far the most numerous; I’ve responded to some of their points in my previous post. Happily, there were also comments on the essay by representatives of different professions, as well as comments with respect to other professions. I am responding to these comments below.

-Though the so-called “minor” professions (such as teaching/social work) were mentioned in passing in the initial essay, I devoted most of my attention to the traditional professions. It’s important to stress that much of the most important and most needed work at the present time is carried out by teachers, nurses, and social workers—professionals who rarely garner the headlines but who are in the trenches every day. (I would include here those who have been trained to be ministers—though, nowadays, that term has been applied promiscuously to anyone behind any pulpit.) With respect to each of these professions, there are different stresses—for example, evaluation of teachers by their student test scores, pressures on nurses to work longer hours, issues of compensation for social workers as insurance policies change unpredictably, and ordained ministers competing with self-proclaimed gurus. These professionals deserve kudos for the remarkable jobs so many of them do, often against considerable odds.

In the short run, it seems unlikely that the status of any of these “minor” professions will be raised to that of the so-called “major” professions. Indeed, there will continue to be tensions with respect to abutting professions: nurses’ relations to physicians and physician assistants; social workers’ relations to psychiatrists and psychologists; teachers’ relations to their supervisors and to the local school boards and municipal officials. The more that the minor professions are given authority and autonomy, the more we can and should expect professionalism at a higher level. Indeed, more so than many in the major professions, members of minor processions are likely to evince a strong sense of calling—recalling the traditional “service strand” of the professions, rather than the more recent “expert strand.” But to the extent that they are treated as second class workers, or worse (for example, the way that public school teachers are villainized in many corners today), members of minor professions will not have the opportunity—and may cease to harbor a desire—to behave as professionals in the most admired sense of that term.

-It is possible that certain occupations may increase in professional status. One such profession is that of librarian. Once roughly equivalent to that of teacher, in a highly digital and connected world, librarians have seen their workload and their expertise valorized—and often they are now called “information specialists.” Like those technicians who handle servers, the role of librarians in the world today is considered far more important than in past years, and these workers have the opportunity—and perhaps also the obligation—to assume the role of major professional.

-Lines may also blur in other ways. An increasing number of professionals—and especially physicians—are gaining formal or informal training in business. These dual-trained professionals may elect to straddle these areas either because multiple expertise are needed or because they seek far greater control of their occupational situation. While this trend is understandable, it also raises what I’ve come to term the “two hats” problem. When the role of physician (focused on healing) collides with the role of corporate executive (balancing the books and growing profit margins), the individual is faced with a decision about which role is predominant.

-On my analysis, journalism has long been a quasi-profession, entailing for journalists the behaviors and ethos of full-blown professionals while neither requiring the training nor having the certifications of doctors, lawyers, or architects. Given powerful and fast- changing digital landscape, the role of journalist is more fragile and more disputed than before. Many observers would say that all of us are now journalists and disdain those who claim a special mantle in view of training or expertise. In my own view, however, journalists on whom one can rely over the long run will become increasingly valuable—though perhaps, alas, rare.

-While some would like to extend the term “professional” to cover the spectrum of occupations, I am conservative on this issue. I essentially did not discuss the military in the essay nor in subsequent posts, even though by most definitions it readily qualifies as a profession. Nor has there been discussion of politics—possibly because whatever professional sheen once characterized American political figures has long since disappeared. (I write during the months leading up to the presidential nominations of 2016.) I am well aware of efforts, over many years, to apply the label of “professional” to individuals in business, particularly managers and corporate leaders. But in my view, the only obligation of individuals in business is to obey the law and make a profit. Like any other individuals, businessmen and women can elect to behave in a highly professional way—but that election remains an option, not an occupational obligation.

Just as I do not consider business to be a profession, I don’t consider individuals engaged in sports or the arts to be professionals. Yet, as was pointed out by Laurie Brown, often artists have a much longer training—whether in art school or in the studio—than other professionals, and they deserve to be valorized for that dedication. The same point is true, of course, with respect to highly skilled athletes. We should note as well the many bona fide professionals who work in the arts or sports. We expect the doctor for the sports team to carry out her medical practice in a professional way; by the same token, we expect the teacher or the professor in an art school to live up to the expectations of the profession of educators.

-I found of special interest the comments about architecture from David Handlin. While artists are not considered professionals, architects lay claim to that descriptor. Reflecting on nearly a half century as an architect, Handlin points out that much of the traditional work of architects is now undertaken by a gaggle of experts, few of whom are themselves professionals. Moreover, the one trait that used to characterize all architecture—the ability (and, presumably, the desire) to draw—is now done by computers. What is left is leadership of the enterprise; much like the conductor coordinates the orchestra players, the architect coordinates the other experts and workers. And so, perhaps not surprisingly, the professional term architect has been ‘hijacked’ to apply to any individual whose job it is to lead or to orchestrate the contributions of a whole team (see also the less lofty term “curator,” also used promiscuously). So while the nature of the architect’s job has changed greatly, the status and importance of the role has been maintained. As Handlin says, in conclusion, “So, indeed, these are tumultuous times in the profession, but there will always be architecture.”

-I leave the final word to a philosopher who sent me a private message. He quipped that as a member of “the second oldest profession,” he felt his practice was unlikely to be disrupted either by monetary seductions or ubiquitous apps.

Thanks to commentators Pat Barry, Steven Brint, Laurie Brown, Thomas Ehrlich, David Handlin, Jason Kaufman, Joan Miller, Rick Miller, Terry Roberts, Peter Sims, and Wendy Woon.

This is the eighth in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.”

Bridging the Digital Divide: A Student Film Festival on Digital Citizenship

By Johanna Mustacchi

Johanna Mustacchi has been an educator in the Croton-Harmon, New York, school district for the past two decades. She teaches Media Literacy and Communications Skills, Digital Citizenship and Mindfulness at the Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School and has written several times for Educational Leadership magazine on the teaching of media literacy and digital citizenship. She is a member of the National Association for Media Literacy Education and is on the advisory panel of Mindful.org. Johanna is deeply committed to helping young people develop a greater awareness of themselves and the world around them. She can be reached at Johanna.Mustacchi@chufsd.org.

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When a student wants to avoid engagement in a class discussion because she feels unprepared, she looks down at her notebook. The trick is to not make eye contact with the teacher.

In the technology-rich world populated by their children, parents often feel so unprepared to engage in important discussions about responsible, safe and ethical use of digital media, they, too, “look down.”

The current generation of youth lives in the digital universe with surprisingly minimal guidance. Over the years, I have spoken to countless parents who are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of online issues and challenges their children face with few navigation tools. While parents may understand that many of the same rules apply between traditional citizenship and digital citizenship, the lines are blurred for children who often behave quite differently online when “no one is looking” than they would in person. I once had a student blurt out in a class on online piracy, “I’m not paying a thousand dollars for a thousand songs!” Needless to say, a lesson on the ethical dimensions of media downloads ensued. As Nancy Willard states in her Education World article “Why Teens Make Unsafe Choices Online,” without tangible feedback, teenagers’ brains lack the development to process the repercussions of their online behavior. Parents can use their wisdom and life experience to provide the moral compass their children need to expertly steer their digital lives.

Over the past school year, I and four of my colleagues worked to build a bridge over the digital divide between parents and children, using a showcase for student creativity and work as the arena for meaningful and honest dialogue about citizenship in our digital world.

I cannot underplay the enormous influence Carrie James’s book Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap played in the genesis of an event that drew 150 parents, students and community members. After reading the book a year ago, I contacted Dr. James explaining that, while I completely agreed with her call to action to bring parents into the conversation, I wanted her to know how difficult it is to generate parental interest in school events that are not centered around the arts or sports. Taking her sage advice, I followed her prescriptions and can now report on the success of an event that had students “acknowledge and explore the moral and ethical dimensions of online life…” (Chapter 5 of Disconnected). 

Focus Groups

Ten months prior to our event (which turned out to be a film festival focused on digital citizenship), two school counselors and I assembled four small focus groups of students in 5th through 8th grade. We gathered information about how students in these age groups spend their online time, including the role, or lack of role, their parents played.

Newsletters

In the fall of the new school year, I began posting on my school web pages a series of “digital citizenship” newsletters targeted to parents. Based on some of the results of our focus groups, and particularly upon my experience teaching media literacy and digital citizenship at our school for the past ten years, I focused the newsletters on provocative topics that would help parents begin conversations with their children at home. To help parents bolster their understanding of these issues, each newsletter provides links to topical articles, statistics, student voices (culled from survey questions I gave my own 8th grade students) and parent surveys. So far, I’ve published newsletters on the topics of sexting, online piracy and technology distractions.

Planning a Film Festival

About six months prior to the film festival, we assembled a team of two administrators, two school counselors and myself to plan an evening that would not only showcase student films, but also an 8th grade student poster session with activities related to digital citizenship, and a panel discussion with students speaking frankly about the role of technology in their lives.

We opened the festival up to all students in 5th through 8th grade, allowing them to sign up individually or in teams of up to four students; of the fifteen teams that originally signed up, nine actually made films. This high return was largely due to how we monitored student progress from day one, including three mandatory meetings and frequent check-ins with individual teams. To guide them, each team received a packet containing rules and criteria, as well as the judging rubric, storyboard template, information on film techniques, bibliography sample, and film submission form. Students received guidelines that included a brief discussion of digital citizenship with questions from which to choose and research for the subject of their no-more-than-two-minute films, divided under the categories of Privacy, Property, and Participation delineated in James’s book.

Marketing the Film Festival

To promote student interest, we focused the entire month prior to the festival as Digital Citizenship Month in our school’s thriving Advisory program. During their lunch periods, students watched and discussed videos on digital citizenship topics with our assistant principal, and during their Advisory classes, students participated in further activities. In addition, we advertised the film festival with flyers, daily announcements, website announcements, and a series of email blasts to all parents, including survey questions later used in the festival’s panel discussion. At the same time, my 8th grade students were in the process of creating cyber safety lessons for my 6th grade students. These students turned their lessons into highly engaging posters for the evening’s poster session, which they presented to visitors.

The Film Festival Evening

We divided the evening into three parts: the 8th grade poster session; a panel discussion featuring three 9th grade students (from our 8th grade focus group of the year before) answering parents’ questions; and the showing of the nine student films followed by certificates for all filmmakers and awards and prizes for the top three films. We had judged the films two days beforehand with the help of a faculty member from the Jacob Burns Film Center Media Arts Lab. The poster sessions and films focused on a broad range of issues, including plagiarism, piracy and fair use, phishing scams, cyber bullying, sexting, online grooming, catfishing and behavioral targeted advertising. We also put together a parent tips packet so that they would have additional material to take home and use as conversation starters with their children.

The Other Bridge

In addition to bridging the digital divide between parents and children, another important goal of the festival was to bridge the ethics gap apparent in the digital lives of youth, described by Dr. James. I noticed that gap closing over and again on that March evening, when 8th graders passionately taught mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers how to respond to an inappropriate text message; when our 9th grade guest speakers implored parents to pay attention to who their children are speaking to in their online games; and when 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade filmmakers created stories that highlighted some of their own experiences with ethics online. The film festival exposed parents and children to issues they may not have considered before, providing the opportunity for a more open dialogue.

The success of this event was summed up beautifully by one of the 6th grade filmmakers, who said, “I wanted to make a movie about cyberbullying because it’s a real issue. My favorite part of making the movie was that every day we would go to my friend’s house, and we would film little parts of it, and even though we were talking about a serious subject, it was still fun to do, because then I could educate my fellow classmates and tell them about it, but also in an okay way, not [in a way] that would make you feel really sad.”

Excellence, engagement and ethics all rolled into one.

Disaggregating the Professions: Comments on the Law

When I released my original essay on the future of the professions, I was very pleased to receive comments from individuals representing a wide array of professional domains. I was surprised—though, to be frank, not that surprised—that so many of the comments came from lawyers.

I comment here on issues raised specifically by lawyers or by others about the law. (In the next blog, I’ll survey some other professions and non-professions.)

-Law is not a monolith. Roles range from prosecutor to defense lawyer; from corporate ranks to self-employed; from full-time practitioner to teacher to judge; from general practitioner to highly specialized technician. Equally diverse are the clients: individuals; small businesses; non-profits; huge corporations; municipalities; nations; even international courts that purport to represent all of mankind. Any thorough study of the legal profession needs to take into account the attributes, needs, and resources available to individuals wearing these different legal garbs.

-Legal training often does not lead to the practice of law. Even those individuals who are sought after by elite firms may elect to go into business, politics, real estate, or other vocations. And while engaged in these other realms, individuals may or may not draw on their law expertise or even indicate that they have legal training and (if so) whether they have passed the bar.

-There is a huge disjunction between two groups: 1) Well-compensated lawyers who work in “white-shoe” firms for well-resourced clients or corporations; and 2) The far larger number of lawyers who are solitary practitioners or work in small partnerships and who often struggle to make ends meet.

-Despite the aforementioned subdivisions of the law and of legal practice, we cannot conclude that one group of lawyers is more or less likely than the others to behave in a professional (or non-professional) way. There are highly ethical corporate lawyers, litigators, and small-town general practitioners; but there are also members of each of these groups who cut every corner that they can and who may ultimately lose their licenses to practice law or even be sent to jail. As one commentator suggested, instead of regulating lawyers per se, perhaps one should regulate the delivery of legal services, however they are carried out.

-There is today a massive misalignment between where lawyers most want to practice (location, type of practice) and where lawyers are most needed. While attempts have been made to realign supply and demand (e.g. by relieving law school debt for lawyers who enter public service), such options have not succeeded in significantly ameliorating a troubling national (and perhaps global) predicament.

-Lawyers (including those who commented on my essay) disagree with one another about the extent to which, and the ways in which, their work can be handled by paraprofessionals or by software programs. They also disagree about the extent to which the law valorizes logical reasoning, as opposed to human relationships and wise counsel. Some deplore the inbred nature of legal language and reasoning, while others take pride in highly-honed expertise. But nearly all agree that, with respect to the most complicated cases, human judgments by well-trained legal minds are at a premium. And in many cases, a combination of initial software products, then judged and nuanced by trained lawyers, seems the optimal route.

-Recognizing these various points, it remains the case that there is a central tension in the practice of law and in our legal system: does one defend one’s client(s) in every way possible, or does one exercise some restraint—either because of the legal creed one has sworn to uphold or because of one’s personal value system? Other professions are not characterized by so sharp a conflict.

The many valuable distinctions and points made by lawyers underscore the complexity of any professional terrain.

Thanks to commentators Eric Blumenson, Harry Lewis, Edward Montgomery, Eva Nilsen, Sean Palfrey, Andrew Perlman, and “Young Lawyer.”

This is the seventh in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.”