Why are professionals more highly valued than other workers?

24 Nov 2008, 12:18

Edited by Jose Martel Penate, 24 Nov 2008, 12:19

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[Unfinished but I'll add it here]

Why is it we value "professional" occupations (egs??) over farmers, refuse-collectors or hairdressers, when these workers have a far greater effect on our daily lives as concerns our continued ability to stay alive, our continued health and our continued sense of self-esteem and confidence.For most people, do doctors or lawyers or accountants have much of a direct influence on their daily lives?

We might state that professionals learn and train for years. But don't car mechanics as well. Why is the training a lawyer has more "professional" and therefore more important than that of a car mechanic? Doesn't the professionalism of our car mechanic have a direct and immediate effect on our own safety, that of our family and the safety of thousands of other people we might drive past every day? The continued professionalism of a lawyer, accountant, even a doctor rarely protects or affects our lives on a daily basis.

Professional occupations are the higher profile (white-collar?) jobs that are, or can be, critical to us at particular times in our lives. We take for granted the many other occupations, trades, work, labour upon which society relies to function. Why is this? Why is it we don't value the 70 hour weeks and professionalism that the office-cleaner, bus-driver, sandwich-maker puts in? Is it because "professionals" are the judge of the extraordinary value of "professional professionalism" and the commonplace/mediocre value of "unskilled/less skilled work"?

Tags: reflection professionalism professional unit 6 unskilled worker

Re Perkin's "The Third Social Revolution"

24 Nov 2008, 11:38

Edited by Jose Martel Penate, 24 Nov 2008, 11:44

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Perkin in 1996 states that "The modern world is the world of the professional expert" (Perkins 1996, p1) as opposed to the industrial world dominated by capitalists. Perkin maintains that professionals' "power, prestige, influence, and
incomes stem from their possession of specialized knowledge, based on education, competitive merit, and experience on the job–in a word, on their human capital." (Perkins 1996, p1). Perkin states that "the key players are the professional managers of the great corporations and their counterparts ingovernment, the state bureaucrats" (Perkins 1996, p6). These professionals deal in "knowledge-based
services" (Perkins 1996, p6), "sophisticated services which have transformed human life" (Perkins 1996, p6). Perkins maintains that "As long as the particular expertise is scarce [...] the expert can command a rent as surely as the landlord or owner of industrial capital" (Perkins 1996, p7).

Stan (2008) points out that "Perkin’s view of society is closely related to the concept of the information society since an important part of being a professional is having information and being able to make use of it. This is one reason why the centrality of higher education is one of the major trends that Perkin attempts to explain."

Perkin warns that the more powerful professionals "are the elites who will make or break modern post-industrial society" by their "intelligence, enlightenment and integrity" though the unique cultural inheritance, social structure, and political ingenuity of each advanced country" is also a factor (Perkins 1996, p7).



References:

From: Philippa Perry 2 18 November 2008 19:00:26
Subject: Is this a professional society?
To: Alan Clarke
Cc: H808 ac6 Unit 6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_society


From: Mitchell Stan20 November 2008 13:51:53
Subject: Core Activity 6.1 on Perkins
To: H808 ac6 Unit 6

Perkin, H. (1996) Chapter 1 of The Third Revolution: Professional Elites in the Modern
World, London: Routledge. Available as a course resource.

Tags: student professional perkin unit 6 perry stan the third social revolution

Email to my tutor

23 Nov 2008, 03:32

Edited by Jose Martel Penate, 26 Dec 2008, 02:33

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Hello Alan,

The guide for unit 6 says: (http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/resourcepage/view.php?a=25887)


The learning outcomes we hope you will achieve in Unit 6 are to:

- understand and engage with current debates about elearning practitioners as an
emergent professional group

- understand how systems of professional certification might apply to your own
development as an elearning practitioner.


I really have no interest in these outcomes. I accept that elearning practitioners are/should be professionals. It's obvious from the reading and from the existence of H808 that many other people believe this also. I have virtually no prior development as an elearning practitioner.

Will not going into depth on unit 6 be harmful to my understanding of H808 as a whole?

I've read the papers and looked at the websites but feel little interest in doing the activities. I've compiled some of the other students' work and will make summaries of it. But I can't bring myself to do my own from the original texts. Is this somehow cheating, or is this working smart?

Hopefully I'll find the next units interesting/relevant to me. I certainly don't plan on simply using other students' notes.

The FCC crashes don't help. Helen says they may not be the OU's fault. I only know the crashes are happening and are negatively affecting my ability to communicate with the other students. Btw, Jianfan, on his blog, says that he has problems