Education Frontlines
John Richard Schrock
The death of US professionalism?
A hospital administrator with no medical training has no business telling a surgeon when and how to conduct a surgical operation. As a deeply trained professional, the surgeon has been provided with an education based upon the knowledge and standards established by the medical profession.
Yet, our government increasingly interferes with the status of many professions, violating the professional status and practices of nurses, teachers, librarians, professors, scientists and medical professionals.
Under new student loan rules passed in the “big bill,” effective July 1, nurses and teachers will no longer be included in student loan rules for “professional degree” programs. Teaching, nursing, social work and physical therapy are no longer considered “professional” degrees. Therefore, students pursuing nursing or teaching now face a low limit on student loans while students in dentistry and pharmacy, etc. can continue to receive much higher loans.
Prior to 2001, teachers decided what to teach, when to teach and how to teach within their subject area, but the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act essentially removed that professionalism by forcing teachers to teach to the test. This began the continuing decline in students entering teaching fields, but the bulk of de-professionalization has now occurred in these last years and extends to far more fields.
In certain areas of the country, both teachers and professors have been directly ordered to not teach about any negative American history, DEI, the existence of transexuality, etc. Books that teachers and professional librarians have approved are being removed from libraries. Some professors face dismissal if they do not remove these concepts from their courses when the concepts are fully within their course content and remain completely established and accepted in their profession.
While the teaching shortage has accelerated nationwide due to removal of professional decision-making, the nursing shortage is likewise due to the upsurge in the retired and elderly population. Reducing students’ ability to afford higher education and advance in their careers will accelerate the staffing shortages in nursing and teaching. Why are just teaching and nursing regarded as less deserving of financial aid? Is this a remnant of the attitudes a century ago where teaching and nursing were “women’s work” that should be paid less, and after marriage, wives should stay home to be barefoot and pregnant? With the U.S. population in educational decline and with a larger portion retiring, teaching and nursing are among the most critical of professions.
While students pursuing pharmacy can still access the higher level of student loans for “professionals,” their ability to administer the vaccines and legitimate drugs approved by the bona fide medical community and prior FDA professional committees has now been undermined by quack administrators and committees making political decisions that contradict the well-researched science recognized and established in policy by professional medical associations.
Across the U.S., a growing array of states have adopted anti-vaccine positions that have caused the return of diseases once eliminated from the U.S. Both state officials and legislators have shown profound ignorance of the need to vaccinate 95% of students against highly contagious measles in order to protect the few students who are immuno-compromised and infants who cannot yet receive the measles vaccine, with the resulting return of adult and childhood deaths. Both the Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are ignoring the professional standards developed by professional organizations.
This did not begin recently. Medical doctors were long frustrated by having to argue with medical insurance staffers who only had business majors and lacked medical expertise and refused to accept medical doctor diagnoses and prescriptions. This ignorance of professional knowledge and acceleration of non-professional government policies has accelerated in the last nine years.
The return to 18th-century ignorance concerning recognition of trans children is also in contradiction to major medical associations and the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders standards.
Just as a country that accepts flat-earth theory cannot launch satellites, ignoring and overriding the in-depth and advancing knowledge of modern professions sends a nation back in history.
John Richard Schrock is a Roe R. Cross distinguished professor and biology professor emeritus at Emporia State University.
The views of our guest columnists do not always represent the views of the Huntington Beach News
Visit our week's