isa-normaladvance-1903-00101-Mar

Description:	The Normal Advance.Vol. VIII.TERRE HAUTE, IND., MARCH, 1903.No. 6Is Teaching in the Towns and Townships a Profession ?It has not been many years since there were butthree so-called professions namely, those of law,medicine, and religion or the ministry. These(and especially the first) were the centers of attraction. When we are now called upon to give abiography of a poet, a general or a diplomatist, ifwe simply say that he studied law, was admittedto the bar but did not like it, we are almost certainof one fact in his life if no more. It seemed atthat age that the sole ambition of a youth was toenter the field of law and politics.In those good old dajs which we hear ourgrandparents talk so much about, a man on hisfrontier farm was practically a farmer, a doctor,a carpenter, a blacksmith, a machinist, a furniture factory, a cotton or woolen mill, tailor, lawyer, preacher and teacher, all combined in one.Circumstances today are much changed. Instead of the three, there are now many professions.Year by year some line of work has been made aspecialty and has taken upon itself the denomination of profession. This is an age in which weare preparing ourselves along certain lines or evenalong some definite phase of a work and Unlesswe step into the current we cannot hope for success. There are many today who are earning alarge salary and who, if that specific work weredropped from existence, would be practicallybeggars so far as knowing how to labor at anyother trade for a living is concerned. There arefive or six forms of engineering, each demandingthe term profession, and none knowing definitelywhat his brother professions are or do. Insteadof one vocation, the ministry, it has divided itselfinto a score of branches, each called a profession.The medical profession has done likewise until wehave the dentist, the oculist, the ear specialist andmany others. Teaching has also undergone asimilar change in the past century. It has notonly grown from an unrecognized vocation into abusiness, but an occupation which calls for specialists as well.By profession we mean any trade or line ofwork which demands thorough training, preparation, and practice to accomplish its duties, andwhich sustains financially the individual who follows it. Websters dictionary defines the term asfollows: That of which one professes knowledge the occupation to which one devotes onesself the business which one professes to understand and to follow for subsistence. We see,therefore, that a profession means at least threeimportant things: First, the person who followsit must possess a knowledge, skill and experiencepeculiar to its kind second, it demands the fulltime of the person so engaged and third, it mustsupport him financially.As to which one of these is the most importantfactor it would be difficult to state without somecontention. The first and third are probably moremomentous than the second. It may be abso^lutely necessary that the individual possess a clearunderstanding of his occupation but at the sametime, if it does not yield him a livelihood, we cannot expect him to devote all of his time to it, nordocs it merit the name profession. - Moreover, ifthe occupation does not furnish a support of life,we cannot expect a man to invest capital in learning the profession. No person would feel justified in placing a thousand dollars, say, in an edu-
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/33866
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

Further information on this record can be found at its source.