The schools of the minor professions

Abstract

The proliferation of new occupations in Western societies in the twentieth century corresponds to the multiplication of technological processes and to new social tasks which are thought important enough to merit remuneration. Technological innovation has called for " skilled " or "semi-skilled" manual occupations or "clerical occupations", and those who practise them learn to do so by performance under supervision or through short, highly specialised courses. The learning of the occupations which entail primarily dealing with other human beings rather than the manipulation of material objects or machines are thought to require a more general, more calculated, and more prolonged course of study. These are occupations which touch on "serious things "-health and illness, happiness and misery, enlightenment and ignorance and they cannot be taught in brief specialised courses, which teach very specific techniques. In the past, the activities which foreshadowed these occupations were learned through the experience of practice and the guidance of experienced persons. This is no longer acceptable. Those who perform these occupations as well as those who appoint them are not satisfied with "empirical" knowledge. Science and higher education have become indispensable to the dignity of these new occupations which deal with social tasks. In the discussions of the reform of the universities in the past quartercentury, the model of the American universities has repeatedly been held up before the world's more traditional universities. American universities had assimilated into themselves teachertraining, social work, community leadership, lay psychotherapy, journalism, library administration, and many other subjects which had not been regarded as properly belonging in the universities. The wider range of courses of training for "the new professions" which could be found in American universities has been regarded as one of several ways in which universities could adapt themselves to the needs of an affluent, " science-based " society concerned for the welfare of all its members.