Professionals, Experts, the Common Man and Government Decisions

During a school board meeting recently, I heard a person express an opinion that absolutely astounded me. The idea expressed was that people should let the professionals run things in the best interest of advancing education, or something close to that.

I was astounded that anyone would make such a statement for a variety of reasons.

First was that our school board is not made up of strictly professionals nor should it be. In our democratic system of government, from a town council to Congress itself, I know of no elected government body that is restricted to drawing membership from a single profession. The laws concerning the eligibility to sit on most of them place no restriction as to the profession of the membership. If I wanted to live in a place where only professionals made decisions concerning public spending, frankly, I do not know where that would be on this planet. There is always room for the common man and he does have something to offer. While the professionals do have different perspectives, due to their similar education and experiences their perspectives tend to be very similar. A person from outside the profession sees things "from a different angle" and can reveal options that can be overlooked for that very reason by the "professionals."

Second, thinking about my life experiences, I think of the times when I have thought that I had covered all possible consequences of a decision and prepared for them only to have someone point out one that I had not thought of that became so obvious to me when attention was drawn to it that I felt positively stupid. Our professionals strive to do their best with the finite resources at their disposal and they do a good job of solving immediate problems. However, when you use finite resources and devise a "win-win" solution to a problem, it is often forgotten that by using the resources you have sacrificed the option of using them in a myriad other ways. When you put money in the bank, you sacrifice buying something now and if you use it to buy gas for the car, then it is gone and you cannot buy groceries with it. The professionals within our corporation constantly have to balance need against resources, but they are as human as you and I and will overlook consequences at times.

Third, I thought of the many times that I have been so engrossed in the details of a task or project that I simply forgot to step back and look at "the big picture." That is like a student concentrating so hard on getting an "A" in one class that they fail another. This student has failed to remember that the goal is to graduate and that the criteria for that is not to make the highest possible grade in one course but to make a minimum GPA to qualify for the goal. Our professionals can also become so engrossed in one aspect of their jobs or the filling of one need of the corporation that they lose sight of the final goal, which in a school corporation is to educate and prepare students for adult life in our society.

We pay professionals and other workers to do things all through our lives that we do not want to do, not because we could not accomplish the job but because it is to our advantage to do so. You could repair your own car, build your own house, entertain yourself, write your own novel and defend yourself in court, but hiring a professional to do the things that you are not willing to invest the time in to do a good job at is to your advantage. We could all home-school and forego school altogether, but that doesn't quite work for the majority of us.

One definition of the word "professional" is "engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career"; another is simply "performed by persons receiving pay." I have yet to find a definition that says that hiring a professional to do anything absolutely guarantees a perfect outcome.

The recognition of a person, even by a majority, as an "expert" is always a matter of opinion and cannot insure good results from their efforts.

To explain, I will illustrate using the Marine Corps "Rifle Expert" Badge, an award that confers the recognition of "expert" using standardized criteria. A Marine shoots fifty shots over known distances at targets with a bull's-eye and three rings. Scoring is 5 points for a bull's-eye, 4 for the first ring, 3 for the second, two for the last, and zero for a miss. The minimum score to rate the "Rifle Expert" badge is 220, which in the minimum number of shots equals 44 shots in the bull's-eye or 88 percent of rounds fired hitting the target.

In shooting, you know the results in seconds but in decision-making, the results and most of the consequences of the decision are rarely known immediately.

How many people should be looking at the decisions of the school corporation and offering their input? Every last one of us! These decisions affect every one of us and they will affect the future of this community.