Subject: teaching aids and CEUs

[Guest guest]

Here is a true story that illustrates a major part of the problem:

 

A few years ago, one of my top graduates began exploring ways to start a

practice. His clinical skills, as evidenced by his ability to do assessments and

workups on paper and in clinic are excellent. He is a quiet person who thinks

and probes into areas others often miss. However, this tendency to be quiet and

reflective makes it difficult to market himself.

 

Perceiving that having an acupuncture license will make it easier to display

credentials, he has enrolled in a well-known TCM college. Periodically, he

contacts me to agonize over his decision. The clinic is run by practitioners who

make basic mistakes in assessment ( " diagnosis " ), errors that anyone who

completes the first semester of my program would simply not make. There is no

thoroughness, and what seems like a complete lack of understanding of

differential diagnosis. He debates whether to continue. He is spending far more

money on this " accredited " program than he ever did on tuition for my courses,

and he is angry that it seems to be a waste of time, except for the magical

piece of paper held out as a reward at the end.

 

We assume that without modern accrediting boards and government bureaucracies to

whip everyone into line, that scholarship and human culture will disintegrate.

This is a preposterous and presumptuous idea. For millenia, people developed the

sciences, arts, music, and culture for the sheer joy of it, because certain

individuals were compelled by curiosity to discover and create. Why should we

force these people to endure boring and mediocre " education " ? If fact, it has

been documented by a former U.S. Department of Education head (Charlotte

Iserbyt), that accrediting boards are a central part of the problem - they

inflict their mediocrity on everyone, transforming creative young people into

sullen and cynical adults. Also see:

 

http://www.rmhiherbal.org/review/2003-4.html

The Dumbing Down of American Education: Implications for Herbal

Education

 

Gatto, John T.; The Underground History of American Education; Oxford

Village Press, New York, c2001.

 

Iserbyt, Charlotte Thompson; The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America:

A Chronological Paper Trail; 3d Research Co., c1999.

 

Sure there will always be mediocrities and slackers. I've already described the

solution many times on this for forum, yet the idea is so simple it seems to

elude people:

Provide a voluntary, independent certification that documents clinical knowledge

and reasoning ability - that way potential clients would have an objective means

of choosing their practioners, and potential students would have an objective

means of judging the competence of faculty members. I agree that no one should

have to tolerate incompetent instructors who have no clinical ability in the

subjects they claim to teach. Our TCM Herbal Tutor software is a step in the

direction of providing an objective measure of competence that can be easily

administered - we've used it for the past 5 years in various incarnations, and

the results suggest that only about 30% of TCM college graduates and even many

faculty members ***cannot*** do the basic reasoning exercizes in differential

diagnosis - determine the syndrome (pattern) possibilities from a limited set of

symptoms, and determine the level of reliability or certainty in the

conclusions.

 

As for 40 or more of these independent programs opening up, what's the problem?

I'd love to be able to have my graduates have internship choices and advanced

study options all over the world. Finally, we might see some real competition

based on professional and academic merit rather than skill in Macchiavellian

manipulation of the political hierarchies. Some of the best study situations

that my graduates have experienced were in internships with private

practitioners, not with institutions, most of which suffer from the old problem

of mediocrity, the tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which

usually manifests as the student seeking a piece of paper with the least amount

of effort.

 

My solution would also solve the problem of the individual student who is bored

and frustrated by the standard educational routines, but only flowers when he or

she is given something real. Let these people choose to train in apprenticeship

or internship situations and skip the tedious years in formal schooling. That's

how they do it in Switzerland - formal college educations are reserved only for

the minority of the population that truly requires this type of training for

their profession (i.e., the sciences); apprenticeships are the rule for most

trades and professions starting in teenage years, supplemented by highly focused

and short training classes when necessary.

 

An increasing number of my friends in the educational business, at college, high

school and grade school level, are concluding that the educational bureaucracy

is so broken, that it would be merciful to simply let it collapse from its own

dead weight.

The problem in the U.S. is that the educational industry has created a lot of

very profitable dead weight, and any shift toward a more reasonable solution

will create a painful readjustment period. I perceive that as the real obstacle

to change. A lot of paper shufflers will need to learn a useful trade.

 

---Roger Wicke, PhD, TCM Clinical Herbalist

contact: www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/

Rocky Mountain Herbal Institute, Hot Springs, Montana USA

Clinical herbology training programs - www.rmhiherbal.org

 

 

 

 

Marnae Ergil <marnae wrote:

 

>Certainly, there is the option that individuals like Roger have chosen. To

>create a program outside of the established academic environment. On a

>personal level, I think that is great. And I have the greatest respect for

>what Roger is doing - again, on an individual level. But what happens when

>40 or more of these programs open. And there is no standard, no objective

>measure for comparison, no way of understanding the qualification of the

>faculty, etc. The prospective student may luck out and choose a good

>institution. But they can just as easily choose a deficient one - without

>being aware of it. Perhaps they are choosing out of the necessity to

>remain in a particular geographic area, perhaps they are choosing based

>upon cost, perhaps they are choosing based upon the look of the brochure,

>perhaps they are choosing based upon the number of students already

>attending the program. Who knows. But without the external standards, the

>student is left to make a choice without any way to really understand what

>they are choosing from or even how to make an educated decision.

>

>While I agree with Bob, Rory and Roger that we need to weed out more

>individuals and raise the level of our students this is also a tricky issue

>- often students who do not seem to perform very well in their initial

>academic endeavors are able to excel in the clinical phase of their

>program. Should we therefore tell these students sorry - you don't get to

>study this medicine or should we help them through it so that they can

>become clinicians?

 

 

---Roger Wicke, PhD, TCM Clinical Herbalist

contact: www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/

Rocky Mountain Herbal Institute, Hot Springs, Montana USA

Clinical herbology training programs - www.rmhiherbal.org

[Guest guest]

At 3:01 PM -0700 1/26/05, rw2 wrote:

>Perceiving that having an acupuncture license will make it easier to

>display credentials, he has enrolled in a well-known TCM college.

>Periodically, he contacts me to agonize over his decision. The

>clinic is run by practitioners who make basic mistakes in assessment

>( " diagnosis " ), errors that anyone who completes the first semester

>of my program would simply not make. There is no thoroughness, and

>what seems like a complete lack of understanding of differential

>diagnosis. He debates whether to continue. He is spending far more

>money on this " accredited " program than he ever did on tuition for

>my courses, and he is angry that it seems to be a waste of time,

>except for the magical piece of paper held out as a reward at the

>end.

--

Roger,

 

Clearly this person has enrolled in a poor program. Having discovered

that, and having you to advise him, why doesn't he apply to a higher

quality program?

 

Frankly, if he attended the school I am fortunate to teach in, Touro

College, he would not find the problems you describe, and where he

disagreed with a teacher, would have ample opportunity to explore the

differences. I imagine that's true of other schools as well.

 

Rory

 

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