David Looser wrote:
"Rob" wrote in message
om...
David Looser wrote:
Since education leads to qualifications (except for those who fail to
benefit from it) I'm not sure I follow your point.
'Education' is a broad term. You don't need a qualification to know and be
good at things.

No, but they do help demonstrate to others that you are "good at things".
And *if* you are "good at things" then it's no great effort to acquire the
qualification that will allow you to do that.


But why should you bother? To get the job, status, pay, professional
accountability etc - not necessarily to do the job any better.

Qualifications are sometimes categorised - L4 1st yr undergrad, to L7
postgrad.
And the answers to my other questions? So are you saying that these
"councillors" (whoever they may be) who haven't an O level between them
have far better skills than you do *in your own field* even though your
skills are to postgrad level?

Councillors are elected local politicians.

Ah, at last you are giving an answer to one of the question that I asked a
couple of posts back. But you still haven't answered the question as to
*what* are these "technical skills" that they are so good at, or indeed what
"field" you are in. And what is the relevance of the fact that these people
are councillors?


Relevance - none. Actual skills. The particular field I have in mind is
social housing finance and the maintenance of local authority accounts.
There's a heap of CIPFA guidance/protocols I know very little about -
they seemed to know it pretty well.

My field is social policy. My specialism is social housing, and then
within that housing finance.

In the examples I gave they had more current technical detail knowledge
than me (although more than that required for the module) - and I write
and teach nationally to PG level. They're not quite so hot on the
evaluation though ;-)

Again, what "current technical detail knowledge" are we talking about? And
what are you teaching them?, indeed why are you teaching them?

I think they were doing the course because they were interested - I
couldn't see any career reasons. Why teach them - because they wanted to
learn. The courses are made up of several modules - law, social policy,
finance, practice and so on.

Not at all - depends what you mean, however. My skills are what they are,
and it just so happens I'm good at exams and so forth. If I'm good at what
I *do* it's not *because* of my qualifications.

So what do you do?


Teacher/researcher. And I'd say my teaching qualification was not the
most enlightening thing I've ever done. Unless something subliminal went
on, it taught me nothing.

And of course you aren't good at what you do *because* of your
qualifications - what an absurd thing to say. You are qualified in what you
do because you are good at it, not the other way about.

Ah!, is this what this is all about? It's all about class.

Could be ;-)

Then I wish you'd said so at the beginning and I wouldn't have bothered
replying.

If you choose to wander aimless through life dazzled by a string of
degrees and titles, indeed yes, don't bother ;-)


If that's what you think I have been arguing all this time then you haven't
read my posts.

It was slightly tongue in cheek.

My point about "not bothering" is that, unlike you
apparently, I do not see a connection between being "unqualified" and being
"working class". If you want to indulge in inverted class snobbery be my
guest, but I'm not interested.


Not sure where you got that link from. Anything in the social world
could be about class - plenty of theories knocking about stating thus.
You asked - I just said 'could be'.

Rob