Bruce Kimball, professor of the history of education at Rochester University, discussed these types of questions during his address at an Oct. 2 address titled "The `True Professional Ideal' in America: Historical and Ethical Perspectives," part of the Ethics Center's J. Emmett Herndon Lectures in Professional Ethics. Kimball is author of the 1992 book The `True Professional Ideal' in America.
Since the monastic Medieval period in Europe and through four centuries of American history, the cultural understanding of what constitutes a profession and a professional has undergone continuous revision. In recounting the historical development of the late 20th-century understanding of the professions, Kimball explained that the commonly-held ideal of who legitimately can be considered a professional has contracted and expanded at various times. During the Medieval era, as well as the late 17th and early 18th centuries in America, the term professional was reserved solely for the clergy, who usually were the most affluent citizens [aside from merchants] and the group expected to provide leadership on community issues, as well as providing selfless service to the community.
The Latin root of the world profession, professio, referred to the sacred oath taken by monastic clergy. That meaning was gradually expanded from the monastic clergy to encompass the parish clergy and even the corporate group of lay believers, Kimball said. Because of the pre-eminence of the clergy during this period, the term profession acquired a kind of dignity not used in reference to any other line of work. "Profession" came to refer to the secular calling through which the more important spiritual calling was fulfilled.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, forces such as Enlightenment thinking eroding the belief system undergirding Christian theology, and a cultural shift away from religion toward politics, began the gradual process of the clergy losing influence and attorneys becoming the cultural profession of choice. People with disputes to settle, Kimball said, began going to court rather than their local minister. He said that during this period, the meaning of the adjective professional, which had referred only to clergy and religious commitments, was transformed to refer to four specific areas of endeavor: theology, law, education and medicine. Although this redefinition expanded the number of people who could be referred to as professionals, attorneys clearly remained the most revered of the group.
The importance of selfless service for professionals remained, but attorneys added the concept of contractual service to ensure payment for services rendered. In addition, an emphasis on professional organizations emerged during this period, with the formation of numerous bar associations.
In the late 19th century, an increasing disillusionment with politics and the political process coincided with a meteoric rise in science and educational institutions. "Education gained social authority as schools, college and universities came to be seen as engines of social reform," Kimball said. The notion of requiring professionals to possess an agreed-upon body of functional knowledge or expertise was born during this period, Kimball said.
After World War I, medicine supplanted education as the profession of choice as the effectiveness of modern medical treatments became widely known. This newfound appreciation of medicine and of physicians led to the idealizing of the professions, Kimball said.
While those identified as professionals were held in high esteem in American culture for centuries, Kimball said, a distrust of professional began emerging in the 1950s. Since then, many lay people have come to view professionals as "wolves in sheep's clothing" who use their status and education to exclude and mystify the laity. When asked about the potential impact of the religious right's call for society to turn back to religion as the dominant cultural force, Kimball said a return to a religion-dominated culture could signal "the extinction of the idea of the dignified professions" that gradually emerged over the centuries, "and we would all simply become employees again."
Kimball also said that changes in the health care system that are transforming physicians from independent professionals into corporate employees pose another challenge to the professional ideal. College and university professors, he added, have demonstrated a model that could help address that problem, a model in which faculty members identify professionally not with the particular institution that employs them, but rather with the professional disciplinary organizations to which they belong.
Subsequent Herndon Lectures this year will deal with ethical issues in the specific professions of theology, law and medicine.
--Dan Treadaway