AIC certification plan

I am not a conservator, but please allow me to comment to you on the
AIC Certification Plan.  I am an ex-academic with 34 years
experience dealing with "certification" and "credentialism."  The
whole thing sets what remains of my teeth on edge.

As they say in the southern US, it's "a dog that won't hunt."  That
is, an individual acquiring credentials serves only the organization
granting the credentials; often, the organization actually makes an
income from the accrediting.  Who benefits from this scheme?

Becoming accredited, or certified, or licensed, adds nothing to the
value of the work of the person or organization being certified or
accredited; it only means that person or the organization has passed
some sort of fake benchmark made up by a self-perpetuating
bureaucracy.  This sort of stuff is endemic in academia, beginning
and ending with schools of education.

We all know this, if not explicitly then implicitly.  What's more,
people tiptoe around telling it like it is, for some reason.

Mark D. Gottsegen
Materials Research Director
AMIEN Administrator
Intermuseum Conservation Association
2915 Detroit Avenue
Cleveland  OH 44113
216-658-8700
330-977-0334


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:35
                 Distributed: Monday, December 8, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-22-35-013
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