Certification

There has recently been a series of postings on the AIC Object Group
List, started because of George Wheeler's letter, which also
appeared on the DistList. We hope that more of the OSG discussion
about certification will be duplicated here.

There is a vote coming up in the near future about certification:
yes or no. Is certification something that AIC should be doing now
or in the near future? A number of members have written about the
pros and cons as they see them, and there have been some very
important questions posed.  It seems that some members see
certification as a way to distinguish people who are conservators
from those who are not.  Others see it as a way to distinguish those
who are "good" conservators from those who are "bad" ones.  Neither
of these views is accurate. Clearly, if certification is put into
place, individuals will be certified (perhaps many individuals) who
others may feel are not conservators, while  some (again, perhaps
many) "bad" conservators will also be certified.  This is simply the
nature of certification--it aims for the lowest common denominator.
Although it is important to try to fine-tune the process, the only
way to do that would be to be absolutely clear before the program is
designed as to what a professional conservator is, what such a
person must know, and what they must know how to do. We are not.

While this imperfect gate-keeping may not be a critical defect in a
certification program, it is something to keep in mind when deciding
whether certification is an appropriate program for AIC to undertake
at this time.  This is only one of many issues to be weighed in
deciding how to vote.

Paul Himmelstein


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:36
               Distributed: Wednesday, November 27, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-16-36-003
                                  ***