I am an unconditional believer in education.

But I do question the titles bestowed upon those who pay the admission, and
pass the tests administered by various entities.
Is "master beekeeper" even equivalent to "master gardener"?  Master Gardener
programs at least have common standards.

And I have also taught beekeepers.  For free, and for several decades.  
I have yet to be so bold as to presume to bestow any title on any beekeeper,
as we lack "organization" in our organization, by intentional design.  

My point is simple - one who desires a title, or a certificate, or
recognition is simply not cut out for beekeeping. 
I will not sugar-coat this.  The ego has to be extinguished when the smoker
is lit.

Further, certifications without common standards can only be corrosive and
divisive, and will only end in hard feelings.

The proliferation of certification efforts reached its apex when I met a new
employee at Cornell U this fall.  While Cornell refused to replace the
retiring Dr. Nick Calderone, and ceased providing their traditional
"land-grant college beekeeping extension" services, they do intend to
resurrect Nick's "Cornell Master Beekeeper" program, as they see that it can
provide them with a solid revenue stream.  Cynical, aren't they?

It is hoped that, somewhere along the path, the student realizes that the
bees themselves administer the only tests that matter.  But, we have become
certification-crazy.  

We can blame Cisco and Novell for this.  Both made products that were filled
with glitches.  By paying them more money, over and above what one paid for
their product, they would indoctrinate you a bit, teach you about all the
glitches, and make you a vendor-certified "expert".  Techies not only
tolerated this extortion, they demanded more.  Now there is a thicket of
certifications out there, each claiming to make the low-level technical
employee "more valuable", but in actuality, only raising the minimum
requirements to be hired at all to include the certification(s).  A very
vicious circle results.  Homie don't play dat.

Here in NYC, we have an entire "cottage industry" taking young people's
money to teach them skills that are essentially useless in modern
agriculture, but may be of value in small-scale, home garden, and "urban
agriculture" settings.  (See http://justfood.org/farmschoolnyc for example.)
This is exactly what we advocated back in the 1970s, when it was hoped that
"large-scale" ag could be replaced with a multitude of "small-scale"
operations (ok, we were young, naive, easily led...)  but people are going
out into the world and attempting to gain full-time employment with little
more than these "credentials", hoping to obtain paying positions with NGOs
and non-profits, and ending up in unpaid "internships", not realizing that
they have paid large sums and spent months on what they could have learned
from old videos of the WGBH Boston (Public TV) "Crockett's Victory Garden",
or from his book, available used for under $5.  

At an EAS years ago, I was giving a talk, and I began by explaining the many
colored ribbons which hung from our name badges - there were ribbons for
"Vendor", "Sponsor", "Speaker", "EAS Master Beekeeper", and so on.  I had
several ribbons on my badge, so I said "This ribbon, if you were wondering,
is for Best In Breed, and this is for Best In Show..."  

Note that EAS would never put a ribbon on the badge of an attendee who had
earned an level of certification from Dave Tarpy's NC program, which has to
be admitted to be superior in multiple ways, as it is not merely a test, but
instead an full-blown state-wide education program.  Each certification
program is a "walled garden", with no common standards, as exist in the UK
for such things.  The proliferation of so many "competing certifications"
devalues them all.

But many of the novices who appear in my classes share the same preconceived
misperceptions combined with evangelistic zeal that Jerry mentioned when he
discussed the hostile pushback he got on the simple issue of feeding a
package that was starving during a dearth rather than industriously drawing
comb.  To understand that phenomena, I direct people to the words of Jazz
great Branford Marsalis, who teaches music at the college level:

http://youtu.be/5rz2jRHA9fo

I could not agree more!  

If one does not learn sufficient humility from the bees to see how silly
titles and certifications are, then one has learned nothing at all from the
bees.
I may be the only one to admit it, but Winnie the Pooh said the only
unconditionally true statement one can make in beekeeping - "You Can Never
Tell With Bees".
This is the joy and the fascination of bees - they seem to overtly defy all
attempts to make them predictable.  This keeps it interesting.
One who is not regularly and profoundly humbled by these creatures with
brains the size of a pinhead is clearly not paying attention. 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html