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