The Professions

The Professions

By Gary Rea

One of the least understood subjects of popular ignorance and misperception is that of the professions. The lay public has long held the erroneous view that a “profession” is merely a job and that everyone who works for a living is somehow a “professional,” but the fact is, a profession is a licensed occupation, legally requiring a higher education, a period of internship, continuing education and, above all, a license to practice, which is governed by a strict body of rules, regulations and laws that, in some cases, carry criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. Yes, you can actually go to jail for misrepresenting yourself as a physician, especially, or even as an architect. During the last decade or so, it has become the case that, in all fifty states, it is a criminal offense to offer architectural services or to even refer to yourself as an “architect” if you do not possess a license to practice architecture!

The original professions, called the “learned professions,” during the middle ages, were law and medicine. In the modern era, though, several other occupations have been included in a growing list of professions, ie, those occupations that meet the criteria for being considered as genuine professions. A few of the more important of these are education, architecture, engineering, etc. There are also several trades that require a license to practice (electrician, plumber, etc), but as to whether they meet all the criteria of being a bonafide profession, this is somewhat murky.

The main reason for the stringent rules, regulations and laws that govern the professions, as well as their licensure, is that, unlike most other occupations, the professions are composed of people whose work entails a high level of trust by the public to perform competently, expertly and ethically. In the professions, it is usually the case that people are expected to do work that can have very serious and potentially damaging effects upon the lives of the people they serve.

In any occupation in which the death of someone may come as the result of a practitioner’s incompetence, bad judgement or malfeasance, there must be a very well defined set of controls over how services are to be rendered, as well as who can render them. This is why fines and jail time exist for anyone who misrepresents himself as a physician, engineer or architect. This state of control exists even for licensed occupations that may not necessarily be thought of as true professions. Occupations such as electrician or commercial airline pilot, for example, are typically performed by people who are state licensed or federally licensed because their work involves being entrusted with the lives and safety of the people they serve. But, in most other occupations, these conditions don’t exist and, thus, there may be no need for any strict controls over a worker’s actions. In fact, it was this concern for public safety that created the regulatory

aspects of the professions, to begin with. In the visual and performing arts, no such standards exist because there is no reason for them, and thus, there is no demand for required training or licensure. Oddly enough, though people’s lives and health are being entrusted to people who prepare food for public consumption, cooks and other people in the food service industry are not at all required to be licensed. Only their employers can be held liable if someone dies as a result of food poisoning or contamination, and thus, owners of restaurants and bars must be state licensed to serve food and alcohol.

Nevertheless, most people today still hold the misconception that if you merely work for a living, are paid for your work or run a business of some kind, you’re a “professional,” and this is a popular misconception that has existed since the late 18th or early 19th century, but has reached its zenith in the present, with the inclusion of the creative arts as so-called “professions” by many people. Since the advent of the internet and the subsequent popularity of the idea that any creative person (artists working in any medium, including photography) can bypass the middleman and sell their works or services directly to buyers from a web presence online, this notion that art is a profession has come into being. Prior to this dubious perception that merely offering something for sale from a website can constitute a “business” of some sort, it had long been realized by most people, including artists, themselves, that art is, at best, a vocation, whether paid or not, and most viewed it as a pastime or hobby, in fact. This view still persists among some people and, thus, expressions such as, “starving artist” are still heard, though this is slowly giving way to the mythology that one can easily start an “art business.”

However, despite the relative success of some artists in recent years, the fact remains that art is a vocation and not even close to being accorded the status of being a profession. It meets absolutely none of the several criteria for being a legitimate profession, yet there are millions of people today using the term, “professional artist,” or “professional photographer,” and by this, they mean that one is merely making a living from their work. But, the making of money, or making one’s living from any activity does not constitute a “profession.” If you have any doubt of what I’m saying, you might want to consult the Wikipedia article, “Profession,” which is one of the most thorough treatments of the subject to be found anywhere.

In the creative arts, it has been the case, ever since the invention of art by the cave painters of Lascaux, some 30,000 years ago, that artists create for the sake of creation itself and are motivated to do so by a compulsion to create for self-expression. It wasn’t until tens of thousands of years after the advent of art that anyone at all was paid for their work, since civilization, money and all that stems from those developments didn’t even exist yet.

The artist’s role in society, so far as they were perceived to even have any role, was originally in the service of religion and the state, once religion and government came into existence, only a few thousand years ago. The idea that an artist could be paid enough to live on didn’t come about until the foundations of anyone earning a living by being paid for it came into existence. If that seems like something that has “always existed” to you, then you are ignorant of humanity’s history, as Homo Sapiens have existed for some 200,000 years. Civilization, let alone money, has only existed for a maximum of some 6,000 to 12,000 years, and the evidence for it being

any older than 8,000 years is very sketchy, at best. The advent of money and, thus, the very foundations of a society in which people could support themselves with money as a form of payment is a mere 6,000 or so years old. Again, if this sounds like “forever” or even a long time to you, you have to consider that none of this existed at all for the vast majority of human history. In the context of 200,000 years, 6,000 years ago is the blink of an eye, yet that is about how long anyone has ever earned a living by being paid in some form of currency. It wouldn’t be until thousands of years later that the artists of the middle ages could feed, house and clothe themselves by creating art for wealthy patrons, and this existed only for those artists talented enough to attract the attention of said patrons. This state of affairs went on for centuries before any artist was ever capable of supporting himself by selling works he’d created for his own reasons. It is this state of the artist as being someone who creates for his own reasons and might be able to sell what he creates at all that we call “fine art,” and only a tiny minority of fine artists could exist purely on revenues from the sale of their speculative works, and that was how artists lived and created for centuries.

That said, the idea that an artist should be able to make a living from his work is a very recent one, no more than a decade or two old. Prior to the dubious promise the internet held out that anyone could make some kind of a living from an online business (an idea that was in its infancy in 1995), no one ever thought of art as a reliable way to make a living, let alone as a “profession.” And, as for art being considered as any sort of “profession,” again, it has absolutely none of the earmarks of a profession. There is no legal requirement for a higher education, for starters. In fact, there is no requirement, legal or otherwise, for any education or training at all! The vast majority of artists are still mostly self-taught, in fact. Then, there is no legal requirement for any sort of internship, apprenticeship or anything of the kind. There is no legal requirement for any continuing education, either, even if one has a degree in fine art or commercial art. Most importantly of all, there are absolutely no licensed artists of any type anywhere in the world. There is no license to practice art in any medium, including photography, thus the terms, “professional artist” and “professional photographer” have no real meaning at all.

I have earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design, and with that and $5, I can get a cup of coffee anywhere. If I invest the time, energy and money required to get a masters degree, or even a Phd in fine art, with that and several dollars more, I might be able to get a sandwich with that cup of coffee. I would still be required by the state to expend further time, money and energy in training for a teaching certification if my ambition was to teach art, but the addition of the teaching credentials that would lead to a license to teach wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with being an artist. I could just as easily be allowed to teach any subject I have sufficient knowledge of. When I was in high school, for example, my next door neighbor was my algebra teacher as well as the school’s football coach!

If this has still not sunk in, yet, consider that the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) has spent decades actively campaigning to have interior design recognized as a profession, and they are still not accepted as such. As a draftsman/CAD technician, I have personally known and worked with members of ASID in architectural firms and I can tell you, from direct observation, that architects do not regard interior design as being any sort of “profession” at all, and architecture, itself, has only reached the point of requiring licensure in all fifty states within

the last decade! In fact, as late as 2003, in the state of Oklahoma (where I lived and worked as an architectural/engineering draftsman, at the time), I could have legally offered my services as a “residential designer,” designing houses and apartment buildings of no more than two stories in height. If I wanted to design any other, larger structures, my plans would be legally required to be reviewed and approved by a licensed architect and stamped with his seal of approval. Just a few years later, though, that loophole in the law was closed by the requirement for an architect’s license, and the same occurred in a few other remaining states, including Arizona. Back in the 1950s, things were even looser. The celebrated architect and industrial designer Charles Eames had no formal training in architecture, nor a license to practice architecture. Neither did several of Frank Lloyd Wright’s draftsmen, some of whom, like Bruce Goff, went on to design houses, themselves. Strangely enough, though, while the standards of both architectural training and licensure have become increasingly stringent, at the same time, in some states, the standards for lawyers have actually become more relaxed.

That said, if you want to gain any understanding of what a true profession is, you should read up on the legal requirements for the licensing of lawyers and physicians, who are still the only true professionals in existence, and even the standards and legal requirements for these two long recognized professions have only existed for little more than a century, at best. All of this was developed over time and stringent legal requirements for being a practicing lawyer or doctor were not completely or universally established until only a few decades ago.

Another aspect of the lay perception that being a “professional” simply means being paid for one’s work is that, in the true professions, a professional may be expected to work for free from time to time. In fact, in the legal profession, it has long been a standard that some attention to “community service” should be required and, thus, it is expected that a law firm must include a certain amount of unbillable hours each year, ie, what is called pro bono services. To a lesser extent, the same expectation exists for licensed physicians, depending upon where they are working. In state-run teaching hospitals, for example, it is not at all uncommon to find licensed physicians doing a certain amount of work without pay. Medical students, even after having achieved resident or intern status, may be barely compensated for their work, if at all. So, the idea that being paid for one’s work is the criteria for being a “professional” is laughable in light of these facts. In fact, it’s laughable as soon as one realizes that everyone who has a mere job is paid for their work, otherwise, who would even bother to work at all?! The only people who are not paid for their work are called “slaves.” Even prisoners are paid for their work. Every burger flipper, ditch digger or janitor is paid for their work, yet no one would call these people “professionals!” Yet, even the terms “professional assassin” and “career criminal” are thoughtlessly used by people every day!