ABOUT TRAINING

After filling my brain with such thoughts, I decided to rest on the financial aspect of it and concentrate on the training that a professional must have. No person would ever think of doing as we d provide a service that he had never studied in a formal school and then turn around and call himself a professional, right? Of course, there are a few minor exceptions to this overarching rule, such as Bessemer, Carnegie, Goodyear, Edison, and Einstein, but largely, it is true. Folks uneducated by professionals simply are not professionals. Outside of the few, such as Bronte, Austen, Barton, and Bell, we would not think of giving them payment or calling them professionals. It is a given that people such as Johnson, Lincoln, Madison, Marshall, Adams, the Roosevelts, Fillmore, Franklin, Garfield, Washington, Henry, Jefferson, Boone, and Wilson seldom come along, and would normally be considered unable to perform to a level that included reimbursement for their hard work. Is that not correct? I mean, there are not many Brownings, Blakes, Mozarts, Nightingales, Dickens, Pascals, Disraelis, Tennysons, Goethes, Wagners, or Whittiers. At least, if these folks do exist in large numbers, they are not very well known, right? Especially these days, they are very seldom self-taught in their professions, such as Gates, Adair, Stewart...

Usually, when we look for a professional, we turn to someone who knows his field, someone who has received certifiable teaching on all aspects of his profession. All others are amateurs and likely to fail us in some way. The professionals know everything about their profession and never make mistakes or fail. Amateurs do not know what they are doing and always make mistakes. Right?

SOME EXCEPTIONS

So why did our doctor once tell me not to bring our four-year-old son to visit him? This son had thrush for the sixth time and my doctor told me, "Mrs. Trauger, I think you know thrush when you see it. I do not want you sitting in this waiting room with flu going around. I am calling in your prescription and you can just go pick it up." I was pleasantly surprised at this turn. But how could I know thrush that well? I had not gone to medical school. I could not treat diabetes or sew up a gaping wound. I knew nothing about goiter or IBS. What would become of our son, since I had diagnosed him myself?

My diagnosis was correct and he recovered. The medicine was exactly what he needed. I did know thrush on sight. The reason I knew so much about thrush was that I had been attending this son, studying this son, for four years, and I knew him and his problem very well. You could say that I had a four-year degree in diagnosing and medicating this son.

Actually, it was a dual degree, one in doctoring him and the other in educating him. He knew colors, shapes, the alphabet, everything that a child his age ought to know and more, and we had been his sole teachers. Ours was a success story that repeats itself daily, across the nation and around the world. We are amateurs, yes, but we do know our subject and what we are doing.