Things Heard: e131v4
Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at
8:42 am
Good morning.
- A commercial hack?
- The technology behind carbon fiber, not exactly explained.
- Steward on the Sherrod kerfuffle.
- Those leaks and a likely consequence.
- NaCl and soteriology.
- More NaCl here too.
- Gallantry … a old fashioned notion, for which the revival of same would not be a bad thing.
- Mr Kerry and his taxes.
- Like a poll tax?
- Kind or clever … and a question begged.
- An argument for irresponsibility examined. I reject proposition (b).
- Diversity training in action.
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Of course, I am strongly opposed to any suggestions of limitations of religious freedom. At the same time, I wonder: Would a medical school pass a student on to become a doctor if that student adamantly refused to acknowledge the existence of germs, believing, instead, that tiny unicorns crawling through people’s ears caused diseases?
At what point does the school have an obligation NOT to graduate a student not prepared to go into their field?
If a psychologist student who intended to counsel married folk truly believed that marriage was an evil and that he would always counsel folk to get a divorce, should he be able to graduate from a legitimate school? Don’t schools at that level have some responsibility – maybe even legal responsibility – to certify that this person IS prepared to practice law, medicine, counseling?
I mean, it’s one thing to graduate with an English degree and the firm belief that Shakespeare stinks, and another to certify that this student is prepared to practice in a professional field, isn’t it?
Or, closer to home for me: Would the Army let an Amish fella make it through boot camp if he wasn’t prepared to kill?
Would an Amish fella be right to sue the Army for refusing to let him graduate from boot camp?
Sometimes, perhaps our belief systems preclude our participation in certain fields. IF the field of counseling or medicine – which are overseen by professional organizations with certain standards/codes – requires some certain beliefs and those beliefs are contrary to our own, perhaps that’s not the field for us?
The problem is, it seems to me, in tinier details. The whole purpose of the army revolves around the threat to kill, thus, a religious person whose values are contrary to that should know that they can’t take part in that.
Counseling, on the other hand, is a field with much broader applications – in some ways at least – and it may not be as obvious that acceptance of gay folk as they are and the recognition that homosexuality is NOT a mental illness is part and parcel of those professional standards.
Interesting case.
I would think certainly that if this person were trying to be a certified counselor that certification boards would rightly turn her down if she did not accept their professional guidelines. I’m less clear, though, on the school side of things. By graduating a student in a professional field like this, does the school assume some responsibility for these sorts of beliefs outside the norm of the profession?
I don’t know the answer to that.