Today was a big day for me. I watched online as a doctoral student defended her dissertation. It happened at the same university where I began teaching more than 50 years ago. I had taught 5th graders for 4 years before that and I would not have been allowed to have that job without a bachelor's degree and the appropriate credentials to teach in that state.
When I received my bachelor's degree, I knew very little about advanced degrees or types of schooling. It can be helpful these days to divide schooling and training into "academic" and more specialized. But in many moments in life, love and support for our children combines with the American drive to be #1, the BEST. We don't often ask whether a student has mastered something valuable. More likely, our questions relate to being at the head of one's class, without too much attention to what class.
In the rough classification of levels of education, K-12 public or some sort of religious or private schooling usually comes first. To learn the skills of reading, writing and basic calculation (readin'/writin'/and'rithmetic), plus some understanding of science, history and the arts has often been considered a basic education. Over time and in many countries, college may be an option after those 12 or 13 years. College often takes four years. Further schooling may head toward a master's degree, which may be 1 or more years, depending if the student can manage to be full-time or not. Further schooling than that may mean obtaining a doctor's degree. That can be 3 to 5 years, depending on luck, personality, wealth, focus and the subject being studied.
The professional training of physicians, lawyers and other "professional" degrees may begin after college but may take different paths. Getting a PhD in many sciences can mean a "post-doc" working with more senior scientists. The skills and ranking from European guilds of "apprentice, journeyman, and master" is another set of steps that have influenced thinking and plans for training and education.
I come from a background of elementary school teaching, where the feminine values of gentleness and understanding and encouragement, the virtues of a mother, are basic. As humans mature, they naturally develop more interest in freedom and independence and more ability to compete with others. At higher levels, a.k.a. chronologically older students, there may be more pressure to perform, compete and excel. Historically, teachers have been men at these levels and men have not taken as well to training to improve their ability to teach. So, it is only lately that demands for good exchange for money plus the competition for a dwindling supply of younger people have combined to increase the training of teachers of older students and scrutiny of their teaching.
