The National Congress of Parents and Teachers is 90 plus years old with 6.6 million members. They have influenced the establishment of a great many things:

• Child labor laws
• Juvenile justice system
• National public health service
• Drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs
• AIDS education
• Parent development curriculums

Does it strike you as strange that a subsidiary of the larger National Congress, your own local Parent Teachers Association, is so preoccupied with such matters as the fractional difference in student teacher ratios, a desire for assistant principals, or tenure? Matters, not coincidentally, of tremendous importance to teachers and their unions. Why is that? Don't you think it unusual, at a time when people cut out middlemen, that we have parent-TEACHER coalitions at all?

Suppose you wanted better service from your doctor, dentist, local garage or the like. Would you join with their office workers, nurses or mechanics in a Customer and Client Association (CACA) to bring about change? Would you join with garment workers to insist that Calvin Klein make clothes of your design? Would you suggest that taxpayers and IRS auditors join forces to reduce payroll costs for the Internal Revenue Service? Not likely. So why have parents and teachers, throughout America, chosen to unite? The teachers have a voice, their union. And what is really wrong with the concept of a "PTA" is that teachers are both literally and figuratively in the middle. This should not be. We should develop, instead, something more suitable to our own interests. Our own and very best interests.

How about PAC, the Parents Action Committee? Ooops, won't work. Sounds too much like Tax-PAC. Well then, perhaps PAA for Parents Against the Anointed? No, that requires a community familiar with Thomas Sowell's writings concerning all things wrong in education. No, we'll need something strong and familiar sounding. Something comforting yet suggesting a measure of assertiveness. Something, perhaps...dare we say it, even paternalistic.

Whoa! Got it! It should be called PA, with a fatherly image, not the PTA!!!! And, it will speak for more than just the parents, but for all of the community because, like Hillary said, it does take "an entire village..." and we are all clients and beneficiaries of good education. We'll call it the Peoples' Association. Can you imagine? The people with a voice in school governance.

Today your district, tomorrow a not too distant neighbor's and then...

A profession defined is something more than the distinction made between volunteer and paid service providers. When we speak of true professions, we do not include musicians, firefighters, police officers, a Shakespeare, plumbers, opera singers, race car drivers or a Michelangelo. Nor should we include teachers.

Prerequisites of a Profession: