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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu!ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
Newsgroups: sci.edu,comp.org.ieee,misc.education
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: Re: Engineering Education
Message-ID: <90Aug8.224207edt.8327@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Keywords: engineering,education,Waterloo
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <3374@dciem.dciem.dnd.ca> <90Jul29.230424edt.8339@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <1008@stca77.stc.oz>
Date: 9 Aug 90 02:43:11 GMT
Lines: 28

nick@stca77.stc.oz (Nick Lochrin) writes:
>[...] I couldn't help but notice the comparisions between engineers and
>"lawyers and doctors" [...]
>
>To shed a little light on what the Australian perception of these professions
>is, a recent survey [...] found that the public perception was that lawyers
>were ranked just before car salesman in (descending) order of the amount of
>trust and respect with which they were generally regarded.  This made the
>lawyers embark on a publicity campaign to try and rectify this perception;
>their money probably *won't* run out !! :-)

I have not come across this survey, but I know a similar survey recently found
that doctors were disliked by most people.  The doctors are bothered by this.
However, such issues of rating are NOT binary in a good/bad sense ; dislike
does NOT mean disrespect or distrust.  These things are not necessarily even
correlated.

Consider political leaders, for instance.  Suppose you and a lot of your friends
really liked your highschool janitor, but dislike Mikhail Gorbachev for some
reason.  No, suppose that you held a social event, and by some fluke of history
both these individuals showed up.  Compare how you think you would respond
and what would weight most heavily in your behavior and memory.  It seems that
liking somebody is quite separable from respecting them.  This, I think, is
strongly at work in our medical profession, and possibly the legal profession.
People may not trust lawyers, in all endeavors, and respect what lawyers do,
but I think they damn well respect the social position that lawyers assume.

The elements of the perceived status of a group can be hard to disentangle.