Though I’m not presently looking to move across the world for a job, the free spirit in me can’t help but be interested… An awesome job opportunity with people I’d love to work with in a place I’ve never been – very tempting indeed!
In terms of my experience and skill set I am an ideal candidate for this job and have no doubt that I could be an asset to their team; as an added bonus I have have basic Norwegian language skills which would make their requirement of learning Swedish more easily attainable. However, the job posting specifically stipulates that they are looking for “a Petö graduate conductor”.
I’m not precious; I’m not offended to the core of my being or anything, and in fact think it is more their loss – there are a lot of excellent and innovative ‘non-Petö’ conductors out there and I am extremely proud to be a NICE conductor. But this Petö conductor vs non-Petö conductor thing has been a thing since I graduated and it still makes me quite angry. It may not have been meant to be an excluding job post; perhaps I should give the person who posted the job the benefit of the doubt and assume she meant condutors trained in the Petö method vs specifically at the Petö Institute – but as I said, this has been a thing for a long time now. I think that we need to come together as a profession, and learn to judge each other by what we offer as professionals instead of what school we went to. And, I think us non-Petö conductors and our colleagues and the families we have supported over the decade and a half since conductors have been trained outside of the Petö Institute should probably stop being ‘NICE’ about this.
Comments
7 responses to “NICE Conductors need not Apply”
An interesting aspect of this business is that Move & Work is acting to co-ordinate an EU Leonardo da Vinci project for the 'exchange of quality standards in rehabilitation of motor disabled children'. This represents the interests of five organisations with differing involvements in 'Conductive Education', situated in four countries: Hungary, Germany, Austria and Sweden.
The purpose of this is less than clear but the stated intention is to 'find a consensus of the quality standards and compile a manual of quality standards'.
It is proposed that other institutions will wish to adopt this manual: 'Customers and trainees will benefit from the assurance knowing that every trainer they are training with draws from a systemized education knowledge base, they will receive the same quality of training regardless of where they train.'
Presumably recruitment policies, and their acceptability under national and European laws will be an explicit and essential feature of this manual for the consideration of any organisations considering its adoption.
Andrew.
See also at:
http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world/posts/341599029229051
A.
Sorry, just one more point. To see what this group has been discussing, you can review its minutes at;
http://conductiveeducation.eu/index.php/leonardo-da-vinci/minutes
Enjoy.
A.
Dear Lisa
I thought it important to post a link here to an earlier discussion about this on Andrew Sutton's blog and facebook pages –
http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/09/advert-conductor-requried.html
I am still not sure about what I mentioned in my comment on that Conductive World posting in September 2011, whether it is a case of training or nationality when advertisements specify that a Petö Institute trained conductor is required.
Susie
I was thinking about you Susie, and the other British conductors who trained in Hungary and wondered if you felt the same ' discrimination ' 'exclusion' 'anti-NICE' sentiments — I will certainly check back through the post you mentioned — thanks for that
Lisa
Thanks Andrew — interesting — part of what is happening here is that Better Start has asked Future Footprints to put together something similar – a policy / manual / quality assurance document type thing it they are to proceed with expansion.
Tell me — and pardon my somewhat slack understanding of some EU politics — where does Norway sit in all of this? Are they out in the cold or part of the cool kids?
Lisa
Susie – I read through the comments on the link to Andrew's blog that you referred me to. I had seen the original posting (all of Andrew and all of yours come through my RSS feed) but not the rest of the conversation afterwards. At least I don't have to wonder what Move and Walk is implying by Petö graduated. Hmmm – I guess I've always wanted to see it in the open instead of just knowing that that was what many of them think. What a sad and funny little world CE creates for itself …