Nursing Outmoded Ideas of Third-Grade Aspirations

In examining a list of jobs that third-graders aspire to, I was struck by the absence of several supposedly popular ones.

The list included actress, artist, art teacher, car salesman, computer scientist, deep-sea diver, doctor, firefighter, football player, guitarist, lawyer, masseuse, police officer and teacher.

I wondered why none of the children chose nurse. For generations nursing has been an occupation that was open to girls and seemed to hold a strong attraction for them. There was always that image of Florence Nightingale to inspire them.

Alas, the profession seems to have fallen from favor. Alne Schumacher of Hermosa Beach suggests why:

“I’m not sure (whether I’m) pleased or disappointed that none of the children you wrote about were interested in nursing. Disappointed because nurses were looked up to years ago. I have been one for 46 years. Pleased because I would not wish for a child to want nursing for a career today.

“I am very disenchanted with the medical profession. Many nurses have left the field and sought other employment. Nursing is a thankless, grueling, underpaid profession with the greatest responsibility. I’m sure the word has gotten out even to third-graders.”

Leonard J. Nevis, a Whittier physician, offers what may be a clue to this disenchantment. He writes that the other day a nurse asked him to translate a sentence from a textbook used in a course she is taking on “the nursing concept.”

The sentence reads: “Development proceeded with intellectual movement toward the formulation and expression of an integrated structure of generic concepts descriptively explanatory of nursing and then to structures of integrated concepts that descriptively explain the reality feature subsumed by the broad theoretical concepts.”

I wonder if it could have something to do with bedpans.

Three out of 231 pupils said they wanted to be teachers. Jim Robinson, a Latin teacher at Madison High School, San Diego, describes a little-known hazard of teaching--the teacher’s anxiety nightmare.

“I’m sure most teachers have had it. It begins with being late to school (an absolutely mortal sin). When I finally get there, I don’t know where my class is, and the vice principal has to lead me to it. Then I face a room full of strangers and suddenly realize I am supposed to teach Advanced Diesel Engines, or something else I know utterly nothing about. . . . I suddenly realize that I am wearing nothing but a T-shirt--a very short one.”

Being unclothed in public is common to most anxiety dreams, I suspect; I have found myself in that position many times, but I wouldn’t want any child to be discouraged from entering journalism because of it. There are other more terrifying bugaboos--such a missing a deadline or libeling a minister.

One of the pupils wanted to be a masseuse. By definition, masseuse is feminine for masseur. I assumed that this child was a girl, and wondered why a little girl would want to work in a massage parlor when she grew up.

Tillie Tyler responds philosophically that it might be because “some people, given to self-mockery, seem to need a little stroking. Maybe her daddy enjoyed having his back rubbed; and, from him she learned how to feel useful. Choices often appear to be a matter or whim or chance; yet choice itself is an illusion.”

She recalls that when a physician’s error caused her mother’s death at 45, she took a year of premed. “Although my grades were good, it wearily dawned on me that I didn’t want to read nothing but medical journals the rest of my life.”

Perhaps the medical journals she had to read were something like the text pointed out to Dr. Nevis by the nurse. That kind of language should discourage the most dedicated student.

Despite the success of an article she wrote for her junior high school paper, Ms. Tyler was not attracted to journalism.

“Professional female reporters were inevitably assigned to social events, and I didn’t know decolletage from decoupage.”

In my younger years I knew and worked with female reporters who had quite bloodthirsty tastes, and were assigned to stories of mayhem and wrongdoing, which they covered with zest.

“Short Takes,” a not-quite-monthly bulletin published by Tom Case of Liggett-Stashower Inc., Cleveland, quotes a poll from New York Woman magazine listing the “sexiest” male occupations: “Artists--sensitive, soulful and they can draw you on a napkin; athletes--especially swimmers and sailors; veterinarians--they’re kind to animals; carpenters--gentle, and they wear flannel shirts; journalists--sort of cute in an unkempt way.”

I suppose it’s true that journalists are sloppy dressers. It used to be said of a certain New York columnist that he “always looked like an unmade bed.”

I’ve been trying to make the National Council of Tailors list of the 10 best-dressed American men for the last 10 years.

I have about as much chance of winning a Nobel Prize.