what makes an archaeologist?

You need a babysitter: who do you have watch your kids?

A: Someone who has read a book about children?

B: Someone who sat in a classroom listening to an instructor tell stories about books they’ve read about babysitting?

C: Someone who went to school and heard the stories for years, and then went to be a nanny for 2 months. After which they went back to school for years, this time as an instructor, instructing others how to care for children but never actually watching anymore children themselves.

D: Someone who gets paid to research different childcare techniques and supervise other people who babysit, even document who and where babysitting activities are going on, perhaps at times picking up the toddler to check for age and varify that he/she needs a diaper change?

E: Someone who started babysitting when they were 11 years old, continued to care for children for the next 30 years, getting better with each family until they were so good, the local mothers, nanny-instructors, childhood experts started calling THEM to watch their child?

The fact that someone sat in a classroom and got a piece of paper that claims they are qualified to do something, doesn’t mean that they can actually do the work any better than a person who has natural talent, motivation, and skills learned on the job.

John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, among many other great works, was a college dropout.

Abraham Lincoln only had about 18 months of formal education.

And where did John James Audubon learn about birds and how to document them? Not in a classroom.

Wilbur Wright attended 4 years of high school, but never got a diploma, Orville Wright never finished high school.

I’m sure there are many other examples for this case, but I wish that people would realize that just because someone has a plaque with their name on it, a grant to pay for their expenses and existence, and a tackle box full of the best tools money can buy, it doesn’t mean that they are more QUALIFIED to dig up artifacts.

And it is especially sickening and unnecessary that thousands upon thousands of tax-payer dollars were spent to send an army of gun-toting FBI agents to the homes of 78-year-old grandfathers in order to do a job that the local sheriff could have performed.

i guess we all know the american way: guilty until proven innocent. who will they go after next? unlicensed babysitters? afterall, what's more precious, your children or your dishes?