Scott on Accreditation

I have been in Hualien for five days, teaching a winter vacation English camp, and so have been on the far side of the moon as far as access to a computer. On returning home, I discovered this whopper of a post. Wow. Let's take Scott's essay point by point, because he covers a lot of ground.

Scott: "I'd like to once again state that I have never advocated accreditation or qualification as good methods to assure the quality preparation of professionals."

This opinion was never attributed to him by me. Looking over my post, I suspect the offending sentence is "There will always be gatekeeping standards for entrance into teaching, of course. I just seem to differ with Scott on the degree to which those credentials really correspond with excellence in teaching." Scott clearly assumes from the way in which the postings segue from a discussion on bogus degrees to liberal arts programs to accreditation that I was attributing to him a postion on accreditation. In fact, the second posting was an expansion on the above V.S. Naipal quote, not a counter-argument to something Scott said. Re-reading my post, using the term "gatekeeping standards" in the transition may have been sloppy. But if was counter-arguing, I would have, as is my habit, offered a direct quotation to argue against, and used the specific term "accreditation". It was also sloppy of Scott to, in my comments section, accuse me of "misquoting" him. Quote him is precisely what I would have done if I was attributing the position to him.