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This was covered in a previous FR post, believe it or not!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1263704/posts

An individual seeking prophecy must be careful to keep his motives absolutely pure. The preparations for prophecy are extremely rigorous, and without divine help, they can lead to psychosis and false visions rather than to true prophecy. Moreover, a neophyte prophet, who has not yet learned to master his gift, can easily misunderstand his revelation.

Therefore, every individual who desires to attain prophecy must have a master and guide. The function of the master is to teach the neophyte the techniques of prophecy, and help him avoid the pitfalls along the way. Those who sat at the feet of the great prophets and engaged in meditation attempting to attain prophecy were known as the "Sons of Prophets."

With the exception of Isaiah, every prophet in the Bible received his gift through his predecessors.

Even after a prophet attains a vision, he still needs a master in order to advance to higher degrees of prophecy. Like every other faculty, prophecy must be nurtured and developed.

As mentioned above, "the sons of the prophets" were something of a recognised institution or school of ancient Jewish prophets. Almost all of the Old Testament prophets belonged to this school. "Son" is not meant literally, but actually means something like "disciple" (just as the word "Abba" meant not only "father" but metaphorically was used to mean "rabbi" or "teacher"). Judging from what it says in I & II Kings, we can infer that Elijah probably had a hand in organising them.

I don't know whether or not Isaiah belonged to the sons of the prophets, but he does describe in Isa. 6 the way God called him to be a prophet. Similarly, the prophet Amos explicitly says he was not a prophet, nor was he trained to be a prophet -- he was apparently a farmhand of some sort, and God appeared to him and told him to go to the northern kingdom of Israel and prophesy to them. So Amos did not belong to the sons of the prophets. (Be careful not to confuse the prophet Amos with Isaiah's father Amos or Amoz. Those were two different men.)

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