On what subject(s) are you an authority?

IS ANYONE REALLY?

I often wonder if anyone is really an expert on anything. This wondering comes in part from personal experience.

In 1968 before commencing teacher training, I was deemed a novice. In my first years of teaching and school leadership, I was still in the foundational stage of understanding. There was so much to learn and so much to do with that learning.

Fast forward to 2023. I am now retired and in my twelfth year of retirement following a career in education that stretched from 1968 to January 2012. In various publications for which I have written articles. I’m cited as being “an educational expert”.

That’s not really how I see myself. However, as somebody with experience, I am more than prepared to help those connected to education with support and advice – in the same way, I was offered that support in my earlier years.

But to describe anybody in any field as an expert, from myself to others, I don’t think is right.

The ability to learn and to understand in all fields of endeavour is never-ending. There is always more learning, and I wonder whether anybody is ever an expert on anything in the complete sense of knowing.

As our knowledge increases, one of the awareness is that the same much more to learn.

Sometimes I have what might be negative thoughts, and I don’t mean to put wood on anybody. But those who are learned in limited fields, I sometimes think of as “microcosmic specialists“. That is to say they know a lot, indeed a huge amount, about not very much at all.

Learning is important and offering advice and support should be something we all do. But I think to myself, that’s so often those deemed “experts“ and “Gurus“ are that way regarded, because of the discipleship of others toward the things that they say and do.

So maybe the notion of being an expert is a phenomena created about some people by others.