Knowledge & the Cult of Experts
by Wendy Priesnitz

Ever since the Industrial Revolution created the need for specialized knowledge to run equipment and manage employees, our education system has been creating a cult of experts – people who spend large portions of their working lives focusing on increasingly narrow ranges of highly specialized information. In a market-driven economy, these “experts” are able to charge for access to the information they “own.” Even things like seeds and research animals are now being patented for sale to the highest bidder.

Most of us willingly pay others to design and build our houses, program our computers, settle our legal disputes, entertain us, grow our food, and cure our illnesses. We do not have time to look after these aspects of daily life for ourselves because we are too busy pursuing our own fields of expertise.

But there is more to it than that. The “experts” have an interest in convincing us that what they know how to do is too difficult, time-consuming, or complicated for the rest of us to learn. And because we have bought into the assumption that we can only “get knowledge” by being painstakingly taught by highly schooled experts, we do not recognize or value the knowledge, wisdom, and skills that we have gained, often incidentally, on our own. So even those of us who want to build our own houses, program our own computers, entertain ourselves, or look after our own health often do not feel qualified to do so.

Even when we want to learn these skills, it is difficult. Many of them are not taught in school and even people who have such skills often do not value them enough to pass them along to their children or other young people. We have been conditioned not to think of ourselves as . . .

To read the rest of this article, please subscribe to Life Learning Magazine. Back issue access is included in your subscription.

Wendy Priesnitz is the editor of Life Learning Magazine. This article is adapted from her book Challenging Assumptions in Education: From Institutionalized Education to a Learning Society.

The term life learning refers to a form of homeschooling that trusts children and avoids the trappings of school. It is sometimes called unschooling, radical unschooling, or natural learning. Life learning children live and learn naturally, with the support of their families, based on their own interests and their own timetables, and without curriculum, tests, or grades. Go here, here and here for a more comprehensive explanation.

Copyright © 2002 - 2013 Life Media

|  About Us  |  Contact  |  Advertise  |
|   Contribute  |   Privacy Policy  |