DeanWuBlog

Expertise

The greatest deception of experts is making it all look easy. This effect is not even deliberate. Oftentimes I have attended a performance, especially of an art form that is unfamiliar to me, and I leave the show with the delusion I too could do that too – dance, act, play the musical instrument, perform the athletic feat, and so on. It takes only a moment of reflection or simply a clumsy effort to imitate what I’ve just seen or heard, however, for me to understand that I have just witnessed a level of skill that, whatever the innate abilities involved, must have required incredible effort in training and practice. Indeed, I am so ignorant I am unable to discern the differences between what is basic and advanced, and who is merely good and who is extraordinary: I am told, for example, that there are many piano pieces that sound very difficult but in fact are simple, and vice versa.

I remember the first time I went to an appellate court. A group of us visited the Seventh Circuit, in the company of an experienced attorney. Afterward, I asked him how good the oral arguments were, in his view. None of us as neophytes had a good sense, one way or another. We needed his reassurance that the advocates had been effective, likely in part because our perceptions were distorted by media representations that bear little resemblance to reality.

Conversely, I have sometimes wondered why others cannot do what I do regularly. For example, I give speeches to audiences large and small, on subjects I know thoroughly as well as those I am only learning. I am not especially impressed by myself, but I recognize that true humility also means being aware that I have had more experience in these endeavors than most other people – not to mention formal education. I have been doing public speaking for well over half my life, not to mention the benefits of Socratic dialogue in law school, and I have had my share of humiliating moments that only I now remember.

So there is, as there should be, a difference between what teachers know and can do and what their students know and can do. The best teachers are those who are able to start their students toward becoming their equals.