What is a ‘music specialist’ anyway?

If you spend any time at all having discussions about music education, you will quickly come across the divisive issue of ‘specialist’ versus ‘non-specialist’ teaching. It is perhaps, after notation, the second most polarising topic across the sector. (This is quite surprising when you think about it, since our sector is made up of ‘music specialists’, so one would assume 100 per cent of us would be all for specialist teaching.) Coming from a position of someone who is a ‘music specialist’ but also is someone who helps train ‘generalist’ teachers, I think there is room for both specialist and non-specialist approaches, depending on the context of the school and what it is, in particular, that you are trying to achieve. Where the difficulty lies for me is in the defining of ‘music specialist’ status.