The skill price for knowledge pleasure

What are you talking about?!

In an argument about the present system of education in most developed and developing countries, the point when virtually all arguments cease is when there is a sense of fraternity on the point that the education system is not functioning right. We all know this, yet there is not one convincing argument about what is it that is actually wrong with our system of education!

A conversation about what is wrong with our education system need not go on for hours. There is a simple answer to it - lack of focus on skill-building! That right there is the biggest issue we have had that has gone unnoticed. All other systemic issues like untrained/under-trained teachers, lack of appropriate infrastructure, poor curriculum planning, everything is centered around the fact that skill-building in teachers and classrooms has been ignored completely. The result? - Rigid school structures, a non-flexible curriculum and teachers who lack skills in transferring enduring knowledge and skills effectively.

Are you kidding me? Aren't they the same?

No, I am not! And no, they are not the same! While the 'concepts of 'knowledge' and 'skill' are used to explain the concept of 'competency', for an educator, it is important to use there words in overlapping isolation. Allow me to elaborate, and elaborate I will! Knowledge is being able to identify something, or recall a simple fact or a group of ideas. Skill is being about to evaluate those group of ideas for their inherent value in an attempt to put together an informed opinion for ourselves.

Let us look at historical data. In this case, let us look back at what we learnt at school and how we learnt it. The chances are, you don't remember much - except for broad overviews- like say, space, trigonometry, composition, all learnt through a series of essential facts, which you then had to filter out to remember words/phrases that will gain you those crucial scores in fate-determining exams! All these are the 'knowledge' pieces that we have been taught. It may take us a while if we were to think of what solid, transferable skills we learnt in school. You may say, communication skills, social skills, teamwork, and so on! I will come back later in another article about why these skills are no biggies.

What do you mean by skill price for knowledge pleasure?

Think about 'knowledge' and 'skills' as two people. 'Knowledge' is sinister, boisterous, street smart guy and 'skills' is the introvert, no-nonsense person. Everytime 'knowledge' hijacks an intelligent conversation that 'skills' is having, 'skills' retreats further into his shell, because neither does he doesn't believe in low-balling, nor does he like senseless confrontations. Every time we give too much importance to knowledge, we ignore the skills that will build the enduring understanding about a concept. However, unlike the hypothetical instance I gave you just now, though skills and knowledge are not mutually elusive. They simply cannot exist without each other. Knowledge helps build skill and skill comes from the mastery of knowledge of a particular concept.

What can we do to reverse this ignorance?

It's never too late, really! If we start focussing on the skills students have to build at a particular age/grade level, we will start planning curriculum, training teachers to impart skills instead of focussing on knowledge, quality of teacher-training course curriculum will undergo positive changes, and students will be able to apply a single skill to multiple knowledge areas. When that happens is when the role of an educator will evolve from being a teacher to being a facilitator in the true sense of the word.