The new educational landscape must integrate skill-based learning into formal education systems, fostering a holistic approach to learning and livelihood

Each generation does make its contribution to the vocabulary of the language it uses. The vocabulary represents its understanding of the current emotions and fancied expressions of sentiments, which are at times as old as the human race. This may be of joy, glee, or sheer ‘inaction’.

At times serious sentiments are involved and led by a prominent person of the time; they acquire fancied importance. Many will recall the time when the Department of Education in the Government of India was declared the ‘Department of HRD’ during the time of the Prime Ministership of Rajiv Gandhi and overnight many departments of personnel of corporate enterprises declared themselves to be the departments of human resource development. Nothing in the content had changed nor had even the approach, but still the fashion had got its new draping.

Each time somebody important in a current scenario projects a concept, there are a lot of people who follow the trail. Nothing wrong with that, The important thing is to understand how human nature moves and what the significance of words is in the larger context of those particular times. It is best to do an analysis without making a value judgement. Having said that, one can come to the present times and notice how the emphasis of the present dispensation in the national arena on ‘skill’ has brought the word skill to the center of the focus in learning.

There are attempts to offer degrees for certain types of skill formation. Some decades ago, skill was not such a happy word. No vice canceller of a university would have talked of a degree in ‘skills’. Education was supposed to be a ‘grand concept’, which indeed it is. The confusion with skill was, albeit, reducing its significance of the grandeur of the process of education.  To enter that debate may not be helpful at this stage.

The fact of the matter is that times have now changed and skills have acquired the level of an elevated pursuit. As mentioned earlier, there are attempts to offer degrees in skill formation.

Perhaps this is a recognition of the emphasis on doable learning. Anything which can be performed in action is now getting more valued.

By itself, it may or may not be a good thing, but it does show a tendency to reducing action largely to an operational front. The neglect, therefore, of concepts and ideas is proportional. By itself, the subject matter may be debated, but that remains, as the expression goes, ‘another matter’. This is inevitable and leads to some reflections. Skill by itself is important and perhaps far more important than the value attached to it in everyday parleys.

Skill is the foundation of all relationships. If one is attracted towards anyone else, it is only on the basis of that person’s skills. That skill may be in singing, cooking, speaking or dancing and the list can be endless. The truth is, nobody was drawn to anybody else, if that other person had no skills. Even a parent is drawn to a child, only at some action of the child, even if it was just a smile. That is how important a skill is. Without a smile, the child would draw no attention. Any adult sees a child seeks to establish some communication with that child and that child’s response is the core of the attention it gets from anyone around him. Later, that kind of interaction becomes the root of learning communication and more.

This seminal position of skill in human relationships has not often been noticed, either with analytical fervor or poetic exuberance. If that had been done, there would have been greater recognition that nothing, not even emotional bonding, takes place without some skill being the foundation of it. Be that as it may, it is an additional dimension of playfulness, friendship and relationships and from there it goes on to earning and livelihood.

What is happening today is the induction of this skill formation into a standardised format like education leading to a degree. Today even skill in laying bricks in construction can get the status of a degree. A degree is indeed nothing but the benchmarking of standards. Similarly, there is even a proposition on degree in acting and more.

In other words, like any other degree, a degree in skills can lead to earnings and a livelihood. This is new on the landscape. There is more to earn and more ways to earn with it than before. This has widened and deepened the nature of learning, which by popular parleys has been addressed as ‘education’. The industry, if one might say so, of education has its own components, which are widely understood but not equally commonly categorised in our operational terms. Such being the case, a time may have come to categorise different types of learning and different types of skills. It is this component of education which needs greater thought and analysis than has been done so far for ‘education’ leading to a degree.

It may, therefore, be a fit proposition to submit that to understand ‘skills’ as a part of learning, one needs to begin the overhaul of the learning process with an overhaul of the learning process of degree in ‘education’ itself. Operationally this could mean, to begin with, the review of the curriculum of the B.Ed. and M.Ed degree. It is generally agreed that conceptual reflection to be converted into operational reality requires a fulcrum point of intervention. In the text above, the philosophical reflection on skill has been sought to be combined with the world of action and research. This could be a point to be seriously taken on board for further discussion and action.

 (The writer is a well-known management consultant of international repute. The views expressed are personal)