Are we failing our Children?

What is the difference between Information, Knowledge & Skill? Is our lack of understanding and giving the right priority on these failing our children in their education?

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The knowing of what a Fish, a Fishing Rod, a Fishing Hook & a Fish Food is, is what I would call as the Information.

The knowing that fishing hook attached to the fishing rod with the right fish food stuck to its end is the basic minimum things needed for fishing could be called as the Knowledge.

The knowing that we can also catch a fish with any old stick from the storeroom, attached with a modified safety pin stuck with an earthworms from the backyard, is what I would call as the Skill.

Knowledge makes sense of the Information Skill puts the knowledge to the test & makes use of it in the real world. So there is little benefit of Information or the Knowledge until they are of use. No wonder, most problems of the world need skills to solve, & all the challenges need bigger skills to tackle.

BUT, still majority of the schools (at least here in India) tend to force-feed our children with a mixture of information and knowledge from across the spectrum of subjects, like it or not. A tiny mind of a child is subjected to this process for well over a decade and make them perfect at memorising & reproducing the information, once, at the end of the year, and never to remember it again.

Parents on the other hand queue up schools which smartly market this act of cramming more than what students can handle. These schools are in the race to increase the breadth & care two hoots about the depth. & parents just love it. Students get to try out yoga, dance, music, martial arts, horse riding and much more along with the need to mug up those different subjects by the end of next year. This factory style schooling pumps out students who have half knowledge about everything without a deep understanding about anything. A question asked an inch on either side of the topic, and they go blank.

On the other side, not too far away, a lazy society continues to maintain the status-quo but hopefully expects these children to join as adults ready with the magical skills needed to change the world.

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