Skills Over Knowledge

Skills or knowledge? Which one should learning leaders focus on?

As The 74 reported in a post (9/30/25) recently,

“…it is ever more common for school districts and states to publish ‘portrait of the graduate’ – a vision of the well-educated student. As a review of this collection of portraits reveals, there is little emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge. One study that scanned a large number of such portraits produced this condensed list: ‘Analyze to understand, care for and contribute to society, collaborate across difference, communicate in all media and modalities, create to solve and share, and practice self-awareness and regulation.’ Such a hodgepodge of metacognitive, behavioral and ethical goals is often confused, wrongheaded or underthought from the start. To analyze something, you need to know what it’s about; communication in the absence of learning might well be mindless or destructive. In public (and private) schools that are increasingly segregated by income and race, what ‘differences’ are we talking about?”

Admittedly, most traditional K-12 “portraits of graduates” turn out to be nothing more than a list of goals that don’t align well with the learning that is occurring in their schools. But it’s clear that the American public education system has forfeited away “skill-building” (reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development) in favor of absorbing “content knowledge” – especially in our secondary schools.

The promotion of content knowledge over skill development is now new. In this country, the importance of content knowledge was promoted by E.D. Hirsch at the University of Virginia, John White, Louisiana’s Superintendent of Schools, and organizations like Knowledge Matters Campaign. Their argument is that, without broad background knowledge, becoming a strong reader is impossible. As The 74 post points out,

“According to this body of research (and to common sense), it’s pointless to ask an American child to ‘find the main idea’ in a sentence like ‘he switched to the googly and so rearranged the placing of the silly mid-off – yet many English students would have no trouble understanding the cricket reference.”

Background knowledge is important when it comes to developing reading and writing skills – especially when you are dealing with black, brown, and poor kids. But all our abilities to access background knowledge has changed with the advent of the smartphone and artificial intelligence. Instead of learning E.D. Hirch’s list of “important facts all Americans should know,” every learner now has the ability to use their smartphone to access AI to learn what “the googly” and the “silly mid-off placement” actually mean.

One warning. As an adult learning leader, if you are going to favor skill development over content knowledge (and let AI help the young learner with building the latter), then emphasizing media literacy lessons with your young learners would be a wise use of time. Being able to figure out fact from fiction is probably the most important learning skill of them all in present times.

“Knowledge furnishes the mind – what we know is the most intimate, the most enduring, of our companions. Without it, we are but bundles of instincts, emotions and habitual behaviors. Fortunately, children love to absorb knowledge – if we would but provide it.”

In the future, if not today, it seems that AI is going to be the provider moving forward.

Til tomorrow. SVB