Education as acquisition of knowledge and skills

Back to: Educational Studies UGC NET – Unit 1

Education is derived from the Latin word “Educate” which means to draw out the talent powers of the child, the action exercised by elder generations upon those who are not yet ready for social life. The objective of education is to awaken and develop in the child those skills and knowledge which are required of him to fit himself to the social life of the society through education. Skill is the knowledge and ability that one acquires that enables him to do something. Whereas,  Knowledge is a result of many processes like knowing, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reflecting, observing, finding out, inferring and proving.  

Three Elements of Knowledge

The major three elements of knowledge are:

● Existence of a group of ideas and phenomena.

● These ideas and phenomena correspond to things which exist.

● The correspondence is supported by beliefs.

Everyday a child acquires various learning experiences through interaction with people, reading, observation and reflections. All of these learning experiences and perceptions form the content of a human mind and get organised as data, knowledge, skill and wisdom. Therefore, it is crucial for a teacher to know how children construct their knowledge and skills so as to provide them with proper learning support. Education is an instruction to acquire a large part of our society and technical skills. Schooling is merely a highly specialised form of education to learn the science and rules of behaviours of a society into which he was born. Thus education is an acquisition of knowledge and skills to develop in him the capacities through the highest learning which is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human.