Education should be seen as an absolute necessity but our obsession with qualifications gets in the way of understanding the value of experience, argues Geoffrey Heptonstall.
In all the debate about the meaning and purpose of education there is one point on which the crustiest Mr Chips agrees with the most liberal experimenter: Education is more than qualifications.
When I worked in publishing one of my tasks was to assess French language manuscripts. I do not speak French very well, but I do read French. I’m not naturally a linguist. I did French at school up to A-level. It was hard work. It seems to me that the more impressive qualification is contained in my four or five years writing detailed reports on untranslated work. There is the clear evidence that I have advanced knowledge and skill that I can apply in a practical way, a commercially useful way.
But were I to approach an employer with this evidence I am quite certain it would be the certificates that would count far more than the experience. Like a friend of mine, a graduate in English Studies, whose university teachers included a professional playwright. My friend wrote performance pieces. He worked with distinguished names in the theatre. He became Head of Drama at a reputable school. When he applied to another school they refused to shortlist him on the grounds that he lacked the right qualifications.
Of course it is important to be qualified. Study means something more than skill. It means an understanding of the ethos, the values, and the purpose of the subject of study. It is not about mugging something up to get through the exam (and then discarding all that theory as useless.) It is about encouraging the intellect to gain an overview of the situation. Someone trained for a certain task may perform the task well. Promoted, they will be confronted by problems requiring perspective of a kind that task-training cannot offer. But practical qualifications, the proven ability to do something, may imply an advanced awareness that may be the more impressive for being learned by experience, by personal discovery rather than simply repeating the accepted formula.
To put another way: every newly-qualified professional knows that there is a lot to learn as they sit the other side of the desk for the first time. They may be addressed as ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ by people twice their age. But we know on whose experience the newly-qualified will rely. The most foolish thing ever said to me was, ‘You’re qualified: you shouldn’t have any problems.’ Knowing is not doing. There is no doing without the knowledge, but learning is gained, at least in part, by doing.
The point is that we are losing the appreciation of experience. This is partly because the world belongs to the young. It is partly because there are so many more qualifications. Or, rather, they are of a different kind. A letter written in 1911 recommends my grandfather as manager of the business he ran and subsequently bought. Today he should need a Business Studies qualification. That letter of recommendation was his certificate gained through application and diligence. He had background knowledge through the manuals he read and went on reading. (One, published in 1948, warned of the coming danger of an American retail idea, the supermarket.) He never stopped learning his trade.
Others of his generation undertook all manner of work that today would be the exclusive province of the professionally-qualified. Yet society functioned with these people in charge. Of course many who had never been near a university did have an advanced education. Often it was through evening classes. Sometimes it was in a technical institute that was the foundation of a modern university. This was an education integrated within the conventions of work and living in a community. In one respect the socially-integrated education was more fulfilling than formal study in a specific locale. Knowledge and skills were gained as part of ordinary life, not as a privileged access to a higher social stratum.
Education should not be regarded as a privilege. It is a necessity. A qualification should not be a mark of superiority but, rather, of service. Knowledge and skills need to be for the social enrichment of everyone, not the personal enrichment of the advantaged.
Geoffrey Heptonstall writes regularly for The London Magazine. He is a widely-published poet, fiction writer, playwright and essayist.
Join the discussion
Comments
Please login to post a comment or reply
Don't have an account? Click here to register.
While I understand the employer's perspective of using qualifications to benchmark levels of understanding (although not knowledge as that is not transferable), I also agree that education for skills should be much more than this. As a university lecturer there is an increasing pressure to teach students to pass the assessments which stems from the ridiculous notion that 'students are customers' and 'are paying for a degree'. The logical mind understands that students are not paying for a degree, they are paying for the opportunity to engage in a place of applied learning.
That is after all what tuition fees entitle the holder to. You pay your fees and you get access to the resources of the institution, the teaching, the experience of staff, the library, the databases, the research centres and the networks. No educational institution of quality advertises 'come to us and buy a degree', instead students are given the opportunity to 'read for a degree' once they are members of the institution. Unfortunately the consumer based society with we live in, which transmits information in 150 character chunks, does not promote this message as it does not fit neatly within the constraints of social media platforms and is not 'punchy' or 'sexy', as the truth invariably isn't.
So instead, too many students consider themselves as transactional consumers in the educational sector and approach their studies like they approach their shopping and assume that just because they have paid their fees, they are entitled to a qualification, see the recent report in the Guardian (2016) about a graduate suing Oxford University for not getting a First. If the education sector conforms to this social perspective of consumerism, then will qualifications still the way to best measure understanding? I, like the author, feel that education for qualification alone is not sufficient to demonstrate skills, certainly it should give the you basics, but it is only part of the process of becoming a master and not a destination.
I found this article very interesting and very informative. I also have this question in my mind from some time that how can we identify a person that he/she is well qualified or well educated or both one in my Ph.D. class a friend of mine raises the question among the faculty members of the institution that we should be modified our education system today it is surrounded by the race of getting marks in universities exam this stopped the innovation of the new products then our prof. stand up and asked him so you taught us that how should we teach PhD he said to him come on the podium and gives us a demo that how should we teach Ph.D. My friend went to the podium and write some words on the board and said find out the meaning of the words that I wrote on the board answer should be given in two minutes books was allowed to take help all the students and our prof. was joining the battle and no one was found the meaning of words then a friend said I just want to explain that no one cares about the knowledge anyone did not think about that today we would learn something new all the students and prof were indulged in a race then he said to our prof sir you know better than me about Ph.D. the thing I wanted to told you that how to teach
"Study means something more than skill." Lost me there.
Two words: Mark Twain
Sitting on the recruiters' side of the table for a moment suggests that one of the advantages of qualifications is that they are widely recognised as some kind of common shorthand for having acquired some body of knowledge and/or skill, with the same assessment criteria for those sharing the same qualification/awarding body/time of qualification. If an exam becomes discredited, it's devalued, fairly, for all. In a world where this is replaced with letters of recommendation, surely, any notion of privilege is magnified 'You worked for Apple, with this letter? Great' 'What is this Poxware Consulting? I haven't heard of that." We can't all be Apple designers. To say nothing of increased ease of forgery and increased difficulty in assuring the recruiter that the reference provider and their company have good bona fides. Sufficient education including the skill to learn new skills would seem to be a good starting point. But which knowledge and which other skills? For equal opportunity surely we should be offering access to the same courses to all people who match the relevant entry criteria, not just let Jane learn finance because she knows someone who can write a letter and give the nod to a manager at the family's bank for a job. I think if you look at the figures that you're likely to find that far more people learn at evening classes than used to be the case. In a global community standards (qualifications) offer imperfect but, I think, the best, most pragmatic, way to even the playing field for those seeking work. There's room for special cases to be made in a local community, I think where people know each other and for institutions to make allowances, as universities do, for backgrounds of hardship. Back to the days when I was OK if my dad knew the boss's dad? Hardly fair I think.