ABSTRACT
There has arisen a demand, at least in England, over the last ten to fifteen years that schools impart not merely knowledge but skills. On some levels such a demand seems both understandable and perfectly reasonable. So, for instance, few would cavil at the notion that before a young child can learn to paint or draw properly they have to be taught or develop fine motor skills, for example how to hold a paintbrush or pencil for maximum effect. At a different level – but still within understanding and reason – professional historians seem split at the moment between those who think that the school’s place is simply to deliver ‘the facts’ – or what passes for the facts at the present moment – and those who think that schools should try to develop the type of skills exemplified by a historian at work; for example, the identification and analysis of primary source material. However, skills talk and prescriptions involved with it have developed far beyond these uncontroversial examples. On the one hand, there has been a tendency to identify every ability or competence with a skill, so we could talk of walking skills or door-opening skills or shoelace-tying skills; where what we mean is that the person in question can walk, open doors and tie their shoelaces. Such a usage seems both strange and redundant. On the other hand there are people who want to insist that we can identify and teach a whole range of very general skills which are supposed to underpin particular performances; so, for instance, critical thinking skills, teaching skills, research skills. Even more extreme have been the claims of some who seem to want to extend skills talk into what would seem to be uncongenial and morally loaded areas, for example ‘caring’ skills and ‘friendship’ skills. The reactions of philosophers of education to this kind of linguistic
imperialism has been, largely, hostile. However, the recommendations as to what to do have differed. A conservative reaction has insisted that the proper use of ‘skill’ refers to a very narrow set of activities; that skills are ‘abilities that are minimally involved with understanding, that are essentially physical, and that are perfected by practice at the activity itself ’ (see Barrow 1987: 191). Others have objected to this account on various grounds, for instance that its emphasis on discrete, impersonal performances and the downplaying of understanding cuts the concept of skill away from areas where we happily and fittingly employ it. So talk of a master craftsman lovingly, knowledgeably and patiently working upon his materials is not, if we use the word ‘skilled’ to describe his performance, a misuse of
language but rather one of the central and important uses of the word (see R. Smith 1987: 197-201). Others have been even more liberal and, developing points ori-
ginally made in Ryle’s distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ (see knowledge), have suggested that any attempt to insist that skills are necessarily non-intellectual and physical does injustice both to the concept of skill itself and to the proper understanding of the relationship between theoretical and practical abilities (see Griffiths 1987: 203-13). However, Ryle’s notion of knowing how is pretty clearly a narrow one which discounts the influence of theoretical knowledge on practice. Whatever the rights and wrongs of these analyses, it is certainly the
case that we can talk of ‘skilful’ performances which go far beyond the unintellectual and physical; for example, a musician may be a skilful interpreter of Beethoven, a footballer may be a skilful reader of the game, and a historian may be a skilful weaver together of different strands of his narrative, and it would seem a little odd to cut ‘skill’ away from ‘skilful’. However, the above writers are surely right when they counsel
against such things as ‘caring’ and ‘friendship’ skills, for what we want in people is not that they exemplify any such set of skills – should they exist – but rather that they care and are friendly, which is a rather different matter. In this case, skills are being assimilated to something quite different, namely virtues.
