Educators are now becoming more and more socially conscious: Dr. Ray Lindley, Executive Director, American International Accreditation Association of Schools and Colleges (AIAASC)

Education has not always been available for all people and was often a luxury only the affluent enjoyed. Then as societal changes emerged, the opportunity for education began to change. The Industrial Revolution and the thinking of educators like Thomas Dewey and Benjamin Bloom began to have an effect.  They vocalized that not only did people need an education but in order to achieve, people would need certain knowledge and skills to be productive citizens.  

Knowledge-based education such a just knowing mathematics or science facts isn’t sufficient. Knowledge has to be application based. “When you learn something, you also need to know how to apply it.” Otherwise, knowledge in and of itself has little value. A leader in this better way of looking at education, Abraham Maslow also published the hierarchy of needs which indicated that humans aspired for satisfaction by striving to reach ‘self-actualization’. This occurs when people maximize their potential by rising above the basic learning of understanding, application, analysis and evaluation. Simply: all learning leads to fulfillment when that learning can be applied to full satisfaction in their every day lives.

For the longest time, institutions strongly emphasized that education was mainly a collection of facts. Emphases have again changed in the last several years. Education now includes learning other kinds of skills, crafts and how to live as well – it’s about how to become a more satisfied and productive citizen. 

So in addition to collection of information from textbooks, education began emphasizing soft skills.

Hard skills include specific knowledge and abilities to get a job done – these are technical skills learned in school. Soft skills, on the other hand, include social and communication skills amongst others such as being able to work in a team, networking, time management, conflict resolution, critical thinking, problem solving, etc.

And in a lot of situations, soft skills are given more weight than hard skills. It is also apparent that students who don’t perform well in knowledge-based education (collection of facts) but in learning that requires technical skills and soft skills. Many students fare better with this emphasis.

It’s also safe to say that often it’s people who possess soft skills who are more successful in life than those who only have hard skills. They are able to understand the task at hand and adapt themselves to a specific situation or promote professional development. 

Educators are now becoming more and more socially conscious and this is the change we’ve seen in the recent past.

Knowledge attained from books is not in and of itself enough – we need to educate students to develop soft skills as well.