Core Skills and Up Skills - a debate

Thanks to Bernie over at Inside View posting about Core Skills in Ireland. He discusses the post 'Core skills not up skills' by Chris Horn, who says

"There's some considerable debate here in Ireland about the need to "up skill" our economy, in the light of loss of jobs to lower cost economies. I however contend that there is not so much a need to "up skill", but to "core skill" - to get back to fundamentals and thus ensure that we have a solid foundation of lifetime skills."

I feel there is a need to do both. We cannot ignore the fact that many workers now need to gain more skills if they wish to be in demand as ongoing or future employees. I see his point and fully agree that core skills are being neglected in primary and post primary schools. Getting back to basics now will only allow us to see the benefit in our children in 10 years time.

Horn says

" Our young people should be able to reason, to deduce and derive, to correlate and spot patterns, to explore and to be inquisitive, and to be articulate and confident. In my humble view, these are more life centric skills than learning facts and perspectives by rote: knowing something off by heart, but not understanding why, why not, and so what. Skills taught in schools should be for life. There are many things which can be learnt during adulthood, but some skills which are difficult to learn without a solid foundation during the teens and 20s."

Maths and science is where Horn is leading and feels our students are being let down by the education system that fails to take more of an interest in these skills.

In Britain Carol Voderman is being suggested as a Maths czar as a means of getting students interested in Maths, and there is an American TV police show 'Numbers' that is fascinating with the way it shows how we interact with numbers every day of our lives. The site explains the maths in the series and also has a weekly maths puzzle, well worth exploring.

Bernie Goldbach of Inside View states,

I know that many of the asipiring programmers have weak mathematical skills. Many do not program in second level education, so learning programming is like learning another language. Some first year students do not think logically and expect their third level education will remedy their deficiencies. Third level is often too late in the education cycle. Taking a page out of Chris Horn's blog, the primary level is where the skills start--in mathematics classrooms. Then those skills continue into second level, with an expectation that geometry, trigonometry and calculus get sound coverage. From what I see entering third level, I think there are serious core skills shortfalls in Ireland and I don't believe those shortfalls will be remedied during the current recession.

Bernie Goldbach is a lecturer in Tipperary Institute.