K. Letter K is for knowledge, but, what is knowledge, actually?

K.

What is knowledge? As far as I am concerned, knowledge is connected to skills and attitude that an individual has on a particular subject matter such as the knowledge a plumber has to know how to change or fix a leaky tap and having the attitude to charge you $100 for doing something you cannot do yourself, or more importantly, be bothered to gain the knowledge to do it yourself in an effort to save some money.

Knowledge is what a teacher imparts to his students. Coincidently, I looked in the dictionary to learn what the word "impart" means and it says exactly this:

impart
/ɪmˈpɑːt/
verb
make (information) known.
"The teachers imparted a great deal of knowledge to their pupils"

That is exactly what I want to talk about - how does a teacher impart this knowledge to his students? How does a teacher know the student has gained the knowledge he is imparting? Take a look at this graphic:


What I gather from the cartoon above fundamental to 'knowledge' is the meaning of 'understanding'. The idea of 'imparting' knowledge sounds bizarre as the dictionary forgets to address the significance of the word 'pupil' in this case. To add to the confusion, the true meaning of the word teacher is also in question here as I am of the belief that we, that is, people like me, educators and trainers, are not teachers but facilitators of education.

What is education? OMG, I am going to be here forever. Stop digressing. Let's focus and get back on track. What is knowledge? Before I can evaluate what knowledge is, it is important to address the issue of learning and to what extent does a student gain the new knowledge learnt? How does a teacher evaluate and measure or assess what the student has learnt?

Knowledge is not about knowing something but proving to someone else that you know something and that other person making the judgement to whether what the student knows is what is needed to be learnt, and this leads to the communication between the teacher and the student and the understanding on what needs to be done so that the teacher can make the correct judgement. 

A new set of questions here: what is the correct judgement and who is responsible for this? 

When I have more time, I will come back to this, but for now, let me tell you that no one really knows anything, really. What is important in this fragile world is that we need to know where are we going to get our next meal from and understand that we can all disappear tomorrow and nothing really matters in the end if we don't know how to look after each other.


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