Knowledge | Pedleysmiths Blog

I have always thought that wisdom was something slightly magical, even biblical, reserved for those who have travelled the world in search of the secrets and meaning of life.

But in reality, it’s far less mystical and is more likely the result of a lifetime or simply a longtime of “good learning”.

This year marks my 30 years with Kaplan a professional education company here in the UK and I am leaving for pastures new. This has inevitably meant I have been doing a lot of thinking about the past, reflecting, and asking some fundamental questions such as, what do I know now that I didn’t know 30 years ago, what has been my most important lesson, and of course the classic, what do I know now that I would share with my younger self? So, I hope you will allow me this slightly self-indulgent post about wisdom.

What is wisdom?
There seems to be no single definition of wisdom, although all agree that it is much more than simply possessing knowledge. There is also a commonly held view that intelligence plays a part largely because if you are intelligent you are able to solve problems and learn from experiences, but it would be wrong to conclude that intelligent people are wise.

“A Clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” Albert Einstein

A simple definition is probably all we need – “Wisdom is the ability to make sound judgments and decisions based on knowledge, experience, and understanding.” And when you read that back, wisdom becomes far more accessible and less mysterious. In fact, who wouldn’t want to make sound judgments every single day – We all need wisdom.

“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

But the definition gives little away in terms of what is meant by knowledge, experience and understanding. John Vervaeke, the philosopher, and cognitive scientist goes a little further by saying that to be wise you need the ability to identify what is relevant from the vast amount of information we are exposed to. “Relevance realisation” helps us navigate complexity and make sense of our world, but to do this you need to pay attention and challenge what you see, continually looking for feedback. This is an example of thinking about how you are thinking or metacognition, reflecting on what was momentarily in your mind and asking questions as to its accuracy, your bias and prejudice. And when you can do that, it becomes possible to develop insight, the aha” moment that comes from a deep understanding, revealing previously unseen connections.

Okay, that might be a little too much detail but I think it shows that in order to develop wisdom you need the ability to challenge your own thinking, in search of a greater and deeper understanding.

Wisdom and age

“Knowledge in youth is wisdom in age.” Proverb

The relationship between age and wisdom is nuanced and multifaceted. While age can contribute to wisdom, it is not an absolute guarantee. Wisdom, can be accumulated over time as a result of having different life experiences, but its not necessarily the experience that creates wisdom, it’s what you learn from it. Additionally, with age often comes a greater capacity for reflection, you may simply have more time to integrate your experiences into a broader understanding and as consequence develop that all important insight. Emotional regulation also tends to improve with age, contributing to more thoughtful and less emotional and reactive decision-making.

However, it is important to acknowledge counterpoints that some cognitive abilities for example problem-solving and processing speed, decline with age. In fact, studies from the Berlin Wisdom Project suggest there is a plateau of optimal wisdom performance in middle and old age, with some evidence of wisdom decline starting at the age of 75. One interesting aside, wisdom tends to correlate with less loneliness. In a study from the University of California, San Diego, in 2020 researchers found that for middle-aged and older adults wisdom warded off the worst effects of loneliness.

In conclusion, it’s not necessarily age that helps you develop wisdom. Its just that you have had more life experience and time on which to reflect together with a greater inclination to do so.

How to acquire wisdom
To think that you can provide an instruction manual for wisdom is at best ambitious and more likely foolish, but there might a few lessons we could learn that will move us in the right direction. A good starting point might be to ask a couple of experts:

Confucius said “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
And Socrates “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

From these “wise words” we can perhaps extract some of the traits of wise people. Wisdom comes from:

Reflection – is the process of introspectively examining and evaluating your thoughts, experiences, and actions. It’s a continuous process requiring a creative and inquisitive mind, questioning assumptions and seeking new perspectives. Reflection is an essential component of both learning and wisdom.
Experience – you need to have had some interesting life experiences on which to reflect. It is however not necessary to have “seen it all,” only that you questioned, challenge and thought about the experiences you have had.
Humility – Socrates went around asking people questions about justice, truth, and wisdom and found that despite them thinking they knew lots, in reality they were ignorant. To be wise you need to reach a sufficiently high level of questioning that you find your own level of ignorance, whilst at the same time not slipping into becoming arrogant.
Although not derived directly from the quotes, we should include Virtue – this is about consistently choosing to do what is right and good. It requires perspective, the ability to see things from the point of view of others as well as honesty, courage, kindness, and fairness.

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” Albert Einstein

30 years later
What a long time 30 years is, but so far it has been a real privilege to work with good people in an industry that helps people learn, and get a chance to change lives for the good. If I’m honest It wasn’t what I set out to do but its not worked out to badly.

And now to the hardest part, how would I answer those three questions I posed at the start?

What do I know now that I didn’t know 30 years ago – in some ways this is the easiest one because I have learned so much. But if I had to pick one thing it would be the understanding I now have as to how learning works. This has served me well in both my teaching and wider career in education.
What has been my most important lesson – work hard, have focus and purspose but try to be kind, make friends, and don’t fall out with people, life’s too short.
What do I know now that I would share with my younger self – A couple of things I guess, firstly that Socrates was right, “I know that I know nothing.” This is not so much about humility but a recognition that even when you get to a level of competence or expertise, there is always another higher-level waiting for you. And secondly don’t compare yourself with others, only with yourself, if you’re moving forward that’s good enough.

I cant claim the above as wisdom, but give me another 30 years and maybe I will have something for you.

The skills gap
Although it is estimated that by 2030 there will be more people than jobs for those with lower skills, research conducted by the Learning and Work Institute estimated that England faces a deficit in higher level skills of around 2.5 million people, this is why we have a skills gap.

It’s not that we don’t have enough people it’s that we don’t have enough people with the right skills. It’s an education problem not a resource one…..

The solution is of course easy, train more people, but its skills we need not knowledge, right?

What are skills
A skill is the knowledge and ability that enables us to do something well. There are many definitions of skills but I like this one because it highlights the importance knowledge plays. Although knowledge is valuable, on its own it has limitations. For example, knowing the steps to the Argentinian Tango doesn’t mean you will be able to dance it. Knowledge is theoretical, whereas skills are practical. There is arguably no better place to see how skills are learned than Strictly, the BBC’s hugely successful dance show. Celebrities with differing abilities are given a dance that they need to perform each week, the process they go through is however always the same, and involves practice, practice and more practice.

What is knowledge
Most people will assume that knowledge relates to something written in a text book, be it words, facts, dates, numbers etc, and they would be right. To be precise this type of knowledge is called explicit or declarative knowledge. You will also “know that you know it”, which on the face of it might sound strange but some types of knowledge (implicit and tacit) are unconscious. You have the knowledge but “don’t know” that you do, for example, “I can hit a golf ball straight down the fairway, but don’t ask me to explain how I do it, because I have no idea, I guess I’m just naturally talented”. One final point, for knowledge to be understood it should be applied in a specific context or illustrated by way of example, which lifts the words from the page, often putting the learner in a more practical environment where they can “see” what they need to learn.

The Knowledge V Skills debate
Often knowledge and skills are put into conflict, with some promoting knowledge as being the more important. The current national curriculum in England as set out by the then Education Secretary Michael Gove requires that pupils should be taught a robust “core knowledge” of facts and information.

“Our new curriculum affirms – at every point – the critical importance of knowledge acquisition”.
Michael Gove

Whilst others promote the value of skills over knowledge, suggesting that technology provides knowledge for free.

“The world no longer rewards us just for what we know – Google knows everything – but for what we can do with what we know.”
Andreas Schleicher, Special Advisor on Education Policy at the OECD

But like so many things this type of dichotomy is not helpful, with evidence on both sides attesting to the importance of each. The truth is you need both, you can’t learn skills without knowledge and although knowing something has value, it’s what you can do that is most highly prized.

How do you learn skills?
To learn a skill, you first need knowledge, for example here is some of the knowledge required to help dance the Argentinian Tango.

Every dance has its own unique music, and you can’t master it without developing a feel for the music. Tango is a walking dance, meaning that all the steps are based on walking. When you start learning, you must first master some basic movements. Beginners usually start with 8-Count Basic or simply Tango Basic. The rhythm is slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.

We can then follow what is called the four-step approach to learning skills:
One – Demonstrate the skill with little or no explanation (demonstration)
Two – Repeat with an explanation whilst encouraging questions (deconstruction)
Three – Repeat again with the learner explaining what is happening and being challenged (formulation)
Four – Learner has a go themselves with support and coaching (performance)

Skills are developed through continual practice and repetition, learning by trial and error, asking questions whilst receiving advice to improve performance. An analogy or metaphor can sometime help e.g. Finding your balance is about feeling stable like a ship with an anchor.

Transferable skills are not that transferable
The ultimate goal of those that promote skills development is that once learned they can be taken with you from job to job, they are in effect transferable. However, research suggests that this is not the case. In July 2016 the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK released the results of a two-year study involving almost 100 schools. The experiment looked at the benefits of teaching chess as a means of developing generic skills, in this instance mathematical ability. It concluded, that there were no significant differences in mathematical achievement between those who had the regular chess class and the control group. Playing chess, does not make you better at maths, on the whole it only improves your ability to play better chess.
This supports the argument that skills are domain specific and that critical thinking learned whilst studying medicine does not necessarily help you become a better critical thinker in other areas. One reason for this may be that to become a good critical thinker you need large amounts of knowledge on which to practice. Which brings us full circle, skills need knowledge and knowledge becomes more valuable when applied in the form of a skill.

Strictly foot note – there is an argument that the celebrities on Strictly are only skilled in one dance at a time, and what is learned from one dance does not transfer easily to another.