The lightest load

“Knowledge,” my father used to tell me, “is the lightest load you’ll ever have to carry.”

He used that belief to prod me through high school and university. Later, I often thought I could hear him saying it to prod me through air force pilot training, and later still, through graduate school.

He’s been dead for decades now, but sometimes I can still hear him.

Thanks to him, I have an abiding belief in the value of continuing education.

That’s why I’ve been impressed by the information found on two or three Web sites suggested recently at a workshop on skills training led by Lynda Fownes, executive director of SkillPlan, of which I wrote last week.

An important off-shoot of SkillPlan is a site called Measure Up, which gives visitors the opportunity to practice (and then test yourself on) three essential skills needed in all types of occupations: reading text, document use, and numeracy.

The site was developed by the B.C. Construction Industry Skills Improvement Council, which is the group that founded SkillPlan, with assistance from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRDC).

The testing portion was done in co-operation with Bow Valley College in Canada.

The college and SkillPlan came up with TOWES, which they call “Canada’s essential credential.”

The acronym stands for Test of Workplace Essential Skills.

The TOWES project has developed a bank of test items which, taken together, make up an assessment tool to measure essential skills in workplace settings.

This is nothing like other tests for literacy skills. It has enough items that it can discriminate across the full range of skill levels demanded by many jobs.

The tests themselves are based on actual documents found in the various workplaces, and require that those taking the test process the information contained in those documents in order to complete a task.

A sample test booklet is available on the Web site.

More — a lot more — information about essential skills is available on the HRDC Web site.

There you’ll find almost 200 “essential skills profiles” that describe how each of the nine skills defined as essential are used by workers in any particular occupation.

These profiles weren’t compiled in isolation by committees of suited bureaucrats.

They were compiled through interviews with workers and managers — the real people you’ll find on the jobsite.

So far, profiles have been completed for all occupations requiring a high-school education or less.

Next up will be profiles for occupations requiring university, college or apprenticeship training.

Each profile includes a brief description of the occupation, a list of the essential skills most important in that occupation, examples of how each skill is applied, ratings that indicate the level of difficulty that must be mastered for each occupation and a few other things.

The site includes a simple search function so you can look through the database for the profile of the occupations that most interest you.

If you search for carpenter, for example, you will find that the most important skills for that trade are document use, numeracy and problem solving.

There are other skills needed, of course, and they are dealt with, but those three are considered the most important.

So if you’re interested in training — whether for the benefit of your employees, or your company, or your industry — you may want to visit these Web sites:

SkillPlan: www.skillplan.ca

Measure Up: http://measureup.towes.com

TOWES: www.towes.com

HRDC Essential Skills: http://www15.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca

Of course, you might also want to pay them a visit if once in a while you think you can hear your father’s ghost whispering in your ear about knowledge being the lightest load one ever has to carry.

You’re always welcome to comment on anything you see in this column, or suggest topics for discussion. You can reach me at korkykmail-column@yahoo.ca