Gabriel Attal's age—he was born in 1989 and appointed prime minister on January 9, has been the subject of much discussion, both in France and abroad. Thirty-four years—isn’t that a a bit too old to lead a government ? One might immediately counter, with Corneille, that age is irrelevant. For, as the famous 17th-century tragicomedy put it, “In noble souls, virtue does not depend on the number of years,”^e century Le Cid in a line that generations of middle school students have memorized.

But we would still need to define what a “well-born soul” is, which raises the issue of natural gifts; and we would need to specify what “matter” we are referring to. Are there tasks—or roles—for which one is too young… or too old? And doesn’t that depend essentially on each individual’s own abilities?

This raises the whole question of the relationship between skills and experience. Examining this question will allow us to better understand the dynamics of the educational process. For it is this, essentially, that is at stake in this “matter.” What do the educational sciences have to say about it?

Knowledge, Skills, Experience: Are They Distinct Concepts?

At first glance, skills and experience appear to be two distinct concepts. In the context of the trend toward competency-based assessment practices—driven by developments in both training and education—skills have been the subject of extensive research.

The Government of Quebec defines competence as “the ability to act based on the effective mobilization and use of a set of resources.” This distinguishes competence from mere knowledge, which is not directly applicable. Competence involves:

• the possession of resources (in terms of knowledge and expertise);

• the ability to effectively mobilize these resources to tackle specific types of tasks (e.g., driving a car; installing a water heater);

• and thus the existence of identifiable families of tasks within the universe of possible tasks (e.g., subtraction problems; running a government department).

But competence is not something that comes naturally. Crucially, it is developed through learning. Admittedly, this development rests on a foundation of abilities that can be considered innate. Then, once developed, competence falls under the category of an individual’s internal resources; and, as such, it is considered a given—but a constructed one. Experience, on the other hand, forged over time, is unquestionably and entirely part of what is acquired.

Experience can be understood in two ways. It relates to raw facts: growing older; having lived; having encountered and resolved problems. And it is also a matter of maturity, which follows from these life experiences: these experiences have left their mark in the form of familiarity with problems, or genuine wisdom, which make it easier—and more effective—to draw upon one’s skills.

So there is indeed a significant gain that becomes part of one’s “repertoire” of personal resources. We learn from our experiences, and the sum of all these lessons constitutes what we call experience.

Education: Opening the Way to Self-Actualization

Ultimately, innate abilities and acquired skills are interconnected. Skills and experience are both the object and the result of learning. When an individual’s development is positive, skills and experience work in concert and pull in the same direction. In this regard, we can identify four main scenarios:

• a competent individual who lacks experience (the novice).

• experienced but with a very limited skill set (a professional with limited expertise and a narrow scope of practice).

• without skills or experience.

• and at the same time experienced and highly competent (an expert who is open to all kinds of situations and avoids getting bogged down in technocratic rigidity).

The mission of education and training is to advance toward this ultimate ideal. For personal development cannot take place outside of a human context, which provides a specific environment (historical, economic, social, political, and familial). This environment may or may not offer adequate support to help each individual realize their unique potential, desires, and abilities.

That is why Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen suggests we speak of “capabilities” rather than “abilities.” Each capability opens up a realm of self-realization (e.g., feeding oneself; participating in political life) where one can develop skills and gain experience… provided that the environment has educational and formative value. That is, provided it is organized in a way that fosters learning.

At any given moment, each person is (among other things, since no human being can be reduced to this alone) the sum of their skills and the result of their experience. Skills are developed and evolve. Their current state shapes experience, which itself is a work in progress.

Everyone is caught up in a spiral whose positive outcome is never guaranteed, and which can prove just as destructive as it is empowering (in the sense that Jean Piaget spoke of “empowering equilibration, ” which enables growth and increases one’s capacity for action). It all depends on the quality of one’s self-development in terms of skills and experience, and on the quality of the education and training opportunities offered by the environment in which one is fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to find oneself.

Human Beings: Forever Unfinished

Finally, we must pay attention to one last characteristic of human development: it is a process doubly marked by an inherent incompleteness. In his book *The Entry into Life: An Essay on the Incompleteness of Man*, Georges Lapassade brilliantly described human beings as creatures that are both premature and “immature,” “forever marked by an original incompleteness.”

Plasticity and fragility are two fundamental human characteristics. So much so that the capacity for self-improvement (for those who benefit from an upward spiral…) is merely the other side of “the individual’s perpetual incompleteness… mirroring the species’ perpetual incompleteness.” This dual incompleteness is expressed by the concept of “neoteny”—the capacity to progress through the development of juvenile forms, without any hope of complete and definitive completion.

Simply put, this means that education can only be lifelong. And that everyone is called upon to equip themselves with the means to continually progress toward the ideal of the individual who has fully developed their capabilities, as part of an “empowering educational journey.”

Ideally, skills and experience enrich one another throughout a developmental process that education is primarily tasked with guiding, before each individual takes the reins to become the master of their own life.

But this process of education—and later, self-education—is never-ending. No one can claim to have reached maturity or to have become an adult. Hence the relevance of the concept of “anthropolescence” (modeled on the term “adolescence”) that Guy Avanzini proposed to describe“that human being who never ceases to renew himself and, being born as many, never ceases to manifest—and to reveal—his plurality through a renewal of himself.”

That is why, in the end—with all due respect to Corneille—it is only at the end of a life that one can know whether the departing soul was “well-born.” For, paradoxically, it is by the measure of development that one can assess the quality of an initial given. It is only at the end of the story that the truth (which is always relative) is revealed.