Start with what cuts.
The knife is the first tool, not the scariest one
Most kitchen injuries happen not because a knife is dangerous but because it is dull, stored badly, or used with the free hand in the wrong place. A sharp knife on a stable board, with your fingers tucked and the blade moving away from your body, is one of the safest tools in the room. A dull knife on a wet cutting board, with your thumb across the top, is where trouble starts.
What you actually need
You do not need a full knife block. Most household cooking runs on two or three knives and one good cutting board. A chef's knife for the bulk of the work, a paring knife for small jobs, and a serrated bread knife if you cut loaves. Everything else is a convenience, not a requirement.
What matters more than the number of knives is whether each one is sharp, whether you can grip it comfortably, and whether you know what you use it for. A drawer full of dull blades you avoid is worse than one sharp knife you trust.
A knife you are afraid of is usually a knife that needs sharpening, not replacing.
The inventory is the action step
Before you read about technique, take stock of what you actually own. Pull everything with an edge out of the drawer: knives, kitchen shears, the peeler, the mandoline you got as a gift and have never touched. Note which ones are sharp, which need work, and which you never reach for. That honest list becomes the baseline the rest of this course builds on, because you cannot improve a kitchen you have not actually looked at.
The reading for this module
This is the core reading for the module. Take it with your earlier work beside you.
Take stock of what cuts.
List every sharp tool in your kitchen, note its condition, and identify what you use each one for. This becomes the baseline for the rest of the course.