Universities focus mostly on theoretical knowledge without any practical application of that knowledge. Many would argue that the primary purpose of college isn’t even to get you a job, but to develop you as a person. Hence, the huge focus on Liberal Arts. This focus runs so deeply in the academic world that for a long time (and still somewhat today) calling some “practical” has been a slur in the academic world. Practical physicists are people “who play with toys” as opposed to the chalk-dust inhaling theoretical physicists. (By the way, this distinction is well illustrated in the documentary “Particle Fever.”)
If you think about for a moment there’s really only one conclusion to make:
That’s fucked up.
Where are people supposed to learn the skills that will keep them and their families alive if it isn’t at the school where they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours learning?
The answer to that question is nebulous at best. Sir Ken Robinson suggests that the problem stems from the fact that the entire modern educational system was designed by academics in order to create more academics. They have managed to sway social opinion against mentorship and “trade” schools where practical skills, knowledge, and ability are learned.
When people start to ask, “How am I going to get a job” near the end of their years at college, most colleges just give that lip-service or send them to the “placement” advisors. I remember doing that and coming up completely empty. They focused mostly on creating connections with alumni and guilting them into offering jobs to theoretically trained new graduates. But, these graduates don’t really deserve these high-skilled jobs because they just don’t qualify. In some cases, unqualified people get the job because of their connections and school, which is even worse.
The solution has to be a shift toward practical skills education within these organizations beginning well before college. Younger grade school students are encouraged to explore, play, and experiment, but eventually this is changed to “do what I say” or what the book says to do without understanding why that applies to the world. By the time these kids get to college playing around with something to learn about it is frowned upon. The field trips end, as does the laughter and learning. If we are to help turn this around we have to embrace very messy experimentation.
I believe the best way I can contribute to this is to capture the list of things people ought to learn for a given occupation and then provide a way for members of learning communities to share their own exploration and discovery. I used to call this “delivery-driven education” but I’ve called it other things before. Lately, putting these requirements in the language of job listings as open credentials is my focus with the Open Credential Merit System. It is designed after the most successful practical learning program I’ve experienced: the merit badge system of the Boy Scouts of America. I’m really glad I was exposed to it even if I have a lot of problems with that organization for other reasons.
There is one community that we can turn to for proof that practical exploration and discovery works phenomenally well: hackers. The very act of hacking is 100% practical. It is about failure and discovery. It’s about trying this and that. And then it’s about applying that hack for whatever purpose. Those that excel in the hacking world have embraced the RWX method of reading, researching, writing about it, and exploring, experimenting, and ultimately exposing their discoveries. Perhaps this is the reason the hacker mentality is so despised by the academic world. When a hacker learns theory it is to explain why they were able to hack something in the most minimal, practical terms.
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