andyh wrote:
batou wrote:
experience
Surprisingly enough this nails it.
You can only truly be educated via experience.
Learning about something second hand just doesn't cut it.
That doesn't hold water for me or in my experience. I have read stuff about many different subjects which I have little experience of to a highly proficient level. Armed with that knowledge and understanding the principles and reasons why certain things are done in the way they are done allows you to achieve things without being experienced in other fields.
For example some server administration knowledge allows web developers to understand aspects of the system environment with out being experienced in server administrators.
Understanding is the key to education and that is what modern schooling doesn't provide for the most part. If schools taught people how to learn and understand things people would be far better equipped to educate themselves, for life and not just while at school passing exams or for a particular job roll.
People can be experienced in something and still have little real understanding of what they are doing. Computer programming would be a good example of that. I know people who can write programs and would be considered experienced programmers. I also know people who understand computers, who are programmers in multiple languages who make experienced programmers look like complete novices. The difference is they come up with totally unique solutions to problems because they can take unconventional routes to find solutions to problems. The reason they can do that is because they understand how and why things work, they are experienced and they are prepared to experiment with new concepts - reeducating and gaining experience is an on going process. If someone says to them you can't do that the first question they ask is why not and often they find a solution.
Understanding, experience, curiosity, motivation, imagination and determination etc. all contribute to education which is an ongoing process.
Ah well, actually understanding something is a whole new ballgame frog. The education system we currently have does not seem all that bothered about turning people out who actually understand things so much as remember certain facts for an exam.
You could also experience something and not have an understanding of it but the likelihood is you'll have a better understanding if nothing else.
