Reality Challenged

From a young age, we are taught to live by certain rules. Schools teach you to speak when spoken to, and listen to people of authority. While that can keep you from getting a arrested, schools work you into wonderfully strange patterns.

If only you could solve your marital problems by answering a math question, or maybe score a new client at work by passing a spelling test. The trouble is schools give you the problems to solve and tell you the solutions that are 'okay'. They give you all the rules to try to get you to think a certain way. As many of us have found out, life is a little trickier than that. If you've ever had to work with someone fresh out of college that just kept asking you if what they did is 'close enough', you know where I'm coming from. I'm not opposed to people checking their work, but if you don't appreciate the goal of what you're trying to do, me putting a check mark on it won't solve your problem. Luckily, it doesn't seem to take too much real world experience to break someone of those habits.

Academia has this issue with the theoretical world. The problem is that that's where it lives, and the rest of us that don't live there are often a little busier and little more preoccupied with a little thing called reality. Phd's are a particularly good demonstration of this fact. When it comes to hiring them, they can talk the talk, but have them put pen to paper and see what little they can really do. Many of them have spent so much time thinking about problems and so little time solving them that frankly, they just aren't that good at it. Granted, they can and often have done some wonderful things, but their lack of practical experience and practical understanding often puts them at a disadvantage at least in my profession.

Of all the evils that schools have bestowed upon us. I'd say that grades are the worst. Students are made to understand that they these numbers are what matters rather than the material they might be learning. They cheat, bargain and whine to get higher ones. Competition intensifies the longer they stay in school. Med school students are often sited as the worst example, allegedly cutting up library text books to get an edge of other students. Frankly, I don't care if my surgeon was 6th or 106th in his class. I'm a tad more interested if they can manage the procedure.