Learning a Skill
If you watch a good chef in action they make their
art look easy. In fact anyone good at their job makes it appear easy. There's
a story of the underpaid and unappreciated programmer who left and had to be
replaced by a programming department that included a head programmer, secretary
and assistant. The management didn't appreciate how good their single programmer
was because he did it without any fanfare and made it look so easy.
In the past many trades were taught by apprenticeships. The student worked alongside
a master who taught the trade. The apprentice learned by assimilation, often
without really realising that they were learning. Nowadays, people don't consider
they are learning unless they get a degree. I went to university but I really
learned my programming skills by training under a master programmer. It wasn't
until some years later that I realised what I had learned.
Nurses, in Australia anyway, used to be trained by working in a hospital doing
basic chores. The trainee nurses were at the bottom of the pecking order but
they learnt the discipline and the techniques from the experienced nurses. Nowadays
the traditional technique is considered anachronistic and they attend university
to do a degree. Many nurses drop out, however, as they can’t see the relevance
of the studies they have to do. Just about every trade or profession has a degree,
and I've mentioned before (‘Education and Indoctrination’) that much of what
passes for education simply ensures students conform to an established ideology.
Real learning is assimilated subconsciously and most skills have to be practiced.
Techniques may be taught but practice and experience are the keys. Many people
who have a natural ability at a trade are driven away by the intellectual straightjacket
that a university degree imposes. In many companies the best people are passed
over if they don't have a relevant degree, often by people with an intellectual
understanding but no real experience, or by people who can play the political
game.
This is symptomatic of the lack of understanding in the West of what I've called
right-brained thinking. All learning nowadays is intellectual. Ability is tested
by exams that test academic knowledge rather than real life skills. One reason
for this is that employers want to protect themselves. They need to provide
some criteria to determine who to employ and possessing a degree weeds out the
most inept, even if it also removes some highly competent people. If a person
without qualifications turns out to be a complete failure the question is going
to be asked ‘why were they employed?’ If they have a degree the answer would
be that at least they had some qualifications (assuming they actually told the
truth). As a programmer I've seen many adverts for jobs requiring version x
of a particular software package. The person they finish up with may be useless
but at least the interviewer can cover themselves. When I've interviewed I've
always attempted to assess the skill of the person and their ability to learn
new skills. I consider that a good programmer can pick up a new package or adapt
to a new environment easily. I've seen many projects fail with programmers who,
on paper, had the perfect skills.
Another reason for the rise of the degree is that the trade institutions want to protect their empire. For example, you can’t join the Australian Computer Society without qualifications and many professional institutions are keen to provide a high bar to entry as it maintains their kudos and their salary levels.
