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Education vs Experience

by lacqui on June 11th, 2010

I’m a communications technician in the Canadian Navy.  As such, I spend alot of time either on ship or in school.

I’m currently in a school phase.

One problem with technical education is that, no matter how good the instructor is, there’s absolutely no way that he can show you everything that can possibly happen with the kit.  You can spend years studying one piece of equipment in the classroom, and as soon as you see it in the real world, it will do something completely new.  Especially when users are involved.  And more especially when it’s designed to be shot at.

One of my fellow students seems to disagree.  He feels that absolutely everything should take place in class; he seems to feel that education is a replacement for experience.  Given enough time in the class, he feels, you should be able to solve any problem without any thought.

I guess it remains to be seen once we get back onboard ships, but I truly believe in education as a base for and a supplement to experience, not a replacement for it.

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  • http://www.reneestephen.com Renee

    Um, yeah, that guy would be what we like to call “wrong.” :) Working in tech/eng education for years I can positively state that education without practice is worthless. Profs try to build in practice and experience in the classroom, but until you actually do something (a few times) in the field, you can’t really be said to have learned it. Which is why there’s such a thing as a “P.Eng,” and not just an Engineering degree – five years of professional practice is required in engineering to be considered a practicing (get it?) engineer. Tech is no different, pedagogically.

    So there =)

    • http://blog.lacqui.com lacqui

      Ah Renee, always direct and to the point :)

      The best part of it is that, in order to get onto this course, we had to have at least a year onboard ship. Which means that he should have experienced thinking on his feet and not knowing all the answers.

      Bonus points for the fact that he’s been deployed to the Gulf. You’d think that spending half a year in a war zone would wake him to reality.

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