mmmmmmmmmmmmmgoood

Being a post whore today.

Infinitely frustrated with the adult world's concept of "training"..

Self Study

"Industry training, at least in its popular form, is roughly based on the model of a fire hydrant: sit in front of it, open the valve, and take a big drink. Due to time limitations, trainers present information at a rapid pace, with participants retaining only a fraction of what they see and hear. What knowledge they do gain seldom passes on to co-workers after the training session, and is forgotten almost as rapidly as it is presented, necessitating continual re-training. While working as an Instrumentation professional, I attended many training sessions, witnessing the inefficiency of the process firsthand. I have never seen a case where trainees leave a training session with increased skills as independent learners. Quite to the contrary, training sessions condition the trainees to become more dependent on the training cycle by forcing them into the role of a passive recipient. They often leave with the impression of the instructor being something of a genius for being able to present so much information so quickly, and instilling within their own minds a sense of inferiority for not grasping all of it at the delivered pace.

It also dawned on my reluctant mind that our pedagogical model at the college was based around this same "fire hydrant" methodology: present an incredible amount of information in a short time, and hope that students retain at least some of it. As bad as this philosophy is, it makes perfect sense why it is this
way. One reason is that vocational instructors are typically ex-industry professionals, indoctrinated in this method by years of short-term training. They teach as they have been taught. Secondly, knowledge-specific learning outcomes (written as long lists of specific subject areas and skills {are most efficiently dispatched in this rapid fire format. Not that students will actually retain all these things as they are presented, mind you, but an instructor faced with a long list of topics to cover is tempted to present them as quickly as possible due to time constraints."


And stolen from some Islamic Home-Schooling site:
"Education is life long and can only happen when the person is ready to receive what you have to offer. An educated person is an all rounder not deficient in any life discipline. A schooled person is a specialist. They can only do what they have a paper for. If they want to do something else they have to go away and do a course for it."

I don't think you understand that everything inside my being roils at the idea of self-study. It just seems WRONG. Part of it is undeniably that learning on your own requires more effort. It requires hard work, and I hate working. Plus I can't imagine what my life would've been like if I were expected to "work" at teaching myself some of the boring required shit I've had to learn thus far. I just *think* I'm dumb now. The range of things I'd know would be extremely limited. I mean even more than they are now. When I was little all I ever wanted to do was read. Fiction. Oh, and play piano. There's a long list of things I might've tried, but an even longer list of things I would never have taken.

Second issue that has me squirming is type-related. I just hate the idea of being my own authority, of having no real point of reference. All interest in learning would desert me if there was no payoff at the end of someone saying, "Hey, good job." If there's no approval meter and no assessment, I don't have any interest. Plus, we all know with the Internet that you can find 50 different sources to give you 50 different answers on something. How can you ever be sure? You'll just run around *thinking* you know something. At least in a situation with a teacher, you know that the knowledge is relative to his/her personal preferences, and all you have to do to "learn" is to come up with the answers that make him/her happy. It's no longer your cred that's the issue. If stuff happens, you just say you followed everything as taught by X, and that person becomes responsible. It's a lot better than having to tell people you just made some shit up or heard it somewhere. Then all the blame and responsibility is on you. You're the dumbass that didn't know what you were doing, and didn't bother to get any kind of qualified guidance. I hate the idea that you could be all off... way out in left field.. thinking you really know something.

Grrrr.

How often do you have to do something that just kills you and goes against everything you are? It's something like chopping off your own arm, going totally against your instinct for self-preservation. Why would I do that? Where would I find the inner strength and impetus to do it?