If we speak of learning environments the first though goes at schools and universities.
In my humble experience schools are good at:
- taking care of the kids (freeing parents time)
- letting the kids know each other and behave as a community
But schools have been terrible at teaching me what matters to live and work well.
I suspect the main critical issue in educational system is the concept of evaluation and grading. But it’s just a suspect and I won’t dig more on this issue.
Going back to my experience…
20 years at school didn’t teach me how to:
Look for the meaning in what I’m doing. “Don’t ask why and do your homework.” or “One day you’ll understand” kind of message was the norm during math lessons.
We never explicitily and consistently talked about “aims” in my school.
Where and how I learnt it:
I guess practicing experimental theatre for one year full-time taught me nothing was for granted and everything had to be designed or thought at least. In fact setting aims was always the toughest part of the job.
20 years at school didn’t teach me how to:
Look for my passions
Enthusiasm and high energy levels are reserved for the hour of sport not for the classroom where depression is the dominant emotion.
School never actively helped me about finding and nurturing my personal passions.
20 years at school didn’t teach me how to:
Facing complex situations / setting the problem
“There’s always the right answer for the given question”
And especially there’s always a clear question.
This is light-year far from the work experiences I had so far in life.
Where and how I learnt it:
The first work experience I had taught me there’s no pre-defined solution for everything (more on this in another mission : )
20 years at school didn’t teach me how to:
Do networking
and I mean: actively look and engage other people based on common interests.
With age-based classes that lasted years I was never encouraged to look for and approach other people based on their and mine interests.
Where and how I learnt it:
Studying abroad in the US gave me the opportunity to learn that networking is a skill (and it’s even fun to practice! :D)
p.s. In Italian we don’t even have an appropriate translation for the word networking. Isn’t networking the most important skill in the work environment?
20 years at school didn’t teach me how to:
co-create with others
Because they have to give me a grade, my grade, they never encouraged me to copy and build on top on my peers work.
Where and how I learnt it:
in the virtual world while learning to code and on Wikipedia as well.
With online videogames. I’ve been playing online videogames for years. There I learnt how to coordinate my efforts with strangers all over the world.
20 years at school didn’t teach me how to:
take initiative and risks, explore the real world, see failures as occasions to learn…
This is really the most important block of skills for me and maybe the synthesis of all the previouses.
Where and how I learnt it:
Organizing workshops and events inside a local and then european student association taught me the joy of taking initiative: to make things happen and to make things.
With these activities I learnt to generously take initiative just for the fun of it: with no expected clear direct benefit.
I could keep writing about personal finance, time management, english language, questioning the authority, cooking… but I don’t wanna write a monologue! 