Learning by Doing — A New Trend and a Trap Loved by Many
Past few years have seen a great hype in the concept of “learning by doing”, though a good concept which encourages individuals to work on their skills, manual skills to be more precise, however, now people are only seeing one side of it. People believe that learning to do things only through observations without understanding the context or concept behind them, without knowing the true mechanism behind them is enough.
the followers of such a belief have fallen in the trap of preaching to individuals that degrees and proper education is worthless as long as you are able to get the end task end. FORGETTING! that without proper knowledge of the true mechanism of something the task and job done is hollow and will collapse in time.
In countries like Pakistan the concept of this learning by doing is mostly seen at local auto shops where the head mechanic has two or three kids with him who learn how to fix automobiles through observation. The great learned ones most often cite this example on many platforms demeaning education and degree and claiming there is no practicality in it and only the work done in the field is worth any praise and people should stop opting for higher education and only involve themselves in the learning which is same as the one done at the automobile mechanic’s shop.
FORGETTING that the word “JUGAAR” (improvising) was coined somewhere for this same type of work. Jugaar is the work which is a huge part of learning by doing in the setting which is being encouraged by our learned class. Jugaar is not a 100% and has no guarantee of working. It might work for some time and end up into a bigger problem later on, like for instance a battery being improperly attached, wiring left unconnected, casing opened improperly ending up damaging the actual thing that was supposed to be mended.. BUT it is done and encouraged, while demeaning proper learning process through education.
Instead of encouraging individuals to learn and develop skills through proper contextual, theoretical and conceptual learning, we want individuals to just walk into the field and start doing things, improvising just cause people are in love with the a concept of “Practicality” without any educational and theoretical grounding behind the workings of things and phenomenon. the love of practicality is so illusive that its followers blindly follow it and preach it without even knowing what it really means or what its significance is that too if there is.
As part of the educated class we all owe it to others that we not lead them to a pitfall of loving jugaar (improvisation) and hating education. since it will only lead us into a more tighter situation than the world already is in. We are creating so called practicalists without any knowledge foundations of things, we are creating practicalits without any solid skill development. We are actually creating modern day zombies that only replicate things that too at a poor and mediocre level without any improvements or enhancements.
