You get it or don’t. Somebody has laid out an experience and people get what is meant or not. It can be about getting the fun or getting the passion, but can also be about more serious goals like getting the knowledge that is teached.

It is very difficult to get somebody else to get it. The best way is to adapt to somebodies thinking and adapt your teaching/telling. But if we look at schools a stange system has formed out of the many years students are teached. Schools need to have concrete goals and they need to plan what students have to learn. They lay out plans and try to describe what the knowledge is. If it cannot be described new words and jargon is formed. The knowledge is formed into theories, history, abstract concepts with the end goal to form a strict path fot students to follow.

Many of the learning today is by getting to a class where you have to learn all kinds of abstract theories and then repeat them at tests. Think of economy/business, management, media, nursing, communication, programming, teaching etc. These are all fields of work that are based on getting it but why do lots of students have to learn all kinds of abstact ideas instead of just doing it? Of course you have to learn some of the basic rules, but there is to much jargon and abstractions in this world.

A study that makes no sense to me is the local study Media and Entertainment Management. Management is not learned by abstract knowledge on how to plan but by experience. Only with experience you really know how media works, what the technological barriers are, where projects go wrong and why, how to plan your stuff etc.

In contrast with the ‘old school’ learning I am currently in the last phase of a study that is based on practical learning. You are constantly doing projects and by doing it you see what you need to learn to accomplish your goals in the real world. My best learning experiences was by doing very big projects with over 20 students and where everything had to be managed to a end product on a strict deadline. A lot of things went wrong, but by doing it people discovered who where the managers, the workers, the socials etc. Doing big projects creates knowledge and you get how to do it better next time. We are not encumbered with books full of jargon and we try to find knowledge in new ways. Teachers do not make your lives more difficult but try to help you at the sidelines with their knowledge. The end result counts.

The main difference is encountered when you combine groups of the two styles of learning. In general the old kind works with the rules and is less creative with coming up with new different ideas while the new group of students try to reach for innovation. I see that the new kinds of students are more focused on the end user/student/patient and less on the process. The abstract type of learning seems to lose the connection with real people. The new way seems to be based more on getting it.

The old way was formed because of managers and bureaucrats. I think many in between layers of managers don’t get it. They want to see numbers and theories on why something works or not. People have to form their getting it into theories to make it comprehendable for somebody that does not get it. But can you ever get it that way? Why are there managers that manage a project/study and don’t get it theirselves? Let people do their thing and evolve a passion so we get better patients/students/users etc. It is all about the experience, and without experience you will never truely get it.