"new graduates may discover that the biggest adjustment they make as they begin their careers is to unlearn the rules that helped them excel in the classroom, and learn the sometimes contradictory rules that govern their new workplace."
Maybe it's because this idea of unlearning relates to a current thesis paper I am writing, or maybe the general concept just intrigues me, but I think it's fascinating that the lessons we learn in school are so disconnected to the world we actually enter. The consequences of this, as Petit points out, usually require that we act and work completely opposite to the rules we spent so much time memorizing in school. But what does this say about our education system? What does it mean that we have to "abandon" what we learn, especially from higher institutions, to actually succeed in the careers we entered college to prepare for in the first place? It seems like an awful lot of learning, with not much to show for it. Makes me wonder if we should all revert back to the guild system, where students learned the craft they wanted to pursue by becoming an apprentice, shadowing someone who actually knows what they're doing instead of "going to school" for it first.
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