Differentiating between education and learning

The world is changing rapidly and along with it technologies, companies and entire sectors.  What does a professional need to navigate this in this world?  Is it enough to be satisfied with a degree and go out into the wide world?  Or is there another core skill that is needed?  Mr. Krishnan delves into this key question.

Mr. Krishnan (1986, Production Engineering)

Introduction

Ever wondered why people ask, “How much are you educated?”  No one seems to ask, “How much have you learned?”

I wonder if it is because they only want to know about the formal education that one has got, and not about the knowledge that one has gained over a period of time.  Or perhaps it is easier to make assumptions about a person based on the degree they have attained or the ‘brand of institution’ they have attended.  Whereas it is more complex to judge how much learning one has - for the questioner has to be equally competent to judge the extent of the learning.

Something and Everything

One day in 1983, when entering the hostel/dorm at PSG College of Technology, I saw on the black board a statement “An Engineer is one who knows Something of Everything, and Everything of Something”.

This was written by Prof. Venkatraman, then Principal of PSG College of Technology.

This statement looked like a statement of word play in English, but it was thought provoking. I internalized it, mostly because it sounded nice. Looking back, I consider it a cornerstone in my building.

It helped me in clearing the GATE entrance examination for getting into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) for Masters degree.

I used to watch the TV program in Doordarshan named the “UGC program”. This was an educational program by the University Grants Commission. That time there was only one channel, and we did not have the luxury of flipping channels, so I had to watch this program while having the evening tiffin. This UGC program used to cover educational programs in all kinds of subjects and streams varying from engineering, science, medicine, mathematics, sports and geology. Watching the audiovisual programs let me learn these programs easily without me having to effort consciously. I did not think that at that time, it would help me someway in the near future.

Entering the GATE

The time came soon. In the final year, I wanted to attempt the GATE exam and get into IIT for higher studies. I was determined about this, and I had prepared well, even to the extent of neglecting to study hard for the final semester papers. The GATE exam had 2 papers, one paper in the morning, wherein the student would have to attempt objective type questions in 4 different subjects including mathematics, physics, thermodynamics and structures and one paper in the afternoon on the main branch of engineering that one studied e.g., Mechanical, Production, Electronics and so on.

For the morning paper, I had prepared for 4 subjects, Physics, Structures, Mathematics and Thermodynamics. After answering the questions in Physics, and Structures reasonably well, I was stumped with the questions in Mathematics and Thermodynamics. I could not understand anything other than the question serial numbers. What can I do, now that I cannot answer 2 subject questions that amount to 50% of the total marks in paper 1?

“Stay calm”, I told myself.

Luckily then, while we filled the application form for GATE, we did not have to pre-select the subjects that we would attempt. We could select and write, whichever subject we wanted during the exam time. I remembered this, and scanned through the different subject questions. I realized that I could recall the answers for almost all the questions in Metallurgy though I had studied this subject in the 3rd semester. That done I again scanned and found that I could not answer the subjects like chemistry that I had studied earlier.

Was my luck running out?

Running out of options, I saw the subject Geology. Having nothing to lose, I scanned the questions in geology. I could visualize the UGC grant commission program popping in the eye of my mind giving the answers to the questions. Voila! I could answer geology questions, and there I wrote the answers to the geology questions.

I scored well in GATE and went on to do my masters in Industrial Management in IIT Mumbai, then known as Bombay.

What I learned “something in geology” then, helped me then in GATE. I owe it to my internalization of the statement “An engineer is one who knows Something of Everything, and Everything of Something”.

Learning by doing

When one reads the learning is limited. When one observes how something is done the learning is better. When one learns by doing practically the learning is complete.

This reminds me of what once Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa said in reply to a question as recorded in his Gospel, “What is the use of describing milk - that it is liquid, that it is white, that it tastes nice or that it is good for you?  The only way you get value from the milk is drinking it”

At PSG College of Technology, we had this unique opportunity to learn by observation and learn by doing practically. The college had on its campus the PSG & Sons Charities Industrial Institute.  During our engineering study, every week we had a 3-hour visit to the PSG & Sons Charities Industrial Institute. This was a manufacturing factory producing pumps, motors, agricultural diesel pump-sets, Lathes, Drilling machines and other kinds of machine tools. This industrial institute had a foundry, pattern shop, machine shop, motor winding shop, lathe assembly section, heat treatment section, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, and robots.

What better opportunity could an engineering student ask for?

Each week we were assigned to one shop to observe and learn. Sometimes we were given small assignments or tasks such as:

- wind the stator & rotor coils for motors

- sit at a stamping machine and produce the motor stator or rotor stampings

- assemble the headstock of a lathe

- make a sand pattern in a pattern-making machine

- make an oil core for a molding, count inventory.

When I close my eyes, I can still visualize the shop floor and the work that we did. Did we learn?

I guess we learned more by observation and practical work that has stood as our foundation.

Pareto’s Law

With that foundation, later in my first job, I could stand up to the challenge thrown by the shop floor workers and prove that I am not just a text-book engineer. I could handle a machine and run it like a professional machinist or could spot a mistake in a CNC program and correct it quickly before it ruined the job.

-       The purpose of Reading, is to Understand.

-       The purpose of Understanding, is to Absorb.

-       The purpose of Absorbing, is to Internalize.

-       The purpose of Internalization is to Practice.

-       The purpose of practicing is to realize its benefits.

My professor of Materials Management at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai taught us with the help of case studies. He used to give us case studies that we had to solve and present in the class.  At the end of our presentation, he would summarize the key aspects of the chapter in question. Due to this case study method of learning, the lesson was retained well in our minds.

I got the opportunity to take it a step further, to practice, to implement in real life and realize its benefits. While I was learning materials management from my professor, I was the hostel mess coordinator in my hostel-2 at IIT Bombay.

In the hostel cafeteria, I introduced the concept of 2-bin system of ordering. For example, the monthly stock of rice would be kept in 2 different locations. In the first location would be kept 3 weeks consumption of rice, and the second location would be kept 1-week consumption of rice. The issue of rice initially would be from the 1st location.

When all the sacks of rice are consumed from the 1st location, the reorder would be triggered and the hostel manager would place an order for the next 1-month stock of rice from the merchant. By the time the stock arrived, the rice from the 2nd location would be used up almost. This way we could ensure a timely ordering of rice without having to wait till the last moment to order rice at a premium price.

One of the initiatives was to reduce the monthly bill incurred at the cafeteria.  How could we achieve it?

Again I put into practice what I learnt in materials management lessons. As per Pareto’s law, 80% of the cost is due to 20% of the materials.

Adopting this, I found out that the most significant cost is due to cooking oil consumption. We changed the menu appropriately to use up less oil, and over a period of 2 months reduced the cooking oil consumption by 50% and this reduced the monthly cafeteria bill.

Lifelong Learning

Learning is a continuous activity, and is a never-ending one.  A best practice is to keep a regular 30-minute learning period every day and stick to it. One could read any subject matter in that 30 minutes and grasp whatever is possible to be grasped in that time period. This would help in “Knowing something of everything.”

In history there are many famous personalities who did not have a great education beyond basic schooling. If we look at these personalities to see how they gained success, it would be because of their ability to learn.

Education has its limits, learning has none

Education has its limits because there are only so many courses being offered in institutions. Education is that which is taught. Learning is by self. Hence learning has no limits of time, no limits of age and no limits of volume to learn. It is left to each of us to spend time to learn.

Unlike in the olden days of only frequenting the libraries, today the Internet offers limitless scope for learning. It can be done at any time and place convenient to each of us. Audio files, YouTube, Ted talks, blogs, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - the scope is large.

It is worthwhile remembering that we need to not only learn, but also internalize, absorb and practice and thus realize its benefits.

The need for a questioning mind

Once, my professor ‘let me hear it,’ for reproducing in my assignment paper, something from a journal verbatim, and even quoting the journal. He asked me did I believe in what was stated. I said I believed it because it was published in a journal of repute.

He then said that in the years to come there would be many authenticated and unauthenticated statements that one would come across. Unless we question them and weigh them logically and accept it through careful logical analysis, it would be dangerous for us to accept what is written in different sources. That was in the year 1987, when Internet and worldwide web was unheard of.

How true it is today in the days of unlimited search tools that churn up so much unauthenticated information!

What a thoughtful statement from him - “Have a questioning mind.”

The questioning mind is one of the tools that I use regularly to get different answers and solutions.

Open book examination experience at IIT Mumbai

In 1987, in our Marketing Management paper, our professor gave us an Open book examination. He gave 2 questions to us, and gave us 3 days in which to answer. He told us that we could refer to any book or journal in the IIT Bombay library. It was the time before the advent of Internet, and hence we had limitations in our search facility. We had to resort to use our minds to search through different books and journals in the library to write the paper.

We all fared poorly in this exam.

What was the reason?

We did not know where to tap for the right information, and hence could not get to search in the right books and journals. Even today, if we do not have enough basic information on a subject we would end up getting ourselves wound up in endless searches in the Internet without much of success.

Our lesson: Know where to tap for information, and what to tap.

Prof. K. Venkatraman, who I have mentioned at the beginning, wrote a paper on Theory of Machines. Did he prepare us for the future?

In the third semester of engineering we had the paper he wrote on the Theory of Machines and it was taught by the author himself. The subject matter was tough, but the classes were interesting.

When we opened the question paper in the semester exam, we were shocked. The questions were not the simple straightforward questions from the classic textbooks that we had gone through.  Each of the questions incited us to think about different concepts that we had learnt in Theory of Machines and come up with the answer.

For example, one question was about the testing of a diesel engine on an engine test bed. Usually this kind of question would involve the calculation of Brake Horse Power of the diesel engine.

This question was asking “If the brake drums are cooled by water at a certain flow rate, what is the final temperature of the water running out?” This involved us to go outside of Theory of Machines and use the concept of Heat Transfer and Fluid flow rates along with Theory of machines.

I wonder if he challenged us so that we prepared ourselves for the future by knowing how to connect the dots.

Let me share a touching anecdote here:  We had gathered in 2011 for our 25th anniversary celebrations on campus.  A small group from the class of 1986 decided to visit Prof. K. Venkataraman at his house.  He was retired and quite elderly by then.  He had tears in his eyes when students visited him out of sheer affection.  Many stories, laughs and memories were exchanged during the visit.  This was particularly possible because he was also principal of the college at the time, and thus got to know many of the students well as part of these responsibilities. 

As the group was leaving, ever the professor, he whipped out a piece of paper and gave the visiting group a design problem!

The rest of us who had not gone to visit the professor gave an affectionate but audible sigh of relief.

Imagination and Intelligence

“Imagination is more important than Intelligence,” Albert Einstein.

How true. When the human being started to dream, started to imagine, new things came into being.  New methods, and processes, new literature new discoveries and inventions came into being. Intelligence helped achieve what the mind imagined. Without imagination there would not have been the possibility of creation.

So my encouragement to you is to start imagining. Get on the road to discovery and invention by starting to imagine. Only in our imagination can we set ourselves free of limitations. Once we get limitless thinking, the possibilities multiply, the avenues open up.

There are many intelligent people around in the world, and many of them do not get to achieve much. Yet there are some achievers who have not been considered particularly intelligent. These people had one great prowess, that of imagination. Once armed with imagination, they imagined what they wanted to achieve, and it drove them to achieve it by getting whatever skills that were required to master the achievement.

One such example is Wright Brothers who were only bi-cycle shop owners. They did not have formal learning in technology beyond bi-cycle repairs. Yet they achieved the first flight. If one were to look at the parts that made up their first flight, it consisted of bi-cycle parts. Their imagination drove them to achieve the first powered flight by human.

Imagination opens up a large space of possibilities.

Leonardo Da Vinci was a person with great imagination. Coupled with learning, he excelled in everything. Where he thought that he had to gain knowledge, he went and sought it. 

Enough of just reading.  Let us start thinking, start Imagining and start the action.

There would come a time when in some of the subject areas the reading material would become repetitive. It is then time to start to put into perspective all that we have read in that subject, connect the dots, and form our own thoughts and perspectives.

That is when original ideas spring up. Coupled with imagination it would open up a new arena to conquer.

From musical notes to music

I would like to share a particular aspect from the Southern Indian tradition of Carnatic Music.

Students learn from a teacher step by step. After a certain stage they are encouraged to experiment on their own. This is when small sections of compositions are made by students from their minds, from their imagination. This makes the rendering by each student different and brings a beautiful melody to life..

Similarly, each of us by the time we are in our twenties would have a good basic knowledge of some of the subjects. It is time to use up this basic knowledge and churn it with formulations and hypothesis to come up with new findings.

Examples are plenty:

-       Coming up with a new machine

-       A new mobile App

-       A new management hypothesis

-       Anew way of improving production performance

-       A new art work

-       A new architecture.

Once the thoughts spring up, it is time for Action.  The action to achieve in real what we thought up is the culmination of our learning.

Summary

Throughout my schooling and subsequent career, from my first day at college, I have been struck by the importance of the difference between education and learning.  I hope through many of the ideas, examples and anecdotes above, I have been able to share the crucial distinction between the two.  One of the great writers of science fiction, Isaac Asimov said, “Self-education, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”  So let me summarize by stating that education is something that is taught, and learning is something that is self-taught.

About the author:

Mr. Krishnan is a Production Engineering graduate. He currently is engaged with companies in India in improving manufacturing efficiencies through digital technology. He lives in Bangalore with his family.