Based on my several decades of life experience, I would say the point is there’s hardly anything useful that you can learn without doing. And there are many thi

Based on my several decades of life experience, I would say the point is there’s hardly anything useful that you can learn without doing. And there are many things that you can’t do without leaving the traditional classroom environment. That’s why schools have chem labs, wood shops, kitchens, orchestras…oh wait, do they have those anymore? Another point is that you can’t really learn a skill unless there are stakes - a real goal you need to accomplish, real customers, real coworkers. Grades aren’t real stakes; at least I didn’t regard them as such. I’ve seen this over and over through the years as new college grads arrive who know a lot about things but have no idea how to do those things. Unless they went to a school with a good co-op program.