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>As a teacher of organizational communications, I agree that there's
>nothing sacred about certificates and diplomas. However, I'd want
>everyone to try to see differences between education and training --
>while it's easy to be self-trained, it's much harder to be self-
>educated.
So, what's the difference between education and training? Also, why is it
easier to be self-trained than self-educated? I just looked these two words up
in the dictionary and they aren't that far apart in meaning. The thesaurus
also uses them interchangably. And who cares how you learn something. If you
can't apply what you have learned, especially in situations that are completely
diffenent from the one used during the learning process, what good was the
education or training?
I have the degrees and certificates, and who cares? I have also worked on both
sides of this fence. I have been a teacher, a technical trainer, and a
technical writer (among other things). So what did the degrees and
certificates do for me? They got me the interview. I think what the real
issue here is, "Can the person hired to do the work do it." Too many people
(me included) assume that if you have the degree or certificate, you can do the
work. How many times have I been wrong about that! I've worked with (and
hired) too many people who have the degrees and certificates, and they can't do
the work. Degrees and certificates mean only that you have sucessfully
completed a bunch of courses. They don't mean you can do the work or even be
any good at it if you can do the work.
Don Timmerman (dtimmerman -at- anl -dot- gov)
Senior Techinical Communicator
Argonne National Laboratory
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