Learning Could Be Counterproductive - At Least to Artists

In the past couple of weeks, I've gotten a much closer look at what tasks my son has to do for school. Of course, it took everyone, students and teachers alike, some time to adjust. 

After a few weeks have passed, though, it strikes me how few "actual things" have come out of his efforts. His assignments involve a lot of learning but not a lot of doing.

This matches my own memories of school. 

We learned a lot of facts, but there were very few instances where we actually "produced something". 

Even when we did make something, we never spent a significant amount of time learning how to make that thing better. I can not recall a single time where we went back to an essay we had written and worked to make it more polished, more compelling, or more readable - let alone "as good as it can get".

Everything we produced - an essay, a picture, a presentation - followed the same life cycle:

We made it, it got graded, and then we promptly discarded it. 

Somehow, we learned and learned but didn't acquire a single skill. 

It may seem very obvious that learning - the acquisition of knowledge - does not help us do things, but I never noticed it as much as I did over the last few weeks.

Real learning - the acquisition of skills - only comes from doing things. 

For physical skills, this seems quite intuitive. Of course, you can not train your muscles only by reading a book about how muscles work. 

We rarely talk about the fact that this also applies to skills we think of as "mental abilities". 

The only way you will learn to write an essay is by writing - and then perfecting - piece after piece. The only way you will learn how to make an argument is by engaging in - and promptly losing - countless debates.

True, some knowledge of biology might help us find a better strategy for optimizing our exercise regime. But we can find the same strategy by merely trying things out and seeing what works best. A book could be helpful, but it is not essential. 

Similarly, knowing how to structure an essay well seems helpful, but in the end, only doing the writing will produce the piece. Conversely, not knowing the best essay form can not keep us from creating something "of essay-like quality" if we just sit down to write. 

Perhaps it is even better first to write the piece and only later to learn more about the form and about how to improve it.

If we did it this way around, at least the essay would exist. There would be something to improve.

Besides, the more we learn about how to do something without actually doing it, the harder it becomes to reconcile our lack of skill (i.e. writing) with the expected outcome (i.e. the fantastic essay, just like the ones we studied). 

Maybe people are not natural overthinkers. Perhaps we just make them so by teaching them too much about how things should be done instead of encouraging them just to do.

We give them the means to “judge” before they have acquired the skill to "do".

We teach them artist’s block.