Why Learning by Doing Beats Traditional Education (And How Schools Keep Us Unprepared)
Most real skills come from action, not instruction. Here’s why hands-on practice consistently outperforms traditional education.
Most of us went to school. And if not everyone, then at least we all asked ourselves this question at some point: why am I memorizing all these dates, formulas, and facts? Why do I need to know the chronology of events — revolutions and conquests that happened hundreds, even thousands of years ago, in countries where I don’t even live? Why do I need to understand how chemical compounds work or molecular interactions if I’m not planning to become a scientist and conduct research?
These questions haunted not only me, but everyone who ever stopped to ask themselves: why am I doing this? What’s the point? Those moments of awareness when you question the purpose of your actions — those are some of the best questions you can ask yourself, your surroundings, or even into the void. Trying to find answers is how we gain new knowledge, how we open the door for it. When a question arises, you inevitably start searching for an answer. If you don’t find it immediately, it spins around in your subconscious until you find the answer either deliberately or by accident.
Conform Or Face Unpredictability
The classical education system was built a long time ago, decades in the past, and the school-university curriculum can’t keep up with the speed at which society and the surrounding landscape change. The frequency and volume of changes are so great that retraining teachers in schools or universities simply isn’t feasible. To teach, you first need to study to become a teacher, get an education, and only then start working.
Good teachers are those who have experience, teaching talent, understanding of psychology, the ability to communicate with people — a set of skills that not everyone possesses. But we all go through school. Some drop out, some, like me, try to survive in this system, conform to the rules, get good grades, defend dissertations, all to guarantee a calm future.
When that future arrives, when you enter the job market, it turns out that knowledge isn’t as necessary as you thought. This wasn’t entirely unexpected — we asked these questions before — but the paradox is that no one gives you answers, yet you still have to perform these actions despite the absence of reasons. No one knows anything better, there’s one scenario that everyone follows, and you have to follow it too.
Especially when you don’t have weight and power in your words, you can’t resist the will of parents or your environment, which influences you so much that it’s scary to do anything outside the framework. You follow established norms.
The Real Purpose of Education (That Nobody Tells You)
Here’s what I’ve come to understand: education isn’t aimed so much at gaining knowledge as it is at training your brain. Exercises where you have to engage your cognitive abilities, think, remember — these shape your brain, your ways of thinking, your patterns. For example, solving geometric problems is built on algorithms. If you solve dozens of such problems, then when solving life problems, you might see a pattern and apply the algorithm. But we’re taught to solve problems, not the algorithms for solving them. You have to figure that out yourself. It’s not obvious, it’s not lying on the surface, and you understand it years later.
Reading books expands your horizons, especially literature, and allows you to draw on centuries-old wisdom that great writers share through their immortal works.
Mathematical or chemical problems develop logical thinking, allowing you to use skills to solve problems, which is training for the brain. In adulthood, you need to apply this same brain. If it’s been trained since childhood, when it’s plastic and forming, things will be easier for you.
But for some reason, more than a decade has passed since I finished school, and I still have to justify it in your eyes and come up with ways that school helped me. At school, nobody knows about this, nobody talks about it, nobody explains it to students. They just present you with a fact: memorize these dates by tomorrow. For what purpose, why — even the teacher doesn’t know. Why these dates? Because they’re in the textbook approved by the Ministry of Education, which hasn’t changed in years.
Did School Really Teach You Something?
“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.”
- John Dewey (20th century, American educational reformer)
Think back to your first real job after university or school, whichever came first for you. What skills or knowledge from school did you actually have to apply, what exercises done in school helped you solve problems that move the business or structure where you work forward, what abilities acquired in school helped you deal with deadlines, pressure from colleagues, client expectations, bill payments? I’m confident the number approaches zero.
And here’s what the data shows: I’m not alone in this observation. According to a 2023 survey of 1,600 participants, 77% of recent college graduates said they learned more in six months on the job than in four years of college. Even more striking, 68% felt their degree did not provide the skills needed for their job. On the employer side, 75% of HR leaders believed colleges “aren’t preparing people at all” for workplace needs.
The numbers don’t lie. There’s a massive gap between what schools teach and what real work demands.
Living in a World the Education System Can’t Catch Up To
Why did all this happen and why does it continue like this? Why do we live in a different world, one that changes every day, where there’s artificial intelligence that, together with robots, is actively replacing people, and soon not only physical but also mental professions will be performed not by humans? In a world where there’s the internet, where knowledge and information are freely available to anyone who can connect? Where there are more smartphones than people, and access to data has never been easier?
In a world where information isn’t the new gold, but is so excessive that a new problem has emerged: information overload. Psychological disorders arise because the brain can’t cope with the flow, volume, and variety of data.
These are theoretical questions, reflections, but I’ll lead you to this: on the internet, in data sources, there’s a lot that you can use to your advantage, to gain the skills you need independently. The system doesn’t choose for you what to study — you choose what skill holds you back, what you need to acquire to move forward.
For everyone, this is their own set of knowledge. Freedom of choice gives almost unlimited opportunities to live and develop in the modern world, if you have access to the internet.
When Real Learning Actually Begins
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
- Confucius (c. 5th century BC, Chinese philosopher)
I can’t help but recall an example from my own life. I was invited to work when I was in my second year of university. Due to peculiarities in my thinking and the fact that I enjoyed computers, which I got early in life, I was interested in programming. In programming classes, I did well, which my teacher noticed. She invited me to work at the university’s information center, which she managed, as a programmer. Without thinking long, I agreed.
In my student years, the alternative was working in the service industry, where they paid more, but programming work appealed to me more because it gave prospects and experience by the time I graduated from university — a critical factor for finding work. I agreed and came to work my first day as a programmer.
The first task they gave me was very different from what I’d done before. At university, they explained how to solve a problem, gave methods and templates, and by applying them I got the expected answer. Here it was different. My boss gave me a task: write a system.
We were writing an information system for the university to maintain a database of students and applicants — a custom ERP system where all information about students was stored. There were user screens for managing information that was filled in when entering the university.
A One Task And a Pile of Books
My task: create a query system for the database that would be convenient for a simple user, so they could compose a query and get results in the form of a dynamic table, generated from the database of students and applicants.
I’m staring at the computer screen, having written down the task formulation in my notebook, not understanding what to do or how to solve it. I didn’t know what a query system was or what an ERP system was. We only started studying these two courses later.
I wasn’t working alone — I had a colleague who had been writing this system for a long time. The logical question to him: where do I start? He understood that I had no experience and handed me a set of books: about PHP, a textbook on SQL, and a textbook on JavaScript. Three huge thick books, more voluminous than many literary works we read in school.
Listening to my colleague, I started reading, quickly realizing that I wouldn’t finish the task today. I clarified the deadline. The manager understood that the task was new for me, but without a deadline, it would never get done. She set a deadline — one and a half months. Considering working time, this should be enough.
I have a deadline, three huge textbooks, and zero understanding of what to do.
To be continued.
The Moment Everything Changed
So there I am, sitting in front of the computer, surrounded by textbooks, looking at the task I need to complete, not understanding which side to approach it from. I start reading textbooks, doing some basics. But I run into the first problem: I need to install a software environment to access the database. I need to have access to the server to upload executable files. We wrote in PHP, JavaScript helped with queries.
Remember, this was a time when the internet wasn’t developed enough to find an answer to every question. There was no Stack Overflow where you could copy-paste code. Everything had to be written almost from scratch, which is what we did. I had a more experienced colleague, and I wasn’t shy about asking him questions. He showed me what programs he uses, what to install. I followed his advice, copied his experience.
He showed me the foundation for my product. In the admin panel with database access, there’s a query system, convenient and flexible, allowing any query. My task — make the same thing for our database, an analog of this system. I started doing it. I have a sample, tools, a colleague I can ask, books from which to draw information.
Then everything moves forward in iterations. I need to understand where the code begins. First, make a page with a connection to the database. I go to the book, see how it’s done, from the very beginning — that’s how any program in PHP starts, I figure out what a connection is, how the database works, I read the SQL book, connect, study the structure, and so on step by step.
The Final Release
By the appointed deadline, in one and a half months, from under my hands comes a finished product — a query system that we publish for users. The boss is satisfied, users not so much, because it’s complicated for them. I had to train them: I came to users, showed them how to use it, wrote instructions, posted them.
This is where the real learning happened. Not in the classroom where we discussed theory. Not in the textbooks I skimmed. But in the doing. In the building. In the struggling and figuring it out as I went.
And this aligns with what research has consistently shown: active learning — where students engage in practical problem-solving and hands-on activities — significantly outperforms passive lecturing. A landmark meta-analysis of 225 studies found that active learning improves exam performance by approximately 6% on average and reduces failure rates by over 10%. Students in project-based learning classes have been shown to score 8 percentage points higher on science assessments than their peers in traditional classrooms.
The data confirms what I experienced firsthand: you don’t learn by listening. You learn by doing.
From Zero to Hired: The Power of Real Projects
Everything continued similarly after that. They’d give me a task, I’d complete it. Over 4 years of work at the university, by the time I graduated, I had decent experience in programming and developing information systems, real ones from day one. I learned to program in PHP, JavaScript, describe systems that real users actually used, get feedback, refine them, develop my skills.
Later, I had no problems with hiring, since I wanted work in IT. As soon as my resume appeared online, calls started coming, invitations from companies. All I had to do was choose what I liked. This was in 2011 — now the market is different, but nevertheless.
What’s the point of this story? To learn a skill, for example programming, you need several things. The key thing is not to take a course or learn something formally. We had a programming course — they taught theory, how code works, algorithms, methods for solving problems. But when faced with a real task, I realized that not one methodology was needed or useful, and I didn’t know what to do specifically.
This is the fundamental problem with traditional education. It prepares you for tests and exams, not for actual work. It gives you theory without context, knowledge without application, information without meaning.
And the consequences are staggering. Only 24% of recent college graduates felt they had all the skills needed for their current job. Nearly 96% of HR leaders said colleges should do more to prepare students for the workforce. The system is broken, and everyone knows it — except the system itself refuses to change.
The Freedom to Choose Your Own Path
But here’s the thing: you don’t need to wait for the system to fix itself and permission to start learning in a way that actually works. The internet has democratized knowledge in a way that was impossible even twenty years ago. The tools, the resources, the information — it’s all there, waiting for you to use it.
In the modern world, for anyone with internet access, you have unprecedented freedom. Freedom to choose what skills to develop, freedom to learn at your own pace, freedom to build real things that matter, not just complete assignments for grades.
You’re not trapped in a classroom anymore. You’re not dependent on outdated curricula or teachers who may not even work in the fields they’re teaching. You can find people who are doing the actual work, creating actual value, and learn from them directly.
The content creators, the practitioners, the builders — they’re all out there sharing their knowledge. Many of them share the bulk of their expertise for free, then compile it into courses for those who want the convenience of organized information. But the knowledge itself is accessible, it’s yours for the taking.
This is a profound shift in human history. For the first time ever, the barriers to learning have almost completely disappeared. The only barrier that remains is the one in your mind — the belief that you need formal education, that you need someone’s permission, that you need to go through the traditional system.
You don’t.
What This Means for You
So let me ask you this: think back to your own education. Your time in school, in university if you went. What percentage of what you learned there do you actually use in your daily work? In your real life? In the problems you solve and the value you create?
If you’re like most people, the answer makes you uncomfortable. Because deep down, you know the truth. You know that the most valuable skills you have — the ones that actually matter — you didn’t learn in a classroom. You learned them by doing. By building. By trying and failing and trying again.
The question isn’t whether traditional education has failed us. The data makes that abundantly clear. The question is: what are you going to do about it?
Because here’s the reality: you can spend years in classrooms, accumulating theoretical knowledge that may or may not ever prove useful. Or you can start today, right now, with a real project that teaches you exactly what you need to know, exactly when you need to know it.
Sometimes it may be wise not to spend your own time on things that can be delegated or automated. That’s exactly what I was thinking about while creating my content creation system, which, with the help of AI tools, allows me to have more than 72+ content pieces per week without spending full-time on it. If you are building your personal or corporate brand, it may save you a ton of time and money. Check it out: ANTIghostwriter.
Step-By-Step System Ahead
“You can’t learn riding a bicycle by attending a lecture. The good way to learn is to use it now.”
- Seymour Papert (20th century, MIT professor and AI pioneer)
In the next article, I’m going to share with you exactly how I did this. The specific steps I took to go from confused university student staring at three textbooks to confident programmer with companies calling me. The framework that worked for me, that’s worked for thousands of others, and that can work for you.
It’s not complicated. It’s not mysterious. But it is different from everything you’ve been taught about how learning is supposed to work.
And that’s exactly why it works.
The traditional education system had its time and place. But that time has passed. The world has moved on. Information is no longer scarce — your attention is. Your time is. Your life is.
Stop wasting it on learning methods designed for a world that no longer exists.
There’s a better way. And I’m going to show you exactly what it is.
Originally published at https://anticodeguy.com on November 12, 2025.