School Writing vs. Real Writing

Continuing on yesterday’s theme.

The entire education apparatus, from kindergarten through college, teaches skills relevant to how to succeed in academia, and nothing relevant to how to succeed in the free-market.

Take writing as one example.

In school, you write to criteria determined by others on topics of interest to them then submit it to a single “expert” to review it in secret and tell you if they think it’s worthy. Just like the academic peer review and publication process. But nothing like any kind of valuable writing in the real world, where you get no assignments, you are exposed to the full market, you need to motivate relevant action among your target audience regardless of “expert” opinion, and you have real profit/loss at stake.