Counter-Point: Education and Training have Different Intents
By John Jarrett, Vice President, Project Operations / Implementation, Visual Purple, LLC
Ah, semantics. As a long-time educator, trainer, and instructional designer, I tend to focus on practicality when a debate such as this occurs. If we focus on semantics, Chuck is correct – education and training are different. If we focus on the practicalities required to provide a useful education or practical training, the distinction blurs.
Chuck is correct when he says, “The intent of education is to develop a student’s knowledge and theoretical understanding in a field of study,” but of what use is such knowledge and theoretical understanding if the application (training) is not provided as well? If, as Chuck states, “…the intent of training is to improve a learner’s specific performance of a task” is true, then do we not need to be concerned with understanding the task? My favorite example is a cashier making change. It’s an exercise in grade-school math, but most cashiers can’t do it. True story: for a $16.08 purchase, I handed the cashier a twenty, let him enter it into the cash register and waited until the machine calculated the change. I then handed him an additional $1.08. The cahier stared in horror at the additional funds. He then handed the $1.08 back to me and gave me the $3.92 the machine insisted I was due. The cashier was trained, but not educated. My point is that either one (education or training) without the other is nearly useless.
We begin building our products at Visual Purple by first asking two questions: “Who do you want to train,” and “What do you want them to know.” In asking these questions the way we do, we blur the distinction between education and training. “What do you want them to know” sounds like “education,” but the implication (and intent) is that the client will want them to know not only content, but what to do with the content as well. Visual Purple has never built a product that was strictly education or strictly training.
Education and training are ying and yang, peanut butter and jelly, heads and tails – you can’t have one without the other if your goal is to provide a useful education or practical training.
