Skill acquisition requires practicing the skill in question. It requires significant periods of sustained, focused concentration. It requires creativity, flexibility, and the freedom to set your own standard of success. Unfortunately, most modern methods of education and credentialing require simple compliance. The primary (but unstated) goal isn’t to acquire useful skills, it’s to certify completion of a mostly arbitrary set of criteria, established by standards committees far removed from the student, for the purpose of validating certain qualities some third party appears to care about.
