All too much of what passes for education today consists of curricula and courses designed to create the illusion of learning.

There’s also the difference between skills that are useful for additional learning and additional learning itself. For example, the skill of reading is relatively limited in its application if the “reader” only applies it to signs and labels once he or she leaves high school, but vital to someone who wants to be a high level professional. One might even say that reading skills convey a certain illusion on learning on the sign, label, and headline-only reader.

Likewise, students who are passed on without learning skills, or reading and learning the course material — and there are literally millions of them — are given the illusion of learning. This creates anger when they can’t find or keep jobs because they don’t know enough, or when their employers find that various rules require convoluted and time-consuming processes to fire them.

Another illusion of learning is the idea that the purpose of education consists largely of having the skills to find information. Being able to locate information is not the same as knowing it, or knowing what it means, or the implications behind the facts, or what led to those facts or what may flow logically from them. Merely finding information doesn’t mean that the finder can use such information. In many professions, actual physical or specific mental skills are also required. Reading about a complex medical procedure doesn’t provide the necessary skills for a doctor to operate and accomplish that procedure. Often, even practicing that operation doesn’t provide enough knowledge for a doctor to deal with more complex cases. Being able to look up economic statistics, or sales figures, doesn’t provide the expertise to analyze them and to project likely outcomes for a company or a government.

And in some cases, failure to learn basic and simple skills that seem unnecessary in our computerized and high-tech world can create problems for the individual and those around them. For example, the child who doesn’t learn multiplication and division tables is going to be handicapped all his or her life, because most of those children won’t have the basic tools for mathematical estimation as adults. I can’t even count the number of times someone has entered the wrong number or entry into a cash register or computer and insisted to me that the result is correct — when it wasn’t. Why? Because they couldn’t estimate the range of the probable result. In cases such as medicine or pharmacy, an error such as that can be life-threatening. In business, too many errors of that nature can lead to lost revenues… or lost jobs.

Once upon a time, students had to learn to memorize poetry and passages from plays. This wasn’t thrust upon students as a form of torture, but to provide them with hard-wired, learned passages as examples of proper use of language. In addition, students were required to write far longer papers than they now do, and at earlier ages, and those papers were graded with liberal amounts of red ink. The loss of practice in writing, especially the loss of directed and harshly corrected writing exercises, and the loss of all memorization of good literature for students corresponds rather directly with an increasing loss of writing skills. Merely being able to read individual words does not correspond to being able to understand or to write.

In my wife’s field — vocal music — all too many students fail to grasp the idea that successful singing is the combination of intellectual understanding and trained muscular and musical coordination. They don’t understand that their muscles have to be trained to get results, and that requires practice of specific techniques in specific ways. They also don’t understand the need to recognize the muscular sensations associated with proper singing and to learn to replicate those sensations on a reliable and continuing basis. To sing correctly, one doesn’t just memorize the words and “sort of” follow the melody. A good singer needs to know the rhythm well enough to beat it out without looking at the music, to know the actual meaning of every word, even if the song is written in a foreign language, as well as explain what the song is about, and be able to sing the melody using a single syllable [such as “la”]. Anything less is merely an illusion of having learned the song.

The recent financial crash was due in large part to reliance on the models of a few people without those who were responsible for decision-making learning or understanding the implications of those models, combined, of course, with a large amount of greed that make it easier not to learn. Interestingly enough, most of the regulators responsible for overseeing the market did happen to come from the generation that has been shorted on basic learning. And they didn’t bother to listen to, or learn from those few older heads in an industry dominated by the young.

I could give more examples, but that would be redundant. Every truly skilled occupation requires that type of in-depth learning… and it’s the kind of learning that’s becoming rarer every year because too much education consists of learning facts and where to find them, and too little consists of truly learning and understanding anything in any depth.

The other day, the former vice president made the observation that he would choose Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell as a better Republican. Now… Colin Powell has served his country faithfully and well, both as a military officer and as secretary of state. Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, there has never been any taint on his behavior or his character. What Mr. Cheney was saying, however, in effect, was that anyone who does not follow the strict beliefs of the far right wing of the Republican party is not a good Republican. By this token, neither Teddy Roosevelt nor Abraham Lincoln would have been a “good” Republican, Roosevelt especially, since he believed in preserving the environment and putting curbs on big business.

Mr. Cheney, along with Karl Rove and the ultra-conservative Republicans, can accurately be described as “true believers.” True believers exist in every organization and every religious faith. They are the ones who hold to a certain set of rigid values and claim that anyone who does not follow those values absolutely is not one of “them.” In the case of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Limbaugh, as is often the case with true believers, the values they espouse are, to put it mildly, hypocritically inconsistent. They proclaim the sanctity of life by opposing abortions, even those that might threaten the life of the mother, while also opposing aid and support of unwanted and abandoned children. So… is life only sacred until birth? Can a newborn be abandoned or left to be malnourished or abused without violating the “sanctity of life?” Ultra-conservatives avoid this inconsistency by taking refuge behind the principle of fiscal conservatism… which says that, yes, such children should be aided, but not by government, even when it has become more than clear that there are too many such children to be helped by private sources. So fiscal conservatism triumphs except when they’re bailing out multi-billion dollar corporations, which leads one to conclude that the sanctity of corporate profits trumps the sanctity of life after birth, and that government can be used for corporate welfare but not human welfare.

Such hypocritical inconsistency isn’t limited to the American ultra-conservatives, unhappily. The environmental movement has had its share of lawbreakers, in part because whenever the laws of the land didn’t seem to protect aspects of the environment they felt should be protected, they broke other laws to make their point. Let me get this straight. You want laws to protect the environment, and you want others to obey them… but you’ll break still other laws in order to make your point?

The same sort of hypocrisy has pervaded religion throughout history. Virtually all Christian-derived faiths preach mercy and forgiveness, and yet various faiths have shed millions of gallons of blood “defending” or attempting to force their version of the “faith” on others. The same is true of Islam, as well. The Taliban want freedom from such ideas as education for women, in order to keep them “pure,” as well as freedom from the pollution of Western comforts and degradation. Of course, when U.S troops first entered Kabul, they discovered a number of rather palatial [at least by Afghan standards] dwellings occupied by the Taliban religious leaders, furnished with more than a few Western comforts. They also discovered more than a few instances where such leaders had been indiscriminate in their efforts to remove purity from young women.

None of this should be surprising to anyone. What is surprising, and what so seldom is recognized publicly, is that in many, many, cases, life does not present us with clear absolutes, but with situations where any decision at all will compromise one set of values or another, where any solution is “gray,” rather than black or white. Yet rather than acknowledge this rather obvious fact, the true believers endorse hypocrisy by sticking to one set of absolutes. In the case of an expectant mother where carrying the fetus to term will likely kill her, the “sanctity of life” can only apply to mother or child. In the case of fiscal conservatism, history has shown, time after time, that raising taxes to balance budgets [always a staple of fiscal conservatives] when economic activity has declined only makes matters worse and results in even less government revenue.

The problem with the true believers is that they insist on forcing people into black or white boxes, often with rifles, bombs, or ostracism, while insisting that theirs is the only way, hypocritical as their values are — because no set of “pure” codified values can be applied wholesale to the world as it is without becoming hypocritical. In fact, the key test for identifying a true believer is that true believers always place their values over everyone else’s and usually over physical reality. After all, those who burned Giordano Bruno and imprisoned Galileo denied that the planets orbited the sun because it conflicted with their beliefs.

According to a recent study, 78% of all the emails received consist of spam. I’d submit that 78% actually understates the problem. That’s recognized spam. What about all the emails that are effectively spam? How much of the email that stacks up in everyone’s email consists of cute little e-cards or forwarded anecdotes or stories, most of it without so much as a line of explanation from the sender? And what about all the invitations to be linked to someone, or to join Facebook or MySpace? Even deleting all of those takes time.

In the “old days,” sending someone a clipping from a newspaper without even a personal note attached wasn’t considered a letter, or any form of true correspondence. Should emails consisting of forwarded cartoons, jokes, or quotes be any different today? Since a forwarded cartoon or joke costs the sender nothing, unlike a clipping sent by mail, one could make the case that such forwarded junk is almost totally impersonal, just like spam.

None of this non-spam spam shows any real recognition of the recipient as an individual, just as an address on someone else’s computer, creating the illusion of contact or caring. It’s an empty meaningless gesture, less than the equivalent of the aspartame or methadone of communications.

For that matter, what about Twitter… twenty-some words, is it? That isn’t about the recipient. It’s a condensed ego-trip for the sender. Why should I, or anyone else, care about what you’re doing in twenty words?

And exactly why should I be interested in being on Facebook or MySpace or any other ego-driven open “personal” forum? I’m not against professional forums. They serve a useful purpose. If people want to find out about my books and thoughts, my website will provide that. Business websites provide 24 hour access, and, if done well, can make life easier for users of those services and products. But why should I set up a Facebook presence? If I provide no personal details on such a site, it’s just a way of saying, “I’m great. Be my ‘friend’.” If I do provide lots of detail, regardless of what the claims are about privacy protection, it’s an invitation to identity theft. And for what? To claim that I have lots of friends among people I really don’t know at all? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? As for real friends, those are the ones who don’t need an electronic site to know who I am or for me to know who they are.

Even emails, which are supposed to save time, often don’t. Complex personnel issues shouldn’t usually be handled by email because, first, they have emotional overtones that don’t translate well into text, and second, because trying to reduce them to text usually takes far more time than a telephone call will. This can be true of other complex issues as well, not to mention the fact that email carries the burden of expectation of a quick response, and that often leads to even more emails asking why someone hasn’t replied.

I’m not against electronic communications, just against the illusion of communications or personal contact and against those that waste my time. If you’re a friend and send me a personal email that says something, conveys news or a sentiment that’s personal between us, I’m happy to hear it, but I’d still rather have a phone call or a letter or hand-written card.

Is that old-fashioned? I don’t think so. I’d prefer to call it what it is — considerate.

Once upon a time, when students or employees performed competently, they got a grade or their paycheck. If the work happened to be competent, in the case of the student the grade, depending on how many years ago this took place, was either a “C” or a “B.” For the employee, the paycheck didn’t change with competent work. That was what was expected for competent performance.

In recent years, however, students and younger employees alike seem to want more than mere acceptance of competence. College students’ evaluations of teachers are filled with comments with phrases like “didn’t make me feel special” or “expected too much” or “failed to encourage student self-esteem.” In addition, most students seem to think that showing up and presenting merely competent work merits an “A.” An ever-increasing number often fail even to buy and read the required textbooks for their classes. And yet there is still a continuing grade inflation in both high school and in college. In many areas of study, such as in English literature and writing, in general, students know less and write far less capably than did their predecessors. Fewer and fewer business students have any innate sense of estimation, and more and more seem lost without computers and calculators. Part of this is the result of a greater percentage of the student population going on to college, many of them falsely encouraged by too much cheerleading, too little emphasis on competence, and a society that tends to punish teachers who insist on excellence and the mastery of basic skills.

We’ve seen the same thing in the financial community, where so-called excellent performance — that later turned out to be even less than competent — was rewarded with bonuses ranging from the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions. The last time I checked, the minimum salary for a professional NFL player was something like $400,000. A recent study just cited in the Wall Street Journal made the observation that, given the structure and requirements of most large public corporations: (1) few CEOs were truly excellent; (2) excellent CEOs could make a slight positive difference greater than merely competent CEOs in a comparative handful of instances; (3) merely competent CEOs were adequate for the job in the majority of cases; and (4) even terrible CEOs took a while to destroy a company, except in a few exceptional cases. Yet corporate boards all presume that their CEO is excellent, and that is seldom the case.

From what I can see, fewer and fewer Americans, especially the younger ones, seem to understand the concept that every job requires basic competence and the fact that doing a job competently shouldn’t have to result in cheerleading, bonuses, and constant positive feedback — and continual promotions. Then again, if that’s what it takes to motivate someone to do a job, maybe that’s not what he or she should be doing. Rather than trying to bribe people like that, maybe their superiors should just fire them. As for the students, a lot more Bs, Cs, or even Fs wouldn’t hurt either.

The other day I read a short news story about the success of the singers at the local university in a regional competition. The story highlighted each of the singers, and the only mention of their background was the name of the university. I said something about that to the head of vocal studies at the university, and she said, with a rueful smile, “They did it all by themselves.” Her unspoken point was, of course, that these students hadn’t gotten there all by themselves. Each had a professor, or several, who spent hours each week with him or her going over diction, tone, phrasing, etc., not to mention the classes in theory, literature, methods… and all the rest of the curriculum. Then, to top matters off, when the subject came up later among another group, someone else said that the Music Department was so fortunate to have such talented students, as if all their professional education meant nothing at all.

While this is just a small example of a problem that’s much larger, it did get me to thinking. Over the years, I’ve watched various sports, and I’ve found it amazing to see how a quarterback, for example, who’s done well with one team, suddenly doesn’t do so well with another, while another who was considered washed up with a former team shines with his second team. A good part of the answer is that he didn’t do it all by himself. You can be the best passer in the world, but it won’t matter if the offensive line can’t or won’t give you the time to throw.

Likewise, in the financial and business world, a great deal of media focus and excessive salary and other compensation goes to the CEO. But just how much of that is really deserved, and how much goes to all those below the CEO who did all the grunt work that make things work out well? Microsoft seems to be doing just as well now that Bill Gates isn’t in charge. Might that not indicate that, while he came up with the initial ideas and entrepreneurship, for the last decade or so, he really didn’t do it all by himself?

As an author, which is one of the more solitary occupations these days, I still can’t do it all by myself. I need an editor to catch any stupidity that might linger in the manuscript, a copy-editor to catch the inevitable typos and stupid little mistakes, someone to publish the book, someone else to provide a cover that conveys the idea/impression of what is between the covers, and a whole lot of bookstores and booksellers to carry and sell the books. And that’s what’s needed for a one-person operation, since, contrary to some popular opinion, books do not just produce themselves, walk off the shelves, and carry themselves to the check-out registers.

Yet… in field after field from collegiate activities to professional sports, to education and business, there’s this myth that people “did it all by themselves.”

Did they really? All of them?