Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions I left school and university with my head packed full of knowledge; enough of it, anyway, to pass all the examinations that were put in my path. As a well-educated man I rather expected my work to be a piece of cake, something at which my intellect would allow me to excel without undue effort. It came as something of a shock, therefore, encounter the ...

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions

I left school and university with my head packed full of knowledge; enough of it, anyway, to pass all the examinations that were put in my path. As a well-educated man I rather expected my work to be a piece of cake, something at which my intellect would allow me to excel without undue effort. It came as something of a shock, therefore, encounter the world outside for the first time, and to realize that I was ill-equipped, not only for the necessary business of earning a living, but more importantly, for coping with all the new decisions which came my way, in both life and work.

I was soon to discover that my mind had been trained to deal with closed problems, whereas most of what I now had to deal with were open-ended problems. 'What is the cost of sales?' is a closed problem, one with a right or a wrong answer. 'What should we do about it?' is an open problem, one with any number of possible answers, and I had no experience of taking this type of decision.

I had been educated in an individualist culture. My scores were mine. No one else into it, except as competitors in some imagined race. I was on my own in the learning game at school and university. Not so in my work, I soon realized. Being an individual star would not help me there if it was in a failing group. I had discovered, rather later than most, the necessity of others.

So much of the content of what I had learned was irrelevant, while the process of learning it had cultivated a set of attitudes and behaviors which were directly opposed to what seemed to be needed in real life. Although I had studied philosophy, I hadn't applied it to myself. It would be nice to think that our schools today prepare people better for life and for work. The subjects may appear to be a little more relevant, but we are still left to learn about work at work, and about life by living it. I believe we could do more to make sure that the process of education had more in common with the processes of living and working as they are today, so that the shock of reality is less cruel.