Kit Mentality and Education

I’ve heard motivational speakers talk about the reasons why we do things, the deep driving force that ties it all together. Maybe it’s just because I don’t know about the force or I never had a “why”, but I think it's a malformed idea. It reminds me too much of Aristotle or a brave new world. We all must have some end to which we are designed, a purpose of best fit, that sort of thing. If you know your purpose, you can plan your life accordingly. By this heuristic, all we need to do is specialize in that one thing that we are made to do and all will be well. This belief is, by my lights, firmly rooted in a fantasy wherein we are the masters of our own destiny. Behind that veil of delusion is a lot of luck and circumstance. Our choices will likely determine our lives more than anything else, but our options will change over time. I control whether I spend my time learning or watching TV. I do not control the job market or the spread of disease. My choices in education should reflect an understanding of limits in my capacity to predict.

I once played chess in a Starbucks with a much better player than I, which turns out to be a lot of people. Toward the end when it became obvious how terribly I was about to lose, I asked him how many moves he had planned ahead in order to beat me. He told me that it didn’t matter how far ahead you plan. It matters how many principles you utilize with every move you make. In chess, these principles are things like controlling the center, gaining property, and protecting your king. In life they might be things like cost, utility, or domain dependence. My brother talks about something called "Kit mentality", a way of thinking that prepares responses based on a range of scenarios, building a kit for each one. Skills are tools, a skill set is a kit. The most valuable kit is useful in the greatest number of situations. This is a sound heuristic for building an open education.

Traditional education sometimes gets criticized for requiring things that aren't related to a degree being sought, things like literature, or certain branches of the social sciences (I'm looking at you, gender studies). By my lights the criticisms are fair, but maybe for the wrong reasons. The extraneous requirements here aren't wrong because they do not apply to a specific goal, say engineering. They are wrong because they fail the kit test. Many humanities degrees are just good enough to get jobs teaching humanities. My stance on this will immediately be in contention, but you do not have to accept this one premise to accept my final conclusion. Whatever skill or set of skills we seek to acquire, we ought to do so with more than one application in mind. Mathematics, for instance, has broad application across many disciplines. Public speaking and leadership also fit the bill, which is why I'm a strong advocate for Toastmasters.

The future is uncertain. Your desires and goals may change with time. The opportunities available to you will change. How does your overall education look when you examine it as a kit? Does it tie you to one possible future, one career path, or can it show its usefulness across a variety of domains? When choosing the next class or learning opportunity, it may be useful to add an item that isn't like the other items in your bag of tricks. Plan for the many futures that may happen rather than just the one future that you want.