ABSTRACT
Learning to acquire a skill is not more or less significant a kind of learning than learning about the historical evolution of those skills. The world is too full of people with skills who do not have very good ideas on how to use genetic scientists at one end and plumbers at the other. Serious public discourse goes on about the phenomenal skills of genetic scientists in penetrating the mysteries of life, so that it is conceivable that the discredited attempts at manpower planning could be replaced by human planning on a global scale, while the other side of the debate argues the unsuitability of genetic scientists to be entrusted with any such power. Fullemploy’s programmes of training for young people work successfully because they achieve that combination of a rite of passage and learning. The think-based learning must include positive instruction and outright teaching. Young people will not learn all they need to know from on-the-job or work-based learning.
