Meaning of Experience in The Profession

In any work situation, a high value is placed on a man who has got experience. That man is highly valued, because he has acquired practical knowledge of his job and is therefore well equipped to deal with its problems. As a result of past encounters in his working environment with either physical objects, people, colors, smells, sounds, emotional reactions, images or various type of activity, he has developed working conceptions of what the objects and conditions are like or what the situations involve. These notions enable him to anticipate kinds of experiences he would have upon encountering them again. Because he can anticipate what is likely to happen in each case, he is prepared to act in particular, advantageous or satisfying ways, having tested the effectiveness of these over a number of attempts.

By experience we imply therefore that one has had a long personal association with his particular job or problem, and has stored for himself strategic knowledge in the process. The emphasis here is on the words ‘ personal’ and ‘ strategic’ – personal because no experience is gained unless the situation is personally sensed and strategic, because skill is required in solving all problems. It follows therefore that knowledge acquired by merely observing others who are actually physically engaged in the job or knowledge derived from literature lectures and books does not constitute experience. A lot of people seem to know this, but what is not common knowledge is that this actually means that man is naturally incapable of benefitting from another man’s own experience.

A man requires to perceive an event or situation directly before he can usefully learn the facts of living through that event. It looks as though there is always a mental aspect to any experience -as aspect which is not reduceable to words and recorded material. This aspect is treated by individual or personal mental interpretation. Actually, book records literature, recorded history, rule etc are mere summaries and generalized conclusions which naturally have left out the hints and the details of events and processes as they actually occurred.

Since a large body of information is thus left to the individual ‘ s mental ‘ handling’ one is never sufficiently equipped with tried out solutions to any problems merely by reading recorded material . Such gaps are filled by personal experience, which is basically sensory. Clearly therefore any information is naturally deficient in guiding details. But however, it seems to me that man is inherently not able to benefit from any experience which another man personally acquired. No event makes a useful impression on our mind unless that event also impinges on the body. It has real meaning only when it is a direct sensory experience. That is, we have got to see it, to touch it or to fool or suffer it and organize our own body reactions to our advantage. There is a more permanent record when we perceive events than when we are told or lectured about them. For instance, the horrors of international war are more meaningful to the British, French, Germans, Japanese and Russians people who have actually suffered them in their own land or elsewhere than to the Americans, most of whom only read about the wars waged at a safe distance from America. The British experience surely does not constitute experience to the Americans. Nor can the experience of one generation of people condition a subsequent generation into a more cautious attitude. Man never learn by merely remembering the horrors suffered by others , but by himself taking part in and experiencing the horrible events or similar phenomena.

Experience is related therefore to direct acquaintance with reality. Direct experiencing is more vivid, more comprehensive and of a more permanent value. This is exemplified in education in the natural sciences where the learner is brought through practical experiments into contact with real problems. In the most modern science institutions, experience programmes have been carried to a very high degree: students learn and practice a good deal of what is already known and set through this they are exposed to the real conditions of industry, factory life, and their socio-economic problems and they are supplied with an arsenal of technique for solving future problem.