Ivory tower education vs. Practical wisdom

This morning when I was coming to the office, a guy jumped out of a running bus and only by a hair's breadth managed to avert falling on my car. This isn't the worst of such actions that I have seen but this reminded me of something similar from the past and then led to a chain of (un) connected thoughts and finally to this blog.
So during my years at college I used to go home on the weekends and generally carried a small hand bag with me. During one such trips in my first year I had done a similar (to the one by the guy above) stunt and jumped off the bus while it was still moving. This was not the gravest of my sins, what I had done potentially fatally wrong was that I was about to jump off the bus in the direction opposite to its motion. One of the guys in the bus (he was probably a labourer or someone) noticed this and shouted "aage ki taraf, aage ki taraf" (face towards the front) - the words hit me like an arrow with a firehead and flamed in me the thoughts - "Oh shit - damn Newton" and I had only enough time to change my direction to make it perpendicular to the bus so that I could still shift my weight in the direction of the bus motion and avoid falling. I was completely shaken by this act of offboarding and thanked the guy in the bus who had by that time left with the bus as the driver never actually stopped it. Moral of the story - This guy in the bus managed to do what none of my physics teachers or H.C.Verma or Irodov or Resnick or Halliday could. He explained to me the practical significance of Newton's laws. I am not suggesting that Irodov or Resnick Halliday did not make a difference but so did this guy.
In Good Will hunting Will (Matt Damon) goes through a similar conversation with Sean (Robin Williams). Sean tells Will that you might know all about the St. Peter Basillica and who was its architect and what all statues adorn the place etc etc but you would never know what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You might know all about war and war strategies and which one was fought when but you would never know what it means to hold your dearest friend in your lap when he is breathing his last in the battlefield. You might know all about woman psychology but you would never know what it means to wake up besides the same woman for 32 years and hold her.
I think it is one of the best dialogues I have ever listened to. This has forever changed the way i will look at textbook education, rhetorical discussions etc.
Another similar conversation I had with one of my collegues who told me that it is one thing to sign off a document to mobilise 2000 people on a construction site and a completely different thing to actually appreciate what a herculean task it is.
Same is true for all these glossy slidepacks that we make day in and day out without ever appreciating what each box on the slide and each arrow connecting two of those symbolise. All this money trading business without ever appreciating what these companies manufacture or how have they evolved over time and what needs they serve is another classic case in point.
No wonder many people are still debating the topic "Whether Elite Institutions Produce Best Leaders". I would say there is no connection between the two. Education is very important no doubt but not sufficient. And so those who manage to couple their education with good understanding of the world do wonders and others dont. Similarly even if one has not had a lot of formal education but all the practical wisdom, one can still be succssful by duly compensating for his/her lack of education by surrounding him/her with the right kind of people.

How many of us (engineers) can take our car's apart and reassemble them or even repair minor problems? This could be a good starting point for getting our hand's dirty may be. It should put us in the right mindset of being able to learn things end to end and then re-apply them to new and more complex challenges. not just peripherally look at things and use the cliched "I dont like to get into details" kind of reasons. This will help us understand the consequences of the decisions, we suggest should be made.

And I think this in the end is what makes all the difference. Many people can write about war but few can fight it. Almost everbody in the current economic crisis is perhaps criticizing their big bosses for rolling out the redundancy programmes but very few can suggest an alternative or can even understand what it means to go to bed when you are sitting on top of a billion dollar conglomerate. Someone told me that the most difficult decision I will ever make in my life would probably be to fire someone and may be someone who would have invited me home for dinner in the past and whose children would not believe that I fired their Dad. And no MBA course will ever provide me with a handbook of "How to best fire people?" or something like that. Only experiences and wounds from the battlefield can make a warrior.

For me from now on and forever afterwards Practical Wisdom and the guy who possesses it will command a lot more respect than any french cuffed, tie adorning Consultant who has seen not much else than the university campus.

So that co-passenger in the bus that day opened my eyes to the importance of practical wisdom and the guy this morning brought it all back to me in the right context and probably during the right time. - Thanks guys!