I enjoyed this read.<p>Seems to be a theme, in this generation, that the "skill building" paradigm is useful.<p>Speed is a skill. Physical strength is a skill. Emotional stability is skill. The skill paradigm can often be abstracted as stimulus-> adaption. The concepts seems to be applicable to "physical/motoric" skills as they are to cognitive or emotional skills.<p>I'm a believer.<p>I suspect (just musing) that some degree of Hegelian ping pong is going on. Early 20th century education systems were highly skill based. These were (and are) criticized for their "rote learning" deficiencies. Creative inadequacy and inability to apply skills/knowledge creatively.<p>I think there is a point of tension between these two. This could probably be formalized further. For example, skill transfer seems to decline as you progress a skill. Specialization. But... I'm not sure that kind of thinking is useful.<p>I do think if we are becoming highly focused on "skill based learning," we need to balance that (especially young children) with a rich/holistic approach.... which tends to be structurally opposed to skill acquisition.<p>Programming ability, for example. A lot of people have been trained, yet cannot programmed at all. What they seem to have in common is never having "<i>tried to do a thing.</i>" Unstructured, inexplicitly motivated, determined effort to reach some sort of result by drawing on whatever skills you do have.<p>A lot of "skills" are illegible, difficult to isolate, name or train explicitly. I suspect that overemphasis on skill can result in these becoming a limiting factor.<p>Beware the local optima.