The Things That Matter Most Are Learnt by Doing

Lianhe Zaobao, 人生最重要的素养，都在实践中养成

By Professor Chee Yeow Meng, Provost and Chief Academic and Innovation Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and Ms Jenny Lee, Managing Partner of Granite Asia

(Translation)

“I do not yet know of a man who became a leader as a result of having undergone a leadership course,” said Lee Kuan Yew in The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew (2013).

The point is as sharp as it is true. Leadership is character in action, not a lesson in theory. It is learned through experience, by shouldering responsibility, facing setbacks, and earning trust. That truth extends beyond leadership. It applies to the qualities that shape a life.

A complete education forms four parts that work together. Values are what we hold to be right and worth pursuing. Character is the reliable pattern of acting on those values when it is costly to do so. Mindset is the stance we take towards challenge and learning, including how we respond to uncertainty, risk, and failure. Skillset is the set of practical abilities to deliver outcomes at quality, from problem framing and prototyping to communication and data reasoning. Values set direction; character provides backbone; mindset drives learning; skillset supplies the tools to deliver.

With that aim, how should we teach? Classrooms are indispensable for foundational skillsets such as mathematics, formal reasoning, and introductory physics. In those settings, active learning is experiential learning adapted for the classroom: students learn by doing and reflecting in class time, and it has been shown to outperform lectures. In a Harvard physics study published in PNAS^[1], using a within-course randomised design, students learned more with active learning than with lectures, even though they felt they learned less. But the full power of experiential learning appears when it is not confined to classrooms: when students work with real users and communities, in diverse contexts, with authentic stakes and feedback. That is where values, character, and mindsets are formed. It is also where skills such as design and innovation move from classroom concepts to real competence.

As Aristotle observed, “for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” You do not become a builder by reading about bricks or a clinician by memorising protocols. Learning by doing is the mechanism by which the four parts take shape: experience clarifies values, repeated commitments and feedback strengthen character, encounters with uncertainty cultivate mindsets, and deliberate practice develops skillsets. Consider each in turn.

Values

Values are clarified when work meets real people. They require awareness, and awareness comes with exposure; you do not develop values in the corner of a room. The broader the exposure, the stronger the values, because meeting different people and cultures reveals how others see the world and why it matters, especially in a time when geopolitics shapes economies, technologies, and the conditions under which people live. Service with communities, design work with users, and projects with public consequences force students to ask what should matter and why, and to see trade-offs, not slogans.

Character

Character is built through commitments, deadlines, and feedback. Students grow when a team depends on them, when they own mistakes, and when they improve the next iteration. Strength follows challenge, not shelter. The qualities we most want cannot be taught as theory; they must be lived. Consider integrity and judgement, resilience and grit, adaptability, and ethics. Living these means being tested, taking sensible risks, receiving honest critique, and continuing even when progress is slow or setbacks accumulate. Sport shows this simply: drills build skill, but what endures is discipline, perseverance, and teamwork.

Mindset

Mindset is how learners face uncertainty. Two examples matter in our context. An entrepreneurial mindset treats problems as opportunities and embraces risk, uncertainty, and failure; it tests assumptions with small, low-cost experiments and iterates based on feedback from users and results on the ground. It also demands agility: the ability to adjust quickly when conditions change. A global mindset enables collaboration across cultures: learners listen first, notice context, adapt their communication, and reconcile different norms to get things done. Both can only be built through experience, because learners must decide with incomplete information, persuade partners unlike themselves, and adjust when reality contradicts their plan. That is how these mindsets are nurtured.

Skillset

Skillset grows through deliberate practice. Classrooms and labs build the conceptual base for many skills, preferably with active learning. But some skills, such as design and innovation, require early and sustained practice on authentic briefs under supervision. You cannot design for people by reading cases alone; you learn by observing context, prototyping, testing with real users, and revising until something works. Live briefs, real budgets, real users, and supervised practice force precision. Prototyping, testing, and presenting results build the habits of scoping, building, measuring, and communicating. AI can help with ideas, but only lived work with users teaches which ideas deserve to survive. Working with AI demands verification, not just generation. Students must question outputs, check provenance, and test model suggestions against user needs and results in practice. Iteration builds skillsets as well as judgement. Innovation happens in practice, not on the whiteboard. Real users are the best teachers.

As AI spreads in classrooms and workplaces, experiential learning matters more. Machines already produce information, generate first-cut ideas, and solve structured problems at scale. What they cannot do well is frame messy problems, weigh trade-offs, act with integrity, or take responsibility for consequences. Classroom teaching can introduce these standards, but proficiency comes only from repeated use on live tasks with real users, real data, and tangible consequences. Scoping with incomplete information, running a small field test, and revising when results contradict the plan. Explaining decisions to those affected, listening to their experiences, and incorporating what you hear into the next iteration. That is how judgement, responsibility, and empathy are formed.

Singapore is moving in this direction. The Ministry of Education’s Learning for Life Programme (LLP) exposes students to experiences beyond the classroom so they can develop social-emotional competencies and cultivate sound values. Service-learning, industry internships, and overseas programmes likewise give students opportunities to engage the world directly.

At the Singapore University of Technology and Design, we created DIVE: Design·AI Innovation and Venture Exploration. DIVE creates opportunities for students to learn what cannot be taught: values for responsible action, character to keep commitments, mindsets to navigate uncertainty, and skillsets to design, build, and deliver. Some projects work and others do not, and both outcomes teach. It is a modest illustration of how experience can be woven into education so that students graduate not only with knowledge, but with the character and mindset to use it well.

Education is not only about what we teach. It is also about what our students experience, and the richest experiences are rarely bounded by classrooms. Classrooms give them the tools to think. Experiences instil values, character, mindsets, and skillsets that prepare them to embrace risk, adapt to change, face uncertainty, and grow through failure, while still choosing to make a difference.

That is why the future of education cannot be built by curriculum alone. It must be built by design, through the deliberate weaving of experience, challenge, and innovation into every student’s journey. Education must give our young not only the knowledge to make a living, but the character to make a life.

1. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences comprising high-impact, original research the broadly spans the biological, physical and social sciences.

• Chee Yeow Meng is Provost and Chief Academic and Innovation Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design
• Jenny Lee is Managing Partner of Granite Asia