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Bob was  an expert on X, he did research about X and he taught X. When he was teaching, he spoke at great length, and in great detail about X. X was important and complicated, he believed his students really needed to know X, or they would not be able to call themselves a Professional Thing and would be unemployed.

Bob was satisfied with his teaching because he had taught the students everything they needed to know about X. Sadly  the students did not learn. Half of them had decided they did not want to be a Professional Thing, they wanted to be Another Thing. They stopped coming to Bob’s class, or slept through it, or developed their LinkedIn profiles whilst Bob was talking.  Bob did not notice, he did not care about the students that wanted to be Another Thing.

The rest of the class who  wanted to be a Professional Thing,  did not like learning about  X.  X was hard and Bob was boring. They looked at past exam papers, and worked out they could pass the course without knowing anything about X, so they stopped  coming to Bob’s classes. Bob did not notice, he did not care about the students who did not want to know about X.

One student wanted to be a Professional Thing that specialised in X.  Although he was passionate about X, he found it difficult to pay  attention to Bob. He found an online video explaining X, which was much easier to understand  than Bob’s lectures. He understood all about X.

1 year on

All of  the students have graduated.

Those that wanted to be Another Thing  are struggling to find jobs  because they have not developed all the of the skills that employers of Other Things want.

The strategic learners who wanted to become Professional Things found jobs that did not need knowledge about X.

The one student who was really passionate about X  worked with machine learning experts and robotic engineers to develop an autonomous robot, Bob II, that learn all about X.

5 years on

Bob II  now does all of the jobs that require knowledge of X, and teaches other robots all they need to know about X.  Bob II does not care about Bob.