The Most Important Qualities in Life Are Cultivated Through Practice
For Subscribers Only
2026-07-01
Lianhe Zaobao
Authors: Chee Yeow Meng, Provost and Chief Academic & Innovation Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design
Jenny Lee, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew states: "I have yet to hear of anyone becoming a leader because they attended a leadership course." This statement cuts straight to a simple yet profound truth: leadership is not a theory that can be taught in a classroom, but something demonstrated through action. It comes from taking responsibility, facing setbacks, and earning the trust of others through real-life experience. In fact, this applies not only to leadership, but also to the cultivation of all the core qualities that shape a person's life.
A complete education should consist of four mutually reinforcing core elements.
Values determine what we believe is right and worth pursuing. Character is the enduring quality that enables us to uphold and act on those values even when doing so comes at a cost. Mindset reflects our attitude toward challenges, learning, uncertainty, risk, and failure. Competencies comprise the complete set of practical abilities needed to accomplish things effectively, including defining problems, building prototypes, communicating ideas, and analyzing data.
Each of these serves a distinct purpose: values provide direction, character provides support, mindset drives growth, and competencies enable us to turn ideas into reality.
If this is the objective of education, how should we teach? For subjects such as mathematics, logical reasoning, and fundamental physics, classroom instruction remains indispensable. Implementing active learning in the classroom is, in essence, the practice of experiential learning within an academic setting—students learn through active participation, hands-on practice, and reflection rather than simply listening to lectures.
Research has shown that this approach is more effective than traditional lectures. A physics education study published by Harvard University in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that students who engaged in active learning achieved significantly better learning outcomes than those taught through conventional lectures. Interestingly, although these students felt they had learned less, they actually mastered more.
However, the true value of experiential learning extends far beyond the classroom. It reaches its fullest potential only when students step into the real world, collaborate with actual users, communities, and people from different cultural backgrounds, and solve problems in environments involving genuine responsibility and authentic feedback.
It is through this process that values, character, and mindset gradually take shape, while capabilities such as design and innovation evolve from classroom concepts into real-world skills.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." No one becomes an architect simply by reading a book about bricks, nor does anyone become an excellent physician merely by memorizing medical protocols.
Practice is the most fundamental means of cultivating these four core qualities. Through practice, we gradually clarify our values. By repeatedly taking responsibility and accepting feedback, we forge strong character. By confronting the unknown and uncertainty, we develop the right mindset. Through continuous and deliberate practice, we steadily strengthen our practical abilities.
Let us now examine each of these four aspects in turn.
Values
Values become clear only through interactions with real people and the real world.
The formation of values requires awareness of the world, and such awareness comes from genuine contact and lived experience—not from remaining isolated in a room engaged in abstract contemplation. The more people we encounter and the more cultures we experience, the more mature our values become. Different people and different cultures help us understand how others perceive the world and why they hold those perspectives.
This understanding is especially important today, when geopolitics profoundly influences economies, technology, and lifestyles. Participating in community service, co-designing with real users, and undertaking projects with social impact all encourage students to seriously reflect on what truly matters and why it matters. They learn to navigate real-world trade-offs rather than remain at the level of empty slogans.
Character
Character is gradually developed through repeatedly taking responsibility, honoring commitments, and accepting feedback. Students truly grow only when others depend on them, when they have the courage to acknowledge and take responsibility for their mistakes, and when they continually improve through repeated iterations. Genuine growth comes from challenges, not comfort.
The qualities we most hope to cultivate cannot be taught through classroom instruction alone; they must be developed through authentic experiences. Integrity and judgment, resilience and perseverance, adaptability, and ethical awareness all require continuous testing. This means having the courage to take reasonable risks, accepting honest and direct criticism, and continuing to move forward even when progress is slow and difficulties persist. Sports provide perhaps the clearest example. Training improves technique, but the qualities that endure throughout life are discipline, self-discipline, perseverance, and teamwork.
Mindset
Mindset determines how a person responds to uncertainty. In today's world, two mindsets are particularly important.
The first is an entrepreneurial mindset. People with this mindset view problems as opportunities and are willing to confront risk, uncertainty, and failure. Rather than relying on assumptions, they validate ideas through low-cost, small-scale experiments, then continually refine and optimize them based on user feedback and practical results. This mindset also requires a high degree of agility, enabling individuals to adjust their direction quickly as circumstances change.
The second is a global mindset. In cross-cultural collaboration, the most important skill is not expressing oneself first, but learning to listen, understand different cultural backgrounds, adapt communication styles, and reconcile differing values and behavioral norms in order to achieve shared outcomes.
Neither an entrepreneurial mindset nor a global mindset can be acquired through classroom lectures alone. Only in real-world situations do people experience making decisions with incomplete information, collaborating with people from diverse backgrounds, and continually adjusting their direction in response to changing realities. It is precisely through these experiences that such mindsets gradually develop.
Competencies
Practical abilities must be developed through sustained and deliberate practice. Classrooms and laboratories help students establish the theoretical foundations needed for many competencies, and active learning further enhances these outcomes. However, for abilities such as design and innovation, classroom learning alone is far from sufficient. Students must participate in real projects as early as possible and continue practicing under the guidance of mentors. Reading case studies alone cannot teach them how to respond to the needs of actual users.
Real learning comes from observing real situations, building prototypes, testing them with actual users, and continually refining them based on feedback until effective solutions are found. Authentic projects, real budgets, real users, and guidance from instructors all demand rigor and precision from students. Through repeated cycles of prototyping, testing, and presenting results, students gradually develop the ability to define problems, build solutions, measure outcomes, and communicate effectively. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help us generate ideas quickly, but only through sustained interaction with real users can we determine which ideas are worth keeping. Therefore, using AI effectively means more than generating content—it means possessing the ability to validate it.
Students must learn to question AI-generated outputs, verify sources of information, and validate the model's recommendations against real user needs and practical outcomes. Continuous iteration not only improves competence but also cultivates sound judgment. Innovation emerges from practice, not from empty theorizing. The best teacher is always the real user.
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into classrooms and workplaces, the importance of experiential learning becomes even more pronounced.
Today, AI can rapidly generate information, propose preliminary solutions, and process structured problems on a massive scale. However, it still cannot truly perform the more complex and deeply human tasks, such as defining complex problems, weighing competing trade-offs, making judgments with integrity, and taking responsibility for the consequences of decisions.
The classroom can help students understand these concepts, but genuine competence comes only through repeated real-world practice—working with real users, using real data, and bearing real consequences. Students need to learn how to define problems despite incomplete information, conduct small-scale field tests, and promptly revise their solutions when results differ from their original assumptions.
They must also explain their decisions to those affected, listen carefully to their views, and incorporate that feedback into the next round of improvements. Judgment, responsibility, and empathy are gradually cultivated through this process of practice.
Singapore is steadily moving in this direction. The Ministry of Education's lifelong learning initiatives encourage students to step beyond the classroom and develop interpersonal skills, emotional management, and the ability to face challenges through authentic experiences, while also fostering sound values. At the same time, service learning, industry internships, and overseas exchange programs create valuable opportunities for students to engage directly with society and gain a deeper understanding of the world.
Education is not only about what we teach students, but also about what they personally experience. The most valuable growth often occurs outside the classroom. The classroom teaches students how to think; practice helps them build values, shape character, cultivate the right mindset, and develop problem-solving abilities. It is through these experiences that they gain the courage to take risks, adapt proactively to change, face uncertainty with confidence, grow through failure, and remain committed to improving the world and contributing to society.
Therefore, the education of the future cannot rely solely on curriculum design. Instead, it must deliberately integrate practice, challenge, and innovation into every student's developmental journey. Through carefully designed learning experiences, education should continually help students grow. It should not only equip young people with the ability to make a living, but also shape the character that enables them to build meaningful and fulfilling lives.
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Authors: Chee Yeow Meng, Provost and Chief Academic & Innovation Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design
Jenny Lee, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia
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