Practical and theoretical knowledge between schooling and raw learning

After we are born into this world, we spend our first years learning how to walk, talk and familiarize ourselves with our immediate environment. We go then  through a long period of schooling, at the end of which, we are equipped with a huge jumble of memorized information, but almost no practical knowledge.
We start our professional life loaded with theoretical information, but lacking the practical, human know-how to be able to optimally function within teams.
Let’s imagine ourselves for a second in the shoes of John.
John was a rebellious kid, he skipped school to go hunting birds in the nearby woods using a slingshot that he had made out of a forked branch and a discarded lawnmower transmission belt.
He had found these items in the landfill to which he used to go to gather discarded objects that he was interested in.
Sometimes he would find shoes, shirts or toys. He would clean and fix them, then resell in his neighborhood. With time, he started to feel independent and more confident about his ability to secure a decent livelihood.
His father’s repeated sermons about how he should go to school in order to secure a good future for himself fell on deaf ears.
John was already making enough to be able to financially help his mom and buy clothes for his little sister.
After numerous vain attempts, his father agreed that his son could leave school under the sole condition that he should at least teach himself how to read and write.
John agreed to his dad’s condition, mainly because it kept him outside the classroom walls.
As time went by, John started taking his friends to the landfill, teaching them about the items that are worth salvaging.
He also taught them how to fix and then sell them.
As the quantity of the scavenged items increased owing to the extra help he received, he decided to buy a small cart to carry the salvaged items.
He invested in masks and gloves for his friends so that they could work for longer hours without breathing in the stench coming from the mounds of garbage.
He also bought them scented soap and detergent to rid their bodies and their clothes of the foul stench after a long day at work.
"Work" might not be the right word for what John was doing. Being in the landfill with his friends, unearthing surprise after surprise was viewed as play by him.
John small endeavor developped into a small enterprise that enabled him to financially take care of his family, be free, and be able to spend time with his friends.

Practical knowledge was how our ancestors learned, theoretical knowledge come almodt as an afterthought to be able to package that knowledge into a palatable, often diluted form to be dessimated to a larger population that might not be able to get it, for some reason, from the source, practice.

The monstrous chasm between theoretical knowledge and the practical one is what makes us think we "can" do things that we are not in the least equipped for.