Ronnys Frühsteak

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Have we already become too full? When Steve Jobs ended his Stanford speech in 2005 with “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”, he passed on an idea that has stayed with me ever since: remain hungry for what you do not yet know. Allow yourself to ask questions, try things out and, from time to time, be a beginner again. For some time now, I have been asking myself how much of that is still left in us. The reason comes from my own work. With Sensory ID, I have developed a platform for professional meat expertise. More than 55 tools combine specialist knowledge with practical support in everyday professional life. Sensory analysis is part of it, as is engaging with cuts, ageing and preparation. These are tools I have wanted for my own work for years. Whether they live up to that claim has to be proven in use. For that, it takes people who engage with them, ask questions and voice criticism. Internationally, that is exactly what is happening. I have received 78 demo requests from Europe. Three of them come from Germany, 16 from Austria and 14 from Switzerland. There are also 18 from Asia, 33 from South America and 18 from North America. The International Meat Sensory Program shows a similar picture. Scholarship enquiries come from Asia and Southern Europe, from Austria and Switzerland. So far, not a single one has come from Germany. I have also presented the projects to numerous international education partners and other educational institutions. The feedback is open, interested and encouraging. People want to understand what is being created. They ask questions and consider what possibilities this could offer for their educational work. So far, I have received no response from Germany to these presentations. This experience continues elsewhere. I wrote my book “Didactics in the Skilled Trades” with a particular focus on our sector. It is selling really well. However, around 90 percent of sales are to people outside this sector. That makes me happy, because the ideas are evidently relevant in other professional contexts as well. At the same time, it is a remarkable contradiction: a book that emerged from the experiences and educational questions of our sector finds most of its readers elsewhere. Within our sector, Austria and Switzerland have long since overtaken us in demand for the book. These are questions that concern us directly. How up to date is our teaching? How do people learn today? What skills do they need to apply knowledge independently and cope with new tasks? The Berlin Model and the traditional four-step method have their place in vocational education. But they do not absolve us of the responsibility to continue developing our teaching practice. Anyone who wants to shape training must also examine which new possibilities make sense and where familiar methods reach their limits. In “Didactics in the Skilled Trades”, I already called for equipping pupils and participants with tablets, thereby enabling them to access knowledge and learning in ways that are appropriate to the times. In the IMSP, I put this idea into practice through Digital First. Participants receive preconfigured tablets through which they work with learning content, the specialist library and Sensory ID, and document and evaluate their tastings. The digital working environment accompanies them in class and between in-person sessions. This creates a path from the demand made in the book to practical implementation in continuing education. That is precisely what I would also like to see as the subject of a professional discussion: What can this improve? What proves effective? Where are adjustments needed? Yet approaches like these also remain largely uncommented on in our sector. I am writing this because I want to understand this contradiction. The approaches are there. The ideas have been developed. Books, tools and concepts are available. Outside our immediate environment, they are being taken up and discussed. Why does this momentum so rarely arise here? I would like to see colleagues and education providers take up such ideas, try them out, question them and develop them further. A well-founded opposing view would move the discussion forward just as much as agreement. My concepts, too, can and should be put to the test. What I am missing is the willingness to enter into this discussion together in the first place. Because at some point, the frequently expressed desire for better education must also be accompanied by people who help drive its further development. The silence concerns me. I do not expect enthusiasm on demand. No one has to like a project because I have put a great deal of work into it. But a professional discussion begins by looking at something. Even a well-founded “This does not convince me” would be a response I could work with. What gives me pause is the absence of this engagement. Especially in a professional field in which the willingness to keep developing should be part of our own standards. The international comparison of training programmes that I examined for my book reinforces this question. It shows considerable differences in the explicitly designated space given to systematic sensory training. No blanket assessment of individual graduates can be derived from this. However, there is more than enough reason to talk about the further development of our training. Why do I encounter so little curiosity here of all places? To me, this fits a mood that extends far beyond our sector. In Germany at the moment, I often perceive a peculiar mix: great dissatisfaction with the state of things and, at the same time, little willingness to embrace something new. We talk about a lack of innovation, about bureaucracy, economic stagnation and other countries pulling ahead of us. As soon as change becomes concrete in our own environment, the energy often seems to have already been spent. Of course, there are real obstacles. Time is scarce, money is tight, and many businesses and their employees are under pressure. I know that well enough myself. But I wonder whether we have sometimes settled into these explanations a little too comfortably. “Because curiosity begins long before an investment.” It begins with asking a question. Paying attention to an invitation. Looking at a new possibility before deciding whether it is any good. Perhaps we have relied for too long on our experience, our qualifications and our good reputation being enough in the future as well. What previous generations have built can sustain us well for a time. Further development eventually requires a contribution of one’s own. That applies to a country just as much as to a sector. And it applies to me just as much. A title does not satisfy a hunger for knowledge. I am a meat sommelier, I have been teaching for years, and I have invested a great deal of time in my professional development. Even so, I constantly encounter questions I cannot yet answer. Sometimes I also have to realise that a conviction I have held for a long time does not withstand closer scrutiny. That can be uncomfortable. It is part of learning. It becomes problematic when a qualification creates the feeling that one has arrived professionally. When experience leads someone to reject new questions before they have engaged with them. “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” means preserving that openness for me. Even with experience. Even with a title. Even when you have long since been teaching others yourself. The international response to my work makes me happy. The limited response from Germany concerns me because I know many people here whose knowledge and skills I value. It is precisely from them that I would like to see exchange, questions and disagreement. Perhaps that is why the most uncomfortable question is the one we have to ask ourselves: Are we still hungry for new knowledge? Or have we become so accustomed to being competent that we have unlearned how to learn?