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Comment by stox | Hacker News Reader

The whole point of an "education" is to learn how to learn. Some master that without coursework. More power to them. These days, a college degree has become more a certificate in training of specific domains of knowledge. If you can do it yourself, you probably will get a broader and potentially deeper understanding of the subject than you would in a structured course. Getting an employer to recognize that is another story. Since there are not concrete metrics to measure such accomplishment, degrees act as a proxy for potential worth to an organization. This is a unfortunate situation, and wastes a great deal of potential.

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This. Education should teach you to become an autodidact [1]. Otherwise, you are really only being trained for a narrow set of skills, and those skills may not last when new technology is invented.

I was always curious and hungry for knowledge as a kid, but what I lacked was the knowledge of where I can find more knowledge (the libraries in my childhood were crap; the most complex computer book was how to use Office). It wasn't until university that I realized how to research things and find the best resources to learn that I truly was able to teach myself. That happened at the end of my 3rd year of university, and my 4th year was spent barely attending class and instead teaching myself the required material on my own time, while I was also learning about things not taught in class.

edit: Argh, clicked submit too soon. added second paragraph.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism

I don't think autodidactism can be taught. You either have it or you don't. I like to think I have it, I taught myself software development and now have a career in it despite dropping of college after a year. I'm constantly reading books and improving the quality of my thought. College was interminably boring to me, I did not consider anything I did there to be learning. That's why I dropped out.

I don't know very many people who can do this. Most people I know, once they're out of school, learning stops. It's not that they can't learn anymore, it's that the impetus to do so ceases once they're outside an environment designed to facilitate it. I, and I suspect most autodidacts, have to leave said environment before I can really get engaged.

I don't think autodidactism can be taught.

To answer this correctly we'd have to get philosophical, which means we'd both end up correct.

Suffice to say that I believe everyone is capable of learning to become a learner. You'd be surprised at what little knowledge we're born with and what our society has created for us (so-called "constructs" in philosophy parlance). Don't discount the ability for the human mind to be taught.

You might be looking at it from the wrong angle. What if we're all intrinsically autodidacts and 12-16+ years of compulsory education successfully trains that quality out of most people?

It's probably not a coincidence that those willing to go against the grain with respect to education seem to be disproportionately represented among the successful entrepreneurial class.

This entire discussion reminds me of the "mappers" vs "packers" theory. It's a bit long winded but a good read:

http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-th...

> What if we're all intrinsically autodidacts and 12-16+ years of compulsory education successfully trains that quality out of most people?

It's possible that is the case. I don't think it's by any means proven. But all of the autodidacts I've ever read about, and known, myself included, managed to be able to completely ignore the effects of compulsory education and forge ahead despite active discouragement from society.

Simply removing the compulsory aspects of education is, as far as I can tell, not going to be able to create this sort of resiliency, even if it improves the ability to learn. Perhaps they won't need it, I don't know.

> Most people I know, once they're out of school, learning stops.

AFAICT, many people learning the kinds of things I prefer to learn about when they are out of school, but they seem to continue to learn things (even if they are things that I don't value, or even things I consider to have negative value, both to the learner and to the society they are in.)

I agree completely. I am very fortunate to have been taught a young age on the importance of learning how to learn and is something I was able to work out in my early teens when life is a lot simpler. I absolutely ate up university because I discovered that I loved reading textbooks and would go to the library all the time and pickup advanced books in my field and read them. Going to lectures was then a nice way to fill in the missing gaps.

I have found that all the successful people I know had a similar approach to learning. Instead of being complacent with education, they made it work for them, whatever approach that may be. A crappy professor would be fixed by either going to a different lecturer, seeing the professor after hours, discussing the subjects with upper years, going to the library, and so on. Basically, they took control of their education and made it work. Reading the biographies of all the people mentioned in the article, I get the feeling they were like that as well. The fact they dropped out is almost completely irrelevant to their success.

This is a beautifully succintly put.

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