Another reason for the increased ease of Self-Directed Education lies in technology. Today, anyone with a computer and Internet connection can access essentially all the world’s information. Self-directed learners who want to pursue almost any subject can find articles, videos, discussion groups, and even online courses devoted to it. They can gain information and share thoughts with experts and novices alike, throughout the world, who have interests akin to theirs. Students in standard schools must study just what the school dictates, in just the ways that the school decides; but self-directed learners can find subjects and means of study that match their own particular interests and styles of learning. Self-directed learners are not held back by the slow pace of a school course, nor are they rushed ahead when they want more time to think about and delve deeply into any given aspect of the interest they’re pursuing.
The future belongs to the auto-didacts.
The future of self-driving cars belongs to the didact autos.
We are going to be underwhelmed by it though. Realize most of college is useless information. More access to it isn’t going to move the needle. It will be disruptive but not in ways most people assume, I assume.
Embrace diversity. Eliminate public-compulsory education through vouchers.
“In all areas of mixed nationality, the school is a political prize of the highest importance. It cannot be deprived of its political character as long as it remains a public and compulsory institution. There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions.
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“But even if we eliminate the spiritual coercion exercised by compulsory education, we should still be far from having done everything that is necessary in order to remove all the sources of friction between the nationalities living in polyglot territories. The school is one means of oppressing nationalities— perhaps the most dangerous, in our opinion— but it certainly is not the only means. Every interference on the part of the government in economic life can become a means of persecuting the members of nationalities speaking a language different from that of the ruling group. For this reason, in the interest of preserving peace, the activity of the government must be limited to the sphere in which it is, in the strictest sense of the word, indispensable.”
Mises, Ludwig von (2010-12-10). Liberalism
One of the greatest features of self-directed education is that it is often just-in-time, when interest is high and the knowledge is more likely to be incorporated into the students inherent body of knowledge and put to use in their daily life rather than retained for testing and then discarded.
That all sounds awesome, seriously it does, but the requirement to self-motivate to absorb boring, useless information is a feature and not a bug of traditional education.
Undoubtedly, you are at least partially right. Much of what people do on a job is not inherently interesting. If you have learned in school to “do it anyway,” you have a valuable skill. If you have learned to “do it anyway, and do it well,” you have a very valuable skill.
Ahem, not to nitpick, but how am ai not 100% right. I went to engineering school, the most comprehensive AND specialized and highly remunerated offering on campus.
And yet I did not use a single technique I learned there in several engineering positions.
“The future belongs to the auto-didacts.”
I’d like to believe that’s true. But self-directed learning has been fairly practical for quite a long time (since the advent of mass-market publishing and lending libraries a couple of hundred years ago) and credentialism is pretty firmly embedded and defended by overlapping guilds — those in the educational establishments selling the expensive credentials and those in the professions where entry is restricted. Yes, you can become an expert by self-directed learning, but in how many fields will the law allow you to earn a living using this expertise without the official credentials? Or gain the credentials by demonstrating competence? I work in software — one of the few high paying fields where auto-didacts can succeed, and that’s very much as it should be, but unfortunately I don’t foresee too many other fields following suit. At least not without major political battles.
Do you view (what I perceive as) the push to credentialize coding work as a positive, more of a Trojan horse, or both?
They will be held back, however, by the absence of having to defend or adumbrate their views within eyeshot and earshot of a larger audience of human types who just might demur, politely, or otherwise.