Autodidacts/Self-Directed Education

[mrs.b]

The first article speaks of self-directed learning as a free for all with no guidance, but the ed tech supporters she criticizes are not promoting this type of setting. Let's take Khan Academy as an example. Khan Academy is not an unstructured approach to learning a new subject. The materials are fairly well designed and follow a logical structure. The same could be said for the CLEP and DSST exams we love. The required knowledge is based on typical course materials. There are organized textbooks suggested for study. This is a far cry from Bill Gates teaching himself to program on a mainframe computer.

It is understandable to see someone with an Ivy League education lament education without the perks of attending Yale or Columbia, but the education provided by many colleges and universities is little more than canned materials manipulated by publishers for maximum profit being taught by part time employees who are far more occupied with putting food on the table than they are intelligent conversation with students. The adjuncts can't be blamed, they are not being paid to provide the type of academic environment presented in the article.

This article presents the image of a lost soul standing in the middle of a library trying to decide what to learn. This is nothing like the impression I get from those on this website. Structure is available for those who want it. Instruction is available from some of the best universities in the country at the click of a mouse. Peer encouragement is available on websites like degreeforums. The supporters of ed tech she mentioned are not building the straw man this author so eloquently unraveled. They are supporting the tools many of us have used to complete our studies.

Agreed, 100%. I think there is a distinct difference between self-teaching (just sitting down to figure it out for oneself) and resourcefulness to find the alternative structured resources that are either free or inexpensive. These types of articles have the odor of formal academia's attempts to discourage the layperson from even trying. If too many people discover and attempt alternate education paths (that do have structure, albeit not the format used for the previous hundreds of years of formal education), the market for those formal tuition pathways is diminished. Note, the internet is still a relatively new resource (in terms of academic format). Prior to its integration into the learning environment, alternate education forms were few and far between. Now that it is a reality, the old systems must make their arguments as to why it is an inferior option. Since other studies have been unsuccessful in demonstrating that the level of education is not equivalent to the old butt-in-seat formats, a flowery and formal marketing method to discourage would-be consumers seems the next logical step in a marketing campaign.

[Prloko]

The way I see it, someone had to be the first to put their hand in the fire to know it burns, and to then know that cooking food in it makes it taste better. Not everything learned, even higher education requires someone to babysit you. All current knowledge is built on previous knowledge, but that doesn't mean we can't learn by as Will Hunting would say, by getting an "education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library"

[cookderosa]

Prloko makes an excellent point. I think if we drew a venn diagram - set one could be learning (for the joy of it) while the second could be academics (for a credential) and you'd find -I think- a high number of IC members right in the intersection.

[ZsaZsa]

My two cents worth: you can see from my signature that most of my degree has been self-taught. I have taken a few traditional classes. The only major plus I can see is that if you take a tradional class, (vs. self-taught), you have a yardstick to measure your learning by...assignments and tests that allow you to say, "I have learned this much." When you learn for yourself you are never finished.
Some of us come to this kind of learning because it is all that is available. When you do not have the advantage of an upper middle class family structure, you take whatever you can. When I was a young married, with two toddlers, living in a one-stoplight town (with a library that consisted of a few shelves in an old store front), and NO university within less than an hours driving distance...I realized I was reading my mom's trashy bodice-ripper novels because I was fascinated by the history tucked in between the romances. I got lucky and found a huge British history textbook on the bookshelf at my church...and taught myself. I was so excited when I found out you could get credit for the random things you were able to learn just because you were curious. Does that make me an autodidact?

[cookderosa]

My two cents worth: you can see from my signature that most of my degree has been self-taught. I have taken a few traditional classes. The only major plus I can see is that if you take a tradional class, (vs. self-taught), you have a yardstick to measure your learning by...assignments and tests that allow you to say, "I have learned this much." When you learn for yourself you are never finished.
Some of us come to this kind of learning because it is all that is available. When you do not have the advantage of an upper middle class family structure, you take whatever you can. When I was a young married, with two toddlers, living in a one-stoplight town (with a library that consisted of a few shelves in an old store front), and NO university within less than an hours driving distance...I realized I was reading my mom's trashy bodice-ripper novels because I was fascinated by the history tucked in between the romances. I got lucky and found a huge British history textbook on the bookshelf at my church...and taught myself. I was so excited when I found out you could get credit for the random things you were able to learn just because you were curious. Does that make me an autodidact?

I think you make a good point, and that is even if what happens here would maybe label some of us as "autodidacts" or at least autodidactish (not a real word) that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the best approach to a well rounded education. I've had to write things, read things, solve problems, etc. that I wouldn't have opted to do on my own; and then to have that work evaluated with (presumably) constructive feedback is a great learning tool. I think structuring learning for the masses is so incredibly complicated, but no one has to tell an autodidact to go learn something; maybe that's the distinction?