The free availability of knowledge has changed the way we think about education. But even with so much information available and so many quality online courses accessible to everyone, people still have a taboo talking about self-learning.
It seems that learning alone is a genius, a nerd thing, nothing that you and I, normal people, can do.
We changed a lot in terms of interaction and social contact but not the way we think about learning.
I am NOT advocating the extinction of teachers
Once you take responsability for your education, try to absorb and address the issue, and still feel that a school is the most effective way, go deep. Essential knowledge is best accessed when we cant get in touch with great teachers.
Of course there is no shortage of ways for us to get out of school and start learning by different means: https://steemit.com/life/@mateuspujol/do-we-really-need-schools
Why do most of people think they can not learn without a teacher? Why can not they even imagine learning outside the school, for example?
Excuse #1: Saves a lot of effort in some cases
Let's say you work with accounting and want to study nanotechnology. Well, for more information about what you can find out there, go to college in some scientific area and then get a postgraduate degree in the field will be much more practical than being alone.
While self-learning is ideal for some areas, it is not recommended for others. If your interest is in sectors regulated by law, such as engineering, medicine or law, youd'd better get a formal education. Already if your interest is in areas such as language learning, programming and marketing, you have a lot of chance to turn around on your own.
Excuse #2: It exempts you from the responsibility of learning
It's so much easier to have someone to blame. If you enroll in a course and go to classes, you have to absorb the content automatically, that's how it works! You do not need to pay attention, or strain; just pay and go. If you do not get the skills you're looking for, you just have to complain to the institution and go somewhere else, where the cycle begins again.
Taking responsibility for the things that happen in your life is scary. You failed to pass that public contest bacause you did not prepare enough. If you do not know how to speak english even after 5 years of school, the responsibility is not just the school, but yours.
Excuse #3: It brings the feeling that learning is happening
This one is almost a prank. You already know that you are not nearly as smart as you imagine; your brain is badly adapted to today's society: it evolved to operate in the pre-civilized world, where we hunted and were in constant danger. So there is a whole list of dysfunctions of the mind that end up, invariably, generating judgmental erros.
In the case of schools and teachers, there is what is known as self-signaling: we signal to ourselves that we are learning and so we end up not learning (since only the signal is sufficient to satisfy the part of our brain that demands results). We cling to the idea that we are going to learn because we are having class, even though we have not judged whether this is true simply because it is more convenient to think that we are learning.
This occurs in other areas of life, as is the case with charity. Psychologists have discovered through experiments that a good deed makes people less likely to do more grooming. Why? Because we already signal to ourselves that we are good people and we do not need to strive to do something better.
The interesting thing is that this occurs even among the self-taught: many people prefer to study watching video lessons, for example, even without being the most effective method itself, for the same reason explained above.
Excuse #4: Provide university degree
Having university degree can be very helpful. For example, having it in a statistics specialization, or a languague class, can bring you and advantage when it comes to a selection for employment. But what good is it if you do not know what you've studied? The mastery of content is more important than the certification of proficiency itself. Imagine needing that statistic on the first day of work and having no idea where to go?
Not to mention that the job market is so competitive for that for jobs that require differentiated skills, involving initiative, creative work, etc, they are skipping the "what degrees do you have" part and going straight to "show what you've done and knows how to do".
Who is responsible for your learning?
The current model of education becamy really popular with the Industrial Revolution. All this idea of teacher, classroom and students, in the model we know of, seems to come from the first university models, back in the 11th century.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, it was necessary to qualify mass labor, so that the old model of teaching, involving pupil and teacher, with knowledge passed from father to son, was no longer enough. By institutionalizing the process, schools took resposability for educating students.
All of this made sense at a time when information was expensive, scarce and poorly organized. But what today, when it is easy to find, is there already a good part cataloged and structured to be consumed?
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Hi @mateuspujol, possibly you won't read this as I have seen that you are inactive for some months now...
I am building my own Computer Science Degree, using online material, free and low cost. I think that doing so I will be able to learn the same topics as in an undergraduate curriculum in most universities.
However I think that one thing that is yet missing from this study model is that it's not possible to have nearly as much interaction and networking as in college.
Do you have any ideas as how to mitigate this problem? Where should I go to meet people that can help me?
Cheers!
@puzzledbytheweb