Autodidacts discussion
Introductions
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Gerald, you are one well rounded son of a gun. I guess I am as well. I've long been a fan of assisted, mentored, or "taught" education -- the traditional brand of education -- but I also espouse self-education. I believe that guidance is important, but autodidacticism is also important. A straight 50/50 blend is ideal.For the latter half of that ratio, it will be a pleasure for me to take part in supporting each other.
When I think of teaching myself, I think of a six-month period in 2006 when I wrestled with some terrifying revelations about certain world events. Without getting into the details, I can tell you and the other, future members of this group that the experience showed me that up was down and down was up -- at least as far as my understanding of the world was concerned. My whole mythos was turned on its head.
Since then I have gradually increased my appreciation for stories -- your typical "fiction" stories as well as the "facts" that are actually just stories that guide and define us as beings of consciousness. It is now my personal mythos that the universe is made of stories, not atoms. I choose to believe this in all its glorious self-contradiction.
To that end, I am in search for my story, for the stories of others, and how they affect us in this plane of existence. Stories exist in the fabric of everything we "know" -- math, science, politics, religion, underwater basket-weaving and everything else.
As a result, I am, of course, interested in and open to everything that can be known -- and maybe a little of what can supposedly never be known.
Thanks for having me here.
Mod
Sometimes I think of science as an attempt at constructing a universal narrative. Since we went from tribes of 150 people to a more globalized culture, we gradually lost the tradition of oral storytelling. 40,000 years ago, people were not longing for facts and settling for myths. Pre-civilized people were just fine without knowing the facts of basic science because their world demanded of them only their nature.
More important is that which brings peace and understanding than that which can be logically proven.
Hi guys, I discovered Goodreads earlier this week, and today I discovered this group. It was interesting to read your introduction posts, you all have different paths to autodidactism, and the same goes for me.
I have never been to university, in fact, I left High School at the end of Year 10 (in Australia that is two years before graduation). I left because the schedule of classes for the remainder of my high school life was setup up in such a way that I couldn't study down the path I wanted, so I decided to leave, get a job and look after my own educational needs. That was at the tender age of 15.
The job I walked in to a month after leaving school was banking, and I stayed there for almost 10 years before getting frustrated with the sales culture. This is where my story becomes a little similar to yours, Gerald. I went in to business for myself, setting up and running two businesses over the next 12 years. The first was in learning and development, specifically adult vocational education, mostly around business administration, IT and management. The second was graphic design, which was a result of my dabbling in art since I could pick up a crayon.
Eventually I got bored with both of these and changed career once more, using my learning and development skills to start off in Human Resources, where I still work full-time today as a consultant in workforce planning and development.
Throughout this I have guided my own learning. I have formal qualifications in business, IT, design, management, HR, journalism and adult education. These are all formal, bread-winning learning achievements, but the process was no-less enjoyable.
What I value more is the other education I have guided myself through since leaving school. It has been disorganised, sporadic at times and directionless for the most part, but at its centre is the desire for knowledge. Two of my great passions are art history and the origins of the English language.
My goal is to give myself a classical education, something that was gone from the school system in Australia by the time I went through it. I'm starting from scratch and following the Trivium process of grammar, logic and rhetoric. Which means I'm starting to learn my Latin and Greek, and reading the classics of literature.
So that's me. I'm looking forward to being part of this group, small though we are at the moment, I think there are some good conversations to come.
Mod
Welcome to the group, Isaac. I remember graduating from college when I was 24 or so (I was an art major) and looking forward to having time to study. I started reading a really big book of post-modernist theory, but didn't get far. All this time I was kicking myself for not continuing my education -- until I started "designing" courses and thinking more about how to do it. I realize that I actually did continue it, just not in a schoolish way. The lesson for me is that curiosity will be your guide if you let it, and "should's" are poison to curiosity.
Thanks for joining!
Mod
It was interesting to read your introduction posts, you all have different paths to autodidactism, and the..."
That's great that you took your education into your own hands. I remember being taught ancient history in school, but it didn't interest me at the time so i paid little attention. Now that I have some real questions about why our civilization is the way it is, I actually want to learn it.
Also, I find boredom to be a good indicator. It's good to pay attention to boredom without feeling guilty. Welcome to the group.
It's good to meet you, Isaac and Helen. Gerald, your group is already attracting interesting people. Good job.
I read No More Prisons by William Upski Wimsatt after I graduated from college, and I was inspired by the idea of self-education. Eight years later (December 2011) I decided to take the idea seriously.
In those eight years, I taught myself how to start a business, how to design websites using HTML, PHP and CSS (I can now design functional websites by writing code), how to use MySQL databases, and how to customize Wordpress. I've designed guitars, figured out basic electronics, learned how to read schematics, I've designed and built furniture, I can tech a club show and engineer a recording session. I could even prepare a bankruptcy case if I needed to. I've done all of these things because I had specific goals I wanted to accomplish, and I needed to learn a few things in order to get them done myself. I've often kicked myself for doing things the hard way. I used to stay up all night scouring the Internet for pieces of code, thinking “this wouldn't take so long if I could afford to pay someone else to design it for me.”
After going through phases of being a visual artist, self-publisher, organizer, recording artist, sound tech and live performer, I realized that one of my real skills is acquiring knowledge on my own. Even when I was in college, I studied avant-garde art movements in my spare time, which culminated in my friends and I organizing our own group.
Right now, I'm involved in a long, slow research project involving human nature and the psychological and ecological conflicts of civilization. As a result I'm studying Buddhist philosophy, Western Religion, anthropology, psychology and economics. I'm throwing in mathematics to challenge my brain and the subjects of lifestyle minimalism and personal finance so I can balance and manage my life.
People who take charge of their own self-directed learning don't necessarily need to do it in isolation. In my mind, that's the hard part of the autodidact's project. There's a social, community aspect to learning that gets lost after you turn 25. Taking charge of your lifelong education means taking charge of that as well. I hope others will feel like joining the conversation.