College Education vs Autodidactic Education

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Orwell
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06 Jan 2011, 7:46 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Orwell wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

How many people other than yourself do you estimate, percentage wise, are in a similar situation as you yourself are? Anywhere close to 90%? 50% 10%?

Lower than any of those numbers, but still a lot higher than those who are able to get anywhere with pure autodidacticism.

How would you know this?

Because the people who do get anywhere (ie success in attaining a good job or becoming well-established researchers) come much more commonly from a situation similar to mine (good formal education paid for by scholarships) than to yours (trying to read books on their own and then whining about the evils of a system they are largely ignorant of).

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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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06 Jan 2011, 7:47 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

. . . In the hallway some of the students were having difficulty remembering a mnemonic for electrochemical reactions. . .

Was this OIL RIG??

Oxygenation Is Loss (of electrons)

Reduction Is Gain (of electrons)

AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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06 Jan 2011, 7:56 pm

Okay, as an example of an intellectual topic easily understand.

I followed the story about swine flu H1N1 pretty carefully. I took the position we should take it medium seriously.
.
.
"2. Secondly, people who are not from the at-risk group but who have persistent or rapidly worsening symptoms should also be treated with antivirals. These symptoms include difficulty breathing and a high fever that lasts beyond 3 days. . . "
Dr. Nikki Shindo, World Health Organization, Nov. 12, 2009
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/vpc_tran ... shindo.pdf

Zen simplicity! If you're having trouble breathing, get help pronto. Well, someone says, I have a strong immune system. Well, it can be too strong, and your lungs can start filling with fluid. The same conclusion still holds, trouble breathing --> get some help.

And all the news casts, all the round and round, why didn't we get clear facts like this just laid on the table? In part, they're afraid of taking chances. And in part, they're not really interested enough in their topic, to make an assertion and then get some back and forth with one of their medical consults. (It's easy to make fun of the corporate media, and there is a crying need for some good journalism. The difficulty is making money from it.)

-------------------------------------

“ . . . In children without chronic health problems, it is a warning sign if they seem to recover from the flu but then relapse with a high fever, Dr. Frieden said. The relapse may be bacterial pneumonia, which must be treated with antibiotics. . . . ”
reporter Denise Grady, New York Times, Sept. 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/healt ... .html?_r=1

Now, that's a recognizable pattern. That's something a parent can really latch onto. Okay, your child seems to be getting better and then he or she relapses with high fever.

Again, why don't we get this kind of meaty information on the news? (and again, I think the answer is a combination of timidity and disinterest)

---------------------------------

Yes, in relatively rare cases, common old everyday flu can cause pneumonia, either direct viral pneumonia or secondary bacterial pneumonia. Our zen simplicity conclusion still stands:

trouble breathing --> get some damn help :lol:

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 06 Jan 2011, 8:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Stinkypuppy
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06 Jan 2011, 8:10 pm

AardvarkGoodSwimmer wrote:

I like pre-studying. Then, you kind of go to the class as a leader and a person in the background willing to help the teacher succeed (and the fact that I'm a guy in my 40s and that I taught high school for one year and have an idea what the teacher is going through has something to do with it!)

But here's what I would ask, How dearly is a person going to purchase it and how much is he or she going to lose the light touch in the process? For example, I've taken both philosophy and psychology classes and the conversations I was hoping for just didn't really materialize.

That's one of the major caveats of social learning in general: it's highly dependent on the people with whom you're socializing. If a person takes those classes with other people who aren't really trying to learn anything from or contribute anything substantial to the conversations, the conversations lose their usefulness drastically. It's unfortunate, but does seem to be more pervasive the last few years, if not decades.

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iamnotaparakeet
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06 Jan 2011, 8:12 pm

Orwell wrote:

yours (trying to read books on their own and then whining about the evils of a system they are largely ignorant of).

Really? Mind telling me what I don't know about the educational system? Congrats on your scholarship, but if you had to pay for your college education would the costs be worth the benefits?

Orwell
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06 Jan 2011, 9:09 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Orwell wrote:

yours (trying to read books on their own and then whining about the evils of a system they are largely ignorant of).

Really? Mind telling me what I don't know about the educational system? Congrats on your scholarship, but if you had to pay for your college education would the costs be worth the benefits?

Your experience with higher education consists of interactions with Rasmussen College, yes? Rasmussen, like most other for-profit institutions, is known as a diploma mill. It is not someplace you go if you're really interested in learning. Non-profit universities and some state schools will actually provide a legitimate education.

If I had to pay for my education out-of-pocket I would not be at the school I am now, simply because no one but the ultra-rich can actually afford to pay tuition here. But a university education somewhere cheaper would still be worth it.

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iamnotaparakeet
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06 Jan 2011, 9:21 pm

Orwell wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Orwell wrote:

yours (trying to read books on their own and then whining about the evils of a system they are largely ignorant of).

Really? Mind telling me what I don't know about the educational system? Congrats on your scholarship, but if you had to pay for your college education would the costs be worth the benefits?

I've only been enrolled at Rasmussen, though I've visited Bethel University, Northwestern College, Saint Paul College. Of those three the first two are for-profit and Saint Paul College might be as well, although the cost of credit hour in the chemistry technology major was $235 as of 2007 whereas the cost of credit hour at Bethel for courses in the chemistry major were $437 as of 2004. My experience of government formal educational systems was two months in Billy Ryan Highschool in Denton TX, at which they decided to put me in their special ed class because of my stepdad's earnest trilling about me being abnormal and their being low on quota. For two whole stinking months, which I should have been in 9th grade, they gave arithmetic instead of algebra and "career etiquette" instead of anything remotely resembling social studies. I dropped out of that nonsensical farce and taught myself algebra I and II, Euclidean geometry, Spanish, ancient through Renaissance history, chemistry, physics, and everything else I had or developed an interest in that I would have missed out on if I had kept with the lousy Denton ISD version of education.

Orwell
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06 Jan 2011, 9:57 pm

In short, you have little to no experience with formal education, and your criticisms of it are based on essentially no understanding of what you're talking about.

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iamnotaparakeet
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07 Jan 2011, 10:06 am

Orwell wrote:

In short, you have little to no experience with formal education, and your criticisms of it are based on essentially no understanding of what you're talking about.

My wife has been formally educated throughout her life, would you prefer her experiences? Would you be the kind of person who would claim that you can't tell what you're missing until you try it? Like beer, crack, cyanide, mercury, arsenic? My experience with the wonders of formal education are enough for me not to miss it. I can learn far better on my own as compared to merely being part of a herd with people like you.

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07 Jan 2011, 10:10 am

Stinkypuppy wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Orwell wrote:

I've taken a few classes now that didn't have a textbook. They covered newly emerging fields where the subject matter is not yet that clearly defined and there aren't standard textbooks that provide an adequate and up-to-date coverage. The classes instead consisted of conversations with researchers who have been involved in the area. That portion of my education could not be obtained for $1.50 in late charges at the public library.

Yes, there will always be exceptions to everything. Find an exception, and therefore validity must be lacking totally, right?

I don't think Orwell means anything of the sort; he is referring to the fact that there is a social aspect of formal college education which can contribute to your knowledge, and which cannot be obtained as easily as an autodidact. For all the advantages you mention about autodidactic education, there are disadvantages as well. Advantages and disadvantages are two sides of the same coin. His disadvantage doesn't invalidate what you said earlier, but both sides need to be taken into account to obtain a more complete picture of college vs. autodidactic education.

If one is decidedly antisocial why then would a social aspect be preferable?

iamnotaparakeet
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07 Jan 2011, 10:12 am

AardvarkGoodSwimmer wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

. . . In the hallway some of the students were having difficulty remembering a mnemonic for electrochemical reactions. . .

Was this OIL RIG??

Oxygenation Is Loss (of electrons)

Reduction Is Gain (of electrons)

No, it wasn't OIL RIG or LEO says GER, it was something else intended to help remember the same thing though.

iamnotaparakeet
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07 Jan 2011, 10:14 am

Stinkypuppy wrote:

AardvarkGoodSwimmer wrote:

Another caveat of social learning is that there's often far to much focus on the social and far too little focus on the learning.

Stinkypuppy
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07 Jan 2011, 7:23 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

If one is decidedly antisocial why then would a social aspect be preferable?

Because social learning isn't just about face-to-face communication. It's also about communicating by writing and reading, and teaching while being taught at the same time.

You claim that to at least some extent people learn things on their own. However, the flip side is that to at least some extent people also learn things from other people. You claim to learn things on your own, but who wrote those books from which you're learning? How did they learn to write books in a didactic manner that a student, potentially filled with tons of questions, can understand and absorb? You claim that you taught yourself so many things, but do you have sufficient proficiency in the material you learned to be able to teach it, to explain it in sufficient detail to others who'd want to learn from you? Because as anybody who has taught anything could tell you, teaching in all its forms is as much a learning experience as being a student is. And that in itself has a social element in it. Now, if you want to stay decidedly antisocial, that is your business, but there are pros and cons to any decision you or anybody else will make.

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Another caveat of social learning is that there's often far to much focus on the social and far too little focus on the learning.

Well... this isn't really another caveat, it's the same caveat: "social learning is highly dependent on the people with whom you're socializing".

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Stinkypuppy
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07 Jan 2011, 8:01 pm

Oops, I forgot to mention another significant disadvantage to utilizing no social learning: you won't be able to learn from other people's experiences and knowledge. When you're limited to drawing from only your own experiences, the learning process is significantly slower, because you have to wait until you develop that experience in order to learn and progress. Is it impossible to learn purely by teaching yourself without any social interaction at all? No, but you'd end up spending a lifetime constantly "re-inventing the wheel". For example, imagine in basic algebra that you weren't told how to multiply polynomials using FOIL (first, outer, inner, last)? How would you do it? Yes you could probably devise your own way of doing it, but it would take a lot longer than somebody simply teaching you FOIL. Repeat this for every single step in the learning process and you can see how much longer that pure autodidacticism will take. This wouldn't be so bad if one already has his or her own large pool of experience and knowledge, but a major issue relevant to AS folks is that many don't have a large pool of experience, especially if they rely heavily on routines and are resistant to experiencing new things.

Of course, the other extreme on the social side would be that you wouldn't ever learn to think or experience things for yourself, that you'd constantly have to rely on (or to put it less mildly, to be at the mercy of) other people for learning and growing, incorporating their prejudices into your own thinking processes. So a careful balance of learning from others vs. on your own is required to try to get the best of both worlds while minimizing the risks of the two extremes.

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iamnotaparakeet
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07 Jan 2011, 8:01 pm

Stinkypuppy wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

If one is decidedly antisocial why then would a social aspect be preferable?

Because social learning isn't just about face-to-face communication. It's also about communicating by writing and reading, and teaching while being taught at the same time.

Oh, right, I suppose one must therefore have to be contractually enrolled in an official institution in order to write to other people and read their correspondence.

Stinkypuppy wrote:

You claim that to at least some extent people learn things on their own. However, the flip side is that to at least some extent people also learn things from other people. You claim to learn things on your own, but who wrote those books from which you're learning?

Most textbooks are written by people who have degrees from colleges and universities. But that does not make it a necessity that they must have a formal education in order to pioneer a subject, much less understand it. Say, do you like being able to use electricity?

Stinkypuppy wrote:

How did they learn to write books in a didactic manner that a student, potentially filled with tons of questions, can understand and absorb?

Well, people like Nathaniel Bowditch would try explaining concepts in different ways to the crews of the ships he was aboard and journal about it determining which manners of explanations worked best to help each crew member to grasp the concepts and mathematical skills he was teaching to them.

Stinkypuppy wrote:

You claim that you taught yourself so many things, but do you have sufficient proficiency in the material you learned to be able to teach it, to explain it in sufficient detail to others who'd want to learn from you?

I've helped to teach others, including my sister and my stepdad concepts that they were unfamiliar with. My wife also I've helped with college algebra and various other aspects of learning. I can teach others, it's not a difficult task in most cases. Heck, often I've impressed most teachers and professors that I've conversed with.

Stinkypuppy wrote:

Because as anybody who has taught anything could tell you, teaching in all its forms is as much a learning experience as being a student is. And that in itself has a social element in it. Now, if you want to stay decidedly antisocial, that is your business, but there are pros and cons to any decision you or anybody else will make.

As with stoics, for most cases moderation is better than extremes. Socialization in excess is just as good as calling a school a country club.

Stinkypuppy wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Another caveat of social learning is that there's often far to much focus on the social and far too little focus on the learning.

Well... this isn't really another caveat, it's the same caveat: "social learning is highly dependent on the people with whom you're socializing".

Not quite. Spending too much time with people depends not on who they are or how intelligent they are as no matter what they, as with anyone else, can serve as a distraction just as easily as they can serve as an assistant to one's education. However with public school's emphasis upon socialization to an unhealthy extreme it is not surprising that somebody who probably was sent to public school would view it with admiration rather than aversion.

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07 Jan 2011, 8:06 pm

Stinkypuppy wrote:

Who says I'm limited to my own experiences and knowledge? Just by not being enrolled in college means I can't converse with professors, researchers, other students? Do you realize how patently absurd that is? You seem to think, or express rather, that without a formal education that one cannot communicate with others. What insanity.

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