My friend and I were having this conversation some days ago regarding the topics of formal education and school life. He challenged the way I always criticized academic life and standardized achievement, he asked,
"Why you had to be so violent, so hostile against the whole academic standardization? After all, formal education--the one you hate about--had been there for thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands years ago. It's a proof that the society needed it. There are always demand, so the supply kept continue."
I admit, my friend got a point there. Education reform, as I always blabbering about, may or may not be happened, all depended on the paradigm shift that will occur in society. But in the meantime, there'll always people like me, who aren't fit in the strict environment such as school or university, because simply: we have taught ourselves so well without any aid from external teachers or mentors. There'll be always autodidactic people--the highly independent individual, the free-spirited soul--who will shake the calm situation, and turn it into chaos.
It's time to get arrogant and narcissistic, but I told you one fact: schoolwork always came easy to me. It required only imitations of highly structured subjects and material given by the formal institution. It required no effort, exploration or imagination at all, everything is clear and rigid, with given examples, know-how, and systematic step. Thus I'm proudly claiming: schoolwork is effortless, so effortless in fact, it became ridiculous for me. (Now you know why I'm always skipping class, abandon the homework, and all). Not only it kills creativity, but it's also shrouded you from your passion, it teaches you nothing so significant. Most people can't agree with my opinion, because--hell--they do not know what's on the other side, but those who've tasted the long and winding road known as self-learning, may get the idea.
I'm an autodidactic person for my entire life. Hell, even since I was a child, I've been exploring the neighborhood and got lost there--three times a week. I let my passion became my greatest coach, my teacher. The first time I held up the Tintin comic book (when I was 3 or 4), I have this intuitive feeling to be able to draw like Herge, so I get down from my bed, took my pencil, and doodling the wall. And heck, it wasn't even a good draw like I did now, it was just incoherent lines, disconnected one from another. But since no one told me it was bad, since no one told me it was awful, I can't even know the limit. The only thing that separate me from failure was my own mind and body, my limited knowledge and understanding. So I made another doodle, and another, and another. I kept going, even though no one there to teach me, no one there to observe me, assess and make a grade out of my doodle. I am my own teacher, and I am my own pupil. Driven by natural curiousity, I kept going on this blind road, no one knows where the finish line will be. Years it took before I can finally master the instrument, with sweat, tears, bodily pain and all, I finally came into mastery. Ever since that, tools are no longer a problem for me, I could easily switched between pencil and oil paints, or Adobe Photoshop or Coreldraw. I'm not saying it was a gift, a gift is something given, and in my case, it was something gained. Just like Michael Corleone in The Godfather movie said, "Power must not be given, it must be taken.", so do I, lived up those statement: I taught myself to be empowered, to have a passion I'm dying to strive for.
This is a totally different environment than any formal school can give. In school, there's always teacher to guide your hand, there's always people told you what's to do, and what's not. Someone will say, "stop!" when you bleed your hand for trying to make a good fractal splash (believe it or not, I've done that ^_^), someone will tell you to, “relax.” when seeing you frustrated there in the corner of your room, sad for not being able to made a mobius strip. And hell, I know those feeling of true failure and discouragement, the one they're not teaching even at any best school. Because, honestly, unlike any education that offered external instructors, teachers or mentors, autodidactic learning is really required an effort. A full body and mind effort. And I know exactly how it feels, because I've been there, in those moment of failure, and not only because of those stupid assignments given by school, not only because of the bad grades you just received: I was there in the lowest point of my life, when I couldn't even beat the one person I want to defeat, that is myself. I knew the lonely feelings when my best friend was only my pencil and paper, only my camera, or my stack of books. This is what you'll get beyond the standardized structures and rigid environment. A real challenge, a true mental riddle caused not by the demand of your school or workplace, but by you, yourself, who were trying to taste real live. You're trying to be alive and not just merely exist in this world.
And from my experience of autodidacting, I can't help but to grew up differently from my friends: countless times I've been called 'rebel' and 'stupid'. Yeah, I'm stupid and rebellious according to known standard. This much helped me to shape a different mental and mindset: I learned to be independent and productive, I learned to be self-fulfilling, not depending myself to other people. I learned the hard way, I knew the destruction before construction, the chaos before order. I know all these concepts and ideas of 10,000 hours of learning. I know it by my very heart. And that's what been missing out from school: a respect for your own capabilities.
I know I am a logical person and an individual who value knowledge over everything, but to think that school, teacher, and textbooks are the only source of knowledge, it would be stupid. Knowledge aren't that easy to be passed and transferred, otherwise it would only be 'information'. And information is not knowledge. Knowledge specifically attached to your cognitive and practical skill, it won't go away easily. It follow you your whole life. If you ever came to the conclusion, "I forget about Gaussian distribution formula." or, "I can't hardly remember Schopenhauer idealism." That's because you only informed about it. Informed, and not understood. And school is all about information. It's about how good you could remembered those formulas and specific, micro details about a subject, projecting it in paper and pencil tests, and after that, you could forget it.
And me, being shaped by my years of autodidact method in many subjects, knew the difference between real proud and shame. I know something about genuine and artificial, and I know the danger of 'going with the mainstream' without so much knowing what's going on the other stream. The high feeling when someone say, "your drawings are cool", "that's a good photo, Lang", or "A nice piece of writing." is a true genuine feelings, because it's all mine. My work, my learning, not anyone else's. And I don't get those high feelings when my teachers said, "you got a B+ in your exam, higher than anyone in class." I'm not feeling proud for that, because simply, gaining a B+ feel effortless for me. A joke. And for that, I'm sorry, I can't help but to be hostile to the whole educational system, because I knew exactly what's outside of those school environment. Beyond the high walls of school, I've learned harder road, walked blindly without any obvious finish line. And believe me, if you have any autodidact experience (especially if it took more than 10 years, like me...) it'll shape your mindset and mental thinking in different way than anyone. Failing classes or bad grades in school isn't felt like a failure, because you already feel more greater failure. A true failure, perhaps. That is when you first began to dive in the subject you have passion for. When you accelerate yourself 100% in the subject that you loved and have passion for, you will--in one or another way--had this urgency to doing it, with or without any external guidance or teacher, because it's almost instinctual feelings. Like falling in love with your lover, you'll get yourself into the action and striving for it.
Apart from the many pros behind it, actually autodidacticism and self-learning required an effort so hard, a price you had to pay. Usually it's in the matter of time and mind-body-tiredness, but sometimes it tax you something more bigger. The risk could be so fatal, for you're on yourself in this one, no one there to protect you from falling apart or get depressed. Scary? Perhaps, but once you're at it, you can't help but to embrace those risks, because after all, it is your responsibility. Yourself, and not anyone else's. But don't forget also about the advantages...apart from being so fucking independent, autodidact means that you can stand out clearly from the rest of your mates--they learned the 'tame' way, while you embracing the 'wild' road. You get tougher, you become a hard-ass resistant who is invulnerable to small failure. You have great dedication and integrity, heck you can even be famous--remember, Einstein, Nietzsche, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Dickens and T.A Edison are dedicated autodidacts. They were either dropped out of formal school or educated themselves through reading and real-life experimentation. Autodidacts advantages you not only practically and cognitively, it also gave you self-discipline, out-of-the-box imagination, courage to explore, high-rated resiliency and mental thinking of the brave, not the chicken. You'll learn to lived up your full potential and surprise everyone around. A lecturer of mine said something about 'plunge in to your passion' and 'dive in the experience', and I know precisely what is he trying to say. I've read Jerome Bruner's Acts of Meaning and understood totally what he meant about 'learning through real-acts'. I knew it. There's a big difference between letting yourself be taught by teachers, instructors or mentors with stand there on yourself. And by 'big difference' I'm not saying about the outcome of the process, I'm not contrasting the paintings made by an artschool student with mine (the one without any formal education in art), I'm saying about self-development, the human outcome. They'll come out differently. Graduate students may knew something about boundaries and systematic structures, the step by step approach to a problem, but the autodidactic knew something beyond that: they knew about imaginations, about explorations and will likely to be crossing the line without hesitation. The graduates may put 'efficiency' above everything, while the autodidactic will be likely to dive into chaotic process, perhaps something more than the graduate students can do, because the self-learner do not know anything about boundaries and limitations.
In the end, the self-learner, the autodidactic person knew and value something about process. They've been to hell and back. This is an autodidact's creed, and yes, I've learnt the hard way.
"The teacher without reverence, or the bureaucrat without reverence, easily despises the child to inferiorities. He thinks it is his duty to ‘mould’ the child: in imagination he is the potter with the clay. And so he gives to the child some unnatural shape, which hardens with age, producing strains and spiritual dissatisfactions, out of which grow cruelty and envy, and the belief that others must be compelled to undergo the same distortions."
— Bertrand Russell
