[Frooxius]

Thank you all, I'm glad you like it and find it useful :-)

Well I agree that much of society has completely wrong ideas about education, and that you can only get it at college. People even judge your intelligence based on school grades. Still, I don't really find the whole self-education movement to be especially insightful. It's true that you can learn about things you like on your own just as easily as in college, but it doesn't mean college hinders your learning either. It mostly depends on your attitude. That's the problem is that a lot of people who promote self-education have this kind of "fight the system" attitude, which isn't necessary. College is only bad if you have a mindless attitude about it. Anyway, nearly everyone is going to college for the piece of paper, or it's at least a major motivation.

Thank you for your comment as well, let me address your points and clarify my position :-)

First of all... people definitely use odd ways to judge intelligence. Which is why I judge people's intelligence based on the way they judge intelligence!

Now on serious point. I can't speak for others, but in my case it's more of a "Improve the system" rather than "Fight the system" with the purpose of defeating it somehow(?). I don't necessarily associate with any movement or agree with all/any of their points. My article was written just on my own with no affiliation.

I am not saying that college necessarily hinders your learning in all cases, but it's a bit more complicated than just people's attitude, because there are many more variables. Quality of various colleges differ, as do needs and skills of the students. And this doesn't apply just to colleges, but also lower education.

My main point is that everyone is basically self-educating themselves, school and teachers can only help this process to various degrees, but they can also hinder it, but like I said, it depends on combination of student and college and other factors.

If someone finds college/uni a good environment to learn, then by all means, go there. However I still think that generally much can be improved on the way education works (and there are cases, where it's not very good - teaching from authoritative position, teaching what to think instead how to think and how to work with information, compartmentalizing the knowledge and so on) and also important how are people evaluated when searching for jobs (and you can see that already happening in some companies, as they encounter problems with the way it works now).

But like I already indicated, it's not just mindset. Although it plays role, there are more factors, so I would disagree with it being bad only when you have bad mindset about it - there are certainly things that can be done better and for some people, it just doesn't work well.

For example in my case it did hinder my education (and I'll share article on that soon here), as I was forced to go through stuff I already knew, do a lot of exercises that didn't really teach me much new (because I went through that stuff already) and generally was stressful environment that sucked all the fun out of learning and also a lot of my time that I could've used actually learning something new or creating something.

Learning should be fun and if college creates for someone stressful environment and takes out the joy and rather becomes a "bootcamp" you have to fight through to get your degree (which isn't really important as much as learning itself, or perhaps at all) it will hinder the learning.

Attitude doesn't really help, because your attitude can't change the way subjects are being taught or how much time it takes to go through things that aren't that beneficial to you. Unless you change your attitude "Hey, I'll just spend a few weeks working on some projects that don't teach me anything new, because there's nothing better I can do".

Again, it doesn't apply to everyone and I'm certain many people are happy in college. And my article doesn't actually exclude that, it talks about educating yourself even within environment of some formal school, so it's not about that :-)

@GoodyGreen: I love Albert Einstein's quotes on education and intelligence (my favorite is "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."). Although I don't think it's the only source of knowledge literally, but the meaning/spirit of that quote is very good - we learn best by experiencing and working with things, rather than just hearing about them (which might be fascinating as well, if you can't go and experience something) ^^

[JJalkman]

The ability to learn is the most important skill to learn.

[JJalkman]

The ability to learn is the most important skill to learn.

[Xeronations_mybb_import10066]

Interesting and compelling information. You're absolutely right. The best thing one can do to achieve their dreams is to self-educate themselves on that subject matter.

[Xeronations_mybb_import10066]

Interesting and compelling information. You're absolutely right. The best thing one can do to achieve their dreams is to self-educate themselves on that subject matter.

[gazeranco]

Great article - I learnt more at work than I ever did at college and Uni. And as for computer skills my first intro to programming (blitz basic) was a work colleugue and from there Ive been self taught. I would reccomemd anyone new to hacking to learn to program - it really helped me to understand computers.

[gazeranco]

Great article - I learnt more at work than I ever did at college and Uni. And as for computer skills my first intro to programming (blitz basic) was a work colleugue and from there Ive been self taught. I would reccomemd anyone new to hacking to learn to program - it really helped me to understand computers.

[Osama Gulryz]

great article i love reading it

[StRaXD]

Epic article,enjoyed reading it.

[backtrack5_pro]

Thats how I learned almost every single one of my applications. Thanks for the post, I liked it