The Devolution of Our Self-Direction

A while back I forwarded a post about self-directed learning. It got me thinking about how much of our learning process is reliant on our own initiative rather than what information is fed to us in our "schooling".

It never occurred to me until that point that the majority of what I know, now, that exceeds any fundamental understanding of basic concepts in conventional fields (in case I've lost you: two plus two, the cow goes moo, "you and I" not "me and you"), was self-taught.

Meaning, with the exception of basic algebra, basic grammar, basic basic basic, the rest of what I've learned was never taught to me. I taught myself.

So where am I going with this?

I continue to do these sorts of things even in college. Not just by Googling things, but by taking advantage of what I'm paying for. All of my courses consist of things I'm taking seriously: art, psychology, anthropology and global perspectives. They all require quite a bit of work, but I knew that when I signed up for the courses.

I asked someone the other day what some of their classes were. Aside from their major, most of them were pretty ridiculous (by ridiculous I mean a course on how to watch television. No, it doesn't teach the facets of consumerism).

I wish people would take their education (and their money) seriously.