We've
talked a fair bit about the value of informal education and the
increased 'ownership' that comes with it. I found this view, on the
comment thread of an Independent article, rather interesting:
I entirely agree. Boyd Tonkin is evidently a very clever fellow; I do
wish he would understand that not everyone is as clever and write with
less prolixity. This is not the age of Macaulay, and few of today's
university-educated readers will have the patience or the attention span
to plough through his purple prose, let alone readers such as myself
who never had the privilege of a university education or entered the
virtual portals of the OU.
If I understand the nub of his
argument, it is that a university education is not necessarily the key
to a successful life, however one measures success. Ralph Waldo Emerson
opined that success is a constitutional trait, an opinion that Richard
Branson, who eschewed a university education, will doubtless echo.
Such
learning as I have acquired has been steadily accumulated through a
lifetime of reading for pleasure. And it appears I have not been alone
in benefiting from self-education, unhampered by the prejudices and
limitations of tutors whose experience of the real world is confined to
ivory-towered academia.
One of the books from which I have taken
most pleasure is The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes,
by Jonathan Rose, praised by Paul Foot as 'a feast of the memories and
pleasures of British working-class readers.' I have been unable to
detect a trace of political bias throughout its 500-plus pages, possibly
explained by the fact that the author is an American academic.
View from a self-taught learner
We've talked a fair bit about the value of informal education and the increased 'ownership' that comes with it. I found this view, on the comment thread of an Independent article, rather interesting:
I entirely agree. Boyd Tonkin is evidently a very clever fellow; I do wish he would understand that not everyone is as clever and write with less prolixity. This is not the age of Macaulay, and few of today's university-educated readers will have the patience or the attention span to plough through his purple prose, let alone readers such as myself who never had the privilege of a university education or entered the virtual portals of the OU.
If I understand the nub of his argument, it is that a university education is not necessarily the key to a successful life, however one measures success. Ralph Waldo Emerson opined that success is a constitutional trait, an opinion that Richard Branson, who eschewed a university education, will doubtless echo.
Such learning as I have acquired has been steadily accumulated through a lifetime of reading for pleasure. And it appears I have not been alone in benefiting from self-education, unhampered by the prejudices and limitations of tutors whose experience of the real world is confined to ivory-towered academia.
One of the books from which I have taken most pleasure is The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, by Jonathan Rose, praised by Paul Foot as 'a feast of the memories and pleasures of British working-class readers.' I have been unable to detect a trace of political bias throughout its 500-plus pages, possibly explained by the fact that the author is an American academic.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/true-education-is-for-life-not-just-alevel-results-day-10456514.html
The eloquence of the contributor certainly argues well for auto-dictats, I think