If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I made the conscious decision from the start to use self education instead of the more conventional spelling of self-education. I had my reasons, but after a steady series of times when my grammatical skills have been called into question, I give in. From now on I’ll be using the conventional self-education form of the hyphenated word.

At the Techonomy conference taking place now in Lake Tahoe, California, that focuses on new ways to look at the economic power of innovation, Bill Gates expressed the opinion that within five years the web will provide the means by which anyone who is self-motivated will be able to attain a world-class college education. Check out Gates’ comments here. I agree with Gates wholeheartedly.

Technology is quickly democratizing education in ways we’re only just beginning to understand. For the person ready to pursue learning on their own terms, this is great news and quite exciting.

Gates also said something that I’ve been saying for a long time. No matter how you acquire your knowledge, you should get credit for it. We need to start advocating strongly for companies and educational institutions to begin accepting proof of education gained by any means whatsoever. Formal degrees and certifications should not be required to do this.

On March 5, 2010, a great travesty occurred in the State of Texas. A radical, right-wing faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded in replacing fact with fiction in the state’s official curriculum that dictates how the children of that state will be taught. The new curriculum directives touch upon a wide array of subjects including social studies, history and economics. You can read more about it here.

As just one example of the new outrageous and dangerous guidelines, teachers in that state will be required to focus on the Judeo-Christian influences of our nation’s Founding Fathers. At the same time, they will not be allowed to teach the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. I fear the United States is beginning to form its own version of the same theocratic crazies that dominate elsewhere in the world. I thought our country was better than this.

While this blog is about self education, any affront to true learning and education is something I feel I must speak out about. These types of decisions must not be allowed to stand. They also point out why developing the self education skills in our children is so vital if we are to ensure we survive as a nation and as a civil society. Students must be taught to seek out facts and ideas unrestricted by any particular bias. By fostering self education skills we can at least counteract some of the shortcomings of traditional formal education highlighted so clearly by the Texas debacle.

When I run across a great blog or website about self education, I want to share that news with everyone. I’ve run across such a site recently and it’s Wide Awake Minds. The site is the work of Ryan McCarl, a writer and graduate student at the University of Michigan School of Education. As his tagline says, the blog poses “ideas about education policy, philosophy, and practice, with a special focus on self-education and lifelong learning.” I like that special focus.

On the site McCarl states the five principles upon which his blog is based and they are truly sound and wise principles. They direct much of my thinking and work with self education as well.

The site also offers visitors one of the best collection of pertinent links I’ve seen including: education news, research and resources; education scholars, writers and practitioners; education institutions, unions, societies and notable schools; education nonprofits; education for-profit organizations; top schools of education; and (my personal favorite of course) self education resources.

Give the site a look and if you’re like me, you’ll bookmark it and visit it often or subscribe to McCarl’s blog feed (he makes it really easy to subscribe).

I believe the world is moving towards open-source learning and education. The days of highly proprietary learning materials are coming to an end and being replaced by materials available to a wide audience, often for free or at a much lower cost than before.

Richard Baraniuk, a Rice University professor, gave an excellent talk at the TED conference in 2006 about a new global education system he and others are creating that allows people to collaborate in the creation of open-source learning materials. That project is called Connexions. These are the kinds of education projects that truly excite me.

Through the use of Creative Commons licensing (a modern take on more open copyrighting), teachers can create, modify and package learning materials (think textbooks) in previously unimaginable ways. View the video below and then imagine the teaching and learning possibilities this and other similar projects might offer the world. Education can be transformed. And self educators can have access to high quality learning materials that might have previously only been available through expensive university courses.

All education is self education. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a learner. By that I mean someone for whom learning is actually interesting and enjoyable. And as a learner, you likely already know instinctively that all education is ultimately self education.

If education has thus far not been an interesting and enjoyable experience for you, you’re probably hoping that reading this blog will make it so. Perhaps it will. That is my hope.

So what do I mean by self education and why do I view it as an art?

Self education is learning that you undertake self-guided or with the bulk of the educational process of your own design and execution. You might be motivated to self educate by an external force such as your boss assigning you a learning task relevant to your work, but if the process is more or less one that you create, then I consider it truly self education.

Art versus science – the dilemma is obvious and the answer is not black or white. Siding on the side of art, I contend that the complexities of the educational process plus the uniqueness of each individual learner plus the clear gap between what we can and can’t prove about how people learn best add up to what I think is a strong argument that it’s an art, or at least a science with strong artistic leanings.

This blog is one man’s perspective (mine) about self education and how it can best be approached and achieved. I’ve pursued self education all my life. Most of what I’ve learned in life I’ve learned on my own. I’ve managed the learning function in many business and corporate settings. And I’ve done a lot of research on how we best learn when the course of our education is left to our own needs, interests and life paths. The topic of self education is one that’s near and dear to my heart.

My father instilled in me a love of learning and coached me into becoming an excellent self educator. The first images I remember of me and my father are reading a book together. He read to me until I picked up my first book myself and attempted to make sense of the scribbling on the page. I was hooked.

My love of reading led to a love of learning in general and my father’s gift has served me well. Applying what I learned and adding my own acquired self education skills and experience over the years has produced knowledge and a skill set that, while still growing, has proven the great differentiator in my life.

You want a better life. You want a better career. You want to succeed in whatever you do. You want to be happy and alive. Learning is the answer. To be more specific, the ability to self educate (learn) with little or no outside guidance will propel anyone to a better place in life. All success is ultimately tied to learning. Whether you want career success, to excel at a hobby, or to find out how to best wash your laundry, learning is at the core of the keys to success.

College and university educations can be excellent. Without a doubt they are a viable way to pursue an education. The trend has been up for the last few years for the percentage of high school students enrolling in college. Lots of them aren’t graduating. And that number is growing too.

Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne point out in their excellent book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes that while freshman college enrollments are up, the percentage of people who actually graduate from college has remained about the same. This means an increasing percentage of those who start college don’t complete their degree.

Under these circumstances, self education presents itself as an even more compelling skill set to foster and embrace.

Offered on this blog will be a combination of my personal perspective and experience, solid research and insights gathered from others. If in any way this blog helps you in your pursuit of self education, I will consider it a monumental success.

Throughout this blog I have chosen to use the terms “self education” and “self educated” without the traditional hyphenated format. Some may find the deviation from grammatical convention problematic, but as I wrote the term over and over I found the hyphenated form too heavy looking and cumbersome. For you grammar police out there, I hope you’ll forgive me.

Please visit this blog often. And I’m always interested in hearing from my readers. So if you have any comments or suggestions pertaining to this blog, please send me a message.

Have a great day!