Autodidacticism
There is a saying: “The man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.” I wonder: “Does the man who is his own teacher have a fool for a student?” Now obviously, this is not always true. I can’t speak to law, medicine, or architecture, but many people have done extraordinarily well as software developers after teaching themselves to program. In my own case, when I first saw a computer in school I had already been writing programs of one recreational sort or another for years.
While Computer Science is an excellent program in academia, the actual nitty-gritty of software engineering isn’t so well developed. Many software development programs are actually preparation for a life as a clerk or disguised tests for conformity.
But no matter what you think about formal education, it has one thing going for it: The separation of teacher and student. Ideally, while the teacher has an interest in the student’s success, the teacher does not rely on the student’s influence. The teacher can fail the student. The teacher can force the student to learn things that are not fun or interesting. A student who just wants to learn enough to get a job can be forced to learn things that “Won’t be asked in the interview.” A student who loves the recreational aspects of computer science can be dragged away from optimizing his personal HashLife project and told to get cracking on understanding principles of large-scale software architecture.
This arms-length relationship is important. It is why the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client: A good client seeks out a lawyer who can provide an objective perspective. You cannot be objective about your own choices. The same is true in real estate: My mother, who was the top salesperson in her days as a broker, always engaged another realtor to represent her when buying and selling her own property. She valued having an objective viewpoint.
Being your own teacher means forgoing this objective perspective. It often means being unaware of what you are missing. When people claim they are good at teaching themselves to program, I often think what they really mean is that they are extraordinarily good at learning to program. But there is more to being a good student than being good at learning. One of the responsibilities of a good student is to seek out excellent teachers. In the Wikipedia article on Autodidacticism, I find this paragraph:
Autodidactism is only one facet of learning, and is usually complemented by learning in formal and informal spaces: from classrooms to other social settings. Many autodidacts seek instruction and guidance from experts, friends, teachers, parents, siblings, and community.
I think this is the correct approach. Instead of thinking of yourself an excellent—and therefore sole or primary—teacher, think of yourself as an excellent student with a voracious appetite for knowledge from many sources, carefully chosen to provide a balance between fun and drudgery, between inspiration and perspiration, between passionate support and dispassionate feedback.
Returning to the proposition, I will not say that the man who is his own teacher has a fool for a student. Instead, I will suggest that the man who does not limit himself to any one teacher—himself included—is a very wise student.
