Friday 22 January 2016

Does formal education have more value than informal education?

It's after midnight, as it so often is when I write these posts.  This post will be scheduled for tomorrow morning, and when that day comes I hope both you and I have a good day.

My dog is snoring beside me, and my mother is already in bed.  I question what to write.  I write a sentence, and then delete it and this I do over and over again.  I'm extremely aware that this is  public blog, and as such anybody can read it.  I'm also aware that if I don't put some of myself into this blog, nobody will want to read it.  I have to put my emotions, my day to day activities, and a bit of who I am in this blog, to make it personal.

At the same time, I love to learn, and I spend many evenings doing just that: learning.  I am formally educated from more than one post-secondary educational institution.  I've done correspondence and in person learning.  I've written tests, written essays, and attended lectures, and yet I'm beginning to wonder if any of that really means more than the learning I do each day.  Does formal education mean more than informal education?  I never thought so before, but I disagree with my past self.

My mother, used to informally educate herself at the public library.  Before the internet, there were reference books.  She spent afternoons going to the library, and just reading any kind of reference books that interested her.  Did the knowledge she gained, have any less value because she didn't pay for it?

Does knowledge need a professor to teach it, to be valued?  It does in this culture.  But why?

I just spent another evening learning about intersex conditions.  I will probably spent countless more hours before I'm done with the subject, and when I am done, I'll go on to another subject with equal fascination.  Does all that research have any less value than the research those who are paying to research do?  I don't think so.

What do you think?  Do you like to learn?  Do you research things on your own?

Please answer in the comments below.

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