Autodidacticism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact, also known as an automath, is a mostly self-taught person — typically someone who has an enthusiasm for self-education and a high degree of self-motivation. Such ability has led to the success of many famous and successful individuals.

A person may become an autodidact at nearly any point in his or her life. While some may have been educated in a conventional manner in a particular field, they may choose to educate themselves in other, often unrelated areas. It should be noted that self-teaching and self-directed learning are not necessarily lonely processes. Some autodidacts spend a great deal of time in libraries or on educative websites. Many, according to their plan for learning, avail themselves of instruction from family members, friends, or other associates (although strictly speaking this might not be considered autodidactic). Indeed, the term 'self-taught' is something of a journalistic trope these days, and is all too often used to signify 'non-traditionally educated', which is entirely different.

Inquiry into autodidacticism has implications for learning theory, educational research, educational philosophy, and educational psychology.

Contents 1 Famous autodidacts 2 The Ignorant Schoolmaster 3 Books 4 See also 5 External links

Famous autodidacts

Mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan and Newton's contemporary Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were largely self-taught in mathematics. Occasionally, individuals have sought to excel in subjects outside the mainstream of conventional education. Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea depicts an autodidact who is a self-deluding dilettante. Other autodidacts have excelled within, and brought innovative perspectives to, their more mainstream disciplines. For example, physicist and Judo expert Moshe Feldenkrais developed an autodidactic method of self-improvement based on his own experience with self-directed learning in physiology and neurology. He was motivated by his own crippling knee injury. In addition to Feldenkrais, Gerda Alexander, William Bates, Heinrich Jacoby and a number of other 20th-century European innovators worked out methods of self-development which stressed intelligent sensitivity and awareness.

After his initial education, mythologist Joseph Campbell exemplified the autodidactic method. Following completion of his masters degree, Campbell decided not to go forward with his plans to earn a doctorate, and he went into the woods in upstate New York, reading deeply for five years. According to Campbell, this is, in a sense, where his real education took place, and the time when he began to develop his unique view on the nature of life.

According to poet and author Robert Bly, a friend of Campbell's, Campbell developed a systematic program of reading nine hours a day. It is speculated by some that Campbell felt the work he did during this time was far more rigorous than any doctoral program could have been, and more fruitful in developing his unique perspectives.

See also list of famous autodidacts.

The Ignorant Schoolmaster

In The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Jacques Rancière describes the emancipatory education of Joseph Jacotot, a post-Revolutionary philosopher of education who discovered that he could teach things he did not know (for instance, Jacotot taught Flemish students to speak French without speaking any Flemish himself). The book is both a history and a contemporary intervention in the philosophy and politics of education, through the concept of autodidactism; Rancière chronicles Jacotot's "adventures," but he articulates Jacotot's theory of "emancipation" and "stultification" in the present tense.

Books

• The Passion To Learn: An Inquiry into Autodidactism by Joan Solomon ISBN 0-415-30418-0
• SELF-UNIVERSITY: The Price of Tuition is the Desire to Learn. Your Degree is a Better life. by Charles D. Hayes ISBN 0-9621979-0-4
• The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn ISBN 0-9629591-7-0
• The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Stanford Univ. Press, 1991) by Jacques Rancière ISBN 0-8047-1969-1
• The Day I Became an Autodidact by Kendall Hailey ISBN 0-385-29636-3
• The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning by Charles D. Hayes ISBN 09621979-4-7
• SelfDesign: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning" by Brent Cameron and Barbara Meyer ISBN 1-59181-044-2

See also

• Unschooling
• John Taylor Gatto
• Jacques Rancière
• Critical pedagogy

External links

• Autodidactproject.org
• Directory of online classes
• A Resource List for All Autodidacts