By my junior year in high school I had concluded that most of my public, formal education had been pretty much useless. After graduating, when everyone else went off to college, I took a year off in which I tried to give myself the kind of education that I believed school had failed me in. I read non-stop, everything I could get my hands on, and while my methodology was a bit haphazard, I honestly believe I learned more during that period than in four years of high school. But it was a very isolated process and I eventually came to long for the interaction and dynamic exchange of ideas that can only happen in a social setting (mind you, I didn't even have a computer at the time). It's this, more than anything else, that spurred me to go to college after all - a very progressive one, almost radical even, so as to ensure it would be nothing like high school.
The social aspect has always been one of the primary benefits that institutional learning has offered, along with a ready-made infrastructure in the form of curriculum, physical resources like libraries, and plenty of opportunities for networking. It's for this reason that I've fantasized, on and off, about grad school for over fifteen years, not for the learning, which I can do quite well on my own, but for the people and the connections. But with tuition fees and student debts spiraling out of control, depressingly low employment rates and increasing skepticism about the concrete benefits of a graduate degree (at least in the liberal arts), I kept putting it off until I eventually almost gave up on the idea.
Enter Kio Stark's 'Don't Go Back to School,' a book that aims to show people how they can still tap into those same social and infrastructural benefits that school offers without actually going. Stark isn't against going back to school per se. Rather, she believes that if you don't (or can't) for whatever reasons, it's no reason to mourn nor will you be missing out, necessarily, on a world of opportunities.
The meat of the book is an array of interviews with autodidacts from diverse fields in the arts, humanities, sciences and business. Their paths and chosen learning methods are various enough that most independent learners will be able to recognize aspects of their own experiences in these interviews as well as pick up some useful new tips.
Sandwiching the interviews are, first, Stark's impassioned argument for the validity of independent learning and, second, a systematic explanation of different approaches and methods of learning as well as ways to access infrastructural resources that once used to be the monopoly of schools. I found this section tremendously useful in that I now have a vocabulary to describe processes that I had heretofore used mostly unconsciously, like "project-driven learning" and "associative learning."
Those for whom this book might be less useful are people whose desired careers require licensing or certification (lawyers, medical practitioners, college professors, etc.), and Stark admits that for such folks there's simply no other way than to find a way to go to school. But if your chosen field lies in the arts, humanities, business and even some of the sciences, then you're in luck. And, of course, any kind of learning for learning's sake or to simply better oneself also applies.
'Don't Go Back to School' is one of those books that, for me, as a self-proclaimed autodidact, touches a deep, personal nerve. And I imagine that it will be a practical, inspiring and self-validating read for many others as well.
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NMeisel
An interesting, engaging, useful and necessary book
Reviewed in Brazil on October 31, 2021Verified Purchase
Chris H. Leeb
Brauchen wir noch Schule?
Reviewed in Germany on April 16, 2016Verified Purchase
NinjaPigeon
collection of a bunch of people who made it without ...
Reviewed in Canada on December 24, 2016Verified Purchase
Amazon Customer
Save your money
Reviewed in Canada on February 7, 2016Verified Purchase
