A few thoughts anent autodidacticism

I have been ploughing my way through Jonathan Rose’s The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. It’s a terrific book and I’ll post more when I finish it but I wanted to tease out a few personal thoughts about autodidacticism. Now, Rose is writing about working class experience and I make no claims to being working class though in some ways certain aspects of education were experienced in a similar way; classes of 40+ at run down primary schools in industrial Yorkshire, parents who were supportive but in practical terms unable to help with much (both left school at 16), the disorienting experience of winning scholarships to schools largely attended by people of quite different backgrounds. That said, there are aspects of the autodidact experience that ring true which seems an odd thing to say for someone with 4 ‘A’ levels and an honours degree from Durham.

Why do I feel that way. Partly it’s that almost all my formal education since age 15 has been in mathematics or physics. In almost all other areas my formal education stopped at ‘O’ level which is a pretty basic level. I would estimate that 90%+ of what I know of history, philosophy, social sciences and the arts is self taught. That would suggest a learning process (in these areas) rather different from somebody with a PhD in the humanities; less directed, more error prone, perhaps more enjoyable, certainly different. I haven’t read a ‘set book’ in thirty years (except for informal political education groups) and I haven’t taken a meaningful exam in anything except maths and physics (economics prelim at Durham doesn’t count as a monkey with an ‘A’ level in maths could pass that) since 1973.

Reflecting on pros and cons of formal and informal approaches suggests the following:

I miss having smart people to bounce ideas off though lemur_catta and the Internet make up for a lot,

I’ve been down some widely unfashionable side alleys that I never would have had time to explore in academia (I read Roger Garaudy when he was still respectable!).

I get to think about abstract issues in the context of real world problems. Not everybody has the chance to apply Plato to change management or use ideas from Turing to revitalize a data warehousing practice.

I don’t have to be conformist, or even polite, about academic fashions. If I think most “post-modernist” thought (sic) is a practical joke played by arrogant French twats and their dimmer Anglo-American lackeys I can say so without damage to career or reputation!

Anyway, that is my theory, which is mine etc…