On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, John Paul Fullerton wrote:
> One thought that I had when seeing your note was that one extensive
> effort that I have made on a personal-willingness basis has been
> learning computer programming on my own. If I could explain what it's
> like to go from knowing how to PRINT my name in BASIC to all the rest
> of the learning process - including learning through Usenet - the
> "midnight rides", the cycles of iteration, the unacclaimed
> accomplishments, to all who could say "been there, done that" it
> might be nostalgic! At first, I just had time on my hands; then there
> seemed to be some future job opportunity.
Bravo Fullerton! Let's celebrate communally here the benefits of learning
on one's own. You've identified some of them. The initiative, the
discovery, the casting your fate to the winds, the resolve. I learned
nothing in school but dim echoes of what was really exciting: formal
logic, GO, music (an exception: I _did_ have a music teacher, and he was a
good one, and I learned from him things I could not have discovered on my
own), and computer programming.
I would guess many others here have learned significantly at their own
initiative. For how many has that learning yielded a professional skill?
May I quote from the 1977 catalog of the Boston School of Electronic
Music?
"Where we--the Boston School of Electronic Music--are now, twenty years
ago there was only wilderness. You might think of us as the little
trading post on the frontier; beyond us there is still the wilderness,
yours for the taking. We don't give guided tours from a nice safe bus--we
give survival training. It is rigorous, thorough, and disciplined. But
compared to what lies ahead, even our training doesn't amount to much more
than a compass, a map, and a slap on the back.
"Twenty years ago there weren't even any trading posts; anyone who did
electronic music was entirely on his own. The great pioneers, the
earliest researchers and composers, had no teachers. They had only an
immense capacity to learn, on their own initiative, whatever was there to
be learned.
"We are looking for students with initiative--the kind who might survive
on their own. If you are that kind of student, our survival training can
save you anywhere from three to five years of floundering around in the
underbrush eating nuts and berries. We know the country and we haven't
found any limits to it yet; we're still exploring."
You notice how ambivalent that is about just how learning and teaching
relate?
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
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_ - _ If our software were _really_ hardware independent _ -
- _ _ - we wouldn't need computers at all. - _ _ -