Autodidacticism is a key in this modern era!

Ever wondered what made Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Linus Torvalds different? They were all autodidacts and what they had in common was their passion and obsession to self-learn something new on their own, whether it’s music, art or science. Autodidact is an art of self-learning or self- education and is a new form of learning which is not bounded within four walls.

Knowledge is infinite and so is the age to learn something new. The only thing important to learn is passion and zeal to engulf new thoughts and ideas. Ontario’s TVO channel has a very interesting slogan, “Never Stop Learning” which truly reflects the real meaning of education which is a never ending process. Every day teaches us something new and these lines will inspire the budding minds to nurture their inborn curiosity which somehow gets banished in the process of growing up.

Although education is crucial as it forms the basic framework of the personality but in the modern era when the thinking and approach towards things have changed, the traditional education system will not help the people to survive as it binds them with the protocol defined in the books. The world is dynamic and is changing every day and to cope up with the growing competition, we need our children to be not only well-versed with the book but they should be self-dependent which can only happen by acquainting them with the idea of self-education or autodidact.

There is an immediate need of new education model which will be an amalgamation of self- learning and teaching. Being autodidact will not help in making students intelligent but mature as well. Many colleges like Harvard, Berkeley offer online courses, the growing popularity of portals like Coursera, EdX and Khan Academy also indicate the growing popularity of self-education or autodidactic.

Change is the only constant thing in the world, and autodidactism is the new change that our education system needs to imbibe to make it even more interesting. Some feel that autodidactism and school learning are way apart but I feel that both complement each, the sole objective of education is to create a civilized and mature human being and autodidactism is the key to it.