Our Education

As many high school students across the country receive their diplomas, we can debate whether our education system has provided the best education possible.  But as valuable as formalized education is, we cannot discount the tremendous value of self-education.

Having the initiative to educate oneself is, in many important ways, a paramount duty.  Henry Adams, in his The Education of Henry Adams, argues that where traditional and organized education fails us, our capacity for self-education does not.  Reading, having new experiences, and holding friendships above all else is, in Adams’ mind, the true path to enlightenment. 

In The Education Adams speaks of the people in his life as having “values only as educators” and his surroundings being important “only so far as they affect education.” Adams emphasizes that how we remember our experiences is often more important than the experience itself.  He delves deep into self exploration and resurfaces with the realization that it is the life lessons he chooses for himself that ultimately mean the most. 

We learn from reading The Education that formalized education can in some ways stifle, instead of foster, educational growth.  The habits imposed by institutional structures can place a detrimental emphasis on arbitrary academic achievement instead of moral attainment and personal integrity.  The conclusion from The Education is that there is profound and sometimes life changing value in an ambition to educate oneself.  Self-education is valuable education.

The influential psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (whose name I’m sure you can’t say three times fast) explains in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that people who consistently report living happy and satisfied lives are people who, among other things, “keep on learning until the day they die.”  

Csikszentmihalyi provides an example in Flow of how personal objectives can be a catalyst for attaining private wisdom:  “Again the importance of personally taking control of the direction of learning from the very first steps cannot be stressed enough.  If a person feels coerced to read a certain book, to follow a given course because that is supposed to be the way to do it, learning will go against the grain.  But if the decision is to take that same route because of an inner feeling of rightness, the learning will be relatively effortless and enjoyable.” 

I am by no means encouraging high school grads to tear up their college acceptance letters.  In fact, I am an attorney with many years of higher education under my belt and so I personally owe much to formalized education. 

I mean, however, to highlight the importance of our self-directed educational pursuits in the fulfillment of our lives.  Picking up a book to read what interests you personally or writing a letter to the editor on a topic that motivates you, for example, is also an education.

Self-education, whether we are college-bound high school grads or adults well beyond the days of standardized tests, is as important as the value we receive from our formal degrees.  We should cultivate our own educational well-roundedness as a means of enriching our own cultural identity.  Step outside students: Class is in session.