According to the interweb, Jim Rohn is attributed to have said "Formal education will make you a living but self-education will make you a fortune."
I'm not quite sure what the general sentiment is nowadays but in my view, formal education has lost a lot of its appeal in the last decade or so.
More and more people are questioning it's relevance, especially in a world that's constantly changing and evolving.
You know, the traditional go to school so that you can get a high paying job and live a comfortable life seems inapplicable, for the most part. It just doesn't reflect what's actually happening on the ground.
In our modern reality, "go to school to get a high paying job with the hopes of living a comfortable life", especially in the traditional sense of the term, is synonymous with being stuck in a 9-5 job with limited opportunities for growth.
Of course, there are nuances to it. School in the broadest sense of the term isn't a bad thing, the problem is the established approach used in traditional schooling. It's rigid, linear and way too limiting.
In a way, life itself is a school and one can learn way more from observing and actively experiencing life than sitting behind a desk listening to a teacher lecture.
According to history, that's how our ancestors were educated and remnants of it can be loosely found in Waldorf schools, children are taught in a holistically and experiential way.
New Norms
Informal education is more like a norm in today's world. I heard one person make the argument that every time we hop on social media(or the digital space in general), we're being educated. Whether we realize it or not, we're learning "something", consciously or subconsciously.
This made me ponder on what I've learnt so far, especially subconsciously. Yes, I may have learnt new tricks on how to better navigate the digital world but I'm not sure how to fully discern what's accurate or not from that perspective.
Consciously however, I've made an effort to learn new things, like a new skill or language, to sought out online communities related to my interests and passions, and have learned quite a lot from others in those spaces.
Nothing beats hands-on experience and real-world application. And for that, I'm grateful for having the opportunity to learn and grow in a more informal and self-directed way.
To me, that's more valuable than the outdated model of formal education that's usually disconnected from real-world needs or experiences.
With informal education, it's just a matter of time, intention, effort and patience to make a fortune out of it, in a tangible or non-tangible way, if one chooses to do so.
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.