Good Will Hunting

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Philosophy Now
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Good Will Hunting

Post by Philosophy Now »

Michael J. Ferreira takes apart a controversial claim about self-education.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/150/Good_Will_Hunting
Iwannaplato
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Re: Good Will Hunting

Post by Iwannaplato »

Philosophy Now wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 8:40 pm Michael J. Ferreira takes apart a controversial claim about self-education.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/150/Good_Will_Hunting
It's odd this article, but perhaps I am missing something. Will said that the guy he ripped apart in the diner or bar or whatever it was would wake up one day and realize his expensive education was worthless. The article says Will means that the average learner can't replace a college education with self-study. But the guy he is talking to is a Harvard student and one gets the impression he comes from at least a middle class background. That's how I read some of the subtext anyway. So, the issue isn't the average learner. It's someone who got into Harvard. He may be a copy and paste learner without a lot of procedural knowledge, but he's likely a damn clever guy with some serious discipline. Odds are a high IQ if not in Will's range.

Here's what Will says
“See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in fifty years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that… you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a ?#@! education you coulda’ got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”
Was Harvard still in the lecture pedagogy format? if so that's actually a hellava lot like reading and they have to read. The primary difference is they get feedback on essays. Part of writing essays is the ability to absorb and then present ideas in your own voice. But essay writing is not something one generally has to do outside of the academic world. And the person in questions was regurgitating information. IOW he was demonstrating that he had read things. This was the way that person demonstrated his superiority. He could quote, without attribution, the ideas of others.

That is skill you can definitely get on your own. And this way above average learner of that kind of pedagogy with his sense of what being smart is, could do quite well reading books. If he wants he could even find out the syllabi of courses that Harvard and other elite school use in their courses.

But beyond that there are added advantages to self-study. You tend to choose what interests you. You have personal goals for the learning. You're not getting a degree, meeting class requirements, but carving your way through books out of your own curiosity and interest, potentially goals. Should Will's nemesis, a highly skilled and disciplined learner, if without, it seems, a lot of deep interest in what he is learning, decide to be an autodidact, he very likely could do just as well at getting the same information, because that is what he was spewing, but perhaps also forming a more complicated relationship with that information. He's doing it for himself.
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