Forum Post: Cusp

Mark Twain once said, “Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.” While this statement is open to interpretation, I believe that when he refers to formal education he is referring to the standardized, static, and conformist education that we receive in schools. To a certain extent formal education has a set way to do things, there is no exploring, and there is no discovery. When he says that this ‘formal’ education gets in the way of learning, he is really saying that formal education gets in the way of discovery. True learning happens through experience, it happens through trial and error. It happens by trying new things, by taking risks, and by not holding yourself back. While formal education has its value, a teacher can only teach so much. At some point, we can only learn informally, but through our own passion. So what is the role of technology in all of this? Indeed, I think it has very much blurred the boundary between formal and informal learning. Using the Internet to learn is a form of informal learning, and while there can be a lot of very informal things on the Internet, one could also find many sites that are ‘formal’ education. Encyclopedias, databases, Calculus web-blogs, all these varieties of formal education can accessed informally through the Internet. Mark Twain may have felt that formal education is a limit on what we can learn. But in today’s world, where formal and informal education aren’t as easily differentiated, we can learn more than ever before, the sky is the limit.