au·to·di·dact (ôt-ddkt)
n. A self-taught person.
From Greek autodidaktos, self-taught : auto-, auto- + didaktos, taught; see didactic
My search today unturned plenty of information online on and for autodidactics including a rather hippie looking handbook (The Independent Scholar’s Handbook, PDF) and a frightening number of blogs from homeschooling American parents of various religious obsessions. Then I found autodidacticmba.wordpress.com which was exciting until I realized the only thing the “author” had ever done was choose a wordpress theme.
The Guardian started the good news with a mini piece : “In Praise of Autodidactics“. Then a funny and very lovable little website www.autodidactic.com provided arguments in favor of lifelong learning by any and all means available and a great list of historical and contemporary well-known autodidactics. The list featured fabulous writers (O’Casey, Twain, Fitzgerald, Angelou, etc.), filmmakers (Allen, Spielberg, Terentino) and an odd number of American presidents. Lincoln gets the best bio of the bunch: failed twice in business before he was 25 years old, had a nervous breakdown and failed in seeking public office eight times before becoming the sixteenth president of the United States.
You could predict the names of the tech giants: Paul Allen (co-founded Microsoft, owns 80 percent of TicketMaster), Michael Dell (which company do you think he started?), Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, Bill Gates, David Geffen (co-founder of DreamWorks and former creator of Geffen Records), Steven Jobs, Kevin Kelly (founding executive editor of Wired Magazine), and John Romero (Co-founder and former programmer of id Software).
Add a few captains of industry and fashion (Richard Branson, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Estee Lauder, Ralph Lauren, John D. Rockefeller) and the mega mind that is Gore Vidal and there seems to be a self educated quorum of examples proving motivation can outstrip access. I was just checking.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ~ Alvin Toffler
