I just finished reading a kind of depressing book that argues that education has always been a do-it-yourself thing. That schools (especially public, REQUIRED and enforced schools) create the illusion that they can educate you if you just comply (or pay tuition and attend).

John Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction; A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (New Society Publishers, 2008) ISBN: 9780865716315

But from another angle, it seems to me that it’s never a solo job. We live in a world of feedback and a lot of the useful feedback comes from the communities with which we identify. One of the things I’ve learned at CPsquare is that there are “better questions” that I can adopt — better than the ones I started with. That changes my learning agenda (gradually but irreversibly).

So one of the questions that your posting brings up for me is, “what kind of feedback does your community give you on your learning agenda (and what are the social venues where you get the most useful feedback)?”