Dive Brief:

• Many ed tech companies are pushing autodidact​ learning into the classroom, even though it may not be for everyone.   
• Autodidact learners are driven to teach themselves on their own, but in a piece for Slate, New America Foundation Fellow Annie Murphy Paul argues that this type of learning is not natural for most students.  
• Paul argues that many in the ed tech and entrepreneurial world are more inclined to this sort of learning, which is why they may think it would work in the classroom. She maintains, however, that students need support from actual teachers and not just tablets. 

Dive Insight:

To make her point, Paul begins her piece describing the education biography of famous autodidact and education reformer Bill Gates. As a teen, the future billionaire would sneak out of his house in the wee hours of the night so he could play with the University of Washington's supercomputers. Later, he dropped out of Harvard, feeling confident that he could continue to learn and educate himself through tons of reading and deeply intellectual conversations. While this type of independent learning is awesome, it is not necessarily teachable. Paul argues that expecting students across America to have the same drive for independent learning is somewhat unreasonable.  

Paul writes in Slate, "the experiences of ed tech creators and promoters are notably influential—and notably unusual. Most people are not autodidacts. In order to learn effectively, they need guidance provided by teachers. They need support provided by peers. And they need structure provided by institutions. Amid all the effusions about how ed tech will “change the way we learn,” however, these needs rarely merit a mention. Instead we hear about the individual and his app, the person and her platform, as if teachers, classmates and schools were unnecessary and unwelcome encumbrances." 

Not everyone is buying Paul's point of view.  As one commenter on the article wrote, "Perhaps we should be trying to create more autodidacts, instead of trying to crush them in boring, slow-paced educational environments?" 

In that case, the bigger question becomes, "Is it possible to create an autodidact learner?"