Let’s start with a biased opinion on Formal Education as a disclaimer. WE DON’T NEED IT. Not all of us anyway. Many people -some more famous than others- survive in their professional lives despite a lack of certification.
The opinion is, of course, not entirely correct…
Let’s then define what would or wouldn’t be “Formal Education”. This is the form of education we receive in a classroom of some kind, with a teacher…of some kind. The informal is what we come across along the way. In magazines, at libraries. With no formal curriculum.
Education, formal or otherwise, is a considerable point of our existence. We have to learn in order to build then grow.
My strong, and slightly unfair, position on the topic simply comes, mostly, from my working in an age that has The Internet. With the real question being, “Why must I sit in a classroom at 8 am when I could learn all this online?”
There’s no questioning the vast amount of information that’s floating around on the internet. There’s also no questioning how useless most of that information is to the common person.
But there are a number of tools and such online that have collected all of the useful information and segmented into easy-to-follow courses. With qualified tutors and even tests, quizzes, and exams. These cover all sorts of career paths and could come in handy when there’s this new thing that everybody’s doing now but you don’t want to have to go sit in a classroom to learn it.
They are always a Google search away. But here’s a couple of the ones I like even though am not paid for the endorsement. Udemy has a wide variety. From Art to Science. Open University
On the less “Formal” side of life…
We have w3chools. primarily for Website and/or Web App development tutorials. They are free. And Youtube! of course!
