In our modern era, information is most widely available, compared to any period of human history. (Almost) Anything and everything is just a Google search away. This leads to creation of two distinct and one not so distinct groups of learners:
1. Self taught
2. Formally taught
3. A mix of both at varied degrees.
For any learner, being in group 3 is optimum as they are exposed to both sides of the fence, but from personal experience, I would say most people are part of either group 1 or group 3, as in, they are either personally motivated to go scavenger hunting or rode the tides of school curriculum.
This leads to a squabble of the two major schools of learners, as they try of reign supreme over one another; but the reality is that at the end of the day, no one wins the battle, as its not a war worth fighting. This battle of mind will go on for the coming ages as I do not see any satisfying solution in the foreseeable future. In my head, this is can be illustrated nicely by two physicists, theoretical and experimental. They meet up one day to design an experiment to verify the theories developed by the theoretical physicist John. But John thinks that he is better than Troy, the experimental physicist, only appreciates ideas which are experimentally verifiable, but John lives in a world far beyond such conservative realm. So at this very moment, if John does not tie down his own foolish beliefs, chances are that their professional relationship will burn our soon as disagreements would arise from stereotypes, not from critique of disagreeable ideas.
And there is more to all skills than just learning about the rules of execution in a formal setting. If someone has taken a script writing class and thinks that he knows the best approach to such style of writing, even when he is barely able to comprehend his ideas on a page, is nothing but a fool. There are a lot of building blocks to all skills and often new bloods are better off than old ones because they are not restricted by arbitrary rules. So I ask you to keep your minds open and listen to others! If you don't listen others' ideas, how can you expect others to listen to you?
