When you are young, it is impossible that you can educate yourself because your mind just isnt capable of it. to say that the young should educate themselves is saying that no one should intefere in their learning process from young, and young is probably as early as they can learn to read and write. there has to be guidelines to follow and people to guide the young as they learn because the world is now so interconnected and the young are exposed to harmful influences (although there are also good influences) and they can be easily swayed to the harmful influences. this doesnt mean that the young should be subjected to rigid, overlystructured education systems because it is when they are young that their minds are 'fresh' and it is easy to find out what interests the child the most and hence this interests can be further developed on so that the child can be educated in what he is most interested in and this will benefit the child in the long run because you learn best when you are interested in something. thus i feel that there has to be a guide and teacher to guide the child and he should not be left to learn alone.

It's kinda hard to teach yourself something that you don't know :P

Being young suggest the vulnerabilty of getting adversely influenced by complex evnviroment that we live in. As such, young people need to be more informed about the world they live in. This would then lie in the hands of the state, to provide education and awarenes to young people. For example, in Singapore, the Ministry of Education (MOE), which controls the development and administration of state schools receiving government funding, but also has an advisory and supervisory role in respect of private schools. For both private and state schools, there are variations in the extent of autonomy in their curriculum, scope of government aid and funding, tuition burden on the students, and admission policy.

With an appropriate framework of an education system provided by the state, the young would have more opportunities to develop themselves intellectually and be more cultured.

Before one can himself learn he must first learn how to learn. That, as I see it, is the primary purpose of school: not to provide general education, but to provide the education needed to procure the desired education. I didn't learn how to read Swedish or Old Norse or French in school, and my Latin was only mildly augmented in high school; most of my education was autodidactic.

The problem is, however, that there are relatively few autodidacts in the world. Some people turn to overeating and become fat, others cut themselves, but no, not me: I dealt with emotional problems and depression by studying. When depressed, I would learn a language; when it wasn't so bad, I'd turn to learning more general things like history and whatnot. This is why I have a very pessimistic view of learning, if anybody reads this and recalls previous arguments I've made: were it not for my emotionalism I'd be a regular, stupid person - but I'd be happy.

I suspect - primarily from observation - that many autodidacts have had similar problems. You read of great writers and will learn that a great many were sickly in childhood, turning to reading to escape boredom. Most people do things in moderation, and moderation leads to mediocrity in the activity, but happiness, I find, in life.

To get back on topic, no, I do not think that the young should be left to educate themselves because most people who suffer from a precursor to autodidacticism will ultimately turn to something else (such as the overeating I mentioned earlier, or drugs, or other obsessions), and those not predisposed to singular obsessions won't become sufficiently self-educated.

The young need adults to teach them because they just can't do it themselves.