Schools have never quite known what to do with the self-taught learner. They regard them like one regards fire, with fascination and fear. Because the self-taught learner doesn’t ask permission to learn. They don’t beg for explanations. They don’t bow down to the pedagogy of the A4 format. They discover, investigate, connect, create. And that freedom, when a system demands obedience, breaks the mold, disrupts the assembly line.

Schools were created to standardize. The self-taught learner is born to transcend. That tension is inevitable.

The great minds of humanity understood this without needing any diploma. Leonardo da Vinci, who was practically his own teacher, wrote: “He who truly knows does not need many books.” Benjamin Franklin taught this same thing without embellishment: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest,” and he did so on his own, devouring everything he could get his hands on while working in a printing shop from a young age. Thomas Edison, without finishing school, proclaimed: “Our greatest weakness is giving up. The sure path to success is always trying one more time,” a phrase that encapsulates the essence of self-directed learning.

Being self-taught is an extraordinary power. Not because it’s unusual, but because it implies taking command of one’s own mind. It’s autonomy, it’s freedom, it’s that inner drive that refuses to be satisfied with pre-digested knowledge. The self-taught person rejects “canned knowledge” because they know that thinking involves risk, effort, silence, long nights, and rebellious days. And that doesn’t fit into a rubric.

Nikola Tesla, another fiercely self-taught individual, defined himself thus: “I’m not worried about them stealing my ideas; I’m worried about them not having any of their own.” This is the spirit that schools fear, the one that doesn’t repeat, the one that doesn’t copy, the one that doesn’t conform. Schools hate, or rather fear, the self-taught person because they can’t be tamed. Because they don’t respond to “copy and paste.” Because they don’t need approval to move forward. Because when everyone else follows the established path, he blazes another trail, hacking his way through if necessary.

The self-taught man is not a proud loner; he is a seeker. He is someone who understands that intellect is strengthened by curiosity and hard work, not by certificates. He is someone who, like Ray Bradbury, another self-taught man who lived in libraries, could say without shame: “I didn’t go to university. I went to the library.”

That is extraordinary power, not rebellion, but the sovereignty of thought. The dignity of learning without masters. The nobility of seeking truth like someone searching for water in a deep well. And the certainty that the mind, when free, is indomitable.

And yes, the self-taught man doesn’t fit in. And he shouldn’t. His strength lies precisely in being unassimilable. And that is why, every time one appears, humanity advances a step beyond what was expected. In short, he who is master of his own thoughts carries within him the spark that no institution can extinguish.

Julio César Cháves