The word "autodidact" hides a lot of complexity behind it that makes it difficult to make any coherent argument for or against it.
For one thing, a teacher cannot shove anything down your throat. It is always the student who learns and in that sense, everyone is an "autodidact". This is not to belittle a teacher who's role in directing a student, keeping her on her toes, challenging, questioning, probing, explaining, etc. which are all valuable. The thing is, a formal teacher is not the only source of those things. Our parents and peers do those things too.
You learn, you get good at something ... anything. In today's world, feedback from the community on what you need to get good at and whether you're getting good at it seems adequate to the point that if you know how to make use of that, you can learn stuff efficiently and effectively. You might say more of us are becoming "allodidacts".
The third point is teachers also continuously learn. Peer learning is how scientific progress happens, for instance. So if you do continuous learning at all, you're likely to do it for a much longer fraction of your life than the period that you're "taught".
For one thing, a teacher cannot shove anything down your throat. It is always the student who learns and in that sense, everyone is an "autodidact". This is not to belittle a teacher who's role in directing a student, keeping her on her toes, challenging, questioning, probing, explaining, etc. which are all valuable. The thing is, a formal teacher is not the only source of those things. Our parents and peers do those things too.
You learn, you get good at something ... anything. In today's world, feedback from the community on what you need to get good at and whether you're getting good at it seems adequate to the point that if you know how to make use of that, you can learn stuff efficiently and effectively. You might say more of us are becoming "allodidacts".
The third point is teachers also continuously learn. Peer learning is how scientific progress happens, for instance. So if you do continuous learning at all, you're likely to do it for a much longer fraction of your life than the period that you're "taught".