<i>Education</i>? Been there, done that, a lot of it, a bit too much, really. So, I'll comment:<p>The idea of the study groups getting the participants polished on the <i>social</i> aspects of life sounds good.<p>For STEM, let's see: First, here at Hacker News, what fraction of the readers got good at writing code in C/C++ before they had any formal classroom instruction from an established education system, high school, college, etc.? I anticipate, a big fraction.<p>Lesson: In learning C/C++, and a lot of closely related topics, say, quick sort, maybe matrix inversion, the beginnings of using relational data base as "the key, the whole key, nothing but the key", some of the details of virtual memory as Zuck spouted out as he walked out of class in the movie <i>The Social Network</i>, commonly that learning has been done by people mostly on their own.<p>Next, a college prof has to keep up and hopefully push ahead, but there's essentially no <i>formal education</i> classroom instruction for doing that. So, the prof has to do that on his (her, here and below) own.<p>Lesson: Self teaching is fundamental right to the top of the education system. Soooo, self teaching is not incidental, strange, etc.<p>For graduate study in the STEM fields, been there, done that. Fact of life: The university, department, profs, etc. can provide a lot of guidance and direction, often crucial since otherwise a student might waste time wandering in poor directions, but, bluntly, the student needs lots of hours of self study outside of class.<p>Lesson: Soooo, even in a program in formal education, a lot of self teaching is crucial.<p>Broadly in US society, there is a lot of self learning: E.g., a good chef who has a terrific lasagna, pizza, Italian rum cake, coconut cream pie, ..., likely learned how to do that mostly on their own or, say, from an employer who learned it on their own, likely not from some formal classroom education. Same for lots of jobs -- auto repair, plumbing, roofing, brick laying, many aspects of farming, parenting, ....<p>Lesson: Self teaching is crucial in our whole society, and a lot of people are good at it.