The question is raised about the future of Society. I will not dwell on self-learning artificial systems yet. This important issue should be considered separately. Training in modern Society takes place in a classical way (in gymnasiums, colleges, universities) and through self-education using computers and the Internet. In the first case, teachers train students in many ways, including in online learning. But the main thing is that the teachers teach patriotism, love of nature, love for animals and people, the laws of morality, the laws of religion and culture, and much more. In the process of self-education using the Internet, the principles of interest in learning certain skills dominate: the ability to design computer programs, the interface, semantic technologies and other narrowly focused problems. In the second case, the student quickly learns skills in a specific area of ​​professions and begins to earn money. A peer "self-taught" for many years continue to study in high schools and university. What do we see in modern society? We see virtually general "literacy" in the field of computer technology. And, at the same time, we see the fall of morals, attempts to earn money at any cost, one-sided thinking, cruelty to nature. On the Internet, it is easy to learn how to make explosive devices and how to use them. And "self-taught" successfully use such devices. "Self-taught" want to know the world of drugs, early sexual life, cruelty. We see this also in the modern world. Why am I saying all this? To the fact that it is advisable to think about the future of our society, in which immoral professionals or versatile professionals will dominate, striving to approach the level of Niels Bohr, Rachmaninov, Leonardo da Vinci, Dostoevsky, Goethe ...

Formal Education - Definition: “Learning that occurs in an organised and structured environment (such as in an education or training institution or on the job) and is explicitly designated as learning (in terms of objectives, time or resources). Formal learning is intentional from the learner’s point of view. It typically leads to certification. Earning that occurs in an organised and structured context (in a school/training centre or on the job) and is explicitly designated as learning (in terms of objectives, time or learning support). Formal learning is intentional from the learner’s point of view. It typically leads to certification.” “What students are taught from the syllabus.” Formal education is an organized education model which is structured and systematic. This model presents rather a rigid curriculum that corresponds to laws and norms. It’s a presentational education. This means that there are students, teachers and institutions involved. Schools and universities use this method to teach their students. Formal education institutions are administratively, physically and curricularly organized and require from students a minimum classroom attendance. In formal education teachers and students have to observe, this involves intermediate and final assessments in order to advance students to the next learning stage. In formal education you receive a degree or diploma at the end of the formation but there are also desired behavioural objectives. These objectives are rarely operationally established. Assessments have a punitive, obeying and mono-directional methodology, and this fails to stimulate the students.  But it also fails to provide for their active participation during this progress. There’s also another cause to this failure: the students’ standards, values and attitudes are not considered in this education model. It happens that in this kind of education teachers pretend to teach, students pretend to learn and the institutions pretend to really catering the interests of students and the society. Shortly this means that formal education fails to fulfill the real needs of students and the community.

Confidence and Opportunity maker

@Sudeera: so formal education can not influence how the person learns, or how fast/ efficient the person learns?

@Harry - any benefits to formal/ institutional education then? i do not see one mentioned in your comment..?

@Abiodun - can you elaborate please. your answer sounds promising.

overall, it seems there are a lot of social benefits to formal education that is overlooked. i was thinking more in line of cognitive benefits. but perhaps the social benefits leads to additional cognitive benefits

A question such as this elicits two impulses in me. One is to answer very generally about all the wonderful or terrible things that can happen in a formal educational system. So many things could be said of this, however, that the task feels daunting and overwhelming. What I can say from a positive perspective is that there is the possibility of adopting a lifelong orientation to learning if one meets the right teacher. In my last book I presented qualitative research to that effect. The student finds in one whose very vocation it is to teach and learn a model for becoming human, a model which finds a confluence of learning and creativity to lie at the heart of human thriving. The other impulse is to look at this question in a very, very narrow manner, for which I am tempted to say that formal education puts one on the road toward formal operational thought. A look at Piaget, Kohlberg, etc. usually finds that the "highest" levels of their schemata are unusually tied to formal education as part of their Western-analytic bias.

Eugene

@Eugene: so which one do you prefer/ recommend - formal education or informal education (self-taught)?

i would also think that all thinking would be biased, because all thinking is finite or limited. How would informal education not suffer bias?

i like your point on finding a very good mentor.

@Sudeera: can formal education develop your i) cognition or ii) expertise in a way that informal education can not? put differently, although i think this is the wrong way to put it, doing an IQ test on someone with formal and informal education, who would score highest?

Self-taught could cause an increase in the acts of hostility and terrorism.

Formal Education has been creating a big population of unemployed persons. The organisations and the industries do not get right person for the required positions. The formal education lacks practical experience and specialized knowledge of actual work. Formal education makes engineers to derive long equations but dont experience the application of equation in real world. For example there are many civil engineering graduates but lack field knowledge. We want boys with expertise in accounting software but we don't get. Therefore formal education should be backed up with apprenticeship training or industry work training while learning.

The formality of teaching, has not been able to be ignored at any time of the historical and social development of humanity. This practice was intact since the rise of slavery, and has prevailed until today.

The man learns better when he is in a group of contemporaries. Self-learning requires initial social assistance, before it can be undertaken.

In the current Knowledge Society, when knowledge is made expeditious, through Information and Communication Technologies, man can not escape from his time, nor from his social group.

You can not be exclusively self-taught, among others, for the following reasons:

1. Social isolation produces disturbing effects on the health of human beings.

2. Man is a social being and consequently he must behave, to reinforce his humanoid qualities. Teaching contributes to this.

3. The school, well organized and directed with the novelty of Educational Science, is able to guarantee the integral development of the people.

4. The school as a socializing, entity is connected to local and national life, with this, the students receive influences from the cultural activity of their country. Learn to be a citizen and respond to a national identity.

There are more arguments in:

Chapter Quality of life and education in the knowledge society

Article Improntas sociales retardatarias de la buena salud en el ámb...

I believe that the benefit of formal education is the formative guarantee in a certain time and the certification of some acceptable degree of knowledge for a technical and / or professional exercise.