self learning or being taught

It depends on the book you are following. If the book explains the concepts in an easy to learn fashion with adequate examples, then I'd prefer the book to a prof.

On the other hand, if the book i read in engineering are anything to go by, i'd rather ask a prof for his/her help!!

I believe nothing beats self learning; however I also believe in being taught. When I'm passionate about something; I'll find out ways to learn anything on my own - not matter how long it takes.

But when you have a good tutor; he/she can make a huge difference. A tutor can tell you what's right & what's wrong. I remember, I used to think I could play couple of songs 'perfectly' on guitar when my Guitar tutor told me the 'right' way to play.

I'd go with 40-60 combination of being taught & self study.

I prefer being taught by prof... Cause its easier to understand directly from a person rather from reading books. Also it takes lesser time...

I agree nothing beats the self learning. Dependency on self to develop skills is a powerful skill in itself.

Being self-taught can be ineffective in two ways. First, it is usually slower than being in a formal course, since you work at a pace that you find comfortable instead of being driven by deadlines. Second, a person who is self-taught can teach themselves many misconceptions. Self-learning works best when objective tests and discussions about the material are widely available. This keeps a person from mis-teaching himself.

It is often necessary to learn things without having much passion for knowing them - for example, to learn how to use certain software in order to perform one's job. In that case, I prefer to have a quick formal course on the material instead of having to force myself to study it.

We have to distinguish between "self-learning" and "research". If nobody knows the answer, then studying a problem is "research". The researcher also learns, but there is no alternative to this self-learning.

Its a very nice topic.
I also believe in self learning. It is the only and the best way to explore ourselves. What i think self learning/ teaching will make you more confident and you will be also in a mood to learn something new.

The read made stuffs and something which is being taught by others are very limited but self learning can never be limited. we can think and explore the things as much as we can.

Something taught by the others make us very limited to the particular topic and the same is being studied by ourselves can explore/learn many new things related to that topic.

@ tashirosgt :
Very well said in a completely different outlook of the problem. Yes, self learning sometimes might end us into dwelling to places where we might end up understanding a concept completely wrong. May be that is the reason- why we need formal courses and then self learn to know more about it in case we are passionate about it.
It would rather be appropriate to mention that self learning is suggestible after being taught by someone already knowledgeable about the topic. in that way at least we wont learn stuff incorrectly.

The trouble is that not all teachers are great. A great teacher is one who demonstrates the subject to his/her pupil in a way that makes it easy to understand and inpires him/her to dive deeper into the ocean of knowledge. Such teachers are few and unless you are lucky enough to find one, books and good books are the best teachers you can have.

I like both!Self learning is what i do when the teacher is like worth nothing else if the teacher is good i just do some patch up work for getting extra knowledge in that subject!

I prefer both as durga said self learning proves to be a better choice if we are already knowledgeable about the subject matter

but further i emphasis more on self learning as compared to being taught,I don't know about other countries or states but here in punjab teacher generally tries to inhibit original thinking of students .They only put more emphasis on 'ONLY I AM TRUE ' attitude.