School sucked! It was soooo damn boring; I use to dream all the time in class because I was so bored. I wasn’t the only one. Everyone else I knew hated it too. Luckly, at 15, I stopped going to prison/school. My mom started teaching me & I’m so gald she did! It was the greatest! I learned so much. I also hated riding in those stupid buses that we would call “cheese wagons”. Hahahaha!
It is a personal preference. Sure one could learn most things in books since that is traditionally what formal education is based on. Few, however, have the disapline to do it on thier own. It is also good to have somebody regularly critiquing your understanding of things. It is a personal preference and a luxury. If you want it get it if you don’t don’t.
Hawking had a B average over ALL his subjects ALL, that’s why Cambridge didn’t want him. The attitude at Oxford at the time was very anti-work. You either aced everything without even trying or you accepted your limitations & got a low-class degree. Hawking worked his ass off just to get ok grades. That kind of student was known as a grey man. Einstein was never a very quick thinker, that’s why he wouldn’t have done as well on tests with time pressure. People say that his IQ was ‘only’ 165, but without time limitations, they say he woulld have had like a 195 IQ. There’s a lot of stuff that can’t be put on paper.