+1. As an Indian kid growing up in a very conservative family/neighborhood I can attest that what I have learned and have helped me in becoming successful was all through my peers and books (mostly fiction). If I had no access to those and had purely followed what my parents prescribed, I would have been a very different individual and most likely, would not have pursued computer science. More than anything, succees or otherwise, peer learning and learning on my own was and still continues to be the emblem of freedom.

There surely is a downside to this, that this self learning can veer you off in a sub optimal direction of laziness, procrastination, lost concentration etc, as experienced in today's social media. However, it's better to bet the odds on freedom of individuals than on oversight.