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Abraham Lincoln received some formal education in his youth but his schooling was only received intermittently and taught through travelling educators. His total schooling added up to less than a full year and the rest of his education was gained through self-teaching. Lincoln was a lifelong learner and an avid reader, sometimes reading and rereading many of the same books over the course of his life.

Aside from a total of 12 weeks of public school, Thomas Edison received all of his education through homeschooling with his mother, later developing his own systems of independent learning and self-education. He loved pursuing new information and read books on a wide range of different topics. At 12 years old he started selling newspapers, then began publishing his own, thereby taking his first step on a long road of entrepreneurial ideas.

Mark Twain’s formal education involved only a few years of elementary school. He was forced to leave school after the death of his father but he educated himself extensively throughout his life in a vast array of subjects, including botany, history, politics, and foreign cultures. Many of his quotes show his disdain for formal schooling, deeming it mediocre and counterproductive to true education. He has such things “I never let my schooling interfere with my education” and “education exists mainly in what we have unlearned”.

Benjamin Franklin attended grammar school when he was 8 and he excelled in his classes. He had to leave school after his second year because his father could no longer afford to pay for it. He loved reading and writing and constantly tried to improve on his grammar and writing style. He went on to apprentice under his brother as a paper printer and while he wished to write for the paper, he was not permitted. He began submitting his letters under the pen name Silence Dogwood and his articles became very popular.

Agatha Christie was mostly homeschooled for the majority of her youth. She was once quoted to say “I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” She believed that her unstructured education helped her to develop her creativity, allowing her to come up with her original and incredible ideas. She later attended school for a few years but found it hard to adjust to the structure and discipline of the classroom setting.

Albert Einstein attended primary and secondary school in Germany until his father was forced to move to Italy due to business troubles. Einstein was supposed to stay in a boarding house in Germany to finish his schooling but he felt stifled by the strict learning structure and dropped out, instead travelling to Italy to meet up with his family. He was told he would never amount to anything and his future seemed bleak but his natural talent for math and physics, combined with his passion for knowledge, proved otherwise.

Colonel Harland Sanders’ father died when he was 6 years old. His mother began to work to take care of the family and sometimes needed to be away from home for days at a time. Sanders became responsible for the care of his younger siblings and became quite skilled in the kitchen. When his mother remarried, the Colonel didn’t get along very well with his stepfather. He dropped out of school in the seventh grade to work at a nearby farm, leaving home not long after. He worked a series of odd jobs throughout his youth until he became the fried chicken mogul he is known as today.

As a child, Henry Ford attended a one-room schoolhouse when he was not at home helping his father on the farm. At 16 years old, after 8 years of school and farm work, he left home on foot and went to work in a machine shop. He was introduced to the workings of an  internal-combustion engine and when he returned home a few years later he spent much of his free time experimenting in a small machine shop he had set up. He later became a world-famous business leader and the owner of the Ford Motor Company.