The following exercise is borrowed from Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School by Grace Llewellyn.

List everything about which you know enough to contribute significantly to a conversation on the subject or to write a pithy booklet called "The Beginner's Guide to_____."

Now write down everything you're good at - all your skills, anything from designing Web pages, to changing a diaper, to writing a newspaper story, to building a fence.

Now take a moment to consider whether your lists are longer or shorter than you would have expected. (Or ask several people who have very different school backgrounds from you to make their own lists, and compare the length and quality of your lists to theirs.)

Next, put an asterisk by each of the items that you learned mainly in school and college.

Finally, consider what percentage of your skills and expertise you've picked up in school and what outside of school.

My "reply" to follow will be my list, and I will head it with my educational background. I invite all my readers to do the same so that we can compare not only the wide variety of skills and knowledge we all must use during our days, but what proportion of those skills and knowledge were acquired through formal schooling.