True Reform

Educational reform to this point simply has not gone far enough. Over time I have tried to scout out the educational reform terrain to see whose ideas are worthy of implementing into the radical pandidactic turnover. What I have found is a great number of people living inside the broken box and failing to think outside of it.

Part of the reason people fail to truly think innovatively about reform is simply in our verbage. We Americans have carefully trained ourselves to treat "higher education" and "college" or "university" as synonomous. As such, when we speak of higher education being broken, people perceive us to be saying that we believe that colleges and universities are broken and need fixing.

The truth is - and most reformers would balk at my saying this - colleges and universities are not broken. Colleges and universities, for the most part, function as intended - they provide motivation and easy access to information for all those who are able to afford it. Of course, there are a few pesky side effects to colleges and universities, such as massive student debt that one will be paying instead of feeding their children after graduation, and the fundamental transfer of educational ownership from students to educators. But, overall, colleges and universities are managing to provide people with degrees and jobs (which has really been the collegiate goal in the modern era - to provide not a genuine education, but validation and employment).


No, in our reform we have failed to acknowledge that what is broken is education itself: the way that we think about education, our excessively high dependence on so-called educational institutions, the isolation that occurs across the board as part of the learning process, transferral of educational ownership from a very early age resulting in a lack of motivation to learn that most people simply take for granted. We as a society have taught ourselves that education is a painful but necessary evil. We have established altogether the wrong goals for ourselves as well. We have taken the term "get an education" and synonymized it with "get a degree," when in fact the two concepts are very near to being mutually exclusive.


So I cringe to hear some of the solutions that have been proposed for our broken higher education system. In a recent debate at the Miller Center (resolution: "The business model of higher education is broken") Daniel Hamburger, CEO of DeVry University, proposed that the quick-fix to all of our woes is to provide more funding to all types of collegiate institutions and make learning more available through mediums such as online universities. Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, insisted that, in addition to increasing education funding, we must ease for students the transition between high school and college.


Whoa, kids, let's take a step back and look at our criminal misapprehension. It is this: most of us believe that in order to fix higher education, we must fix colleges and how they do business. This is simply not the case. Education has existed since long before colleges came into being and it will exist long after they go extinct. Education and how well it succeeds or fails has little or no bearing on the status of institutions who claim to provide it.


Now, the money pinch since the 1980s has obviously made the college system less and less efficient, and I am actually grateful in some ways. I am grateful because hopefully the current crisis will help us to wake up and recognize the lunacy that we are engaging in. I hope that it will make us realize that the answer to our woes is not to continue to throw money at an artificial system. And colleges absolutely are artificial. They are a human attempt to streamline an organic process. We have not, thankfully, institutionalized the physiological development of infants. I don't know why we would begin to try to institutionalize the psychological development of adults. The answer is not to throw more money at this artificial system.


The answer is to change not the way they teach but the way we think and the way we learn. For therein lies a true education. Education is the process of acquiring knowledge, developing reasoning powers, and preparing oneself intellectually for mature life. And all of these have everything to do with the inner workings of the mind - our very thoughts. So if we can change the way that we think we can fix education. To attempt to fix education by restoring dilapidated campus buildings or increasing the salary of college professors is nothing more than tilting at windmills - it will serve to be utterly ineffectual in the fight for the minds of America. In point of fact, pouring cash onto failing programs may have about the same effect as pouring gasoline on the already-raging fire of inadequacy. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will begin to reform education until we try to reform men and women from the inside out.


Impossible!, you might say, but I say that it is not. To reform mankind from the inside out we must begin by turning our own thinking inside out. This may prove to be the most profound difficulty in fixing higher education. Not only have our parents socialized us to believe that higher education is something it is not, but thousands of years of history have formed our civilization into one that believes higher education is something it is not. But the work begins within the mind of every woman, man and child who embraces the principles of pandidactism and chooses to embark on a quest for education on their own terms. Each of us must recognize our own intellectual failings with regard to our view of learning and correct them. And we must teach others to recognize these failings within themselves as well.


It could be so simple. All that is required to turn an upside-down civilization back onto its feet is a simple realization. What profound power can emanate from that one act of introspection. First we must disabuse ourselves of a few notions, the first being that the responsibility for one's education falls not on the institution but on the individual, the second being that the standard student-teacher form is a necessity. Then we must change the goal of our study from getting employed to getting a genuine education (of course, it isn't ignoble to desire employment - the opposite is of course true - but it should not be the end-all-be-all of our educational pursuit).

But we never achieve self-actualization simply by removing negative thoughts from our minds. Such thoughts must be replaced by their positive counterparts in powerful ways. So, after we have chosen not to believe that anyone is responsible for our education but ourselves, we must choose to take control of that education. I think one of the most dangerous symptoms of this transferral of ownership and responsibility is studying on someone else's terms - studying that which someone else sees as important in someone else's style other than our own. One powerful way to replace this kind of negative behavior is to make a plan regarding that which one wishes to study and how one wishes to study it. This usually includes making a list of subjects that you have a genuine desire to learn and deciding the most exciting road to take to get there. And then take that plan in hand - make it happen.

Likewise, if we are to stop believing the false notion that the only way to learn is from professional teachers we must replace that negative belief with a positive one. First of all, it's clear that there are better ways to learn. While we retain about five percent of all knowledge gained in lecture, we retain ninety percent of that knowledge gained from teaching. So, if we are to harness that energy and stop learning in this inefficient way, we should make a choice to teach everything that we learn. A convenient way to make this happen would be the pandidact's meeting, in which students learn for an hour and then immediately teach that which they have learned.

The last negative mental roadblock is probably the most difficult to conquer - the attitude that the goal of education is not learning but gainful employment. This attitude has several sinister side effects. First, learning ceases to take place as soon as we obtain employment. Second, we begin to perceive education, as mentioned before, as a painful but necessary evil to be endured if we are to become financially comfortable. The replacement for this belief we have already discussed, and that is to make a plan to study that which we desire to simply as a matter of love of learning, whether or not it may increase our capacity to earn.

What power there is in a simple cognitive shift! In the act of realization, lives are made, light replaces darkness and society changes forever through genuine, lasting reform.

So, in terms of actual verbage, I agree with the reformers: higher education is in fact broken. But when I say that, I am saying something utterly different than what they are: education is broken. Not colleges, not universities, not state funding, not pell grants, not teaching styles or classroom techniques or the emphasis that we place on one discipline or another, but education itself. And so I challenge you to muster up some courage and look inside yourself to answer the question: what are you doing to fix your education?

How to Make Ideas From Nothing

I find that there is no end of benefit to be had simply from teaching someone a principle. Last night I had a fairly fast-paced discussion with my brother and sister-in-law on the subject of pandidactism. Somehow, I have failed to this point to teach them the principles thereof. They were more than happy to learn. As I would explain a concept, they would raise concerns or questions that I would have to address, thus reinforcing my understanding of the principles as well as causing me to inquire into the validity of certain aspects of pandidactism and come up with responses to resolve or at least soften certain concerns.

Here are some of the things that I learned: it would be of value, in attempting to market pandidactism, to emphasize its pragmatic value, perhaps coming from the perspective that pandidactism is an associate's degree program of sorts (for it very well could be, if a person chose to make it so).

There is at least one college graduate in the world who would be interested in engaging in the grand experiment.

One could approach certain forward-thinking college professors, asking them to make an experiment of their students - to set said students loose, as it were, to learn the material covered in one semester, and have them challenge the course at the end of it and see if there were any measurable results.

Pandidactism must, by its very nature, remain separate from the institution of universities if it is to retain its integrity. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that as soon as pandidactism is institutionalized it will require administration, with its associated costs - and one of the foremost benefits of pandidactism is that it is perfectly free. The second reason is that the institutionalization of a system requires that said system be regulated by some sort of structure imposed upon its disciples by an outside administrator, and one of the joys of pandidactism is that is entirely regulated and structured by the individual pursuing his or her own education.

And all of this information emerged from a discussion among individuals without knowledge of education theory at a kitchen table, sans textbooks. Pretty neat. Could it be that ideas can be created from nothing? Maybe.

In other news, I commenced my study of workplace learning by going to my first day at work, and it was pretty grand. I enjoy the company, my supervisors, my coworkers, the whole shebang. We began undergoing our training today. ClearLink, my place of employment, is an inbound phone sales company. So today Matt, my trainer, began training my fellow new hires and myself in the art of selling. While I was sitting in that classroom I couldn't help thinking what an excellent deal this was. It seemed as though I was paying quite a minimal price for benefits received: in exchange for my merely sitting in a chair and keeping my ears turned on, they were providing valuable information that was improving my life and giving me $11 an hour. Wow. What nice people they are.

So today I learned about transferring the burden of owning information to our customers. For example: suppose a customer calls us regarding a promotion in the newspaper for internet at just $20 a month. What they didn't notice in the ad is that, in order to receive this great price, they must also purchase a phone package and sign a two-year contract. But I don't want to break the bad news to them. That would probably make them not want to buy. So, instead, I ask them to discover the bad news - to own it for themselves. So I ask: "What are all the details of that deal?" They commence to tell me, and, in so doing, discover and take ownership of the information for themselves.

So, while many look upon salesmen as low-life hucksters and think this is a terrible way of manipulating people into accepting bad news, I think it's a pretty fair reflection on the importance of owning your life. I would rather discover for myself that my room is a pigstye than have my mom inform me of the fact. If I discover it for myself, own it for myself, I set about quite happily cleaning my room. If my mom tells me, then I feel embarassed and angry that she is imposing her standard of cleanliness on me.

When an outside source like a professor or religious leader reveals an idea to me that runs contrary to my closely-held beliefs, I often react with anger and resentment toward that professor. Even if he's right, I often refuse to acknowledge the fact. Acknowledging the fact takes hours, days, months and years of painful self-discovery. But if I can realize that fact on my own terms without my professor teaching it to me, I will naturally and quite willingly alter my current system of beliefs in order to make room.

So, you see, even low-life hucksters can teach us a thing or two about living a fulfilling existence.

In less fortunate news, my patience for computer programming is waning. I'm sure it is because I have taken a two-week hiatus from doing any programming. Now, all the information that I am processing is becoming painful. I think I'll give it at least one more good day.

Yes, I'm sure the real problem here is that I am simply being too inconsistent about programming. If I could just put in a little effort every day, it wouldn't be such a grating process to learn.

It has also been brought to my attention that I have failed to organize my personal education effort. I really don't know what information will be necessary for me to know in order to pass each respective CLEP test and so my learning is being rather scattered. I'll have to take care of that.

Well, friends, it's been a fun, these last few minutes we've spent together. I hope that you have savoured the rhapsodical fashionings of this post. Please have a nice night. Yes. A nice night, indeed.

The Update

A little update:

I recently finished Dante's Inferno and I am now more than halfway through Marketing for Dummies. So the updated list of books read since I embarked upon this experiment now includes: The Inferno, Philosophy for Dummies, The Sri Isopanisad, An Introduction to Microeconomics and most of the aforementioned Marketing for Dummies and half of Sales Closing for Dummies.

I guess my list includes a lot of For Dummies books. While a month ago I would have said that I hope this fact doesn't say a certain something about me (i.e. that I am a dummie), I have since accepted the ancient notion that Shakespeare codified in saying, "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." If such is truly the case, I am proud to count myself among the dummies.

I've learned about the Marketing Ps: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. I've learned about the four utilities of value: Form/Function, Time, Place and Ease of Possession. I've learned about Dante's concept of Dis, and a whole bunch about ancient Florentine history and politics (there were these two parties - the Guelphs and the Ghibellines - and they were fighting over how much power the Pope should have, having battles where thousands died and the city of Florence was almost completely razed, the Ghibellines got stamped out and the Guelphs wound up dividing into White and Black parties and started killing each other. It was a pretty crazy time). I've learned about Dante's opinion of Muhammed and Ali and various and sundry popes. I've learned about sales prospecting, test closing, techniques for addressing concerns and closing sales. Positioning, the value of a good distributor, the marketing aspect of pricing. And the list goes on.

One of my biggest struggles to this point has been to maintain balance. As I have insinuated in past posts, I haven't obtained employment - up until today. So it's been difficult to keep up my energy in the very frustrating pursuit of a job when I have a much more compelling work to engage myself in. But I know that the workplace is one of the most effective places to get an education - more effective, perhaps, than even the classroom. So when I received a job offer today, I was delighted to accept. It's in sales. And I suppose that the art of salesmanship is a valuable skill to learn no matter what career one pursues. And, since I am currently studying a great deal to do with business, I think sales ability will be marvelously useful in my future.

I've had a chance to apply some of the principles of marketing that I have been learning also in another part-time position making estimates for a window-washing company. Before, I never understood that price is not merely a function of overhead and desired profit but also a function of the value that customers attach to one's product or service. And I am getting a good chance to think about price as a measure of value in my window-estimates work.

The world really is full of interesting things. I've never been one to listen to anything but music on the radio, but lately my ear has been turning to news and talk programs while I'm driving from place to place. I've learned that there is a lot to be learned from an interesting call-in radio show like Talk of the Nation, RadioWest, Fresh Air or, sometimes, This American Life.

I still don't feel like I have committed enough energy to advertising the principles behind Pandidactism. It's nice that I know the truth about learning, but unless that information spreads, it won't do me or anyone else a scrap of good. So I just need to start. I don't think it really matters how. Even if I begin advertising in a less-effective way, at least I'll show myself that I can take the initiative to do it.

So I think I'll print off some fliers and take them up to the University of Utah campus to distribute them today. Wish me luck!

The Inner New Yorker

I absolutely and unequivocally ought to move to New York City. You see, I have a goal in my life, and that is to be true to myself before being true to anyone else. And, if I am going to be true to myself, I need to do that which my heart cries out for me to do. And boy-oh-boy does my heart ever cry out for New York! You see, I was born there, and the city seems to have turned me into a boomerang of sorts - no matter how far I get from it, I just seem to keep on coming back. And why not? I love the bustling sights, the inescapable noise, the brash people, the smells both foul and fair, the smog, the soothing rustle of waves bumping up against the South Street Seaport, the excitement of stepping out my front door and being immediately immersed in the exhilarating world that is The Greatest City on Earth.

When it comes to my inner New Yorker, I think William Shakespeare, speaking as Polonius in Hamlet, said it best: “To thine own self be true.” I think that it’s pretty clear how living by an aphorism like this one could be helpful. Throughout time, various people have affirmed the truth that at heart, we as human beings are fundamentally good. If we can but obey that part of ourselves that is good we cannot help but follow a good course. Where does this “fundamental goodness” come from? Well, different people will tell you different things. Some say that it comes from your socialization. There’s certainly some truth to that. Some say that it is implanted in us from birth by God. There’s some truth there, too. As for me, I believe that the human soul is infinite, as old as the universe itself, and that, much as the universe has prevailed this long because of a foundation of solid principles, so must we be built of good stuff, because we’re still here, aren’t we?

But, some would contend, aren’t there desires and attitudes in each of us which are also evil? Maybe. While I’ve got plenty of good desires, I’ve also got pretty powerful negative cravings, like for ice cream. In fact, if I didn’t put some boundaries on my own behavior, I would probably eat ice cream day in and day out without stopping to breathe. Whoo - I guess I better not be true to that part of myself, or I might wind up a pretty rotund - or dead - individual.

Listen again to the first part of my last sentence: I better not be true to that part of myself. Kind of smacks of falsehood, doesn’t it? The truth is that the incessant craving for ice cream isn’t really part of that “fundamental” category that I used to describe “fundamental goodness” earlier. I would call it “extrinsic badness” instead. And the fact that I ought to put reins on it is probably not a point of debate here. Our fundamental goodness goes deeper than that. It is our fundamental goodness that speaks to us when something just “rings true,” despite the fact that it may be outside of our experience and we have not proved it. So, when we accept what someone else says to us on faith simply because it rings true, hoping that later we will see the virtue in it, we are in fact being true to ourselves.

I’m pretty lucky, because I see my inner New Yorker for who he is, while some deal with difficulty in being true to themselves, for they say that they don’t know themselves, and a person can’t be true to an unknown ideal or concept. However, I would have to question the claim of any person who says they don’t know themselves, or at least put parameters on their claim. Granted, there are a lot of things that I don’t know about myself. I don’t know what I want to do for a living - that’s probably one of the biggest of those unknown things. But there is a lot more that I do know about myself. I would divide these “do knows” into two categories: Things I Know I Want, and Things I know I Don’t Want. I think it’s appropriate to define ourselves by that which we do or do not want, for, as human beings are work in progress and life is a matter of progressing that work, we can easily identify ourselves with the part of our souls which stretches and reaches for something more.

Let’s look at those Things I Know I Don’t Want first: I don’t want to go to college this fall, I don’t want to wind up living in a van down by the river rolling doobies, I don’t want to be trapped in addiction, I don’t want to live in fear, and I don’t want to be utterly impoverished either temporally or spiritually.

Next, let’s look at those Things I Know I Want: I want life eternal, I want to find true love, I want to move to New York City, I want to learn the French language and the philosophies of Kirkegaard, I want to start an educational revolution, and I want to make a positive difference in the lives of at least a lot of people, if not the world.

And that’s just to name a few. Your list is probably much different than mine. And with good reason - we’re different people with different destinies. So naturally, it’s not really my place to say if anything on your list of “do wants” is out of place. Of course, I could be right - what you think you want may not be what you truly do want, but I have no right to say if it is or not. Only you can learn the truth of your desires by searching your own soul.

But it seems pretty basic to me that the things that I really want, deep down, are good, and that I ought to do them or seek them. And if I choose not to do one of those things because I was advised against it, I would be making a grave error. I do know what is right, and I have a responsibility to myself and everyone around me to do it. I need to have at least that much respect for my own decision-making.

Most of us decide whether or not to be true to our Inner New Yorker as teenagers. At this age, our parents often advise and guide us in our decisions. For the most part, we can take it for granted that they have our best interests in mind. But many of us are inclined to rebel against this guidance and advice, and with good reason: we need to get some practice being true to ourselves. Much of the time we are wrong - we wind up doing things against our better judgment and that of our parents. But throughout this process we are gaining respect for our own capacity to follow that fundamental goodness.

I think a worse crime than rebelling would be to listen to our elders or our betters and follow advice that runs contrary to the advice we give ourselves - or which our fundamental goodness gives us. Sometimes we follow this advice simply because we expect our advisers to have the experience to know better. But we don’t realize that they cannot know the truth for us better than can the fundamental goodness that runs deep as eternity through the middle of our souls. And, as time goes by and we consistently obey conventional wisdom against our better judgment, we stop owning the decisions that we make. We become the vehicles of our society’s decision-making and deprive ourselves and those around us of the benefits that could be had if we only listened to that intuitive wisdom from deep within ourselves.

I am of this wicked latter bunch. I am one of the wimpy, too dependent on my parents’ wisdom to obey my own intuition. And I have denied happiness to myself and others because of it. And so it’s time to change. And it’s time to own my life. It’s time to move to New York City - to follow the sage within to foreign and unknown destinations. To accept the responsibility for that wrong which I do. Maybe so far I’ve been neglecting the rest of the counsel that Polonius proffered his son who was also about to embark on the quest of adult life: “and thus it follows, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” If I can only trust the truth within me, I can begin to respect the motley whole of mankind. So, be it by train or plane, I must obey that muse which moves me from within and make my embarkation - New York, here I come.

The Wimp

Overdependence is the disease of the upcoming generation, and pandidactism must prove to be the cure. Today I listened to a fairly interesting discussion on the cost of overdependence on KRCL's RadioActive. It featured Hara Marano, author of Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting, a Career Services Executive from the University of Utah, and one of the directors of the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Marano's book centers around the concept that over-parenting has turned today's generation of recent college graduates into fragile "hot-house orchids," incapable of handling the blows of adult life. According to Marano, parents have become snow-blowers seeking to remove every obstacle from their children's lives, over-praising said children to the point that children manifest delusions with regard to their own capabilities. Often, children are also deluded by excessively high promises of the blessings of higher education. Furthermore, even after leaving the nest, children are heading to college with cellphones, "the new umbilical cord," in their pockets. It could be said that children expect all of the benefits of a properous life without the responsibility to take ownership of that life.

Now, take note, this is my generation we're talking about here. It surprised me when all of the callers-in (at least during the segment that I listened to) were recently graduated males in their twenties who whole-heartedly agreed with Marano's perspective.

Even more surprisingly, I too agree with her to a certain extent because, while I am a pandidact, I could probably also be accurately described as a recovering wimp. I feel fairly entitled. I am absolutely convinced of the fact that I am remarkable enough to outstrip not only my colleagues but my superiors in terms of personal accomplishment and to do it pretty quickly. I have had a terrifically difficult time dealing with the hard-knocks of life, partly because I depend so heavily on my parents for support. And, up until recently, I have made little effort to take ownership of my own life or my own learning. I, like an unfortunate number of my peers, feel torn between what I wish to learn and what my society and my parents see in my best interest to learn. Note - my parents haven't necessarily done anything wrong, but I have definitely made a choice to be excessively dependent.

Marano indicates that over-dependence on parents manifests itself in children's yearning for security, especially in the job market. I have to chuckle whenever someone even mentions job security in today's market as a matter to be considered, for it seems that even the most secure of us have a very tenuous hold on our positions.

But there is another issue at hand here, that has somewhat to do with parents, but more to do with education. Parents are obviously our first educators, and most of us become very dependent on them for understanding, to the point that we even call home for wisdom long after we have jettisoned ourselves into the cruel world (not that asking for advice is wrong - it's just the way that it is). Parents, when we turn about five years old, gently untie the apron strings and allow us to become dependent on the school system. Now it is the teacher that must answer all of our pressing questions. And after we have graduated from school we transfer that dependence to our college professors and guidance counselors and expect them to proffer the needed advice to propel us through our college careers. In fact, when professors are too busy to offer office hours, or when we have to battle for professors' attentions with three or four hundred classmates, we feel jilted somehow - not only because we paid for that attention, but because someone who we perceive as having a duty to care for us has failed to do so. It could even be said that we feel - what's the word? - entitled to this attention. For, in our minds, we could not possibly attain educations without professors' help.

So the challenge of children who become over-dependent on parents is exacerbated by over-dependence on professional educators. In our growing-up years, parents and teachers often promise that, upon graduating high school we will be left all alone to be tossed and buffetted by the cold winds of a cruel and very real world. But what do we find instead? We are deposited into another, only-slightly-less-comfortable world of university education with proxy-parents ready to stand in. Don't get me wrong - I don't think that the lone road is the best way to learn to deal with the harshness of life, but I also think that popping from pamperer to pamperer probably just turns us all into a bunch of babies.

So if, according to Marano, children of the latest generation are failing to take control of their own lives, it very well may be because they are utterly failing to take control of their own educations.

Okay, so how do we take control of our educations? How do we shed the "hot-house orchid" stigma? If one wishes to prevent over-dependence on a system, must one sever oneself from that system?

I believe that de-wimping ourselves must begin with pandidactism. We must first determine that which we wish to (and perhaps ought to) learn, and then set about learning it, entirely of our own devices and out of no sense of duty to parents or professors. But let us not be lone wolves in the harsh reality of our current situation: let us surround ourselves with an army of friends and mentors whom we may both teach and receive teaching by so we can make this march together and profit all the more.

Ought we to wean children from the tender benevolence of parents? Yes. But such a weaning requires first that children learn to take ownership of their lives and their educations. It requires that children learn to accept themselves for themselves and to love that which they love simply because they love it. It also requires that we teach children to learn from all - the world, their peers, themselves, the stirring masterworks of ages past and present, and, sure, their parents and their teachers. But learning is not enough. The fulfilling life requires that children, in turn, teach and build their community. We must also teach the hard-won skill of educating others if our children are to learn at the level of which they are capable.

Is this a lost generation? I don't think so. A little troubled, perhaps, but not entirely lost. There are answers to these questions, if we will but accept them. And maybe, if children can learn from the mistakes of their parents, they can build a future where all learn and all teach all - a future worth owning.

The Perpetual Motion Machine

Human beings are constantly in motion. This struck me particularly as I was doing a little people-watching the other day, observing a man waiting at a bus stop across the street from me. Even in the very passive act of waiting, he was remarkably active. His eye followed various and sundry diversions in his field of view. He wandered from one end of the sidewalk to the next, looking now at a pile of construction debris, now at a swarm of ants crawling out of a crack in the concrete. All the time he furrowed his brow, shook his head, smiled, traversing a broad range of emotions while merely waiting for the bus to arrive. I can only begin to imagine what he was puzzling over that particular day as he waited.

We are a restless species. Even the most sedentary of people I have ever known was constantly engaged in some kind of activity - playing a video game, watching a movie, reading a book, pondering endless minutiae. We commonly think of sleep as a moment of perfect rest, but even in the act of sleeping our eyes twitch beneath our eyelids, our limbs move involuntarily, and our mind races through fantasies both wonderful and terrifying. Two nights ago I was working on my blog and my little cocker spaniel, Samson, fast asleep, began to emit a wail more soulful than I have ever heard from him in his waking state. Surely he could not be said to have been inactive at that time. And that's just accounting for our mental and physical activity.

There is also a vast array of behaviors that our body engages in without our knowledge or consent. The energy that we consume is allocated to a distribution range that includes our physical activity, the heat produced from digestion and absorption of foods, and our Basal Metabolic Rate (which accounts for all of the activities that occur within our body simply to keep it functioning - to repair and renew body tissues, fight diseases, etc). The Basal Metabolic Rate accounts for the lion's share of the energy that we consume and expend. That is to say, we burn the majority of our calories without even being aware that we are doing so. In short, we are remarkably efficient at keeping ourselves occupied.

Consider me, sitting here writing this post at this moment. Even as I am doing so, I am crossing and uncrossing my legs, twitching my big toe, which is shaking my whole lower body and thus the computer that is sitting on my lap. I am thinking about this post, listening to my dad talk about some online banking thing, and fuming internally over a news story that I just heard on NPR. The Circus Animal cookies that I ate a couple of hours ago have probably hit my stomach by now and my gastrointestinal tract is busily excreting various and sundry enzymes, raising and lowering the amount of hydrochloric acid in my stomach. And of course, my mind is also thinking about what I am going to write next and my fingers are flitting over the keyboard in a relatively complex way that I learned only after having spent hours in keyboarding classes.

And I'm sure that even in trying to account for everything that I do and observe I have only scratched the surface. Human beings, I believe, are the closest thing that we have to perpetual motion machines. From the moment that we're born (and before) to the moment we die (and - I think - after) we are constantly in motion.

Last week I wrote about the collision between people and experiences - how every object, every experience, every thought, every piece of music or art, every tiny thing that our eyes perceive as we amble through life makes an impression on our minds, no matter how small that impression may be. Everything teaches us something, whether or not we realize it. So if we are constantly in motion, our experiences are constantly changing, and if our experiences are constantly changing, we are constantly learning. We may not be making great intellectual leaps and bounds simply by being alive, but we are learning.

Naturally, I believe that an active education takes a great deal more energy than passively learning lessons by virtue of being alive. But the truth is that we have far more energy to learn that we think we do. The majority of the time, we just fail to utilize that energy efficiently.

Yesterday as I was driving around I decided to try a little informal experiment, seeing how well I could absorb information at the mall food court with all the distractions that attend that environment. I bought myself a Philly cheesesteak and sat down to read Dante's Inferno. I picked up where I had left off - in Canto XVII (Canto comes from the Latin cantus meaning "song." It's just one of the sections of a long poem). In this canto, our heroes, Dante and Virgil, are standing at the edge of a cliff that divides two sections of hell from each other, and they watch a beast named Geryon swim (Dante interestingly says "swim" not "fly") up through the filthy air of hell from the bottom of the cliff to meet them where they stand. Geryon symbolizes Fraud, and he is pretty crazy looking: he has a man's face, a half-reptile body, two hairy paws and arms, and a gaudily decorated back and trunk. After Dante wanders off to observe the lot of some usurers, Virgil and Dante hop on Geryon's back and they float down to the bottom of the cliff, doing circles around a waterfall as they go.

Suddenly, right here in the mall, while all of the people around me were eating their cinnabons and their sandwiches, information formed within my brain about this monster named Geryon - I knew what he looked like, what his name was, what he symbolized, how he got from place to place, and what function he played in The Inferno. It took about as much energy to learn this as it would have taken to eat one of those cinnabons - maybe even less.

Now - here's the really neat part - unless you've read Inferno before, you just learned all those same things too! Just sitting here, casually reading this blog. In fact, I kind of tricked you into learning something today - I bet you weren't expecting to pick up a little tidbit about the Inferno, today, did you? But, almost against your will, you did.

I think that many of us consider education a labor. And, I must confess, much of my formal education has been fairly laborious and painful. But does it really have to be? Much as I don't think we can gain a substantial education just by poking around in other people's blogs, I don't think that gaining said substantial education has to be a dolorous process. It should be a labor, sure, but a labor of love. But I think this has a great deal to do with owning one's education, like I talked about in my last post. When we actively learn by choice and not by the caprice of professional educators, it is simple, natural and joyous to do so. The only trouble is, we must make that choice within ourselves. Since I love to run, I think about it like running: I often find myself lazing about in the middle of the day, doing battle within myself, trying to decide whether or not to go on a run. I know that going running will be beneficial to me, it will make me feel good, fit and healthy both during and after the run as well as provide a number of health perks. And yet, one half of me would rather sit on the couch, eating ice cream and watching old episodes of Lost. But, by a titanic act of will, I summon the strength to change into my workout clothes and hit the road.

So must our choice to learn be. It looks difficult from here. It looks like it may be painful. But we know that we will thank ourselves for making that choice. We know we will not only be better off afterward, but that we will enjoy the process, as we are learning those things we have long wished to learn. And so we must, once again, by titanic act of will, summon the strength to change into our thinking caps and hit the books.

So, in short, I think that the question of education is not "Do I have the energy for it?" but "How will I choose to spend the energy that I know I have?" We are more capable than we can conceive of, sitting here on our couches (which takes energy), eating ice cream (which takes energy) and watching Lost (which takes energy). Come on, now. Get up and change. What do you wish to learn? Make the list. What must you do to learn it? Make the list. Got your running shoes on? Good.

Ready, set...

The Motive

The most effective means of maintaining motivation throughout the course of one's education is to have personal proprietorship of that education, to own it oneself. But how does a person come to own their education, and in what respects does ownership effect motivation?

What is an education? Its meaning is, for our purposes here, two-fold: it is the process of acquiring knowledge, developing reasoning powers, and preparing oneself (and others) intellectually for mature life; it is also the result produced by this process. So, denotatively at least, a degree or grade does not constitute an education and we can effectively remove degrees and grades from our discussion of educational proprietorship.

How does one come to own something? There are a number of ways, some more valid and respectable than others: one can buy it, steal it, have it given to them, or build/grow it themselves. Despite appearances, in the case of education (and economists would say in every case - how does the saying go about free lunches?) there is a price that must be paid in order to receive an education through any of these means.

In the case of buying one's education, one must advance the aforementioned stack of hard-earned cash in addition to time spent studying and in classes. The next means of acquisition is problematic: How exactly does one steal an education? What does it mean to steal? It means "to take without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force," according to dictionary.com. So how can one take an education without permission to do so? I suppose you could sneak onto college campuses and sit in classes which you have not paid to attend and surreptitiously suck the information out of the professor's brain.

Hmm... it appears that what some from other cultural backgrounds would refer to as "stealing," we Americans euphemize into "auditing." And it's both perfectly legal and perfectly ethical. So... if it is legal and ethical, could it possibly be stealing in the truest sense? Probably not.

Sorry, American educational kleptomaniacs, we have logically written you out of existence.

But how could this be? How could something be impossible to steal? 1. It could be so thoroughly well protected that it is pragmatically unapproachable (though a long string of popular heist movies through the last century seem to be trying to inform us that no such thing exists) or 2. It could be free. We've proven that education is not unapproachably well-protected, so it must be that we have implicit permission and right to take it. That is to say, if a person can't steal an education - whoa - education must be free. However, it is only free in a limited sense. But we'll get back to that later. For now, let's move on to the other methods of obtaining ownership of things.

Our next option is to have our education given to us. By appearances, all human beings have their education given to them: the world begins to teach us the moment we emerge from the womb (and maybe even before that). Our parents freely teach us. Teachers in the primary school system impart their wisdom for no monetary cost at all - to us, at least, since the burden of paying taxes to support this formal school system falls upon our parents at that age.

But is there a fundamental price to be paid for all of this having an education handed to us? Of course. It is our time and our effort. So having an education freely handed over is entirely different than having, say, a Wii or a Hummer or ham sandwich freely handed over. In the first case, acquisition only occurs after hours, months, years, and a flood of blood, sweat and tears, whereas in the second case, acquisition is received instantaneously with no effort whatsoever.

Could it be impossible to have one's education handed over to one, at least in the truest sense? I would say so. While some children complain of having an education forced into their hands, the truth is that they are being forced to pay the price of receiving that education.

And thus we reach our last means of obtaining ownership of things: to build or grow said things oneself. But doesn't everyone build or grow their education themselves? What again is the process of education? Acquiring knowledge (no one is going to acquire it for you), developing reasoning powers (no one is going to develop them for you), and preparing oneself intellectually for mature life. Preparation is a funny thing, for there is a fundamental difference between preparing oneself and preparing a lunch or other external commodity. Your best friend can prepare your lunch for you, if they find the goodness in their heart to do so. So could your spouse. For that matter, a complete stranger could prepare your lunch for you - though in that case you'd probably be want to be a little more wary about said lunch's contents. But only you can prepare yourself. Some may help through mentorship, tutelage, teaching, coaxing and encouraging, but when all is said and done, unless you choose to actively prepare yourself, no preparation will occur. There are countless schoolchildren who have acquisition, development and intellectual preparation foisted upon them who nonetheless fail to acquire, develop or prepare, for they cannot have that which they do not choose to acquire themselves.

So one can't steal one's education for two reasons that, juxtaposed, form an interesting paradox: an education is always free, but there is also a price that must inevitably be paid for it - time and effort. Sorry, intellectual pickpurses. And one can't have education handed to them, for there is a price to be paid in, once again, time and effort, no matter how freely education is offered. And if a person wants an education, they will inevitably build it themselves, for, though they may be paying a price in time and effort, who are they truly paying that price to? One does not pay one's time and effort to one's professors, parents, gurus or Sunday School Teachers, for these educators cannot possibly benefit from one's toil. Thus it must follow, as the night the day, the price of education can be paid only to oneself. Thus, every human being alive builds his or her own education within her or himself.

But how do we maintain motivation to go on building our educations?

Society's answer brings us back to our first method of attainment: monetary purchase. Some say that paying for their education with that money which they have toiled so heavily to earn ensures that they will follow through with their investment, for they would not wish to have spent so much money in vain.

On this point, let me wax analogous for a moment:

An education is a structure within one's soul that has the capacity to surpass the beauty of the most artful physical architecture of which man has the capacity to conceive. The burden of building this building falls on that man or woman who desires to possess it and cannot be delegated to any other. There are, however, countless other builders (parents, teachers, professors, great thinkers from ages past) who have supplied construction materials - I-beams, steel girders, shingles, bricks, mortar, glass for windows, etc. - in the form of ideas. Each of us have a few good and bad ideas in the mix. Once in a while, we stumble upon a certain innovative combination of these construction materials that has never before been used, but we rarely ever make up the raw stuff itself on our own.

As human nature would have it, many of us lack the motivation to do this work unsupervised. After all, in our growing up years we always had someone to watch us and coax us along in our work. And we don't always find the pleasure of seeing our work unfold motivation enough to carry on in our labor. While we recognize that the rewards of building this building are enormous, we lack the innate joy that comes from building it. One way or the other, we must find a way to keep up our motivation to build.

Society, on seeing our plight, suggests that we hire someone, a personal trainer of sorts, to motivate our actions. How novel! But there is a price to be paid in money to such people. So off we go to make some money, putting off building our educations. These diverting, money-making activities may once in a while provide materials we can use to build our building, but for the most part they just provide hard, cold cash. And our buildings either retard or stop completely in their growth. But that is the price we must pay to hire out motivation.

At last, we have saved up enough to hire a personal trainer to keep us motivated. If we are lucky enough, that is, for those we hire to be personal trainers in nature. More often than not, we get a slave driver to crack the whip on our backs until the glorious structure is completed. But build it we do, and perhaps at a faster pace than we had been building it before. But at what price! In addition to time and effort, we pay a price in money and the time it takes to make it as well as the enormous personal pain that is caused by the deep lashes on our backs. In the meantime, without even realizing that it has happened, we have come to no longer think of this glorious edifice as our own structure, but as the property of this demon overlord who so furiously demands that we build it. And so, with time, all the pleasure that comes with seeing the building rise, brick by brick, is replaced with a hope that someday it will be sufficient enough for our whip-cracking motivator to be satisfied and leave off lording over us.

Of course, as I mentioned before, some people are lucky enough that they can find a motivator who is not a slavedriver, but is perhaps more like the Jillian Michaels of the education world, or a friendly and encouraging wilderness guide. But often, the effect is much the same - ownership (in one's mind, at least) is transferred from the learner to the motivator.

So tell me, friends, is it worth it? Is it worth it to pay a monetary price, only to shift the ownership of one's very dreams to someone else and cease taking pleasure in them?

There is a better way, and that is to become like little children. I believe that, in childhood, none of us struggle to find the motivation to learn, for, in Emerson's words, "children are all foreigners." Many a parent both bewails and celebrates that stage of constant questioning that most children go through. For children it seems to be an effortless exercise to formulate profoundly thought-provoking questions. One of my most influential high-school teachers once related a story in which her daughter, after having passed by a team of horses, asked, "Mom? When horses look at each other, do they know that they are horses?" Children have achieved that pinnacle of inquiry wherein they can ask those questions which we have no conceivable way of answering.

So what happens to this insatiable curiosity? Does it get satiated? Does learning become less important after we have a fundamental understanding of how to survive in the world? I don't think so. At some point, some stranger will usually take ownership of our education. We are shepherded into the school system, and we are conveniently provided with teachers who will act both as guides - to answer the questions we have not asked - and efficient motivators who provide tests and grades (not to mention furnishing us with graham crackers and chocolate milk after our midday nap).

For most of us, our questioning nature - our unquenchable thirst for learning - is resilient for a little while, but eventually we come to resentfully hand over the stewardship of our education to our teachers. There are those few, however, who refuse to relinquish their God-given right to own and dictate the course of their own educations. Sometimes these prodigious learners come to see the schooling system as an enormous playground of knowledge that will provide them with answers to questions that would be difficult to answer on their own, love their primary and secondary school experience and are enormously successful. Others of these learners flounder in the school system despite their considerable genius, becoming intellectual renegades that, even subconsciously, refuse to comply with the system that they see as attempting to take control of their autonomy.

The rest of us accept our lot, coming to view the majority of teachers as slave-drivers, putting in our quota of schoolwork to graduate but coming to see the act of building our edifice of education as a chore we must fulfill in order to alleviate the demands of our parents and our teachers. Of course, the moment we receive our diplomas and these authority figures stop reminding us the degree-less are usually penniless, we stop putting in the time and effort, preferring to make lots of money and indulge ourselves in other pleasures than those intellectual pursuits, for education has become no longer a joy but a burden to be fled at the first possible moment. that we don't bother to learn is indeed tragic, but I think the greatest tragedy is that we have forgotten our innate capability to make education happen for ourselves. Not only do we not bother to learn on our own, we think we can't.

Now, don't get me wrong: my issue here is not with teachers and parents who have the well-placed intention of providing us with an education. It is with us, the brute majority of human beings, who assign ownership of our education to anyone besides ourselves. And I am absolutely a member of that class. But there has come a moment of realization for me - a remembrance of sorts. Today I looked at the sky and I wondered, "Why is the sky blue?" and realized that I don't know the answer. Today I saw the humble cottage that I've made so far of my education - it's in slight disrepair this summer as I have gotten out from under the lash of my professors, and it's an all right place to live in. But I feel a thrill to think that I have proprietorship of it - that I can make of it whatever I so choose, that I can make of it the temple that it was always meant to be. Looks like it is finally time for a major renovation.

But where do I start? The command to "start by taking ownership of your education!" seems like a pretty tall order. I need a plan or I will ultimately flounder and fail. And there is a plan available which will set me on the path to education proprietorship. It is known as pandidactism.

The first step of pandidactism is this: take inventory of that which you have a desire to learn. For the first twelve years of our schooling, we are constantly furnished with answers to those questions which we have not asked. Once the smoke has cleared and a moment of realization has occurred, we must ask ourselves - what are my questions? what do I have a genuine desire to learn about?

I took this first step in a musty old used bookstore on Main Street in Salt Lake City. The list I compiled included Philosophy, French Language and History, the History of New York City, modern music composition theory and a number of other subjects I had long yearned to understand but had never taken the time to do so. Of course, we must formulate a plan for learning this material, which can be as simple as picking up a For Dummies book or as complicated as following college curricula, but planning our journey flows fairly naturally after we have chosen the journey we wish to pursue.

The next step is to prescribe to a method which will help us to effectively acquire and solidify this information. We can, of course, read books and seek out mentors who will not proffer unasked-for counsel, but rather answer our questions, confirm or deny our assumptions and set us on a path toward scholastic success. But, even more powerfully, we can, immediately upon learning, set about helping to build the education of others. By spending time teaching newly-learned material, adding material to the buildings of others, we find our own educational structures becoming exponentially more structurally sound and more magnificent.

Suddenly, we are the masters of our own fate. While we may have some we turn to for counsel when our building struggles, we have not contracted out our education. There is no one in charge of this building process but ourselves. We come once more to realize the very joyful nature of inquiry that we experienced as children.

So pandidactism leads us to ownership of education and ownership of education leads to a renewed motivation to learn, which in turn plunges us back into the pandidactic pursuit, creating a cycle of perpetual learning. Adam Smith postulated in The Wealth of Nations that often, when individuals act in their own self-interest, society as a whole will benefit. Such is the case in that central quest of human existence - knowledge. If each of us could recognize the powerful effect that teaching others could have upon our own learning and act upon that knowledge, the intelligence of our generation, our society, our world would flourish in a way that we can scarcely imagine in our current compartmentalized collegiate culture.

I am a builder. I have my tools in hand. And, if you will join me, I am prepared to build not just a simple home, but a city.

The Collision

Is it possible to live an uneffected life? Yesterday I finally initiated my study of Marketing. I stopped in at Barnes and Noble, picked up Marketing for Dummies and commenced to read. My principle concern about my personal study of Marketing was that, unlike French, Microeconomics and Philosophy, Marketing may have no bearing on my real life. I came to find that I was seriously incorrect.

Marketing is the technique by which businesses attract customers, politicians attract voters, singles attract singles, orphaned dogs attract owners, etc. Some Marketing techniques can be more or less effective than others (for example, fresh young men who wander through the park pinching strange women have a pretty ineffective way of attracting mates), but every human alive markets something at some point or another.

And I have something profoundly important to market - Pandidactism. And I feel pretty sure that whatever I have done up to this point to market the concept has been pretty ineffective. So now I'm excited to thoroughly study the art of Marketing.

A similar realizational phenomenon has occurred as my dad has taught me the science of computer programming. I was under the assumption that, much as learning how to create a well-run program may be interesting and enlightening, such knowledge would have no real bearing on my life, as I have no intention at the moment of pursuing a career as a software engineer. How wrong I was! As it turns out, learning and using a programming language is a powerful way to learn the art of logic and discipline oneself therein, for if one submits an even vaguely illogical command, the program will simply refuse to work.

I have never learned anything that has truly had no effect on me. I suppose there is a lesson to be learned in this. It is as impossible to be uneffected by something we learn as it is for the earth's surface to be uneffected after collision with a meteor. Each moment that we exist, we are learning. According to Gilbert Highet, one can never stop having the experience "of watching one's own mind and how it produces new interests, responds to new stimuli, and develops new thoughts, apparently without effort and almost independently of own's own conscious control." So to assume that learning such-and-such a subject would be a waste, that we would emerge uneffected thereby, would be fallacious in the highest degree.

The Experiment

Let us begin our grand tale at the beginning: About two weeks ago, Brandon and I were riding the train to downtown Salt Lake City in a search for jobs (which continues to this day - this job market sure is doing a great job of building my character), when our discussion settled on the subject of going back to college at summer's end. You see, school had just let out, and both of us had rocky experiences this last semester, to say the least. We also shared a common lack of orientation concerning our desired future career paths.

Our first discussion was textbooks. "Too expensive!" I said. "Open-source textbooks!" He said. "Okay, then!" said I, glad at last to have resolved one of higher education's greatest ills.

Our next discussion was professors. "Useless!*" I said. "Teach yourself!" He said. "Less effective than professors! Teach someone else!" I said. "Okay, then!" said he, likewise relieved at the resolution of this long-unsolved plight. *Okay, I'm being pretty hyperbolic, but I think you get my point.

We decided to start an experiment between the two of us. This was our central question: can we ingest a full semester's course-load of information during the summer without entering into a classroom or purchasing a textbook? The hypothesis: yes, we can. The measurement: CLEP tests. The experimental process: form study groups that congregate at libraries.

Having chosen our path, we abandoned our search for jobs (which our parents were later rather unhappy about) and decided to pop into the nearest bookstore and look for books we could read in order to begin feeding our knowledge right then and there (the main objective was to find Philosophy for Dummies). No luck. The bookstore happened to be an Antiquarian bookstore, with stacks on stacks of outdated, confusingly organized books. So we took a moment's break from our search and sat in two overstuffed armchairs on the second floor and took stock of our enterprise. What was it that we wished to learn about? We made a list - well, it was a Venn diagram, to be exact.

Off we tromped to the Salt Lake City public library, list in hand, hoping to have better luck finding the books to suit our needs. Better luck we had. In about twenty minutes I was plunging into concepts about the existence of God, metaphysics, deontology, Aristotle and radical skepticism and Brandon was getting a brainful of the Stoics, Bool, Aristotle (he must have been pretty important, for both of us read a great deal about him that day), enthymeme, syllogism, etc.

It took less than an hour for both of us to fulfill long-held dreams. For me: to study philosophy. For Brandon: to study logic. And to think, we could have finished our train ride and filled out applications all afternoon.

Suddenly I am seated in the future. I've read the Sri Isopanisad (the foremost collection of Hindi mantras - highly recommended, whether you're Hindu or not. I'm not, and I enjoyed it immensely), Philosophy for Dummies, and an introductory guide to microeconomics. I've finished my first lessons in French (using a resource produced by Carnegie-Mellon University - the Open Learning Initiative: 100% free online courses) and learned some fundamentals of programming in C# - objects, classes, methods and variables. Whoa.

So - onto the rest of the expirement, which shall be documented in this blog. I will be studying French, Introductory Philosophy, Microeconomics, and Principles of Marketing with the goal of passing each of the associated CLEP tests by Jan. 1, 2011 (some of the tests cover much more than one year's worth of study). Can I learn the full load of the information? Is man capable of independent thought? Can society hold up against a challenge aimed at one of its most fundamental institutions? Is there such a thing as truth? Don't touch that dial, kids - I've a feeling you're about to find out.

The Martyr

I was reading up a little bit about autodidactism on Wikipedia the other day and found a story that made me a bit wary. The story is found in the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic detailing the history of India. It goes about like this, according to our benevolent wiki'ers:

"Ekalavya is depicted as a tribal boy who was denied education in the science of arms from royal teachers from the house of Kuru. Ekalavya went to the forest where he taught himself archery in front of the image of the Kuru teacher, Drona, that he had built for himself. Later, when the royal family found that Ekalavya had practised with the image of Drona as his teacher, Drona asked for Ekalavya's thumb as part of his tuition. Ekalavya complied with Drona's request, thus ending his martial career."

It's about enough to make any autodidact - or pandidact - quiver in his boots, much less one who is attempting to start a revolution. My hope is that the university system - which does have, to a degree, a monopoly on education much like the Kuru house - is not as malicious as the Kurus proved themselves to be.

I've pondered from time to time whether this endeavour that I am embarking upon is a rallying cry for socialism. And my thought-out response is that it is not. I am a capitalist at heart. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek (whose work together earned Hayek a Nobel Prize in 1974) described capitalism as a system where efficiency is rewarded when we throw money at it and inefficiency is punished when we decline to throw money at it (I got that information, once again, courtesy of Wikipedia). Well, since the 1980s, at least the federal government seems to be indicating that the higher educational system as it stands today is inefficient, for it declines - more and more consistently each year - to throw money at colleges.

But the current system is pretty resilient, and it is pretty powerful. It's an enormous rock on the beach of the educational market, and the rest of us are mere specks of sand. Should one of us decide to take the boulder down, they could easily be crushed. I would hope that an institution designed to improve the lot of humankind wouldn't be so misanthropic as to annihilate an innovator committed to reforming it. But the possibility is there.

There is a better way to try to fix the system, however. If just one more grain of sand, one more Ekalavya, was willing to find a better way, then perhaps one more would join, until the entire beach could take on the resilient rock of higher education. I don't mean to say that burying the system is in short order. But it could use a little bit of good erosion, a little shaping, to say the least. Well, it could probably stand to be broken in half and then endure some intense sculpting. But the market can do it.

So... is there a possibility that a given university could refuse to reward a degree to someone - who has learned the relevant material without having spent a single hour in a classroom - for no other reason than to protect its own self-interest? Yes. But even if they do, I hope it could garner enough attention to indicate that a change must be made. And someday, we won't all have to walk around thumbless as a price for our genius.

The Solution

Four days ago I outlined some of the problems plaguing the educational system - at least those I saw from my own, very limited, experience. But I have not as yet presented any solutions to this problem. Herein I intend to do so. There are a few imperfect, relatively traditional solutions (autodidactism, the Oxford tutorial system, online universities, trade schools and online universities). Each of this historically tried methods has its respective failings, but there is one method on the horizon which has the potential to not only provide for the deficiency in higher education, but to radically reform the society in which we live.

The first of the old systems is autodidactism. Autodidactism, literally translated from Latin, means "self-teaching," but that's a little bit of a misnomer. Autodidacts actually tend to learn from a wider variety of teachers than their own limited experience, including family and friends, experimentation, books and any number of other media resources. Often autodidacts are intellectual renegades - they have a desire to learn, but naturally rebel against formal teaching.

A wide array of criticisms have been aimed at autodidacts. The first lies in the fact that autodidactism, in certain cases, can be a lonely process (one that is replete of the benefits of teaching and learning from other live human beings). The second is that their education is undisciplined by a general curriculum and that, even when they manage to give themselves a decent education on a subject they are passionate about, they tend to be overtaught in some aspects of that subject and undertaught in others. The last is that the autodidact's "self-image depends on showing that his command of history and politics is an order of magnitude greater than other people’s" (Ezra Klein, TAP), as they have to constantly prove themselves, not having been validated by a degree. One flaw I find is that the human element is removed, and information thus becomes an abstract and not a living process.

But we have other options. One is the Oxford tutorial style, a simple answer to the problem of mass-producing thinking students. The Oxford tutorial style consists of a self-designed curriculum a student pursues, writing an essay each week and regularly meeting with a professorial tutor who criticizes the essays, corrects misapprehensions and challenges assumptions. Learning culminates in an examination, whereby students are evaluated to determine the thoroughness of their understanding and assigned a grade, eventually leading to a degree providing tangible validation for that student.

There are a couple of flaws I see in the Oxford system - one of the oldest formal educational programs in the world. The first is that, while it does allow professors to tailor teaching to individual students' needs, it doesn't provide for one of the most fundamental of those needs, which is to teach. What we read, write and listen to is valuable, but what we teach has exponentially greater staying power in our minds. One other is that, much like autodidactism (but to a smaller extent) it can be a lonely process, despite the fact the student does have a professor to guide them in their journey. The last I consider highly relevant: it costs money. I would hope that one gets a significantly higher value for their dollar (or pound, as the case may be) in this situation than in the traditional higher education system, but human learning on its most fundamental level costs nothing more than time and effort, and it ought to remain so.

Another option is the online university, which I will only discuss briefly. The cost may be more efficient than that of the traditional university, but the problems still remain: it is even more isolating than the traditional university as students are stripped of interaction even with a living, breathing professor and other students, it still costs money (the problem of overpriced textbooks advocated in a classroom still remains) and, well... it countenances all of the issues attached to the traditional universities. The few advantages are a slight monetary cost decrease and the ability to study in the comforts of one's own home - which may or may not (I tend to side with "may") be a crippling disadvantage in and of itself.

The last of the many options I'll discuss here is the trade school. Once again, the problems of the traditional university, with one advantage: lower monetary costs (but, statistically speaking, lower monetary return).

It seems there is no end to the problems we're facing. The most feasible option for having a truly educational experience at the lowest cost seems to me to be autodidactism. And here we have outlined the problems it presents. Perhaps, though, further investigation into autodidactism's shortcomings could yield some answers to its questions. Let us examine some solutions to these problems one at a time.

1. Autodidactism is a potentially lonely process. Any learning that is done by oneself can bear some improvement. After all, as we mentioned earlier, the most effective way to learn is to teach or do. Well, then let us teach or do!

My friend Brandon and I have been experimenting with this concept as of late: we will go to any given library - as they are the most conducive atmosphere for quiet contemplation - with our books, read for an hour, and then teach each other what we have learned in that hour. A recent experience went about like this: I was reading a book on microeconomics and Brandon was reading the autobiography of Steve Wozniak, inventor of the personal computer. I learned a prodigious amount in our four hours of study, not only about microeconomic terms like trade, individual optimization, production possibility frontiers, and property rights, but about dreams, personal ownership, diodes, and transistors. The discussions we had were scintillating and enlightening. It amazes me what profound conclusions can be drawn when two human beings with different backgrounds and perspectives feed each other from the feast of words contained in a book. The ideas that we exchange intertwine and transform and understanding is amplified one hundredfold simply from the fusion.

A second solution to this problem lies in the mentor. It amazes me how willing most people are to proffer their wisdom for free. Take my dad for example. Last night we were playing a popular board game intended to teach sound investment principles and kept noticing the limitations of the game. I suggested that we make the improvements ourselves, changing the format from a boardgame to a computer game. My dad is an extremely successful and experienced software engineer. I suggested that I could write up a plan and text for the computer game and he could do the programming. My suggestion got a lukewarm reception. I reformatted my offer: I could write up a plan, tell him what I wanted to do, and he could teach me how to do it myself.

His attitude changed immediately and he accepted my offer almost without hesitation. Now, the information that I can glean from a professional software developer with more than twenty years' experience in a hands-on environment I would be hard-pressed to receive in a lecture hall. And it's entirely for free. I've signed on my brother to tutor me in my learning of the French language and intend to enlist a close friend of mine who has built, managed and sold a multi-billion-dollar business to mentor me in my study of the fundamentals of accounting, economics, finance and business management. I'll let you know how that one goes.

The propensity to teach is hard-wired into human beings. When something is close to our heart, we are often willing and excited to share it for nothing more than the privilege.

2. Another criticism is that autodidacts are lopsided in their learning. This is clearly true in a genuine self-learning situation. But if we can involve others in our learning, willing to teach and be taught, one aspect of the issue is abated. But it could still be possible that there could be huge gaps in our learning and we could fail to receive a real general education. As for myself, I intend to resolve these two issues through a twofold system of first following strictly a college curriculum for my chosen major, Finance, and secondly testing (but I'll get to that subject a little later).

3. The last criticism I'll attempt to address is the issue of validation. What a shame it would be to have spent hours of study and gained the equivalent knowledge of a bachelor's-degree-holder and have no leverage with employers to show for it. There won't be many - well, any - accounting firms that will hire a student without their CPA, law firms that will hire one without their J.D., computing firms that will hire one without a B.S. in Computer Science or Engineering or... the list goes on.

There is an imperfect answer. To fix this problem completely would entail a complete overhaul of not only the education system, but the hiring system, both of which are thousands of years in the making. So, at least for now, there is some cold comfort that can be offered: the CLEP and the challenge.

The CLEP (College Level Examination Program) basically equals the AP-test for grown-ups. Knowledge one has gained outside the classroom is tested on a mainly multiple-choice exam, the passing of which most universities award credit. But the CLEP has limitations: CLEP tests are offered by the College Board for only a select few classes, mostly general education or entry-level core classes within any major. So there's no test for Advanced Corporate Finance Principles, though a person could conceivably test out of the entirety of their general education.

But there is hope for those upper-level classes. It lies in the challenge-option, which should be offered at most universities, if it isn't already. At the school I was going to last year, to challenge a course is to prove one's breadth of knowledge in the particular area of that course without having to sit in class. The system at the school I was going to last year works about like this: a person wishing to challenge a course contacts the department offering that course and requests to challenge it (I imagine that the greatest roadblock in the process happens right here in this first step) and receives either assent or denial, then picks up a "challenge form" from the testing center, is evaluated by the department offering the course using the equivalent of a cumulative final test or project regarding their understanding of the material covered in the course, a fee is paid (which could constitute a significant roadblock) and credit is received.

For both the CLEP test and the challenge, at least at my last university, no grade is assigned, but performance is based on a pass/fail system.

So, in theory, one could CLEP and challenge their entire way through some university programs. Others are - and should be - totally off limits to this kind of behavior (think of being treated by a doctor who never received a single traditionally-earned credit. I shudder to think). And some things can't be taught by the reading of books and personal experimentation (think the performance of a musical instrument). And I imagine that most universities place some restrictions on this kind of credit-reception.

So I have a great deal to learn about the system myself, and it has imperfections to be resolved from the start. One imperfection is the cost: it sure costs less to pay $77 for a CLEP test than it does to pay upwards of $400 for tuition, fees and textbooks for a class on the same subject, but it still costs. But I would hope that, if multitudes used this as their principle way of getting through college, colleges would begin to recognize the failure of their current system and not necessarily abandon it, but at least radically reform it.

So autodidactism is limited, that is clear. But what about pandidactism? Let us consider a world where every man, woman and child is involved in a network, based out of public libraries, where each teaches and learns from each other for nothing more than the privilege - for that is what is to teach. It is a privilege. It is a pleasure. And it is a duty for each of us. A world where a student of life can enter into the job market without thousands of dollars of student debt. A society that spins a web of learning strong enough to lift the weakest learner and powerful enough to transform, for the better, every person alive. I see it, and I shall endeavour to prove that it can be done, at least in microcosm. But I can't throw this party alone. The music is good and the beer is cold... you want in?

The Cave

Today I am lost. I wandered up a canyon with my dad for a couple of hours as we taught each other microeconomics, burrowing into its depths and raising its dark questions. I went to Barnes and Noble and finished my book on economics, SparkNoted Dante's Inferno and got a little bit into a book on ethics.

But it all strikes me as... vast. Neverending. And directionless. I have to wonder - what if Virgil never arrived to save Dante from his aimless confusion? What if, barred by beasts and his own lack of knowledge, he wandered through the oppressive forest, unable to find his path to Paradise, ad eternum?

Maybe life is a grand quest for learning. Maybe education does constitute the steps to an attainable Parnassus. But maybe this existence is nothing but an innavigable forest, and maybe I am a lone child, so bewildered be his solitary plight that he at last has abandoned the search for divine reward, seated himself in the dark woods and commenced to examine the scenery. Perhaps there is no God above or hell beneath, or, if there is, perhaps there is no guided tour - no Virgil to conveniently appear in my time of need.

No, fellow wanderers, this is no time for speculation. Pondering what's on the outside of this cave won't get me out if it. Only a fixed determination to tear my eyes away from the shadows on the wall and crawl out of this cell will see me through. But it well may be that, having crawled my way out of this cavern, I will find there is only another enveloping it, and another beyond that.

But precursive faith dictates that I cannot believe it so to be. I must shake off these chains of doubt and step out of the shadows or have no hope but to forever remain in darkness. And if, at the end of one lifetime's sojourn in this world, I am still entrenched in these caverns of existence, I can say that at least - at least - I spent my life trying.

The Mind

The other day I was sitting in the Salt Lake City public library on one of their tidily modern brown couches, reading Philosophy for Dummies (which is kind of a contradiction in terms) by Tom Morris, and intermittently looking out the massive third-story window at the sun playing down on the cars, on the buildings and on the graceful impressiveness of a skyline that I have come to love over time. I was reading about a school of thought known as Idealism, which Morris summarizes as:

“The view that all that exists are minds… and ideas in minds. According to the idealist, nonmental matter is an illusion projected by our minds. All of the physical universe is just bundles of ideas, a virtual reality, perhaps produced by the mind of God.”

I was forced to pause for a moment, jarred out of my sleepy rumination. Was this something that I could believe? My heart wouldn’t necessarily swallow the concept hook, line and sinker, but it stirred something within me as I looked out at the urban landscape spread out before my eyes. Could it be that this world was not brick and mortar, concrete, aluminum, oxygen, flesh, skin and eyeballs, but just concepts floating through the ether of my - no, not my brain, but my mind?

Well, why not? I certainly wouldn’t be able to prove otherwise, though my intuition wants to put some parameters on the Idealist's doctrine. The truth is, the world as I perceive it probably does exist, but to me, watching through the windows of my senses, it really is nothing but electrical impulses firing through the synapses of my brain.

Whoa. Suddenly my mind has become a world, a universe that is only as small as the things that it sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches and thinks. If the entire world as I perceive it is within me, then why must it seem like such a great task to accomplish anything outside me?

We as human beings - and I include myself in that “we” - often say things like “I wish I was as intelligent as so-and-so” or “I wish I could be morally upstanding and clear minded like the rest of my community.”

My question is - why don’t I, then? I can! The tools are immediately before and within me. My perception of personal weakness is nothing but a dark, cloudy apparition haunting my brain. Should I desire to be an intellectual giant, I can and ought to be pursuing that course this very moment. This very moment. I ought not to wait until there’s a class on the subject that I can attend. I ought not to wait to ask someone who knows. It is just this easy, Cameron: pick up a book on any subject you’ve long desired to learn (you can even get it for free at a library like this one) and read it. And - voila! - you are already well on your way to brilliance.

I believe that what we truly want in the deepest recesses of our hearts is usually good. So if I really want something, I ought to take it! There is, after all, nothing stopping me.

I put down the book and pulled out a piece of paper and began to make a list of what I wanted. It included a number of subjects I wished to learn about - French language, the history of New York City, literary analysis, philosophy and modern musical composition - in addition to a number of other life goals I’ve long held.

Ever since that day I’ve been in a library or a bookstore every available moment. I’ve read all of Tom Morris’s book, nearly finished a book on microeconomics (which is a story in and of itself) and embarked upon a course of French language study. And all because I wanted to.

It amazes me, the way I can turn and look at a light bulb or listen to music or read a book or sink into a comfortable couch or eat a hot dog and suddenly my brain is reaching out its feeble tendrils, touching, viewing, tasting the world, beginning to wrap its roots around the foundations of this universe.

The Problem

Well, it‘s time to throw down the gauntlet and say: the price of education, on every plane of human sacrifice, is too high. The last semester of my college experience, for which I paid quite healthily, proved this aphorism in spades. I was under the impression for the majority of this semester that my education was mostly free, paid for by a scholarship which the school had awarded. Unfortunately, that scholarship was pulled out from under me just weeks before the end of the semester and I was locked out of all my accounts and campus services until I could find some way to cough up $2,900 in tuition. Here’s what I spent those $2,900 on: one teacher of the arts with a god complex who stood before our class and blew smoke six hours a week and one teacher of the sciences who stood before a class of five hundred students and, essentially, recited the textbook three hours a week. Thereafter I spent $150 to rent two e-textbooks for the semester that cost nothing to print and $300 on fees of whose purpose I am still not clear.

And the price of this semester’s learning must have surely included the approximately eighteen hours of lonely study I pushed through every week in order to receive fairly mediocre, albeit passing, grades. The price must have included the feeling of isolation experienced in two classes of five hundred and three hundred students, respectively. And the list goes on.

By the end of this particular semester, I decided that perhaps the price was too high, in a way, because of the university of my choosing. I’m a pretty metropolitan guy by nature, but I had chosen to attend a school in a very rural area because of that particular school's excellent piano performance program (when I first enrolled I had dreams of becoming a concert pianist and had received a full-tuition scholarship to pursue those dreams). But, like the vast majority of aspiring concert pianists, I came to find that, despite the fact that I’ve got plenty of technical chutzpah, becoming a professional pianist was simply not a realistic option for me (I may be good, but not that good), and decided to switch to a finance major, losing my scholarship. It seemed there was nothing left to keep me at this more rural university with its boundless acres of farmland (their finance program was good - but not that good). So I decided to transfer to a more hip, urban university, despite paying almost $700 more, in tuition alone, for that particular choice.

Needless to say, after all the work and decision-making, the summer came as a welcome relief. I got to move home, away from my snoring roommate, away from the burden of schoolwork, and away from the interpersonal drama that comes from living in a community of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds. So I settled into trying to find a job so I could start saving up the $12,000 it would take to get me through the next year of my schooling.

But all of this paying and paying and paying began to get me wondering: am I behaving rationally? Is there a reason I am choosing to follow this particular educational course instead of another? Is this the most efficient way to be learning? Why am I getting an education at all?

Well, there seems to be a pretty intuitive answer to the latter of my concerns: an education is important in and of itself. Robert Kiyosaki, financial guru, is known to say, “Ultimately, it is your financial intelligence… that makes you rich.” Peter Brougham: “Education makes a people… easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” Joseph Addison: “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.” So education is valuable - that seems self-evident. But couldn’t there be a better way to get an education?

One challenge I face is that I’m not entirely sure what I want to study. I am currently pursuing finance, but I don’t really know that a career in finance is ultimately what would make me the most happy. I know that if I invest in a career in finance, I’m fairly certain to get a significant monetary return on my investment. But I’m not sure if the aforementioned career would lead to a genuinely fulfilling life for me.

My dad is a big proponent of doing what you love, something for which I respect him a great deal. I’ve talked with him about my plight of not being sure what I want to study, and have suggested that perhaps I take a break from school until I do know what I want to do, to which he observes that a person will never know what he wants to do unless he goes into the world and tries a lot of things, and a great way is to go to college, taking classes in many subjects until one strikes a chord.

Sounds like wise advice to me, but expensive. $12,000 a year seems like a pretty big down payment on finding yourself. Couldn’t there be a better way to find out what I want to do? Why? Why pay so much for my education? Why pay so much for textbooks? Why pay so much for professors to read those textbooks to me? Why continue to feel isolated in a system that is meant to unite me with other human beings?

I am intrigued by what Emerson, who was clearly well-educated, had to say about higher education: “We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.”

Now, of course, I have to insert a concession here. Is getting a college education worth it? Is the benefit you get from a college education greater than the cost exacted for getting it? Without a doubt. It’s the best system that we have right now. Well, that is to say, it’s really the only system we have right now. And it’s full of - I believe - benevolent people intending to improve their community. But could there be a better way? Could there be a more stimulating, enlightening, efficient way? To this I must respond with equally emphatic fervor - yes! And with the price of education getting higher every year, the flaws in this system - the inefficiencies - will prove to be fatal unless something changes. The system of higher learning stands to be fixed. And I intend to show that it is possible to fix it.