Finding and making the time for self-education

When I picked up War and Peace from a bookstore one winter afternoon as I was leaving college for winter break, all sorts of doubts ran through my head. War and Peace is one of those books that everyone is aware of and respects, but few actually read. As a friend likes to say, it’s a book one would like to “have read.” The book contains over 500 characters and plenty of theoretical digressions about history, war, military strategy, and the dynamics of human life. My edition, the Norton Critical, ran to 1,070 pages.

One of the biggest doubts I had about cracking open War and Peace was the familiar dilemma of time. First: our time on earth is limited and finite - why should we spend it reading monstrously large books? And in a smaller and more practical sense, my vacation was limited and finite - why should I spend it reading War and Peace instead of playing Playstation?

I suspect that everyone runs into similar doubts when they are deciding how to spend their time, and that the eternal dilemma of limited time is one major reason why so few individuals choose to continue reading, studying, and actively learning after their formal schooling is completed. Each of us is “busy” and faced with countless competing demands upon our finite number of hours. Every time we act or do not act, we “spend” time, and spent time can never be recovered. Just as we become poorer each time we hand over cash to a store or restaurant, we become older each time we watch a movie, read a book, or attend a party. Few things are as precious as our time, and it matters how we choose to spend it.

Nevertheless, however, I decided that reading War and Peace would be a worthwhile way to spend the 30-40 hours over the course of 13 days that it took me to finish it. I suspected – rightly, it turns out – that the book would enthrall and entertain me, make me a bit wiser, give me a bit more insight into human life, and share with me the insights of one of the most profound thinkers and beautiful writers who ever lived. These benefits outweighed the “opportunity cost” of forgoing other activities in favor of reading it

We go through this sort of cost-benefit analysis each time we decide how to allocate the hours of our day, and so a crucial step on the road to becoming a self-educator is to recognize the value of learning and to keep that in mind at all times. I find that self-education gives my life meaning and constantly provides me with new lenses through which to view and understand the world. Having made that judgment, it is easier to make the call to read War and Peace instead of doing something more "fun."

I have been speaking in terms of allocating the hours of one’s day and the weeks of one’s vacation, but self-education can also take place on a much smaller scale. We all waste large amounts of our day standing in lines, sitting in waiting rooms, and "zoning out."

But as Barry Farber explains in his How to Learn Any Language - an incredible resource for self-educators, language learners, and language teachers - we can actually put these “hidden moments” to work in the cause of self-education. If you are going on a long walk, bike ride, or drive, try listening to podcasts or audio books instead of your playlist of familiar music. Bring a good book next time you have to sit in a waiting room or wait for a flight.

There are two ways self-educators can change the way they think about their time: First, recognize the value of learning and self-educating, and plan to spend some of your leisure time accordingly. And second, understand that you have more free time than you might suspect, and begin finding ways to put those hidden moments to productive use.

The wallpaper curriculum

How can high-school teachers maximize learning time for students with short attention spans? Here's an idea.

When students drift off and stop paying attention to a lesson, they often look around at other areas of the classroom - anywhere but where the teacher wants them to look. The lawn-mower in the window was a particular favorite of mine in high school: the hypnotic back-and-forth movement and the pleasant drone could keep me occupied during a long hour of history class.

Teachers, when they set up their classroom, should aim to make it utterly impossible for kids to look anywhere in the room without learning something. Fine, don't look at the teacher - look at the maps and timelines on the wall, or the art, or the quotations from famous figures, or the posters depicting famous photographs and historical events. Or the rows of books that cover a wall - some with their spines out, some faced-out. You don't even need to open them to be intrigued by their titles: "The Philosophy of History" by G.W.F. Hegel; "The Open Society" by Karl Popper; "The Educated Imagination" by Northrop Frye; "Tales of Love and Loss" by Knut Hamsun; "Confessions of a Mask" by Yukio Mishima.

What about vocabulary terms in size 100 type? A garden, with the plants and vegetables labeled? An aquarium? Phrase charts in foreign languages?

Managers of retail stores are taught to never show their fixtures - to cover every inch of shelves and pegs with products. Products are for sale; fixtures are not. Showing the customer an empty shelf sells no books.

The same principle applies in the classroom. Empty wall space gives you no educational return-on-investment; in fact, bare walls evoke feelings of confinement and claustrophobia. Fill empty spaces. The classroom is not a modern, minimalist design studio: it is an attic and workshop for independent scholars with crackling, eager minds. A classroom's walls should contribute to students' impression that schooling is not a world unto itself, but rather an introduction and guide to the greater world of ideas, art, and informed action.