Compiling a list of reading suggestions for high school students

In many of the conversations I have had with educators over the past few months, a recurring theme has been the difficulty of providing challenging instruction to the most advanced students in a particular high school class. In the United States, test scores and other evidence show that the gap between the most and least academically able students in a given classroom widens as the students get older, so it is particularly difficult to design instruction for high school students. You risk teaching above the heads of the students who are behind, on one hand, or boring your advanced students with work that seems remedial or superficial, on the other. And you risk boring everyone by trying to steer a "middle course" by aiming your instruction at the average student.

I believe that one of the ways we can address this challenge is by equipping our best students to be self-educators through independent study. As a high school senior, five of my six classes were independent study. In the high school where I currently teach, one student I know studies Japanese independently in the library every morning, and another plows through massive books and watches as many classic films as he can get his hands on. We have to offer our support to these students, encourage their curiosity, and do what we can to point them toward the broader world of ideas and the academic disciplines.

To that end, I am currently in the process of compiling a list of reading suggestions - fiction and non-fiction - for high school students, and I would love to hear everyone's input. I have heard quite a few great suggestions so far.

I plan to label each book as a "circle," "square," or "diamond" - relatively easy, intermediate, or difficult - in the manner of ski slopes. If you find that helpful, please feel free to label the difficulty of the books you suggest.

Feel free to leave your suggestions as a comment to this post, share them on the Wide Awake Minds Facebook page, or send them to me via email. I'll post a draft list on this blog over the weekend.

Interview: Self-educator Peter Behr

Interviewer: Ryan McCarl

Featured self-educator (interviewee): Peter S. Behr

Self-educator’s location: Chicago, IL

Date: 15 October 2009

On his website, Peter Behr introduces himself by saying: "I'm Peter Behr, and I like to make things." That's an understatement. He is a computer programmer, artist, photographer, language learner, and translator. He maintains a website at http://pbehr.com/, and his recent artwork can be found at Stemleaf Studio: http://stemleafstudio.com/.



WAM: You have a lot of interests and activities, professional and personal. What are your currently "active" projects? How are you spending your days and evenings this fall?

PSB: Recently I have been programming more and doing a few web applications as a motivation to learn Python, which has been fun. I've also been renewing my efforts in learning Chinese in anticipation of a possible return to China, and developing my design and art skills by learning digital techniques and delving into photography. I have trouble focusing, I suppose, so I try to make that a strength.

Like a lot of people, I've also been looking for a new job since I returned to the states after a few months in Europe. It's an odd process but also a fascinating problem to solve, the whole idea of packaging yourself up into small, polished bits and sending them to people you don't know in an effort to get them interested in your work. My goal is to find an opportunity in China or on the West Coast involving one or both of my two main interests: language and technology.

WAM: Your projects include creating works of art, designing new web applications, and learning languages, among other things. What makes you decide to undertake these projects? Why not just watch television?

PSB: It's funny because a few weeks ago we got a huge TV with cable, so I've actually been spending time getting into football and also the Food Network. It's a guilty pleasure, I guess. But it is true that I always have a long list of projects to work on, and to be honest I'm not sure where that comes from.

WAM: What is the source of your creativity? How long have you been interested in "making things"? How did this habit of yours manifest itself in your childhood and in high school?

PSB: I've wanted to find things out and create new things since I was little, and I'm sure that has more than a little to do with my upbringing, in which I was always encouraged to read books and be creative. Actually, I think when I was much younger my parents tried to limit me in that somewhat, because I'd have a tendency to get absorbed in my own little bubble and never interact with people. Now I suppose that I'm in the process of learning how to balance the practice of creativity, which in my opinion is fundamentally independent process, with collaboration. The two feed off each other, but are also opposed in some ways; to develop some ideas you need time for uninterrupted focus, but you also need time out from that focus so that the idea can interact with those of other people. Making that distraction come neither too early nor too late is a challenge for me, and that's what I'm working on right now.

As for the source of creativity, I don't think I have an interesting philosophy on that. What matters to me is that it's there, and that something needs to be done with it. But I do like what Elizabeth Gilbert says in one of my favorite TED talks, which is that it might be a good idea to think of it as a kind of external and inscrutable force which you do not have complete control over, something which was prevalent before the Renaissance.

I'm trying to take that idea and merge it with the knowledge that improvement in technique requires no inspiration, only consistent effort. I am making an effort to find a point of view which makes me feel more at peace with the whole idea of striving to create new and original things, an incredibly hard thing to do, much less understand.

WAM: You are fluent in Mandarin Chinese and have worked as a freelance translator, but you just started learning that language in the summer of 2006. What made you decide to start learning Chinese? What methods did you use to study it? Are you still working to improve your ability, or have you moved on?

PSB: The whole process started when my brother and I visited China in 2006, knowing practically no Chinese. We had both wanted to start learning a language and Chinese became our choice because of how different it is from other experience, and its utility. My brother also needed to learn a non-Indo-European language for his linguistics major, so it all came together that we'd compress a year's study in a summer, then take the 200s back in Chicago. This worked out, and I went back the next year. Since then I've done what I can to keep my efforts alive, including studying with tutors and doing translation work. Recently I've gotten more work in translation, which is nice, and of course my goal is to go back to China again so that I can be back in the immersive environment. There's really no substitute for that.

You could say I just can't let go of the language, so yes, I've been trying to maintain and improve my reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension, but it's tough work on the side. Reading and writing inevitably get the focus, but I'm still not at all at the level where I could do professional work from English to Chinese. Eventually, I'd like to have that level, but time will tell if I'll succeed in finding the necessary environment. My fingers are crossed.

WAM: You do work in advanced computing, including programming, web design, and graphic design. Why are you interested in computers and the Internet? What would you say to traditional types who believe that we should focus on book-based education and keep computers out of classrooms? What can the average person do to learn more about computers and the Internet and grow beyond their computing comfort zone?

PSB: I don't know how much traction such traditionalists have, but I agree with the idea that skills such as reading and writing and mathematical ability or not drastically improved by teaching digitally rather than from books. But I don't think they're worsened, either, and eventually I think digital media will form the backbone of curricula. That doesn't bother me because of the added convenience, portability, and the fact that books will no longer require such quantities of physical resources. And we'll be able to take advantage of the fact that suddenly all of our information at hand is truly at hand, instantly accessible and capable of being processed by machines.

Keeping that trend in mind, I think what is missing in curricula is instruction in technology at a depth that will allow us to not be overtaken by the transformation of (parts of) our lives into a digital medium. The transformation opens up all sorts of possibilities of using programming to augment the speed at which you can manipulate massive quantities of information. The longer we wait to teach children how to control computers 'under the hood,' the further behind we get. Kids are curious and if you show them a system they'll play with it and learn it, and that's why I think it's important to get them interacting with computers in a direct way, not just with the layer that allows computers to emulate what books and televisions and mail are able to.

WAM: Your art portfolio includes both traditional and computer-assisted works. What do you see as the proper relationship between computers and art? Why does art matter, and what role can art play in a person's education and growth?

PSB: Heh, I don't have a very strong belief in that word, 'proper.' If it's a medium, art will be made in it, and there will be the possibility of that art being done well or being done poorly. I like to be a generalist and explore both kinds of media, but some people like to focus. That's okay, it's the effort that matters to me.

Art's role can be anything. I feel very anti-prescriptivist here, and can only say that it's important to realize that though taste and art in general have subjective facets, they are also very concrete areas of endeavor where effort and attention to detail really matter. If someone has the desire to express themselves and to be devoted to it, they should be encouraged. And I also think that it's harmful when people view the natural human inclination towards beautiful things and good art as an indulgence.

WAM: Wide Awake Minds highlights the work of self-educators and lifelong learners. Is it fair to say that many of your educational accomplishments have resulted from your own initiative? Do you consider yourself a self-educator or lifelong learner?

PSB: I would say that most education relies on personal initiative, though it can really be influential when somebody with certain interests and skills sees you have a shared interest and can closely encourage it to develop.

But when it comes to labels such as 'lifelong learner,' I hope that I don't sound facetious here when I say that every human can be called that.

WAM: You majored in mathematics at the University of Chicago. Why did you choose math? What would you say to the otherwise talented and motivated high school student who sees math as a pointless stumbling block? What are some of the benefits and pleasures of studying high-level mathematics, mathematics beyond basic calculus?

PSB: Mathematics is a rigorous and logical way of thinking. I think everyone should be shown the mechanisms of mathematical proof and encouraged to study it, because it sharpens and expands your ability to solve logical problems. That said, if someone doesn't (and I consciously used that word instead of 'can't') see the utility or beauty of mathematics, that's okay. But acquiring facility in fundamental arithmetic, geometry, combinatorics, and statistics are necessary for functioning fully in society. I think that's obvious, even though my mind is yelling at me, 'Prove it!'

The vast majority of people are never even exposed to logical proof. I certainly wasn't impressed with its significance until college, which made for an enormously uphill battle in studying math. I think math was what happened when I found physics too full of approximations and almost sloppy, also there was certainly familial influence involved since my dad, aunt, and uncle are all mathematicians. Even though I finally came to the conclusion that I don't want to be a pure mathematician, I still don't regret having committed to learning what I did, even though I could have gone in may other directions. If I could do it again, I would only want to do it better and with more depth.

WAM: Any advice for current and future college students?

PSB: This certainly doesn't apply to everyone, but I think that a lot of people with strong creative tendencies get paralyzed sometimes when presented with something like college. It's a huge opportunity for creative work, but there are so many possibilities and the whole structure and time period is vaguely defined. You can only understand it backwards, and not forwards. If I were giving myself advice, I would say to never forget to look for what I like to do, seek out smart people, ask lots of questions, and to study and work when in doubt. Repetition is so valuable not only because it makes you better at whatever activity you're targeting, but because each time around you understand what you're doing in a different way, and you might suddenly see a different path.

Instead of trying to cover a thousand things, which it sometimes seems you're forced to do, fight that and maybe pick a hundred to do at least once and ten to do a hundred times.

WAM: Any other thoughts, observations, or advice for others who love to learn, think, and make things?

PSB: There are many places I could crib from, but a modified Zen saying might do: 'When you are hungry, eat; when you are thirsty, drink; when you are sleepy, sleep; when you are curious, learn.'

WAM: Thank you, Peter, for your time and for the good work you do.

PSB: Thank you Ryan, best of luck to you.

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Interview: Educator and self-educator Deven Black

Interviewer: Ryan McCarl

Featured self-educator (interviewee): Devin Black

Self-educator’s location: Bronx, NY

Date: 21 September 2009

(Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of interviews Wide Awake Minds will be conducting with educators and self-educators. If you enjoy these interviews or other material on this blog, please consider linking to us, mentioning us on Facebook and Twitter, and emailing and sharing our articles. If you would like to share your story as an educator or self-educator, please contact me. Thanks for reading!)

Deven Black is a special education teacher in the Bronx. After dropping out of two high schools and a college, Black discovered alternative education and the work of radical education critics such as John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, and Ivan Illich; this experience led him to begin a lifelong journey of thinking about the education system and its relationship to students who struggle in traditional classroom environments. He maintains a blog and a Twitter feed.

WAM: What is your profession?

DB: I am a middle school special education and social studies teacher. I started teaching when I was 50 years old.

Teaching is just the latest of a long chain of careers. I have also been, in no particular order, a radio newsman, a bartender, a newspaper reporter, a political campaign operative, an advertising copywriter, a restaurant manager, a restaurant critic, and a voice-over artist.

Other than going to grad school to get a teaching degree, none of the job-specific knowledge used in any of those careers came through what might be considered normal channels.

While I had some success in all those careers, particularly in radio and restaurant management, I failed in many, and it is those failures that taught me the most. Failure necessitated trying something new, whether a new approach or methodology or a totally new career.

I am a great believer in the value of failure. Of course there are a lot of reasons people fail, but generally never failing means you just haven’t been challenged enough and you haven’t grown nearly as much as you could. My biggest problem with schools is that they don’t value failure. They teach that failure is bad and something to be avoided instead of how to use failure constructively.

WAM: You teach special education classes in the Bronx. What are some of the special challenges you confront as an educator? How have these challenges affected you as a professional as well as your view of formal education in the U.S.?

Special education is a very strange field. It is very broad and includes students with a wide range of abilities. (That is not a typo). Special education at its best is about maximizing the abilities of our students.

I teach students who are said to have learning disabilities. The first challenge I face as a middle school special education teacher is usually to try to convince my students that they are not disabled any more than anyone else. Everybody has things they are particularly capable of doing and other things in which they have no talent to develop. I can’t dance or play a musical instrument. If those skills were valued as much as multiplication or reading, I would be labeled learning-disabled. My students are in the unfortunate situation of having talents that are different from those valued in school, and they get labeled.

My being a special education teacher has reinforced and focused my belief that school is not the right venue for everyone. School is a particular setting with particular procedures, values and demands. It is a perfect fit for many students, but for those of us on either end of the bell curve it is not. For us, school is either a neutral or negative environment that doesn’t meet our needs. Much of the undesirable behaviors seen in schools are inarticulate statements of unmet needs.

WAM: You dropped out of high school twice and college once. Why did you make those decisions? Would you decide differently today? How has the environment changed in recent decades for those who do not complete high school or college?

DB: I think the situation for high school and college dropouts today is much the same as it was almost 40 years ago when I did it. There are some people who have some exceptional abilities and they may succeed in spite of dropping out and there are some people whose lives are compromised in some way by the lack of high school and/or college credentials.

There have been some changes in the landscape. Homeschooling is more prevalent and recognized as are online classes, but those recognitions are not universal. So, while there are more alternatives to traditional brick, mortar and tassel schools, there is still a long way to go before everyone has a real choice.

WAM: What do you understand the term “self-education” to mean?

DB: First and foremost, self-education is an almost universally practiced method of learning. Everyone who pursues a hobby or takes steps to follow a particular interest is practicing self-education, though they may not realize it unless it is made explicit to them.

WAM: Does the description of the self-educator’s mind as a “wide-awake mind” resonate with you? Why?

DB: I am aware that I am constantly learning even though what I am learning at any given moment or collection of moments is not necessarily clear to me. If I attend a lecture about baseball I will surely learn something about baseball that was purposefully taught to me, but I will also learn so many more things about my feelings about baseball; how to or how not to present a lecture; a new style of dress; new technology or new uses for old technology as used in the lecture; and so much more.

WAM: Why should we be curious? What ought we to be curious about? What forms does your own curiosity take? If you are curious about something – say, an academic subject or the way something works – do you follow up on that curiosity by studying?

DB: Being curious is not something we do, it is how we are born; we can hardly take a rest from our curiosity.

I am curious about so many things, big and small, and almost every time I look at a newspaper or the Internet I find something new to be curious about. Sometimes all I do is read the article or what’s on the website, but other times I dig deeper and, depending on what I discover and the amount of time I have, deeper again. Today I learned about the relative amount of meat in the diet of the ten most and ten least carnivorous nations, shifts in religious identification in the US by state, Gasworks Park in Seattle, and how Justin Buck is now thought to be the best defensive player on the football Giants.

WAM: What role do you see for the arts in education

DB: As a special education teacher I see the visual, musical, and performing arts as requiring different skills than the academic classroom and as places where my students typically have a chance to shine in ways not available elsewhere in school. The arts allow visual and kinesthetic learners opportunities that cater to their learning style.

WAM: What are your past and present methods of self-education? Which have you found most effective? Do you use the Internet or other technology to self-educate or expand your intellectual horizons?

DB: I am fortunate in that I grew up in New York City and my earliest self-education experiences involved wandering around the city. While I was learning a tremendous amount about a great many things, that was not my purpose. The learning occurred because I have an inquisitive mind, talent for noticing patterns and making connections, and a relatively open mind, and I am generally at ease in new situations.

I did not become aware that I was self-educating until a few years later when, living on Cape Cod and working as a news reporter and talk-show host for a local radio station, I got invited to speak at the career day of the alternative program that was part of and housed at the local high school. I ended up getting very involved with that program. I was 21 years old, had dropped out of two high schools and college, and was intrigued by this program that was operating in a way totally alien to my high school experience. I asked a lot of questions and the four teachers in the program turned me on to education critiques, writers and books. That was the start of my self-awareness of my self-education.

I don’t use any particular method in my self-education. I use whatever is available. I read books or articles; I listen to lectures, discussions or music; I seek out experts to interview; I use the Internet or anything else. Education has been my main interest for 30+ years, and it is about the only topic that I have any kind of systematic approach to, but it is such a broad and growing topic that the deeper I get into it the less systematic I am about it.

I have almost no academic discipline. When, at the age of 36, I decided to return to college because I found a school, Empire State College, a part of the State University of New York system, that fit my needs. Empire State uses a mentor system, independent learning, study groups, and almost any other form of education other than large classes and lectures. It also gives credit for demonstrated prior learning. Their application had twelve general topics one could choose from and you were supposed to pick the one that interested you. I picked all 12 and wrote an essay explaining my holistic approach and my sense of the interconnectedness of everything and everyone.

It was wonderful to have a school that appreciated that not everyone learns the same way and that let me have a very broad focus.

WAM: Who are your educational, intellectual, artistic, and moral role models?

DB: I have so many. My parents taught me about responsibility for myself and for the world. I am a religious agnostic who has taken moral guidance from all the major and quite a few of the minor religions. I embrace nonviolence, which I learned from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. Intellectually I’m influenced by my college mentor, Miriam Tatzel; Douglas Hofstadter; John Taylor Gatto (who was one of my teachers in middle school); and so many others.

WAM: What is your formal educational background? How did you feel about your formal education? Did you in some ways benefit from the constraints and parameters it provided?

I dropped out of two high schools, one considered one of the nation’s finest and requiring a competitive exam for admission, and the other my local neighborhood high school. I then dropped out of college. All this happened before I was 17. These schools had many strengths and have successfully educated hundreds of thousands of students. They just didn’t fit me at that time.

I had an amazing middle school experience. I was in an accelerated program in which we would do three year’s work, 7th, 8th and 9th grades, in two school years. My teachers included a masterful teacher, Elizabeth Novad, in her last years before retiring, and John Taylor Gatto, then a young and fairly new teacher.

Mrs. Novad was the best teacher I ever had. She had very high expectations for us and helped us develop the tools to meet them. We read two Shakespeare plays a year and took field trips to see them on stage. We read A Tale of Two Cities and, as a class, decided to rewrite it as a musical and film it. This was in 1965, and we worked in 8mm. We wrote the script, the lyrics and some original music. We developed a way to film a fairly graphic decapitation (of me!) by guillotine without, I’m happy to say, actually having to cut my head off. We went in pairs to the adolescent literature graduate course she was teaching to tell them about the books we were reading and our generally low opinion of adolescent lit. In short, our intellects and creativity were uncovered, energized, engaged and celebrated.

Part of the problem that P-12 schools have is that they act like they have an exclusive monopoly on learning. This arrogant fantasy reduces the efficacy and utility of schools because it compartmentalizes learning instead of integrating it. I often hear teachers complain that students who learn a skill in one class don’t have the ability to apply it in a different subject class. This occurs because subjects are taught as separate domains, disassociated from each other and from the world outside of school. Students learn that there is information and skills one needs inside schools and that these are different from those needed outside.

The amount of information available to the average person has expanded exponentially in my lifetime. Despite E.D Hirsch, Jr.’s attempt to identify what learning is necessary to create a common core of knowledge among Americans, it is increasingly difficult to identify what information is essential for every American to know. Schools need to teach the skills necessary to research, access, assess and apply the information available online. This will be impossible to do until there is universal full-time access to computers and the Internet in American schools. It makes no sense to continue to use 19th century technology (pencils, pens, blackboards and chalk) or its 20th Century upgrade (dry erase markers) in times when even the most tech-resistant teachers are using email to communicate.

In his book Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich imagined an education marketplace in which people who seek certain knowledge or skill, playing guitar or architecture for example, find and engage with people who know and can teach what is sought. This is a system of self-education and it is increasingly visible in communities all across America. Even schools are starting to operate this way. I have read several articles about how schools too small to offer certain classes within their building - Italian language was one example – allow and encourage students to take online classes. In other words, they allow the student to choose what to learn and, with some oversight, who to learn it from.

The most effective schools are the ones that embrace and are embraced by the community, those that understand that learning is constant and occurs everywhere. Schools need to evolve from closed-off fortresses to open community resources. They have facilities that can facilitate self-directed or contracted learning and teaching.

WAM: What role do other people play in your self-education? Do you find that conversations and other exchanges with other people can be educative, and if so, do you seek out such exchanges?

DB: Like most people, I am a social learner. Most of my self-directed learning involves contact with other people. I have developed interest in topics I didn’t even know existed through interpersonal contact. I am not an autodidact; I have had a series of short-term and long-term mentors to stimulate, help inform, and guide my inquiries.

WAM: Do you follow current events, and if so, where do you get your news? Why did you select those sources? Do you feel that it is important to follow current events and/or participate in political debate, and if so, why?

DB: I have been a newspaper and radio news reporter. My first jobs as a teen involved current events. I am a news junkie. I read as much of the New York Times as I can before going to work in the morning. I listen to NPR and I read the articles friends or my PLN (Personal Learning Network) recommend by sending links. I listen to people around me talking.

I grew up with newspapers arriving daily. Public affairs were discussed at the dinner table. My parents were politically active. Civic awareness is in my DNA.

I have been politically active since I was seven and worked in my first electoral campaign putting stamps on envelopes. By my teen years I was directing a campaign for a State Assembly candidate. I have opinions and am not afraid to express them.

Sometimes it seems like some Americans practice a willful ignorance of government and public affairs. It does not portend a lengthy life for democracy. The centralization of power is disturbing. People should exert more control over our government, but they need to be well-informed to do so intelligently.

Thank you, Deven, for your time and for the good work you do.

Please take a moment to visit Deven's blog and Twitter feed. If you enjoyed this interview, consider posting it on Facebook or Twitter, or emailing it to a friend.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Interview: Author, finance scholar, and self-educator Wesley Gray

Interviewer: Ryan McCarl

Featured self-educator: Wesley Gray

Self-educator's hometowns: Bethesda, MD and Cottonwood, CA

Self-educator's age: 29

Date: 30 August 2009

(Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews Wide Awake Minds will be conducting with educators and self-educators. If you enjoy these interviews or other material on this blog, please consider linking to us, mentioning us on Facebook and Twitter, and emailing and sharing our articles. If you would like to share your story as an educator or self-educator, please contact me. Thanks for reading!)

Wesley Gray is the author of Embedded: A Marine Corps Adviser Inside the Iraqi Army, advanced Ph.D. candidate in finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and founder and manager of the hedge fund Empirical Finance, LLC. He blogs at Welcome to the Adventure and Empirical Finance Research Blog.

WAM: Why should we be curious? What ought we to be curious about? What forms does your own curiosity take? If you are curious about something – say, an academic subject or the way something works – do you follow up on that curiosity by studying?

WG: At its most basic level, curiosity is probably something that has evolved in humans because it helps us survive and forces us to explore and learn new things. Here’s a simple example of how being curious caused me to learn new knowledge that made my life easier. Before my deployment to Iraq as an embedded military advisor with an Iraqi infantry unit, I was very curious about Iraqi culture. My curiosity encouraged me to learn and understand how Iraqis thought about the world. Throughout my deployment, my knowledge of the culture (and language) helped me convince the Iraqis soldiers that planning before missions was important, torturing prisoners is not always the best idea, and wearing body armor makes sense (even in 130 degree weather).

My knowledge of the culture, which stemmed from an initial curiosity, even saved my life at one point. I was on patrol with some Iraqi soldiers in Haditha, Iraq. We were on a look-out post in a local’s home scanning for insurgents placing bombs in the road. While the soldiers were upstairs, I stayed on the first floor and chatted with the family to get intelligence information. My American instincts encouraged me to discuss business and the current operation at hand, but my knowledge of the culture told me otherwise: I needed to talk about family, life, and the softer side of the world if I was to create a good impression with the Iraqi family and get any valuable information. My efforts were successful. As we were leaving the family’s home, one of the young boys hinted to us that an ambush was set up for us on our current patrol route and that we should reroute through the palm groves. We followed the young boy’s advice and dodged a very bad situation.

If I had not been curious about Iraqi culture and never took the steps to become knowledgeable, I would probably not be alive today. Curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat.

WAM: What do you understand the term “self-education” (or “autodidacticism”) to mean? Do you think of it as a philosophy or lifestyle, or simply as an action? Please explain what it means to you.

WG: Learning new things is something I love - the more I learn, the better. Unfortunately, it’s unrealistic to always have a teacher on hand at my beckoning call, so self-education is mandatory. Now that the internet is overflowing with video lectures, course notes, and self-contained learning packages, it’s hard not to be excited about the future of self-education.

WAM: Does the description of the self-educator’s mind as a “wide-awake mind” resonate with you? Why?

WG: I think it does. Self-education takes an extra level of discipline and effort from the individual since they are actively trying to teach themselves something new - these folks certainly have "wide-awake minds." In contrast, a student sitting in the lecture hall zoning out and thinking about the previous night’s fraternity party as the professor lectures probably has a "sleepy mind."

WAM: What are your past and present methods of self-education? Which have you found most effective? Do you use the Internet or other technology to self-educate or expand your intellectual horizons?

WG: In the past, the local or university library was my main hangout when I needed to learn about something I was interested in. These days I work almost exclusively through the web — my guess is that I haven’t checked a book out from the library in over a year! The Internet has truly revolutionized information sharing, and Google and Wikipedia have figured out how to organize it all in a reasonably coherent manner (or at least they have done a reasonable job so far).

WAM: What is or was your profession? Did you self-educate on the job or as part of your job? Did you see your work as complementary to or a distraction from your interests and education? If your self-education took place largely outside of the workplace, how did you make time for it?

WG: I spent my four years in the military, which had nothing to do with my formal education (which was focused on economics and math). Needless to say, a large portion of my knowledge in the military was self-taught. There is even a saying in the military that there is no excuse for a young lieutenant to not have a 3000 year old mind - all they need to do is read the history of battles over the years, or in other words, self-educate!

My current profession is in the field of finance. I run a small hedge fund and plan on going on the academic job market this year in the hope of landing a job as a finance professor at a top MBA program. Self-education is absolutely essential in this field. I haven't taken a formal class in finance in years, and yet my knowledge in the subject is still fairly robust because of all my self-education efforts.

WAM: Who are your educational, intellectual, artistic, and moral role models?

WG: I have a few role models: my parents, of course, and then some of my favorites are Senator James Webb, William H. Donaldson, Pat Tillman, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eugene Fama (the hardest working academic in finance).

WAM: What is your formal educational background? How did you feel about your formal education?

WG: I received a BS in Economics at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, and I expect to complete a Ph.D./MBA in Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2010.

My formal education was focused on learning skills that I could actually use to pay the bills. I figured that since I was paying for that education I should at least get the greatest return possible.

When it comes to self-education I spent a lot more time learning about things that really don’t translate into income: astronomy, military history, politics, world cultures, travel adventures, etc. Of course, self-education doesn’t cost me much either so I have the luxury to indulge in some areas I probably wouldn’t if I was still worried about paying the bills.

WAM: What role do other people play in your self-education? Do you find that conversations and other exchanges with other people can be educative, and if so, do you seek out such exchanges?

WG: I am a huge fan of message boards, collaboration, and thinking through problems in teams. If given the opportunity to indulge in self-education, I focus on the areas where I can learn new things with others.

WAM: Do you follow current events, and if so, where do you get your news? Why did you select those sources? Do you feel that it is important to follow current events and/or participate in political debate, and if so, why?

WG: I follow current events religiously - specifically economic and geopolitical news.

My news sources and commentary primarily come from a hand-selected group of around 500 blogs/outlets I have been collecting for the past four or five years. I’ve tried to make my collection of sources as diverse and well rounded as possible to avoid bias, group-think, and a variety of other psychological pitfalls from which I suffer. I synthesize all these blogs in an efficient manner via Google Reader.

MIT and Berkeley have excellent open source access to lecture notes, videos, and material for almost all of their courses. I am also a huge fan of YouTube and Google. If I’m ever interested in a topic I simply “google” it and can usually find a group of lectures or insightful media on the topic.

Here are a few of the sites I visit for self-education (mostly economics-related):

• http://freevideolectures.com/
• http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
• http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php
• http://www.mcafee.cc/Classes/Ec11/
• http://economistsview.typepad.com/economics470/fall_2007/
• http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/08/for_introductor_1.html
• http://www.cepr.net/index.php/briefings-&-testimony/
• http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~obstfeld/
• http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

WAM: Any other thoughts?

WG: Education is really the key to leveling the playing field and giving everyone at least a reasonable shot at success in this world. The Internet has created an epic leap forward in our ability to give everyone a shot at learning (redistribution efforts and handout systems don't work effectively).

If I were reinventing public policy with respect to education I would start with the following:

1. Provide and subsidize access to the Internet with a huge emphasis on improving users' ability to access information and educational content.

2. Provide instruction and guidance on self-education and how easy it is with the internet.

3. Provide incentives for people to be curious: religion, culture, and society always find ways to keep people in their place and think inside the box. The more we can encourage free speech and free thought, the better!

Thank you, Wes, for your time and for the good work you do.

Please take a moment to visit Wes's blog and check out his book at Amazon.com. If you enjoyed this interview, consider posting it to your Facebook wall or emailing it to a friend.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Czeslaw Milosz on curiosity and lifelong learning

Truly, wherever one turns, there are...surprises everywhere, and the world appears to be a collection of a limitless quantity of details to be taken notice of.

The world is so organized that it is endlessly interesting; there is no limit to the discovery of ever newer layers and strata. It is like a journey through a maze which is pulsating, changing, growing as one moves through it. We make this journey by ourselves, but also as participants in the common undertaking of all humanity, with its myths, religions, philosophies, art, and the perfection of science. The curiosity which drives us cannot be sated and since it does not lessen with the passage of time, that is a sufficient argument against dying. Although, to be sure, many of us enter the gates of death immensely curious, expectant, eager to learn what it is like on the other side.

The opposite of curiosity is boredom, bull all opinions leading to the conclusion that nothing remains to be known, because there is nothing new under the sun, are false, dictated by boredom, or sickness.

Can you assure me, sir, that when we grow older, ever newer sights open up before us, as if around each bend in the road on a journey? I can. It seems as if everything is the same, yet different. Without a doubt, we do grow old; that is to say, our senses desert us, our hearing grows duller, our eyesight weakens. Yet our mind finds ways to balance these losses with an acuity that is inaccessible in our younger years. All the more so, then, does defeated old age deserve our sympathy, when the mind, following the senses, sinks into sleep.
...
Curiosity must be a powerful passion if so many people for thousands of years have tried to discover, touch, name, understand an elusive reality of "n" dimensions.

Czeslaw Milosz
--Milosz's ABCs