One of the best kept secrets of education is the fact that you do not have to have a mater's degree in phycology to buy Sigmund Freud from the Barns and Noble, nor do you have to be a professor of mathematics to find a public domain copy of Napier's Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, nor do You have to be on a economic committee to study the computations of Ricardo. The only bars to obtaining an education are in your own head. Furthermore, you don't need someone else to bust the bars open for you, because while the bars are in your own head, so is a crowbar. You can bust yourself out.
One of the great advantages of learning directly from the great thinkers and the great books is that not only would you be taught by the masters, but that great men treat you like one of them as you study and critique their accomplishments. Perhaps it is because the target audience on a book written on psychology, is expressly for psychologists, but I find that thinking like an expert on the subject, and being treated as one, is essential to actually becoming adept in any given field; Whereas, a high school textbook is condescending and authoritative, reading top literature becomes far more alluring for the respect and the openness to debate.
The difference between a high school textbook on early American history and Democracy in America by alexis de tocqueville is night and day. Where the textbook demands strict compliance to it's views and sales itself as the arbiter of truth, A classic book written by an intellectual for intellectuals suggests an idea and even challenges the reader to disagree.
Thus picking a classical, autodidactical, literary education surpasses all others.
One of the great advantages of learning directly from the great thinkers and the great books is that not only would you be taught by the masters, but that great men treat you like one of them as you study and critique their accomplishments. Perhaps it is because the target audience on a book written on psychology, is expressly for psychologists, but I find that thinking like an expert on the subject, and being treated as one, is essential to actually becoming adept in any given field; Whereas, a high school textbook is condescending and authoritative, reading top literature becomes far more alluring for the respect and the openness to debate.
The difference between a high school textbook on early American history and Democracy in America by alexis de tocqueville is night and day. Where the textbook demands strict compliance to it's views and sales itself as the arbiter of truth, A classic book written by an intellectual for intellectuals suggests an idea and even challenges the reader to disagree.
Thus picking a classical, autodidactical, literary education surpasses all others.
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