I love books.

Seriously: I can’t go to the library without picking up at least a couple more books to bring home. Trust me, I’ve tried. It just doesn’t happen.

These are my favorite sites for finding free books online, whether it be classical novels like Jane Austen’s Emma or philosophical pieces from great minds like Plato or Artistotle. Whatever your tastes, I know you’ll be able to find a book you enjoy.

My Favorite Digital Libraries

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has an astounding 33,000+ books online. It can be a bit overwhelming! An easy way to start wading your way through is to check out their Top 100 list.

Google Books

What I love most about Google Books is how visually appealing their content is. Instead of just plain text, you get something that looks a lot more like the original book! You can narrow your search down to free books by going to the Advanced Book Search page and choosing “Full view only.”

Online Literature

Online Literature has simple, straight-forward organization and lots of great authors. They have some 3000 completed works online, plenty of short stories and poems, and a forum.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks describes itself as “the open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit.” There are over 2000 completed books covering nearly every topic, and many more are in the works.

ManyBooks

Manybooks boasts a digital library of nearly 30,000 books. Many of the books are also on Project Gutenberg (the two sites are affiliates), but ManyBooks has a much more pleasing design. Plus I like the ability to review books right on the site!

Authorama

Authorama has a short but sweet list of books that are in the public domain. I was happy to find Flatland on their list.

The Internet Archive Text Archive

The people at the Internet Archive have a text archive with a list of over 2.5 million ebooks, books, and other files. The majority of the content is rather obscure, but they still have a few gems we can all enjoy.

Happy Reading!

These are just a few of the many sites around for free books. If you’re interested in looking for more books online, I’d recommend this list of places to get free books at Fried Beef. Let me know if you have a favorite source for books yourself!

Enjoy your reading! :~)

Those of us that have gone to school know the drill.

Literally.

Students have to go through an endless amount of repetition. Teachers bring up the same topic, again and again, in an attempt to cram their students with the right recipe of information. It’s just part of the way schools work.

When it comes to lifelong learning, focusing on repetition and drills is a bit like trying to build a pyramid from the top down.

A dictionary will tell you that memorizing something means you’re learning it by heart. Resourcefulness comes from using a number of resources and aids, instead of just relying on your memory.

Memorization and resourcefulness are the differences between someone who knows what he’s been shown in the past and someone who knows how to learn more in the future. Knowing how and where to find information is important.

Let me go back to the pyramid I spoke about. Like I said, memorization alone is like building a pyramid from the top down. You might’ve guessed how it should be built: from the bottom up, with a sound and solid foundation.

In learning, our solid foundations come from our resources. If all our learning comes from the same resource (school, for example), then our pyramid’s foundation will be small. Instead, our learning is best when it comes from a variety of resources.

I like to call my way of remembering information “knowing it exists“.

It’s a lot like remembering your favorite recipes. After finding a resource useful, you keep it at hand. When you want to know something, you use your new resource. The more you use a resource, the more you remember.

Would you prefer to have a resource prove itself to be useful, or spend days memorizing something you might never need to know again?

Today I played a game: I asked questions inspired by the things around me.

The result? A list longer than even I had expected. I stopped playing after a few dozen questions, but the game does prove a good point: we can learn everything we need to know just by paying attention to what is around us.

Why is learning from your environment better, though?

That’s easy to explain.

Let’s say two children are learning about chlorophyll at the same time. The difference is that one child is coming across it through school, and the other child is curious about her environment.

Now, the child in school (let’s call him Jimmy) is being told this information by his teacher and his textbook. The facts are presented to him in a very concise, step-by-step way. Jimmy hasn’t thought about plant color before.

The unschooler (let’s name her Jill) is out having fun in the park with her family. Jill looks at the trees before she asks why leaves are green. Her parents explain and they have a conversation about it.

Both children are told the same information, but I’ll tell you why Jill is at an advantage:.

- She’s enjoying herself. By having a positive experience, the learning becomes a happy experience, too.
- She’s shown she’s ready to learn by asking a question. Being told something doesn’t mean you’re going to (or even want to) learn it.
- She has a hands on example. She might even grab a few leaves to press as souvenirs.
- She’s encouraged to ask questions. Jimmy could leave his class wanting to know more. He might even be punished for asking questions out of turn.

Most of all, Jill has an advantage because what she’s learning is relevant to her life. She can relate to what she’s learning and she can understand how the information affects her.

Who will learn more: the child who is told to listen and repeat what he’s been told, or the child who is encouraged to seek new information? Which would you rather be?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

We live in a predominantly left-brained culture. Everyday things like language, numbers and the symbols we use to identify the world around us are understood by our left brain. Many jobs require us to be detail oriented. That’s left brain thinking, too.

The arts are commonly associated with right brain thinking. Certain traits, like left-handedness, are considered right brained. However, right brained thinking is more than just the arts. It’s about creativity.

A Side-By-Side Comparison

Our two brains are complete opposites, and we need both of them to understand the world the way we do. Let’s compare the two.

Left Brain:

- Logical: Draws conclusions according to rational information.
- Analytic: Figures things out step-by-step and part-by-part.
- Detail Oriented: Focuses on small bits of information.
- Symbolic: Turns information into symbols.
- Linear: Understands information in a linear one-thing-follows-another way. Is time oriented.

Right Brain:

- Intuitive: Bases itself on feelings, patterns, hunches, and visual information. Makes leaps in insight.
- Spatial: Understands relationships and how parts form a whole.
- Big Picture Oriented: Sees how things are structured into a whole. Recognizes patterns. Jumps to conclusions.
- Realistic: Sees things as they are, without symbols or short cuts. Lives in the present, without recognition of time.

What the Right Brain Does

We all use our right brain in some way or another, no matter what type of thinking we prefer (visual, kinesthetic, auditory, etc). The way we see the world relies just as much on the right brain as on the left. The right brain does a lot:.

• - It processes our emotions. Our emotional responses are primarily in the right brain. This affects our hunches or “gut feelings”, and lets us draw conclusions in an intuitive way. It just feels right.
• - It connects new information with what we already know. New information we receive is almost always related to things we already know. Making a logical list of all the connections would be close to impossible, and that’s where the right brain comes in. It helps us see relationships between different concepts.
• - It processes information indirectly. Your right brain is always working in the background, looking for patterns and searching for the big picture. This allows us to make connections without intending to (like the left brain would).
• - It stores and processes visual information. Complex visual information, like facial recognition, is done by our right brain. Without our right brain, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the huge amount of information we see every day.

Put Creativity to Use in Your Learning

A lot of creative professionals will talk about the same basic process: create first, analyze later. That same process can be used in learning. You could say you’re creating new connections in your brain. Learning creatively involves a number of things, and varies from person to person. Here’s how it works for me:

I gorge myself on a lot information, all at once. Like in the create first, analyze later process, I learn a lot before I bother analyzing much of it. By the time I get to analyzing information, my right brain has done a lot of the work for me.

I hop around in books, websites, documentaries, etc. I don’t limit myself to a linear process. Each snippet of information adds to a complete understanding of what I’m learning, and it gives me the freedom to ignore something I’m not necessarily interested in right now. By doing this I can get a general understanding of something before I focus on the details.

I visualize new information and take advantage of images available. Sometimes I focus entirely on the images in books and magazines, paying attention to only a portion of the text. Which is more effective: seeing a picture of an elephant, or reading a description? Some information is best presented with pictures.

My process won’t work for everyone, but it can give you some insight on how right brained learning works. It’s the ideas that matter: create first and process later, seek a complete understanding, and use visual stimuli.

Exercising Your Right Brain

Our brains are all unique, with unique connections. The types of information we process with each half of our brain differs a little from person to person. Generally, though, we can use our right brain by focusing on its specialities: rhythm, visual processing and holistic understanding. Here are a few exercises you can try:

- Make up a song. Since the right brain deals with pattern recognition and rhyming, listening to and creating music is a good exercise.
- Try something completely new to you. The left brain deals with a lot of routine tasks, but the right brain loves novelty.
- Play a video game. I discussed the benefits of video games in a previous post, and visual processing is on the list.
- Make a mind map. Mind mapping has been called a tool for “whole brain thinking” because it uses both the right and left brain. It utilizes language (L), intuition (R), logic (L) and spatial thinking (R). (L = predominantly left-brained; R = predominantly right-brained)

More About Your Right Brain

Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, suffered a severe stroke in her left brain. She shares how it felt to experience the world through only her right brain. It’s a powerful and enlightening talk.

For fun, you could take this quiz to find out what side of your brain is dominant.

Your Turn

Your brain is a muscle that needs stimulation to stay strong. Using both logical and creative thinking is important. How could you be more creative?

Add your thoughts to the comments!

Compared to unschooling, schools require dozens of teachers and faculty, all with their own specializations, to make sure the school runs properly. The same level of complexity is impossible to replicate at home. There’s simply too much to do for one family to be responsible of.

The truth is the complexity is unnecessary, and even harmful.

Schools Create Educational Dependency

Schools accept responsibility for their students in several ways:

- Organization. Schools tell students what to learn and when to learn it.
- Control. Through an endless list of rules and regulations, schools limit activity to what is necessary for the school to run efficiently.
- Assessment. Students are graded, evaluated, judged, rewarded and punished according to their performance. It’s up to the school to tell others whether or not the student is learning.

Most importantly, schools take responsibility for the student’s learning. Schools base themselves around that responsibility. How will they control what the student learns? How will they know when the student is learning? How can they prove the student’s progress?

The tricky thing is that whether or not schools have good intentions, they can’t tell you what a student knows or what a student has learned. Only the student can. The only thing schools can be certain of is what the student has known at a given point in time, and what the student has been exposed to while in school. Schools cannot guarantee a student’s knowledge. No one can.

However, that lack of guarantee itself isn’t the problem..

By accepting responsibility for the student’s education, schools effectively take that responsibility away from the student and his or her family. Instead of empowering students, schools tell them they can’t be trusted with their own minds and their own knowledge.

Students are dependent on schools for their education.

Unschooling Empowers Learners

Unschooling gives responsibility to the learners. Unschooled children are told they can learn what they want to, when they want to. That responsibility creates a crucial contrast to schools. Instead of passively receiving information, unschoolers know what they learn and when they learn it is their own responsibility. They aren’t afraid to ask questions. They openly seek knowledge.

Knowing you’re in charge of your own education affects your learning in a number of ways:

- You’ll be more curious and excited about your learning. It’s what YOU want to learn, so why wouldn’t you be?
- You’ll be more in-depth. You might focus on a shorter list of subjects than what you’d be exposed to in school, but your learning won’t be focused on answering a handful of questions. You’ll learn for the sake of wanting to.
- You’ll be more relaxed. You won’t be focused on meeting curriculum standards, competing with other students, and making sure you meet expectations. Learning will be natural.
- You’ll realize learning never stops. Being aware of your own learning will make you realize that it happens all the time, at any given moment.
- You’ll enjoy learning. You can’t dread learning if you’re learning what you want to. Learning will be an enjoyable experience, like it should be.

Learning happens naturally, from the day we’re born. Creating an environment capable of stimulating learners both intellectually and creatively is easy, even on low budgets. Humans are naturally curious. All we need to learn is the ability to find answers to our questions.

Giving children responsibility for their learning lets them trust themselves. Their own interests and judgment are listened to. Having the power to control their own educations empowers unschoolers in a positive way. That same responsibility can help adults, too.

Instead of creating dependent students, unschooling empowers learners. Intuitive and natural learning isn’t lazy. It’s just the way it should be.

As an unschooler, I’m responsible for my own education. It’s up to me to know when I’m learning, what I want to learn, and how I’m going to learn it. I’m asking questions, not just answering them.

The only one that can control what you learn and when you learn it, is you. How has being in charge of your own education affected your learning?

“A buccaneer-scholar is anyone whose love of learning is not muzzled or shackled by any institution or authority; whose mind is driven to wander and find its own place in the world.” -p.9, hardcover edition

James Bach dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to pursue his own education. His book is a first person account of his learning methods and experiences.  His excitement over learning is contagious, and he presents his ideas in a way that’s easy to understand and appreciate. The buccaneer analogy of learning is followed throughout the book, illustrating concepts in a very vivid way.

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar is a great exploration of purposeful self-education that will set you on the right path to appreciate a self-directed approach to learning. It’s a book I recommend to anyone interested in learning.

The Misconception of Self-Motivation

Many reviews of Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar argue one point: James is an unusually self-motivated learner, which is why he’s been successful. They argue that others (especially the average high school dropout)  might not be self-motivated enough to learn.

My argument is that those reviewers are missing the point.

James’ enthusiasm for learning is just that: enthusiasm for learning. His motivation comes from curiosity and a nonjudgmental attitude towards his learning experience. His methodologies support a low-pressure learning environment that encourages intellectual exploration. By pursuing learning in the way he does, James makes it a natural, everyday experience.

By trying out and tweaking his process, I’m sure many people out there could find their own process for an engaging learning experience. The key isn’t to be skilled in motivation. The key is to find reasons to learn something, and then do so – passionately. Determination and success will come from there.

“I have no discipline. Oh, you can point to things I’ve done that look like hard work. I shrug. That’s not discipline, that’s passion.” p. 149, hardcover version

This Isn’t a Step-By-Step Manual

Another misconception of the book is the expectation of a step-by-step process. While many books on different educational methods will happily supply readers with a step-by-step guide, self-education cannot be summed up in the same way. James explores his own, personal methods. Exploring his ideas and coming up with your own are equally important. It’s important to distinguish his methods from your methods.

Amazon’s description of the book says, “Anyone looking for an instruction manual on how to get a high-quality education without having to show up for classes will find all they need here.” I find that a bit misleading. Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar isn’t an instruction manual: it’s a discussion of ideas and experiences based around self-education.

Think of the book as an invitation to explore self-education from an intellectual point of view. Just don’t expect to find a fail proof, step-by-step guide.

“I will share my experiences. But none of this is about me alone. It’s about an approach to intellectual life that is open to all of us. Join me in exploring it.” p. 7, hardcover edition

What It Gave Me

I read Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar when I started homeschooling for the second time (long story short, I returned to school for a short period before continuing homeschooling). My year of homeschooling had left a lasting impression on me. There were questions I still hadn’t answered. Mostly: What made it so difficult for me to apply myself to learn about something new and difficult, when I’ve always loved learning?

When I was still going to school, some of my teachers called me an underachiever. “Your tests show great potential,” they said, “but you need to apply yourself more.” This happened during my two year rebellion: I didn’t do homework, I didn’t study for tests, and I asked a lot of questions teachers really didn’t want to answer. (“Why do I have to wait to learn that when I want to learn it now?”)

I never stopped getting good grades, but the underachiever label stuck with me. Self-doubt grew over time. What if I’m really just an idiot and the grades mean nothing? The questions led to other (better) ideas, but for a while I was afraid to learn. I thought, what was the point of trying to learn something if I don’t figure it out? Isn’t that a waste of time?

I was going through those thoughts again when James showed me his book. One of the “great secrets” he talks about is summed up like this:  “If I try to understand, but fail, that’s progress.” That statement stood out to me. It helped ease up the pressure of remembering everything I came across. I could learn without focusing on the end result.

Self-education is a very personal process, and because of that I think everyone will take away something different from this book. I got the confidence to try despite the prospect of failure. You might (and probably will) learn something very different.

“The key to success … is to suspend self-judgment and tolerate confusion. I couldn’t do that when I was very young, because I secretly feared that I was stupid, and I thought confusion would prove it.” p.95, hardcover edition

Final Thoughts: 4.5/5

There are some key ideas that the book gave me.

- Learning in passion is the best way to learn.
- Confusion is okay.
- Taking advantage of right brained thinking works no matter the subject (even technical ones).
- Self-education can be as structured or as free formed as you want it to be.

The only thing I missed was a more open invitation to explore my own learning methodologies. When it comes to reading the book, I have a few suggestions:

- Relax. Enjoy the book as you would an interesting conversation.
- Focus on yourself, too. Apply and tweak the ideas to your own learning. Find out what works for you.
- Read it in one sitting. Each page of the book supports and builds upon the pages before it.

Approach Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar open mindedly by first seeking to understand James’ way of thinking, and then playing around with your own learning process. You won’t regret it.

Connect With James Marcus Bach
Website – Twitter – Facebook

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar is available for purchase on Amazon.