ok, this is the second time I am writing this post - something happened to Apple Works, the program I use to write prepare these postings, and I lost the first one.
I am sorta stuck at home for while this morning, waiting for the Water Heater guy to come ... which reminds me, i should really do a post about the OTHER water heater guy that made this call a necessity.
In anycase, I got a cool e-mail from Learnoutloud.com, and got a free copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance as a free download. They are pretty good about staying away from copyright issues (they haven’t been sued yet, any ways) and they like to offer a ton of books for free.
So I usually hook the book up on my iPod and plug it in to my van’s stereo system for the drives in to work. Works out wonderfully, as I get sick of the poop jokes on the radio rather quickly. After I ordered the book and went through their check out, I got to see some of the other books I downloaded from them. Some Kafka (my favorite), the Book of Proverbs from the Bible, Jonathan Swift, John Locke and The Dhammapada.
Some might argue that I did not read them at all, merely listened to someone else reading them to me. But I counter that with the idea that was the way we used to learn - teachers in ancient Rome and Greece wold talk about and recite epic poems for days on end, as would traveling artists. We learned orally. When I have these books going in my van, or on my headphones, I am learning as the ancient students did. Of course, I think I got to read better books ...;)
But is this where Arnold and California’s idea about no textbooks are taking us? Should we prepare for the day when the kids arrive for school, pull out their iPods and we load them up with the MP3 files needed for the semester? Is that day coming?
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