Free Learning For All: Revisiting Henry David Thoreau

Well-nig 165 years ago, a childlike man in Massachusetts decided to simplify his aliveness every bit much A possible by living in a shack in the woods, confronting only the essentials of life to fix primary what people need and don't need. The outcome of this experiment, referenced in his book Walden, demonstrated Socrates' wise saying, "The unexamined life is non worth living." Thoreau invites for each one of us to reflect more deep about our role on the planet, what it means to be literal to oneself you bet to avoid mindlessly following the herd. In his separate essay, "Civil Disobedience," He explains why remand is the most logical place for a person to live who is subject to unjust laws.

Across the world a person named Mahatma Gandhi read Thoreau's writings, took them to heart, and showed how gravitas could vanquish brutality. Back here in the United States, Dr. Martin Luther Queen Jr. boost highly-developed Gandhi's methods of supine resistance to continue the long work of dismantling slavery.

What does all this induce to do with engineering science, you might call for? Plenty, as it happens. When Henry David Thoreau invited me to wage in a lifetime of manifestation, I took him up on the offer. In my interactions with the world, when I see things that unsettle me, I speak softly merely firmly virtually such matters. And later doing so, I sometimes choose to take actions in support of my convictions. And then I tell others about such actions and invite them to consider whether they power choose such a path for themselves.

And regarding the herd mentality that Henry David Thoreau so with kid gloves warned us about, I see it so clearly represented in the contemporary day. When 90 pct of the world chose to utilise Microsoft Windows, I was among those holdouts who said, "Possibly this ISN't such a good idea." And when Apple started look and behaving Sir Thomas More and more like Microsoft, the Thoreauvian part in my head urged Pine Tree State to steer clearly of their clenches by moving to Linux. And so I have started my own little experiment, format the hard parkway of my Macbook with Ubuntu Linux, and living exclusively in Linux for several months. Some might think over IT a sacrilege to wipe Mac OS off the surd drive of a Mackintosh computer. I see it less Eastern Samoa a sacrilege than a duty. If I am beholden to any company for that most essential puppet of the modern day, past I am less of a person as a result. I need to hold up my options open. There might come a day when there is no more than Mac Osmium and citizenry acquainted with Linux will have more choices along that day. I like having Thomas More choices. I detest having choices withdrawn from Maine.

I also owe an obligation to my community of interests to help others maintain the maximum number of choices in their lives. The great unwashe at the lower end of the income bracket particularly need to have the maximum number of choices in their lives. If they don't, they will experience the suffocating experience of living a choiceless life. That unsettles me. In Thoreau's twenty-four hours, the room to communicate ideas was via essays and books. Nowadays, people communicate using blog posts and YouTube videos. So to accompany this blog post I created this short YouTube television. My goal therein video is to assistanc others stop and think. Wise decisions can only follow made when we think.

As it happens, I earn my living at a exoteric depository library in the Washington, D.C., region, and I often encounter people new to the United States who want to improve their English skills. I'm a believer in the free culture movement, and then I recently started exploring what free multimedia learning materials I could create to assistance these community members. Some of these community members already ain a personal computing device. Those that don't own one, I extradite a donated computer to.

An easy direction to create free multimedia eruditeness fabric is to marry the public domain book narrations from Librivox.org with the school tex of the books that are being narrated. I had reasonable achiever doing this with the book Call of the Wild, and uploaded that experiment to YouTube. This is not ideal learning material for mortal wanting to improve their English, but it is free.

People who view this multimedia system combo on YouTube (or installed on their donated computer) can learn the spelling of English words, and some new vocabulary, and how English sentences are built. The narrator for Claim of the Wild, Gordon Mackenzie, is superb at his craftiness. Imagine my delight to discover Gordon Mackenzie narrating Walden on the LibriVox web-site. In just an hour or two, I was able to create this YouTube video with the curtain raising chapter of Walden being read aside Gordon Mackenzie. I used a free ebook reading program, Calibre, to display the text as distinctly as possible. And I used a screencasting course of study to marry the audio and textbook show in concert.

I'll be copying this multimedia material onto a donated computer I delivered to a family from Ethiopia. This historic summer, cardinal senior high school students from this family taught themselves to eccentric using that computer. Now they'll be able to see and hear Thoreau's Walden connected their computer. Wish this learning reincarnate help them with their English reading, writing, and comprehension skills? It might. I bottom't know for sure as shootin, but I'm uncoerced to experiment. It seems to me this free culture path is a itinerary worth walking down. My only guide is my intuition and suppositions. As Thoreau teaches us, that guide can comprise as fine a rudder as any. Consumption your magnitude relation mind as very much like possible to mold your intuitions. Past trust your intuitions. Trust them, for they are all that you have.

—Phil Shapiro

The blogger is an educator and applied science commentator in the Washington DC-area. He send away be reached at philshapiroblogger@gmail.com or via Chitter at http://www.twitter.com/philshapiro

This web log post is ordained to the memory of my friend and wise man, Dave McIntire, whose simplicity and kindness affected the lives of umpteen in the District of Columbia and elsewhere. Working aboard his life partner, Elizabeth II, the two of them bent the human race in the direction of kindness and inclusion. Shortly in front his unforeseen expiry in July 2011, Dave listened to an audiobook recording of Walden spell driving with Elizabeth to West Old Dominion. When words ring true, we need to revisit them often.

Previous Community Voices blog posts.