Monday, July 19, 2010

Tuesday Event: James Bach on Self-Education and Passion

Join me Tuesday evening for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with James Bach, author of Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success.

Date: Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Event and Recording Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/86937

James Bach is an expert in the field of computer software testing who has taught critical thinking and software testing around the world and at such places as the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He lives in Eastsound, Washington with his wife and son.< When James Bach was just 24 years old, he told a classroom of at risk kids, “Education is important. School is not. I didn’t need school. Neither do you.” And James should know. At the age of 14, James, son of Richard Bach (bestselling author of the 1970s classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull), dropped out of school because it was “interfering” with his education. To James, it wasn’t just a waste of time, he felt he was using his own time against himself. This was a seemingly radical idea for someone who would go on to become one of the youngest technical managers at Apple Computers and an internationally-recognized expert in the field of computer software testing.

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of SuccessFrom the publisher:  "In this new book, James strongly advocates the importance of “unschooling”—considering himself not a student but rather a “Buccaneer-Scholar.” James, a buccanneer-scholar is a person “whose love of learning is not muzzled, yoked or shackled by any institution or authority and whose mind is driven to wander and find its own voice and place in the world.”

"The volatility of today’s job market and the limitless opportunities afforded by the internet have forever changed people's attitudes about schooling. In this world of rapid technological development, people are becoming successful, making money and finding personal satisfaction through non-traditional means. Ideas have become more important than training; innovation is more important than credentials. The ability to educate oneself — to learn how to learn — is crucial.

"With SECRETS OF A BUCCANEER-SCHOLAR, James doesn’t seek to eliminate schools but he does want to deconstruct the belief that formal education is the only path to a great education. In his uniquely pithy and anecdotal style, James outlines the eleven elements of his self-education method and shows how every reader — simply by investing time and passion into educating themselves about the things that really interest them — can develop a method for acquiring knowledge and expertise that fits their temperaments and enhances their unique abilities and skills."

Visit:
www.buccaneerscholar.com