Self Directed Learning

Self directed learning is easy. Its called reading. No not really, I just put that there because I like to read. There are other equally good or better ways to learn, depending on what works best for you. I’m more visual than auditory so I like to see things, displays, images, captions etc.

I read a book once by Orson Scott Card, in his Homecoming series, a futuristic sci-fi fantasy novel loosely based on the Book of Mormon migration story, although it was set on one planet and they were traveling by space ship to another country.

In the story they arrived on the planet, set up camp, divided up due to the jealous rivalries of the two older and two younger brothers and continued on their merry way. There was this one part in the book where one of the characters, I think he was a librarian, had committed some sort of atrocity, I forget what, and as a result they banned him from the library and he was no longer allowed access to any more reading material ever. I was horrified. I couldn’t imagine being without books.

Well, actually thats not entirely true. One summer I was shipped off to stay with my aunty and cousins and they had no books in their house. I nearly went crazy with boredom. No pens or paper, nothing to read in the whole entire house. It was not fun.

Anyway, what I got from the book was a quote from that character a little bit further along in his punishment. He said something along the lines of, When I was banned I didn’t know what I would do with myself. But then I realized after a while, books come from people. Talking and interacting with people cuts out the middle man. I can learn more from people than I can from books.

That was a few years ago. These days I think you can learn a lot more on the internet than you could from books, the whole world at your disposal with the touch of a button, though discernment is an important tool to grasp if you want to look for truth from a website.