Continuing Education

Continuing Education

My neighbor, who lurks here, referred me to a website with short education videos on a variety of subjects. They're all free. When the author discovered that he had a knack for explaining technical subjects, it occurred to him that he could reach more people with his skill by publishing his lectures online than by teaching small classes in person. You don't see the lecturer at a podium but instead a blackboard with his live scribbles. I tried out a few series -- one on the use of commutators in electric motors, and one on differential equations -- and found his style engaging and helpful. It's a remarkable list of lectures, several hundred at least, covering everything from math to economics to hard sciences, from basic to college level. I'm going to recommend these to my friend who home-schools her son.

On the same note, because my sister has persuaded me to take a trip with her to France this fall, I thought I should brush up on my rudimentary French. I found some excellent free websites with phrasebooks, including audio clips.

All these lectures are an especially pleasant find because I've been engaged in recent weeks in a number of arguments over what has gone so wrong in public schools. It's nice to know that access to the Internet, which most Americans have, is enough to permit a motivated student to overcome a failed public education in a core math and science curriculum, and cheap, too.