Knowledge Tips

Inspiration and tools to help you achieve your

goals!
By William Green, Ph.D.

Compliments of:

Knowledge Team In-Home Tutors, LLC

Brooklyn, CT
2010
Table of Contents
Introduction: Letter to an American teenager 1
If it’s not fun, why do it? 2
Potential: You potential for achievement 3
Responsibility: The other kind 14
Study skills: Tips for learning 19
What’s next: Imagine affordable college 27
Introduction:
Letter to an American teenager
Dear Teenager:

You may be struggling in school. You may be discouraged. You may feel stupid. But I know that you
have within you unique intelligences and unique strengths that give you great potential. Find them.
Build on them.

You may feel worthless, weak, and hopeless. But you are not. You are powerful and full of promise.
As a parent and teacher, I have seen it.

You may feel directionless. But you have dreams. Pursue them. There may be obstacles in your way,
but you can overcome them.

I know what you are capable of. You are capable of more than IPods, Facebook, video games, sports,
and even high school. You are capable of great things. Our culture may treat you like an irresponsible
child, but you have the potential to be much more. As Thomas Edison said, “If we did all the things we
were capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

Let’s see what you can do.

Sincerely,

Bill Green, President

Knowledge Team In-Home Tutors, LLC

1
If it’s not fun, why do it?
Question: Learning can be difficult. So why do it?

Answer: Because life is more than parties, video games, and iPods. Life is about finding fulfillment.
Fun brings some small fulfillment, but it doesn't last. The greatest fulfillment comes from things like
honor, compassion, relationships, love (real love, not just sex), creativity, productivity, moral
“rightness”, responsibility, freedom, self-determination, and achievement.

Let’s focus on achievement.

What is your potential for achievement?

2
Ben Franklin, Library of Congress

Potential:
Your potential for achievement
The evidence suggests that young people have much greater potential than they are given credit for.
You may not feel like it, but you can achieve great things, even while you are young. In fact, the
evidence suggests that you can achieve great things especially while you are young. There may be
obstacles in your way, and you may meet with frequent failure, but with hard work and perseverance
you can unlock your potential. Just look at Ben Franklin.

Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin may seem like a character from some boring old story, but he was a real teenager once.
And young Ben may not have seemed like he had a lot of potential. He was not born rich. He was one
of 17 children born to a humble Boston candle maker. Though he was a good reader, he failed math in
school, and at age ten, his father took him out of school to work in his candle shop.

But Ben didn’t like making candles.

He tried working for a knife-maker.

This didn’t work out either.

So at age 12, he went to work for his brother, a printer. But he and his brother didn’t get along, so
eventually Ben headed out on his own. He ended up in Philadelphia at age 17, flat broke.

On his own in Philadelphia, Ben landed a job as a printer, and things began looking up. In fact, by his
early 20's, Ben had set up his own printing house and began printing a newspaper, the Pennsylvania
Gazette.

At 26, he began to publish Poor Richard's Almanac, which spread his fame throughout the colonies and
Europe. He designed an academy which later became the University of Pennsylvania. He founded the
3
American Philosophical Society (for the sciences), and in 1748, sold his business to devote himself to
research.

He discovered electric charge, invented bifocal lenses, the modern wood stove, the lightning rod, and
more. He became politically active at home and abroad and played an essential role in the success of the
American Revolution. He was one of the five who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

How did Ben do all of this with no formal education? Was it his father's influence? It’s true, his father
was fond of reading and argumentation, and Ben certainly followed in his footsteps. He loved to read
and often read the classics as a child. He taught himself to write well by reading magazines and
newspapers and then copying them, as well as he could, from memory. While working for his brother,
Ben spent his evenings writing articles for his brother’s paper. When he was 16, he taught himself math
from books.

There is no doubt that his self-education played a major role in his success, but Ben himself emphasized
simple hard work. In Poor Richard’s Almanac, he wrote: “though you have found no Treasure, nor has
any rich Relation left you a Legacy, Diligence is the Mother of Good luck.” “’Tis true,” he wrote, “there
is much to be done, and perhaps you are weak handed, but stick to it steadily, and you will see great
Effects, for constant Dropping wears away Stones, and … little Strokes fell great Oaks.”

In fact, hard work is a recurring theme in the lives of great people. Thomas Edison, inventor of the
modern incandescent light bulb, once said “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent
perspiration.”

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison’s story is similar to Franklin’s. Young Tom attended school only three months—his
mother homeschooled him from then on. When he was 12, Edison got a job selling newspapers, apples,
and candy on a railroad. By the time he was 15, he had bought a used printing press, set it up in a
baggage car, and started printing and selling his own newspaper, The Weekly Herald, on the train.

That year, he saved a little boy from being run over by the train. In gratitude, the boy’s father (a
stationmaster) gave Thomas a job as a telegrapher, and Tom used his money to set up a scientific
laboratory.

His first invention was an improved telegraph. He was now 21. He went on to invent an improved
telephone, the first record player, and the first practical light bulb.

How did he do it? Like Franklin, Tom also read a lot (his father was a free-thinking entrepreneur with a
large library) and Tom was also a very hard worker. His discoveries did not come easily, he once said,
“If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every
wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward....” Like Honda engineer John Kessler, he saw failure
as the key to success and “the by-product of pushing the envelope.”

Both Ben and Tom accomplished amazing things at a young age through learning and hard work. Could
you do similar things? Maybe you think that these two guys were just lucky geniuses. I don’t think so.
4
You see, they were not the only ones who were able to accomplish great things at a young age—such
stories were common in the past.

Other amazing youths

Let’s look at some more examples:

 The Hebrew king Josiah was 16 when he repaired the temple at Jerusalem, found the old book of
the Law, and enacted great reforms.
 In 1345, Edward the Black Prince commanded the English army at age 16.
 George Washington became a surveyor at age 15 and was the official surveyor for a county in
VA by age 18. He commanded the Virginia militia by age 21.
 The Marquis de Lafayette was only 19 when he offered his assistance to our fledgling country, as
was Nathan Hale when he gave his one life for that same cause.
 Alexander Hamilton was running a mercantile business at age 12 and wrote his first
revolutionary pamphlet at 16.
 John Quincy Adams was made ambassador to Russia at age 14.
 William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873), creator of the McGuffey Readers, opened a school at
age 14.
 “Stonewall” Jackson became a teacher and county constable at age 16.

How did they do it?

How did all of these young people do it? Were they all just lucky geniuses and prodigies, or is there
something else going on? We have already noted the benefits of reading, self-education, and hard work.
But why don’t we see this kind of thing today?

I think it has to do with freedom and responsibility. I think teenagers today are treated like children, and
they often view themselves as children, rather than as young adults with the potential to do great things.
They often see themselves and are seen by others as dependent consumers, rather than creative
producers, so they seek fulfillment in consumption rather than achievement.

Edward Eggleston drew a similar conclusion in 1900 as he explained the reasons for American
superiority in the world. He observed that first generation Americans were still crippled by their habits
of dependency learned in Europe, but American young people, freed from the European social system,
were free to thrive. At the age of 7, he said, Americans begin growing up.

Alexis de Tocqueville agreed. In his 1839 book, Democracy in America, he observed that “In America
there is strictly speaking no adolescence. At the close of boyhood, the man appears.” In old America,
teenagers were treated as powerful individuals with great potential. Those that viewed themselves the
same way did great things.

Were teenagers different back then? Today, people view teenagers as children: irresponsible, lazy,
immature, ignorant, amoral, and interested only in parties, iPods, video games, Facebook. We even

5
have a name for this. It is called adolescence. But is this really who teens are? Is this really who you
are, or is our culture masking your true potential?

Scientist Robert Epstein, author of Teen 2.0 and former editor of Psychology Today, believes that
adolescence is a modern phenomenon that comes from treating teenagers like children:

“In 1991 anthropologist Alice Schlegel of the University of Arizona and psychologist Herbert
Barry III of the University of Pittsburgh reviewed research on teens in 186 preindustrial
societies. Among the important conclusions they drew about these societies: about 60 percent
had no word for “adolescence,” teens spent almost all their time with adults, teens showed
almost no signs of psychopathology, and antisocial behavior in young males was completely
absent in more than half these cultures and extremely mild in cultures in which it did occur.”

In other words, our culture is holding you back. But despite our culture’s inhibiting influences, it is
possible for young people to break free and rise above adolescence and mediocrity and reach their true
potential.

Richard Branson

Richard Branson was dyslexic and didn’t do well in school. He dropped out at age 16. But he was not
unmotivated. By age 15, he had already begun two business ventures: growing Christmas trees and
raising parakeets. Neither of those efforts panned out, but at 16 he started a successful magazine called
Student (sounds a bit like Franklin, doesn’t he?).

Next, he bought crates of records from a discounter and started a record selling business out of the back
of his car. By age 21 he had founded the Virgin Record label, a recording studio, and a record store in
London. He started Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984 and Virgin Mobile in 1999. He was the 236th
richest person in 2008. His latest venture is Virgin Galactic, which promises to take passengers into
space.

How did he do it? Branson tells an interesting story from his childhood. He writes:

“My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the
car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got
hopelessly lost. My youngest sister Vanessa's earliest memory is being woken up in the dark one
January morning because Mum had decided I should cycle to Bournemouth that day. Mum
packed some sandwiches and an apple and told me to find some water along the way.
Bournemouth was fifty miles away from our home in Shamley Green, Surrey. I was under
twelve, but Mum thought that it would teach me the importance of stamina and a sense of
direction. I remember setting off in the dark, and I have a vague recollection of staying the night
with a relative. I have no idea how I found their house, or how I got back to Shamley Green the
next day, but I do remember finally walking into the kitchen like a conquering hero, feeling
tremendously proud of my marathon bike ride and expecting a huge welcome. 'Well done,
Ricky,' Mum greeted me in the kitchen, where she was chopping onions. 'Was that fun? Now,

6
 could you run along to the vicar's? He's got some logs he wants chopping and I told him that
you'd be back any minute.'”

Soon, Richard and his sisters began setting challenging goals for themselves.

You

This is something you've known for a long time:

 You can do a lot more than we give you credit for.

 Modern American teenagers are undervalued.
 Modern American teenagers are stymied by societal restrictions.
 Modern American teenagers underestimate themselves.
 Modern American teenagers are missing out on their full potential.

Not only do young people have great potential, they may have the greatest potential. Take for example,
the much cited relationship between age and scientific achievement. Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa studied this
relationship:

“Anecdotal evidence abounds that artistic genius or productivity fades with age. Paul
McCartney has not written a hit song in years, and now spends his time painting. Orson Welles
was mere 26 when he wrote, produced, directed and starred in Citizen Kane, which many
consider to be the greatest movie ever made.

The relationship between age and genius appears to be the same in science. It is often said that
physics and mathematics are young men’s games, and physicists and mathematicians tend to
think they are over the hill at age 25…

James D. Watson made the greatest discovery in biology in the 20th century at the age of 25,
winning the Nobel Prize for it, but has not made any other significant scientific contribution for
the rest of his career…

Nearly a quarter (23.6%) of all scientists make their most significant contribution in their career
during the five years around age 30. Two-thirds (65.0%) will have made their most significant
contributions before their midthirties; 80% will have done so before their early forties.”

In other words, Mom and Dad are past their prime (sorry, Mom and Dad), but you are definitely not.
And you don't have to be a genius. You don't have to have a great family upbringing. You just have to
decide to swim against the current. And achievement for you may not be a Nobel Prize (who cares
about that anyway).

Success

What is success? The only reasonable motivation for doing anything is to increase your own sense of
fulfillment. Success is succeeding at that. And remember, I do not mean only sensual pleasure or
money, but honor, love, freedom, compassion, courage, responsibility, and achievement.

7
Why do you think Franklin did what he did?

Parties and games are fun, but we were meant to live for so much more. Life is more than iPods and
video games. It is about living according to the purpose that is built into you, the purpose that will fill
you up.

Society may hinder you, but you will find fulfillment in overcoming those hindrances.

So what will it be? Only you can decide. You can settle for iPods and measly fun, or you can do great
things.

And live right.

And live full.

Begin today!

8
Responsibility: The other kind
Many people view teenagers today as simply irresponsible. Are you irresponsible? Or are you
responsible?

Maybe it depends on what we mean by responsible. According to the Encarta© dictionary, responsible
means:

“reliable: able to be counted on owing to qualities of conscientiousness and trustworthiness”

This is probably what folks mean when they say teens are irresponsible. But I want to focus today on
another definition (from dictionary.com):

“answerable or accountable, as for something within one's power, control, or management”

Are you responsible in this sense? Are you responsible for your actions? For your life?

Maybe not. The courts may not hold you fully responsible for your actions until you are 18. Your
parents may not hold you responsible. Society may say you are the product of your genes and your
environment.

But consider this: Fast forward your life twenty years. Where will you be? What will your life be like?
Will you be happy? What or who will determine the answers to these questions?

Blame

Who will you blame if your life is a wreck? Who will be responsible if your circumstances are less than
desirable? Who will be to blame if you are not the person you would like to be, morally, intellectually,
physically, vocationally? Mom and Dad? Your teachers? Society? Chance? God?

You may be justified in blaming these people and circumstances, but what good will that do you?

Bad things may have happened to you, and later in your life you may be justified in blaming them for
your troubles.

But what good will that do you?

Today

If you had the chance to change your future, to improve your life, to do something today that would lead
to higher fulfillment tomorrow, would you do it?

Then what are you waiting for?

9
Power

Whether you are technically responsible or not, your actions and decisions today will play a role in what
your life looks like tomorrow, and what kind of person you are, and whether you find fulfillment. You
have the power to change your life and your future.

Obstacles

Your circumstances, past or present, may be hindrances, burdens, and obstacles. But if so, they are
obstacles to be overcome, opportunities to find fulfillment, and challenges to strengthen you.

Your obstacles may be great, your hurts, deep, and your difficulties, many. But even if you could only
improve your life a little bit, wouldn’t it be worth it?

Fulfillment

The only reasonable motivation for doing anything is to increase your own sense of fulfillment. How do
we find fulfillment? Do we find it in pleasure, sex, food, or fun? Sure, these things all have their proper
place, and we can find fulfillment in all of them, but it is often short lived.

There are things that bring sustained fulfillment: love, compassion, honor, achievement, responsibility.
There is the satisfaction of a job well done, or an obstacle overcome. There is the fulfillment that comes
from liking and being proud of whom you have become, helping others, and improving yourself and
your life.

Can you influence your present and future level of fulfillment?

You sure can.

We just need to take a long range view of fulfillment. It is not reasonable to exchange a high level of
long range fulfillment for a little bit of fleeting fulfillment today. It may be fun to get drunk today, have
sex, be lazy, waste your time, but how will that affect your fulfillment tomorrow? In ten years?

What if, instead, you did what you knew was right and best for you in the long run.

Decisions

Little choices you make today are choices between alternatives for tomorrow—choices between greater
or lesser fulfillment, good and evil. They create habits, good or bad. They affect relationships, for
better or for worse. They mold our character, our abilities, and our lives.

Little choices you make today can affect your circumstances, your character, and your fulfillment
tomorrow.

No one wakes up one day and decides to have a miserable life. It happens one little choice at a time.
But you can wake up and decide to live for fulfillment.

10
Questions

What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live? When you are lying on
your deathbed, what kind of life do you want to look back on? Live it.

Teenagers Today…

are responsible, in that they have the power to choose, to affect their own destinies, and chart their own
courses toward fulfillment.

Begin today!

11
Study skills:
Tips for learning
As we have seen, education can play a key role in success. Education is one of the keys for unlocking
your potential, and one of the keys to education is study skills. Many students struggle in their studies
simply because they lack some simple skills.

According to William Luckie and Wood Smethurst, authors of Study Power, “It turns out that school
success is not directly related to intelligence, quickness, ambition, or any other such characteristics.
Primarily, it comes from the ability and desire to manage your work and your time effectively.”

Luckie and Smethurst have based their approach on programs developed at Harvard and Emory
Universities. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of their approach.

Purpose driven listening

It’s easy to talk, and we all want to be heard, but listening is hard work. And yet listening is an essential
ingredient, not only to successful relationships, but also to successful learning. Good listeners are good
learners.

Many students focus on note-taking in class, and this is important, but they often neglect careful
listening. Lectures are times to gather information. To do this effectively, you need to be prepared.
You wouldn’t go out to harvest a crop without the proper tools and preparation. Don’t go into class
without a clear idea of what information you will gather and how you will get it. You can’t expect the
information to just fall into your lap.

Luckie and Smethurst suggest a kind of sandwich approach. First, ask yourself what the teacher is going
to tell you today. This is the first slice of bread. Then listen actively when he or she is telling you. This
is the filling. Finally, summarize what they told you.

Before class, try to anticipate what the teacher will be discussing. Read ahead in the book the night
before. You may also be able to guess what they will be covering based on what they talked about last
time. If necessary, ask the teacher what they will be discussing the next day. Write these questions in
your notebook.

In class, listen actively. This takes constant effort. Our minds like to be occupied, and let’s face it,
lectures are not always the most exciting things to listen to. Here, Luckie and Smethurst offer some
helpful tricks:

 Keep your mind occupied by continually asking yourself questions about what is being
presented.
 Relate what is being said to other things you already know.
 Sit close to the front.
 Try to pick out potential test questions. A typical lecture covers 7—10 possible test questions.

12
  Have a friend do this with you and compare notes at the end.

When class is over, summarize what you heard in five to nine sentences. This is the final slice of bread.

With practice, you will become a better listener and a better learner. You may even find that you are a
better friend.

Power notes

Active listening is the most important learning skill, but it is impossible to recall everything that is said
in class, so it is best to have written notes that you can review. Though many students take notes in
class, they may not have a good note-taking system or strategy for using those notes.

According to Luckie and Smethurst, one of the most important goals of note-taking is to try to write
down at least 7 important ideas from the lecture that could become test questions. They provide some
interesting and helpful hints for identifying possible test questions:

 The first and last things said by the instructor are usually important.
 Make sure you write down any lists, comparisons, or definitions the instructor gives.
 Write down anything that the teacher writes on the board, including any examples or
calculations.
 Write down anything that the teacher repeats, emphasizes, or gets excited about.
 And lastly, my favorite: “whenever an instructor gets distracted and comes back to a subject,
that subject is almost invariably a main idea.”

Of course, writing these things down is not enough. The real power comes from review. Don’t wait
until the days before the test to review. Without review, we forget 75-80% of the material within 6 days.
With daily review, we can retain 80-85%. Luckie and Smethurst recommend reviewing each lecture for
a few minutes every day for 5 days. After that, review each lecture once per week until the information
is no longer needed. If you take notes in a loose-leaf binder, you can file them by the day of the week
on which they were taken. Then on Mondays you can briefly review all of your Monday notes, on
Tuesday, your Tuesday notes, and so on.

Review will keep the ideas fresh in your mind. You will retain more, you will be better prepared for
active listening and class participation, and you’ll always be ready for tests.

Study reading

When reading a book or textbook for a class, break the process into four steps. Start by previewing the
section or chapter. You can do this by spending 5 minutes reading the introduction, looking at all of the
diagrams and pictures, reading the captions, and finally reading the summary and review problems.
Basically, you are figuring out what it is you are going to be reading about.

Next, spend about 30 seconds per page skimming the chapter or section. Luckie and Smethurst suggest
the “First, First, Last” method: “Read the first paragraph carefully, then read the first sentence in every
paragraph that follows, and then read the last paragraph.”
13
Do these first two steps before class, so that you can be prepared to listen.

After class, you will need to begin what Luckie and Smethurst call “active reading”. Read in 20 or 30
minute segments, with short breaks in between, focusing on one “chunk” of material at a time. Read
like you would listen, asking questions, highlighting, and taking notes. If you like, you can use the notes
to make study cards—index cards with important topics, events, people, facts, formulas, with one item
per card.

Finally read through the material again, this time asking yourself what it all means and how it fits into
the big picture of the course. Try to put the material into your own words. Write your summary in your
notebook. It is also helpful to answer the discussion questions at the end of the chapter.

Test preparation and test taking

If you are reading, listening, and using your notes throughout each course, you will go into each test
well-prepared and much less prone to anxiety.

Do not plan to cram. Attempting to learn a large portion of material right before a test is generally not
effective, since you often forget the material quickly, and it can be especially detrimental if you lose
sleep. It is important to be well rested and alert on the day of a test.

Instead, before a test, review your notes and study cards. In college, I used to condense, outline, and
summarize my notes when preparing for a test. Luckie and Smethurst suggest studying with a friend
and trying to explain the key facts and concepts to them. When you teach something to another person,
you often learn it well.

Also, if you can get your hands on old tests from the teacher, these can be a very effective way to study.

Time management

Studying takes time, and many of us live busy lives. Even if your life is not packed with activities, you
may find that your time is eaten up or wasted by lack of planning.

When we don’t budget our money, we may spend too much on stuff we don’t need, and we may be left
without enough to pay the bills. Without time management, we may spend too much time wasting time
and be left without enough time for the most important things.

Time management allows you to make sure you will have enough time for everything that is important.
It means planning your time.

Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote, “The key is in not spending
time, but in investing it.” What do you want to invest your time in? Answer this question and plan
accordingly.

When you are a student, this means charting out all of your due dates and deadlines. You can do this
using a day planner, calendar, or just by making a simple timeline. Once you have mapped out your
major deadlines, term papers, tests, and exams, you can allocate the necessary time to each task.
14
Many people list their tasks in order of priority and then check them off as they complete them.
Checking off tasks on your to-do-list not only helps you keep track of things, it can also give you a great
sense of accomplishment and help keep you motivated.

You can do the same thing with each week and even each day. Assign tasks to time slots in each day.
Then you can check them off as you complete them.

It can be very helpful to assign specific times to each task because “work expands to fill the time
allotted.” If you give yourself all weekend to finish your term paper. It will probably take you all
weekend.

If you plan every hour of your day, you will be amazed at how productive you can be. As Ben Franklin
wrote, “If you were a Servant, would you not be ashamed that a good Master should catch you idle? Are
you then your own Master, be ashamed to catch yourself idle.” But don’t forget to plan in time for
relaxation, relationships, and recreation.

Large blocks of time are helpful for big tasks. I think two hour blocks are efficient. Shorter blocks can
waste time in switching gears, finding new materials, and setting up for a new task.

A good rule of thumb is to do small tasks first unless you are up against a hard deadline. This gives you
a sense of accomplishment and helps clear your to do list. Anything that will take five minutes or less
should be done immediately.

The same time management approach can be used on a larger scale as you set goals for college, work, or
whatever it is you want to accomplish in the future. Prioritize, and plan your time accordingly.

15
What’s next?
Imagine affordable college
Imagine a world with affordable college. Having trouble? Try this: start with free university lectures
online, add a dash of online or in-person tutelage, if needed, and finish with credit-by-examination. This
is exactly what’s cooking now in the online world. Anya Kamenetz of FastCompany.com summarized
this new brew in a recent article entitled, “How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American
Higher Education.” “Suddenly,” she writes, “it is possible to imagine a new model of education using
online resources to serve more students, more cheaply than ever before.”

The information age has been revolutionizing many aspects of our lives. As Katherine Mangu-Ward
wrote in a recent Washington Post piece, “Since the Internet hit the big time in the mid-1990s, Amazon
and eBay have changed the way we shop, Google has revolutionized the way we find information,
Facebook has superseded other ways to keep track of friends and iTunes has altered how we consume
music.“

It was only a matter of time before the internet impacted education, and today online learning is taking
the world by storm. According to a 2010 report from the Sloan Consortium, from 2008 to 2009 online
enrollments grew by 17%, while overall higher education enrollments grew by only 1.2%. This trend
has been consistent for seven years. The number of students taking high school courses online also
appears to be growing rapidly. Universities like Brigham Young and Ball State University offer online
high school courses, as does Keystone High School, a national online high school based in
Pennsylvania. Such courses have been utilized by homeschoolers for years and now are being
increasingly utilized by public high schools as well.

The internet is making learning accessible like never before. It also makes it cheaper by eliminating the
high overhead associated with traditional “brick-and-mortar” institutions. But perhaps the most exciting
trend began in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began putting all of its courses
online for free, including video lectures, notes, and tests.

They call it OpenCourseWare, and you can find it online at http://ocw.mit.edu/. They even have a
special page for high school students. You can watch introductory physics lectures, learn to build
simple electronic devices, or get tips on writing better essays. (The physics lectures by Walter Lewin
are as entertaining as they are excellent.)

MIT’s initiative was soon followed by similar programs from Yale, Harvard, and other universities.
Many universities post free lectures at iTunesU, which offers a quarter of a million free lectures and
videos from all over the world. Just click on your iTunes store and then find the iTunesU tab at the top
of the screen. Interested in law, quantum physics, or theology? (Hint: You can also download free
audiobooks, like Moby Dick and Alice in Wonderland.)

And universities are not the only source of online education. One pioneer in this area is Salman Khan.
He has degrees in engineering, computer science, and math from MIT, an M.B.A. from Harvard

16
Business School, and a talent for making tough ideas understandable with simple YouTube videos.
Khan has produced over 1000 short videos covering topics from Algebra to Calculus, Biology to
Physics, and Banking to Venture Capital. Armed with simple drawing software and a screen recorder,
this portfolio manager makes the complex simple and interesting in brightly colored writing on a black
background.

Khan’s goal is “to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere,” and he has certainly been
doing that. With over 8 million views from around the world and over 31,000 subscribers to his
YouTube channel, He is part of the revolution in learning that is sweeping the globe.

These websites are examples of the “open source” movement of free information that is exploding on
the worldwide web. They represent the first ingredient for a real revolution in education—free learning.

Students can learn for free, but you may be thinking, “That’s fine, but what about credit and degrees?”
Don’t worry, the learning revolution has that covered. It is already possible to test out of college courses
for which you have independently mastered the content. Such tests are offered through the College
Board’s CLEP© program. Students take tests in 33 subject areas and many colleges (2,900 of them,
according to the College Board) will grant credit for college courses if the student does well on the
exam. Other colleges may not grant credit, but may waive course requirements.

This concept forms the foundation for an entire university: Western Governors University (WGU)
offers online courses and grants degrees based on competency testing alone. Students can take the tests
without formally completing any coursework. Programs like these are the second ingredient in the
revolution.

Of course, learning on your own can be difficult, and so the third ingredient in the education revolution
is mentoring and tutoring. WGU students are assigned mentors to help them work through their degree
program, and Anya Kamenetz writes about Peer2Peer University, an online network where “students
can use the Web site to convene and schedule classes, meet online, and tutor one another….” Face-to-
face instruction has special power and will always be a key ingredient in the world of education.
Sometimes there is no substitute for a mentor or tutor to personally help the student develop new skills,
grasp new concepts, and test their understanding. If you can’t find a tutor online, you can seek one out
through friends and family, your local university, or a tutoring service.

In reality, learning online is not really learning alone at all. In fact, the online learning community is
much larger and more diverse than any our society has yet experienced. The internet need not isolate us
in education any more than it should isolate us in our relationships. On the contrary, it has the potential
to lead to more interaction, not less. Just as it can put us in touch with long lost pals from high school
and new friends from other cultures, it can bring us teachers and mentors from around the world.

The internet puts us in touch with people and their ideas, and that is the heart of this revolution. It has
done for our society what Gutenburg’s printing press did for Europe in the fifteenth century. Education
is about learning. The internet is challenging old ideas about how education should be done, and it is
opening new doors for more people than ever before. We live in challenging times, but we also live in

17
exciting times. The world is changing in ways that would have been hard to imagine not long ago. Who
would have imagined affordable college?

“Imagine affordable college” was first printed in the Killingly Villager on April 9th, 2010.

18
Knowledge Team In-Home Tutors, LLC
At Knowledge Team In-Home Tutors, LLC, we believe every young person is a powerful individual
with tremendous potential, and we are passionate about empowering students and parents to reach their
goals. Tutoring is a proven path to better grades and academic success, and we are excited to make
tutoring affordable and convenient in eastern CT.

We provide free in-home consultation to match you with the best tutor for your child. All tutoring takes
place in the comfort and convenience of your own home. We offer tutoring in all subjects and grades, a
powerful study skills program, standardized test prep, home school help, online chemistry tutoring, and
enrichment courses like piano and creative writing. Unleash the power of individualized instruction!

Visit our resources page for more useful information!

Contact us today!
www.kttutors.com

wgreen@kttutors.com

860-779-9348

Knowledge Team In-Home Tutors, LLC

15 Green Drive
Brooklyn, CT 06234

19