(by 36 people)
experiment with self directed learning for visionaries
Bastiat Free University is developing a place for you to learn.
Starting before kindergarten, college degrees are marketed as a way to get a better job, more income, or a promotion. Bureaucrats selling meal tickets to future bureaucrats.
But college degrees are losing value as they become common and as organizations shrink with the ending of the bureaucratic age. That college degree meal ticket no longer guarantees entry to a quality meal.
At student-centric Bastiat Free University your first emphasis must be on rediscovering the joy of learning. Cultivating a love of learning is a most important action toward improving your life.
There are other goals you will want to explore at BFU and the visionary Netcohort Institute -- among them; discovering new passions, opening your mind, challenging accepted ideas, unveiling exciting opportunities.
BFU is here to stay, we have a long term commitment to improve higher education. If you want to gain actionable knowledge - if you want to make you more valuable - investigate Bastiat Free University.
For now there is not enough demand to establish a Bastiat Free University low cost degree program. But there is a need for cost appropriate learning. Currently you can learn at no cost except for books and supplies - just register and monitor the classes.
What a radical idea - going to school to learn. Do it for yourself this time.
Contents at a Glance
- Bastiat Free University - responsibility, personal control, freedom
- What do YOU want to know?
- BFU Weekly Journal - documenting the creation of a new form of higher education
Bastiat Free University - responsibility, personal control, freedom
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. -- Proverbs 4:7, the Bible
College costs too much time and money. The core learning acquired by your investment in a formal college education is bureaucracy survival.
With diploma in hand a college education's advertised function can now be utilized. A college degree serves as a sales tool for imploring job interviews.
It is not wisdom, understanding, or creativity adding value to college graduates. Instead huge institutions value the active compliance demonstrated by fulfilling college graduation requirements. Submission to authority is a virtue in bureaucratic organizations - most college educated employees can be used like interchangeable machine parts.
The student-centric BFU response has been to offer internationally accessible and actionable student-directed learning for those that want to run their own lives. We exist to enhance and enable student's creative and audacious dreams.
"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." - Albert Einstein
Bastiat Free University is proudly unaccredited and intends to remain an unaccredited college. Satisfying the college accreditation guilds would make us just like everyone else. We also remain outside of bureaucratic control as an educational auxiliary within an unincorporated church.
Bastiat Free University is not being built to segment and distribute information - it already exists as a catalyst to reignite your love of learning.
"You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library." - Good Will Hunting
Technology is driving the cost of most information toward zero. But somehow costs associated with a college education always seem to match available tax payer funding and maximum student loan amounts. Education is a business with deep political connections.
Access our classes at no charge. BFU is dedicated to providing cost appropriate learning tools (diplomas and certificates not currently available) to those pursuing understanding. We will only be able to provide this service by avoiding bureaucratic entanglements.
We started free, we want to stay free, we want to help others become free.
What do YOU want to know?
Discover and engage your passion -- In books of your own choosing. Liberating your desire to know is more important than any educational model.
You do not need to ask permission to read, learn, and understand new ideas. You have personal authority over your own life - use it. Give yourself permission.
If the pleasure of reading was stolen from you by compulsory schooling - take back that pleasure today. The more you read, the faster and easier it is to read. The faster and easier it is to read, the more enjoyable reading becomes. Reading is a pleasuring skill, useful for entertainment and in the gathering of information.
Of course if you are reading for deeper understanding, speed is not important. What is to be valued in serious reading is comprehension and analysis - do you find wisdom in what was written?
It will take effort to gain understanding from deeper literature. This type of reading will also bring pleasures, but of a more enduring sort. For serious reading follow this process:
1) Understand what the author is trying to say.
2) Decide if what you are reading is logical and honest.
3) Consider how to present what you have discovered in a logical and honest manner.
4) Discuss and write about what you are learning.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)
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Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950
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Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School
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Plutarch's Lives Volume 1 (Modern Library Classics)
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BFU Weekly Journal - documenting the creation of a new form of higher education
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer
Pass on, and discuss what you discover at BFU. Find or start a local support & study group to enhance your learning experience. While the learning tools offered at Bastiat Free University are valuable, they have even greater value when shared.
BFU is here to support life-long learners pursuing their dreams. If you know other open learners; tell them about Bastiat Free University.
Here are links to your most recent BFU Weekly Journal.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byThere is great power for good in each of us.
Discover the success of realizing tangible results within your lifetime.
Our efforts can have a positive impact on our own lives - and on the lives of many others.Fund student visionaries right now with a one time gift of any amount using a credit card or PayPal -- or make a monthly $10.00 donation to provide funding for our (students, BFU, and you the investors in change) combined pursuit of educational relevance.
Make a substantial difference in both student lives and society by writing a check and following the simple instructions on the BFU college contribution Form. You will favorably effect how current students and future generations relate to our world.
For all the sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these,
"It might have been!"
John Greenleaf Whittier
Unlike ignorance - an appropriate gift for improving education doesn't hurt. As we combine our gifts we become a force - a proactive force for positive change.
You can keep connected with your educational legacy by remembering Bastiat Free University in your will or trust, and as part of your overall estate plan. Anticipating your bequest's impact is a continuous opportunity to enjoy the sweet taste of giving.
Bequests and endowments can share your future estate unrestricted or may be directed to special projects such as The Netcohort Institute. Please download and send us the college contribution Form so we can properly thank you. You can instruct us within the form as to testimonials, memorials, or other aspects of your college donation.
One student could only offer moral support - her form of a major gift is very encouraging. Marge, who lives in the Philippines, e-mailed Bastiat Free University "I believe in your cause and your vision. but right now I don't have a dollar or even a quarter to donate ... i wish you well. God bless."
For more information about supporting BFU contact me or visit the Bastiat Free University college donations page.
* I live in Southern California and would love to visit with you when you are in the area - a contact link is under my picture. I have made significant donations to BFU but that is my choice; there will be no pressure for you to donate during our first visit. Your perspective and insights will help us improve BFU. I am particularly interested in hearing your ideas for The Netcohort Institute.
If you come up with some great ideas like Ross Rayburn, I may ask you, too, to become a council member of the Bastiat Free University advisory council. The advisory council identifies opportunities and problems and then makes recommendations concerning BFU.
Quick Poll: Is Bastiat Free University Right For You?
For now, BFU is not offering a college degree option. Everything on our sites is open to you at no charge. enjoy
* If you lack the self discipline to finish what you start without someone controlling your actions - BFU is not for you.
Even in BFU's most structured format there is not a lot of structure. BFU was created for self-directed visionaries and entrepreneurs - students that find freedom and personal control appealing.
* If you want to be a bureaucrat - BFU is not for you.
College degree credits or a diploma from Bastiat Free University will not be accepted by government licensing bureaus, most other colleges, and many employers. BFU is purposely unaccredited and intends to stay that way.
What is most important for the coming NetcohortAge is what you know - not where you learned it.
* However, Bastiat Free University may be for you:
if you want to interact with other successful individualists in the network society;
if you want to be honored with an enviable reputation based on performance;
if you willingly want to take responsibility for your own life;
and if in exchange you expect personal freedom and control;
welcome home to your Bastiat Free University. Please help us develop BFU into something extraordinary.
So...
Which FREE Is It?
-- Free Speech or Free Ride?
The free in Bastiat Free University is like free speech; that means BFU is not controlled by bureaucracies. The original free universities were created by students who hired professors they respected to teach what the students wanted to learn. Students controlled the curriculum.
Don't just pursue a degree and then a job, instead concentrate on learning how to develop your most audacious dreams.
For now, a free ride on the Bastiat Bus is available (please pitch in a few bucks for gas) since you can register and monitor classes at no charge; just acquire your own materials and mass produced books. Use our class structure to construct your own "higher learning" regime. Focus on finding creative projects that require increasing your skills, knowledge, and wisdom in order to be completed.
BFU college degrees and learning certificates are no longer offered. All of our resources are now available without charge - dig in! Spend more time discovering and possessing your personal destiny; spend less time concerned about financing a college education.
There is no better time to start discovering you. Head over to your Bastiat Free University Journal to learn why.
Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education
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The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything
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Og Mandino's University of Success
A marvelous collection of the best works in varied areas of living and success.
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The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning
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Self University: The Price of Tuition Is the Desire to Learn : Your Degree Is a Better Life
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Create Your Own College Courses
Call it passion, reason to exist, destiny, or finding meaning in your life. What is so important you have to share it with others?
Do you really understand your Passion? Help others discover it.
"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." - Vincent Van Gogh
Share your passion - create your own college course: right here, right now, on Squidoo.
One of my passions is student-directed learning, so this one page Squidoo lens is about BFU. Follow this link to start your own lens about a subject you love to think, write, and talk about.
Your new lens will be easy to revise - don't worry about making it perfect yet - just make it. You will need several modules before Squidoo will display it as a completed lens.
List an Amazon module with 3 to 5 good books about your topic, or an Amazon Plexo with up to ten books, Tell a reader to pick two books to start the course. Write a text module on each of the three top books you recommend, explaining their value. Find or create a YouTube or two on the subject. Then go wild and do a link module to good stuff about your passion on the internet.
All of this can be done quickly and easily using Squidoo. If you want to see an example of an excellent children's course look at the Royalton Raid Squidoo lens by Evelyn Sanez. As another approach consider my Renaissance Education lens.
Add whatever YOU think is appropriate.
Then come back here and post a comment with a link to your course so others can benefit from your passion. Your class may also make it into the regular BFU curriculum. If you want to positively change education and society, add your new course to the list at the Netcohort Institute also.
Register for no charge at Bastiat Free University to monitor our current class structure - you can create better.
You can just do it to show off, help others, expand your learning, or just 'cause BFU gets 5 bucks if your lens makes money for you or a charity.
Let's see what you've got!
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Angelina_Howard
5* Lens. Thank you for sharing this idea with the world. Posted October 13, 2008 |
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lakeerieartists
Very intriguing. I have to say that I have learned more since my traditional university education, than during it. Well done. Posted October 12, 2008 |
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Portable_eBay
"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." <---- This is very very inspiring... 5* Posted October 12, 2008 |
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susannad
Amazing. Look for a new student in your ranks Posted October 09, 2008 |
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WhitU4ever
Great topic! Posted October 08, 2008 |
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You know it and don't need me to tell you - the world is changing.
Bastiat Free University was born in the enthusiasm of a "can do" decade, the summer of the long Kondratieff wave. The anticipation of fall and winter for the world also carried the distant promise of spring.
Now that it is late fall or early winter you can feel the chill within the social mood. Skepticism is rampant, the desire for uniformity increasing. The final gasps of the bureaucratic age are heard from a factory castle with hoarfrost on the windows. The dying dotard within is seeking his legacy by rule of law; nothing must change, any extant institutions are to be considered inviolate.
The bureaucrats of the passing age are of course in agreement. Their armies promoting failing kings are marching to forestall spring offensives by new and "dangerous" ideas. A Russian winter will once again destroy the invader's arrogance, but not before great damage is wrought.
Spring is yet hidden beyond a mist shrouded valley of almost incomprehensible dimensions.
What then of Bastiat Free University. We are in the marches between the past and the future; and we are not yet fully realized. We have no authority in the strategies of conquest, we are but a slight hindrance, a small obstacle, virtually unseen from within ideological campaigns for power.
The BFU game plan, developed during the heady days of summer, was to ride out the winter storms and like wheat planted before the first freeze burst forth as an early sign of spring. Unfortunately our autumn reception has been cooler than anticipated, there has been little cultivation beyond our own efforts.
Our field is being paved with regulations supporting mere bureaucratic certification rather than quality learning; all the better for battling forces to traverse. The high guilds of educational accreditation are ensconced by their roaring fires - seeking functionaries to exalt their humility.
They have found their toadies and are sending them forth.
The war maintained by supporters of central authority is a holding action, straining to delay liberating advances. The futility of their actions will not decrease the horrible cost in lives wasted. What then is the best strategy for BFU? Do we remove ourselves from the field of battle and return in a more accommodating season?
Do we count our task as done? Still knowing the seeds we planted will sprout from fertile soil enriched by blood spilled for an ignoble cause? Do we continue in the fields during winter, or retire from battle to await the promised thaw?
The primary reason to continue is that we may help avert disaster as the new age dawns. Perhaps that is hubris, and we are better off observing and preparing.
Our shared future is a race between sedentary fools courting disaster to maintain their power; and innovation sparked by empowered individuals meshing by reputation to achieve their personal goals.
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer
Bastiat Free University will remain; our roots will spread, our limbs trimmed at an appropriate time. We will be ready in the distant spring to send forth new shoots and blossom with promise of the first fruits on the Netcohort.
We were planted with that intent. Bureaucratic elites may have controlled the past, failing epoch -- but the anticipated new era will belong to creative individuals.
Government dependence and poor management of endowments by elite universities will lead to their decay - self education, individual determination, and an ethical reputation will provide a more stable future for students.
Like you.
You Don''t Need A College To Learn
not even Bastiat Free University
We can see trends and act on them, such as the emergence of self as the largest employer. The jobs of the future will likely be jobs you create for yourself.
The world is full of good, challenging books. Keep a journal with notes about books you read; get a few friends to join with you in a reading club - then discuss what you read.
The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had
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cool and hot links for college students
downloads, blogs, learning resource sites, and lots of other goodies
While you are at it please bookmark this site. There are buttons to digg, stumble, and delicious this page. One button will allow you to e-mail this page to anyone you think might appreciate it.
- Bastiat Free University Quick Scan
- Check here if you want to get a quick idea of BFU and then move on to registration. Read this famous Bastiat parable as your application to BFU. Since there is no charge to register and monitor classes - do it right now.
Check this link if you want more information on making college donations to support the eager BFU students that want to improve their world and ours. - The Full "I'm Too Smart" Collection
- Smart BFU hats, golf shirts, mugs, and other goodies for you to consider. (including a very cute BFU teddy bear)
Bastiat Free University
Because I'm too smart
for a state college
and
I'm too good looking
for the Ivy League - The Netcohort Institute
- Starting in early 2008 this will be the first home of The Netcohort Institute.
Expect some tough courses that will expand your capabilities within the networked, Internet centric Netcohort . There will also be tools to assist your collaboration with other creative individuals. Unbound by distance, age, or national identity you can multiply each other's opportunities. - Squidoo Lenses That Support BFU
- Make a lens about your audacious dream. Now as a Bastiat Free University supporter submit that lens to the BFU support group.
- free download and links page
- Get Firefox, OpenOffice, eZIP35, Foxit PDF reader, and other open source downloads here.
- Bastiat Free University
- This is the "old" main site. If you want to dig into what makes BFU tick, this is the clock to break open.
enjoy - Junior Partner Ministries
- JrPM is in charge of this whole BFU gig. The church thought a no cost or low cost, world wide, quality higher education could be helpful to many.
Junior Partner ministries also provided the ideas behind the BFU School Of Theology. "I believe that He who arranged the material world was not to remain foreign to the arrangements of the social world." - Claude Frédéric Bastiat
So here we are. This is our audacious dream. let us help you define and create your own outrageous dream. - Speculation Rules - An Anti Investment Resource
- Money is just a tool.
But like a crowbar, some folks will use it to open things, others drop it on their toes.
Most money information is misinformation provided by organizations that want to sell you something. They make commissions - you lose money.
There are almost a hundred pages here to help you find the other, happier, side of finance. - - The BFU Journal -
- documenting the creation of a student-centric college
Bastiat Free University offers student-centric learning for visionaries and entrepreneurs. Rediscover for yourself the pleasures to be found in self directed learning.
Enroll at Bastiat Free University
Register at no cost. If you do not want next year to be the same as this year - change something.
Check here to explore BFU from the beginning. These featured lenses also provide additional education ideas you may want to pursue.-
Netcohort Manifesto
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We share many possible futures. The best case scenario may be a new realm of personal liberty exercised amid competing principalities. Worst case will be waring city states destroying people, freedoms, prosperity, and property. The route to any such...
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What can YOU do to change the world? Start Now - and keep improving your efforts. The Netcohort Institute Mission: develop resources for individuals that are changing our world through technological innovation. Technology empowered individuals a...
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Renaissance Education - how to study and apply classical literature
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Ignorant - We only pretend to know
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We view sophisticated modern knowledge and proclaim the ignorance of centuries past. What we ignore is that within a decade the sophisticated will view our ignorance with disdain. In a century the average person will be able to enumerate our errors....
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Start My Own Business Ideas
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Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt Shakespeare
To re-read, rate, lensroll, del.icio.us, stumbleupon, digg, research books, contact the author, and email this lens to students, educators, family, and your and friends:
"We hear fables about the past, we develop dreams of the future, but the work needs to be done today." - Allan R. Wallace
