New Horizons for Learning: Andrew Flaxman

"Know Thyself" Online Humanities Self Study Program

Educate Yourself for Tomorrow is an innovative, high quality Liberal Arts survey course. It was created in 1981 by an ad hoc group of educators to address certain major inadequacies found in the traditional approach to the Humanities. It meets high academic standards while having a very practical, inspirational and experiential approach to the study of Liberal Arts. The entire program is now available through the internet at www.onlinehumanities.com. Onlinehumanities.com appeals to the mature individual who is interested in self-development and/or in earning further academic credits (either at the undergraduate or postgraduate level).

COURSE RATIONALE

In keeping with E.L. Boyer's recommendation in the Carnegie Foundation report (1987) that diverse materials be coordinated via an organizing theme, the interdisciplinary curriculum of Educate Yourself for Tomorrow is unified by how self-knowledge leads to a heightened personal sense of, and commitment to, community. Each topic focuses on selected works from one of twelve broad subject areas. The subject of these works is introduced by a series of study guides each ending with questions designed to invite students to come to grips with profound human concerns, such as were dealt with by some of the "greats" in our civilization. The curriculum includes Sophocles, Plato, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Rembrandt, De Vinci, Mozart, Beethoven, Lincoln, Blake, Jung, Thoreau, Rudolf Steiner, Martin Luther King, and others. The entire curriculum, topic guides and collateral materials are available at www.onlinehumanities.com

This course presents a model for how liberal arts should be, but is not. It is curriculum you always wanted to take but never had the time. It's the essence of what is important to know about the major influences of our civilization but didn't know how to ask. Educate Yourself for Tomorrow includes revelations found in some of the "Great Books" but in addition also includes insights into music, art, politics and economics. It's the stuff that many of today's college students will never study as they focus more and more on narrow specialties.

Educate Yourself for Tomorrow's approach to Liberal Arts is very different from the abstract, intellectual method found in most colleges and universities. The self-knowledge and thinking about thinking themes of the program provide the motivation to study the associated materials because virtually everyone is interested in themselves and their own thinking. When you are directed to look for something or some idea, it is much easier to find. This guided survey of the Humanities helps make the material easier to understand and to assimilate.

Knowing the whole picture makes it easier to put the pieces of a puzzle together. The interdisciplinary nature of the program makes it much easier to understand each topic. The sense of wholeness provides purpose and meaning to self-study and helps make a pleasure what otherwise might be work. The ability to think in an imaginative and creative manner is no less important than the abilities to memorize and solve problems. Educate Yourself for Tomorrow offers important insights into thinking, creativity and imagination that are essential to being a successful Human Being.

COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY DEGREES
The curriculum and course materials of Educate Yourself for Tomorrow (EYFT) have been evaluated by Empire State College of the State University of New York. Persons who are engaged in study in this program may enroll as special students at Empire State College (ESC) and include this program in a learning contract. A contract is not a course, but an academic plan for a period of time (generally sixteen weeks) which may include Educate Yourself for Tomorrow. A student can earn from three to sixteen credits for the first part of EYFT. Similar arrangements can be made of the second part. How much credit earned depends upon how much time a student wants to devote to this contract. EYFT can also be used for both a BA degree or advanced degrees through the many other colleges and universities that offer distant learning programs.

THE FACULTY
A list of the faculty of Educate Yourself for Tomorrow is available at www.onlinehumanities.com. The director and editor of this program, Andrew Flaxman, graduated cum laude from Princeton in 1957 and earned a master's degree in business at Rutgers. After a successful career as an investment banker and stockbroker, he became convinced that our economic life, based upon increasing selfishness, egotism and lack of self-knowledge, was bringing our civilization to disaster. For the past few decades he has been a publisher of self-educational products, a seminar organizer and a teacher of emotionally disturbed adolescents. He now devotes his full time to further curriculum development and promotion of www.onlinehumanities.com

Flaxman is the author of Learning from History, (Gifted Education Press of Virginia), 1990; The Open "I", Humanities Education (University of Minnesota), 1991; Mozart and the Evolution of Western Music, (Gifted Education Press of Virginia). 1992; "The Extra Senses in Our Perception", Thresholds Quarterly, May, 1999; "The Bhagavad Gita and Self Education", Thresholds Quarterly, Winter, 2000. You can contact him at flaxman@bcn.net.

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