EDUCATION FOR DUMMIES

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=1380“Shelf Awareness” is an online ejournal for people in the book business in every aspect from publishing to actual brick and mortar bookstores.  Just recently it featured a story on the sale of the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman and predicted a happy future for the bookstore.  This cheers me, since it has been a fav place of mine since the days when it started up in a little old converted church.  And it also -- maybe in the same issue -- told about the Looking Glass Bookstore in Portland where I often hung out at lunch time.  Prospects for them are not quite so bright, but hopeful.Today’s "dedicated"  issue (url above) is about an “imprint” -- which is a “brand” of book published by some establishment -- in this case the “Dummies” line of yellow-and-black books that had its roots in the public’s need to learn how to operate computers back when DOS was complicated and new.  It was 1991 and employers were insisting that new hires be computer-literate.  By now the Dummies books have over a thousand different titles about everything in half-a-dozen different countries.  In fact, “Diabetes for Dummies” is one of the best on the subject.  “Curling for Dummies” and “Lacross for Dummies,” both intended for Canada turned out to sell well other places as well.  And so on.The secret of success was effectiveness.  They assumed the reader knew nothing about the subject (but that this was not a character flaw), they were often funny, and they laid out the basics in a way clear enough for you to figure out by yourself.Too bad public education and “higher” education have not picked up on this attitude.  This Shelf-Awareness review of the development of the series is for people in the biz, so it is full of how-many-countries and how-many-copies and what cover design, but the key is still attitude.  Like a Bill Pogue column in the NYTimes, it’s funny.  But not stupid funny.  Often the cartoons are so apt that one can’t help photocopying them to share, which is -- of course -- excellent advertising.  These are not “snooty” books, unlike a lot of education.  But they DO assume that you can work it out for yourself if the goal is worthwhile and you really try.  These two assumptions are NOT present in much of formal education.  Yet kids teach themselves to play the guitar or skateboard.  Or use a computer.  It's not a matter of strictness or high standards.If you think that the Dummies imprint would be ideal for the Internet, you’d be right.  www.dummies.com    Top of the page when I opened it up was “Weatherstripping for Dummies,”  which is another tip:  tell people what they need to know WHEN they need to know it.  (Below zero in Valier at the moment.)I’m thinking about a book called “Paradigm Shift for Dummies.”  In times when so many cherished assumptions about managing our lives, to say nothing about what our lives SHOULD be or how to accomplish our goals since those goals have somehow disappeared from the universe, how does one stay on one’s feet ?  Much less pedal the boat?  (Do you find mixed metaphors amusing?)   I’m not thinking about WRITING such a book.  I’d like to buy a copy, please.The hardest part is giving up the old assumptions:  
Indians are essentially different from you and me and you can tell because they ride horseback.The Great American Novel is something real and that only geniuses can write, so publishers will come looking for you -- something like Publishers’ Clearing House.Non-conformists are bad people, diseases and poverty are punishment for being bad, putting people in prison will make them reform.  Or you could fine them or refuse them a license.America is the best of all nations with the most blameless of ideals and the best way of life.Robin Williams is a great school teacher because learning should be fun.Drugs (either kind) will set you free.But then how does one set out to find better new assumptions?  Especially when most of the available lines of thought are based on the old assumptions:  bigger, better, more impressive, what worked in the past.  Dinosaur ideas, education for the Diplodocus, business for the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  What were the sources of “the future for mammals”?  Or could anyone see into the future that much?  What made the Dummies books a success was finding a niche (the need for info and training about computer operation) and filling it well:   well-analyzed so that the steps actually WORK, non-threatening, light-hearted, self-driven, lots and lots of illustrations.  Then when the niche changed (middle class kids are now evidently born knowing how to operate a computer), they changed: foreign languages, different skills, no how-to that’s too small.  I see http://www.dummies.com/biz.html  for specialized  businesses.There is one niche I see unfilled.  “Citizenship for Dummies” exists, but it is for immigrants.  www.dummies.com/.../U-S-Citizenship-For-Dummies  There is no  parallel book for born citizens.  That’s because the public schools in the beginning had two goals:  first, create good citizens who understood how to run a democracy and second, enable good workers who could get out there and make money so there would be enough taxable income to support the government.  Talk about a paradigm shift!  Now the point of public education is often seen to be producing a child who can get into a good college (if you’re middle class)  and sustaining education as a profitable industry.   Neither of these goals is public.  They are about the person, not the nation.  They are entitlements, not obligations.In Montana the schools are the identity of the town, but it’s a matter of athletics.  Really successful kids in an academic context will leave.  In the big cities schools for the poverty-stricken parts of town are holding tanks for kids whose parents can’t cope.  No longer do people buy houses that fit them, or houses that are good investments.  Now they buy houses in districts where the schools have a good reputation -- not for producing happy, productive people, but for schools whose students pass tests with high scores and get into good colleges.   The result of this paradigm has been a slew of young, nice, but unemployable people waiting for someone to tell them what to do next.  There are too many of them to compete for the jobs they are fit for and they are unwilling to learn jobs they consider they are too good for.  Where is “Dummies for Dummies”?  It appears to be a niche.