Village Books in Historic Fairhaven

Groundbreaking, empowering, and inspiring, this is James’ chronicle of how his unorthodox education brought him success, and how anyone – from children struggling in school to professionals looking to jump-start their careers – can become educated on their own terms.

When James Bach was just 24 years old, he told a classroom of at risk kids, “Education is important. School is not. I didn’t need school. Neither do you.” And James should know. At the age of 14, James, son of Richard Bach (bestselling author of the 1970s classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull), dropped out of school because it was “interfering” with his education. To James, it wasn’t just a waste of time, he felt he was using his own time against himself. This was a seemingly radical idea for someone who would go on to become one of the youngest technical managers at Apple Computers and an internationally-recognized expert in the field of computer software testing.

Here James strongly advocates the importance of “unschooling”—considering himself not a student but rather a “Buccaneer-Scholar.” To James, a buccanneer-scholar is a person “whose love of learning is not muzzled, yoked or shackled by any institution or authority and whose mind is driven to wander and find its own voice and place in the world.”

The volatility of today’s job market and the limitless opportunities afforded by the internet have forever changed people's attitudes about schooling. In this world of rapid technological development, people are becoming successful, making money and finding personal satisfaction through non-traditional means. Ideas have become more important than training; innovation is more important than credentials. The ability to educate oneself — to learn how to learn — is crucial.

With Secrets of a Bunccaneer Scholar, James doesn’t seek to eliminate schools but he does want to deconstruct the belief that formal education is the only path to a great education. In his uniquely pithy and anecdotal style, James outlines the eleven elements of his self-education method and shows how every reader — simply by investing time and passion into educating themselves about the things that really interest them — can develop a method for acquiring knowledge and expertise that fits their temperaments and enhances their unique abilities and skills.