From The New York Times: D.I.Y. Education Before YouTube

by Jon Grinspan

EACH summer, when school ends, education mostly stops short, too. But it hasn’t always been that way. For the striving youths of 19th-century America, learning was often a self-driven, year-round process. Devouring books by candlelight and debating issues by bonfire, the young men and women of the so-called “go-ahead generation” worked to educate themselves into a better life.

Read the rest of the story at the New York Times.