Charles D. Hayes is an unabashed liberal who professes to being a self-taught philosopher and one of America’s strongest advocates for lifelong learning. He spent his youth in Texas and served as a U.S. Marine and as a police officer before embarking on a career in the oil industry. Alaska has been his home for more than thirty years. Hayes’ book Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in a Postmodern World received recognition by the American Library Association’s CHOICE magazine as one of the most outstanding academic books of the year. His other titles include Existential Aspirations: Reflections of a Self-Taught Philosopher; September University: Summoning Passion for an Unfinished Life; The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning; Training Yourself: The 21st Century Credential; Proving You’re Qualified: Strategies for Competent People without College Degrees; and Self-University: The Price of Tuition is Desire. Your Degree is a Better Life. His fiction work includes the novel Portals in a Northern Sky; the novellas Pansy: Bovine Genius in Wild Alaska and The Call of Mortality, forthcoming; and two short fiction pieces, Moose Hunter Homicide and Stalking Cindy, in production. His nonfiction Kindle essays include: Atlas Begs to Differ; Aging Existentially: Getting the Most Out of the Fall and Winter of Life; Heroism, Cowardice and the National Tragedy of Hidden Guilt; Learning a Living: Career Success Without Formal Credentials; Class Warfare: Is It Real? Is It Over? Or Has It Just Begun?; Nostalgia: Why the Past Matters; Pursuing Justice: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Baby-Boom Legacy; America's Greatest Enemy: Ignorance, Why Political Dialog is Disingenuous; and Extreme Conditions: Universal Lessons About Workplace Safety Learned in an Arctic Environment.
Promoting the idea that education should be thought of not as something you get but as something you take, Hayes’ work has been featured in the , USA Today, and the UTNE Reader, on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and on Alaska Public Radio’s Talk of Alaska. His web site, www.autodidactic.com, provides resources for self-directed learners—from advice about credentials to philosophy about the value lifelong learning brings to everyday living. In 2006, Hayes established www.septemberuniversity.org, a site devoted to ongoing dialogue among September University participants in search of the better argument.
Works
The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning
