It’s not about the information itself. All of human knowledge is at your fingertips. Unfortunately, that knowledge is buried under an ocean of bullshit. And if you haven’t studied in a field, you likely cannot tell the difference between quality sources and bullshit.

You bemoan a course that consists of studying a textbook, but how do you even know what textbook to read? If you do not know the field, how do you know that it’s an accurate work of reliable history and not some right-wing slop like PragerU? And it’s not just reading the book. It’s knowing what parts to read, preparing writings, participating in discussions, and a thousand other activities that are designed to advance the learning objectives of a course. Hell, just having a course with a fixed schedule to it can be immensely beneficial to most learners. Studying is hard. It’s time consuming. And it doesn’t generate any immediate returns in your life. Most people who try to teach themselves a subject end up learning less in five years than they could in a single semester of enrolling in one or two college courses. When you’re teaching yourself something, it’s far too easy to just put off the hard dull work til tomorrow or avoid it all together.

For the love of god, without looking it up, do you even know how to pronounce the word pedagogy?

If you had taken even a single course in education or course design, you would know there is so much more to designing a course than simply reading a textbook. I’ve taught and designed numerous college courses. If you think it’s just a matter of reading from a textbook, you are standing atop a mountain of ignorance.