Well, if you’re including “anyone who sells things to schools” in academia- then yes, my argument doesn’t really make much sense.
But, for the sake of steel-manning, let’s pretend that instead of meaning that, I meant academia as the broad collection of things typically associated with it—formal schooling, tenure, teachers, students, classes, etc. Even if you include textbooks as a NARROW part of academia, the point is that you can forgo all that other stuff and JUST take the textbooks, and still be told basically the same things.
Well, if you’re including “anyone who sells things to schools” in academia- then yes, my argument doesn’t really make much sense.
But, for the sake of steel-manning, let’s pretend that instead of meaning that, I meant academia as the broad collection of things typically associated with it—formal schooling, tenure, teachers, students, classes, etc. Even if you include textbooks as a NARROW part of academia, the point is that you can forgo all that other stuff and JUST take the textbooks, and still be told basically the same things.