The way we learn

The way we learn

I am not a teacher but I have studied this matter endlessly for ten years. I have had a good bit of schooling and have many years of active self-actualizing self-learning.

I think it is important to recognize that schooling and self-learning are very different modes of learning. Schooling is primarily a matter of rote learning what a teacher tells us to learn; this mode of learning applies primarily to our early years. After schooling is finished a new and important aspect of learning begins. I suspect few people ever extend this learning process beyond schooling and I think this is a grave mistake for the individual and for the community.

I have discovered when trying to write about self-learning that everybody is a self-learner. Like critical thinking, self-learning is something everyone does. Thus I think I need to identify two types of self-learning.

Self-learning for most people consists of all of the day-to-day things we learn in our daily lives. This is sometimes supplemented with reading a book or the newspaper. I would like to add a second mode of self-learning that I call self-actualization learning.

I would say that the principle objective way of discrimination between the two modes of self-learning is the possession of a library card. As I define it (since this is my OP I get to define what I am talking about), the person who is a self-actualizing self-learner is a person with an oft used library card. I would say that without an oft used library card a person is a mere dilettante of self-learning.

A dilettante of self-learning turns into a self-actualizing learner when s/he obtains one or more library cards