Listing suggestive directions for web based self learning.

Self-learning Self-Learning, a term which is interchangeable with self-teaching, is a GIFT you give to your children. It is the gift that keeps on giving and even gives back to you!

Top 20 Benefits of Self-Learning

Why would you even want your child to become a self-learner?

1. . Student becomes an independent thinker.

1. . Student learns to accept responsibility.

1. . Student gains the freedom to learn without restrictions.

1. . Student earns accountability.

1. . Intrinsic rewards become the focus, that good feeling inside that comes from a job well done.

1. . Student tests well because he is used to tackling problems on his own, which equals confidence.

1. . Students retain more naturally when they do the work versus parents spoon feeding the information into them.

1. . Students learn where to go when help is needed. There is no need to worry about gaps in their education because if they need to know something down the road, they will just look it up on their own.

1. . Student has the courage to delve into an area of interest to study it without having to wait for a teacher to teach it.

1. . Students become more than prepared for college study, which will require motivation and planning ahead.

1. . Self-learning gives the opportunity to develop a good work ethic.

1. . Self-learning allows the learner to go as deeply into a subject and interact with the subject matter as deeply as he would like to go.

1. 1. . Self-learning enables the learner to limit the number of interests undertaken so as not to be spread too thinly.

1. . Self-learning allows the family to function as a family without emulating an institution at home.

1. . Self-learning eliminates all excuses for not reaching one's potential. It will never be anyone else's fault if the student doesn't learn.

1. . Self-learning is more fun than being taught at.

1. . Self-learning means that mom can read great books rather than teacher's manuals and text books.

1. . Self-learning trains one to go to the source for information which reduces the possibility of deception.

1. . Self-learning is the wave of the future now that so much information is available at our fingertips.

1. . Self-learning means that babies and toddlers get more attention from mom because she is not busy playing teacher.

e curriculum lends itself better to self-teaching than others. Unit Studies are not generally a self-teaching mode of education, but I bet they could be adapted as well. Also, it is worthy of noting from the get-go that it can be much more difficult to encourage a student to become self-teaching who has recently been pulled out of a school system. The more years spent in the system, the more difficult the “reversal” can be. More difficult, but not impossible to achieve by any means! Find what curriculum works for you and your student(s).

• What? What IS self-learning anyway?

Self-learning is taking in information, processing it, and retaining it (a.k.a learning) without the need for another individual to be teaching it in order for the understanding to occur. Simply stated, self-teaching (or self-learning) requires the ability for a student to work independently. Self-taught students are motivated by the sense of a job well done. They are self-motivated because they have the confidence that if they don’t know an answer to a question, they know how to use the resources available to find out the answer. Self-taught students often can complete course work in a fraction of the time it would take to finish in a teacher-directed setting. Self-teaching should be ingraining in the student a concept of continual success, gradual and steady success that results from diligence and the pursuit of excellence. Short term goals should be set, but goal-setting is NOT tedious. Isn't that good news?

Where? Self-teaching can be done anywhere at any time! It is unlimited but not unstructured. A good record-keeping system is recommended so the student can look back and glimpse the steady progress he or she is making. This system can be as loose or as structured as you desire.

Why? Refer to the 20 reasons listed at the top of the page. We discuss this in detail in The Self-Teaching Manual. Believe it or not, the answer to the question of how is to set some short term goals with your student, give them the materials including answer keys, and then step back and watch the transformation.

You will be amazed! Of course you will need to check work periodically and as carefully as you feel the child needs you to be checking to keep 'em honest. Make sure goals are being met. Otherwise, stay out of the way.

When? Today! Or whenever you are comfortable with the concepts. Start slowly and allow your child to gain your trust and respect. Then give more and more freedom until you reach the point where your child rarely needs you in order to complete his assignments. (He still needs you, of course, but not in the same way.)

Negatives: Your children may become smarter than you are! That is pretty much true here in my household where most things mathematical are concerned. Nobody over the age of ten wastes time asking me a mathematics question. The resource of choice, if one is needed, would be older siblings or Daddy. Sigh. But that is so much better than me having to battle algebra all over again.

You see, I wasn't taught to enjoy math. I never was enabled to practice mastery learning, the building upon a solid foundation of one learned concept after another. Thank heavens there is a better way to learn! Now if I wanted to, I could go back and learn math to my heart's content. Unfortunately, that desire is long gone; it was snuffed out years ago.

How about you? Do you have something in your educational background that never made sense, but teachers pushed you on because your time was up and it was time to move on? What a stupid idea....moving a student on when it is known that the material was not learned, or it was learned to a "C" level. Whoever decided that missing out on up to 30% of the material was a passing grade?

Yet this type of "education" goes on every day in public and private school classrooms all over our nation and is accepted as being the best way to learn. I strongly disagree, and I hope that you will, too, as you begin to see the dramatic results your children experience as they use simple mastery learning principles.

In the homeschool, all children should achieve A's in every subject at the end of every grading period. Mastery learning, if implemented in our public schools, would change the face of education in our country in a way that has never been seen before! Moreover, it would change the lives of the students it is NOT serving with the current hit or miss system. Self-Learning and mastery learning go hand in hand!