THE PITFALLS OF SELF LEARNING

Many students spend a lot of their time reading and learning on their own. It is indeed a very good habit but I wonder why as students progress to a higher level a lot of these students fall by the wayside. It is indeed very demoralising for these students but all is not loss as what they gain is industriousness that will help them in the future if it does when their level of thought maturity moves to a higher level. Here I will try to elaborate and categorise as follows: -

A. Memorising

Most if not all students start learning by way of memorising. Here, the differentiation factor to separate students are their memory skills and how hardworking they are. However some country's syllabus has develop critical thinking skills in their math syllabus to primary six but most countries still teach the elementary level and so I will stick to MEMORISING.

However there may be some students that mature faster and try to put two and two together, or link their knowledge an therefore learn faster. These are the more gifted students and sadly the education system has not put in place teachers to spot and identify these students so as to accelerate their learning curve.

Memorising and good memory is different. Some just memorise and do not know what they are memorising and therefore forget just as easily. However, those with good memory is able to pick up knowledge faster as they can recall what they have learned after some time but these students need to be nurtured. A lot of these students also fall by the wayside as their good memory is not honed to maturity in thought. Here it is most important to identify these students and develop their thinking skills either critical thinking or creative thinking.

You will find a lot of students that rely purely on memory work can do well up to O level but find difficult to cope at advance level. You will find them demoralise especially the hardworking ones. Some will just stop to think that will bring me to the next part.

B. Thinking

For thinking students it does not matter if they do well or not in their studies. What is more important is the thought they put into their experience. If they think long over their problem whatever it is, I believe this is the prerequisite for action. They will start to act on their thoughts. Students who do not think are the ones that are easily influence because they let others think for them without even the thought of what they learn right or wrong. This brings me to the next part.

C. Learning

The dangers in learning is thinking that what you have learned is right but later finding out that what you thought is right is absolutely wrong. Knowing that you are wrong and not knowing why prompts you to seek knowledge. Some of these students just stress out and give up on learning. For these students they must learn to unlearn and then relearn then all will be fine This brings me to the next part.

D. Basic Knowledge vs Advance Knowledge

A lot of science and mathematics topics are thought to the level of understanding to a particular level. For example an astronaut at a space station is said to experience no gravity at the basic level...why because it is easier to understand but at an advance level that is not the case and a higher level of understanding has to be put in place....or elements in a chemical compound s are thought to bind following the octate rule but there must be a paradigm shift at a higher level. Students must be thought to UNLEARN AND RELEARN every step of their learning curve or else they will be very confuse. They must also learn to adopt paradigm shifts to move away from the norm.

Well I hope my thought today will help.