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 because reading many books, or parts of many books, is the only means for seriously pursuing the truth when one has a burning question that cries out for understanding. When a person begins the quest for truth one quickly realizes that the quest is long and that many sources of ‘truth’ must be digested before one moves from knowing something to the position when one understands something.
Would you define self-learning differently than I did?