Aside from ensuring your kids are healthy and happy, one of the most important goals you have as a parent is making sure your offspring receive a good education that prepares them for the ever-changing world.
Many parents are strong believers in raising self-learners. Programs such as Kumon can help with this, by preparing children to become independent, emotionally intelligent adults and better critical thinkers.
Unlike passive learning methods, which rely on children taking notes, memorizing facts and being taught information, self-learning programs support kids learning the basics on their own. This inspires them to become active participants in their education.
More and more research shows that self-learning leads to greater confidence and independence while positively impacting the emotional intelligence and development of children. According to the Association for Psychological Science, students are better able to learn when they can control the flow of their experience, or when their learning is "self-directed."
Presented in partnership with Kumon, here are seven ways in which a self-learning approach can help your child succeed.
The active nature of self-directed learning helps children encode information and better retain it over time. Think of something you really like learning about (baseball stats, song lyrics, geography, etc.) and how easily you respond to that information and remember it. We naturally gravitate towards what we enjoy and retain that information more quickly.
Self-directed learning helps children be active participants in their knowledge acquisition. This means they can focus effort on the information they don't already possess and not waste time on information they already know. In its very essence, self-learning focuses on the process of knowledge acquisition and teaches children how to learn and how best to attack a problem.
Self-learning increases self-confidence. When children find themselves becoming better learners and acquiring knowledge, their self-esteem and confidence skyrockets. Confidence in yourself is a huge component of learning something new. The more at ease and confident you feel, the more you're able to retain and the more you'll want to learn.
Self-learning increases intellectual curiosity, independence and discipline, and allows young children the opportunity to explore topics they are interested in. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it will only make your child smarter and pave the way for a successful career and a happier social life.
Self-learning allows children to take advantage of technology at their disposal. Despite the parental hand-wringing over screen time that often takes place with computers, smart phones and iPads, technology can be a valuable educational tool to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
Self-learning takes into consideration different levels of skill and speed of learning. If we're all different people with different interests, capabilities, and ways of acquiring knowledge, why are we expected to all learn the exact same way and at the exact same pace?
Self-learning prepares children for higher education and for the real workplace. A traditional educational environment is very methodical and planned-out for students. Distractions are kept to a minimum and expectations are precise and clear. But that's not real life. University and a real job require self-discipline, organizational skills, and the ability to focus despite distractions, deadlines, and demanding bosses.
The proven Kumon method can help your child build a lifetime of math and reading success. Click here to find out more about the self-learning method that Kumon has become renowned for.