by Ernest Smartt

Created on: August 01, 2008   Last Updated: August 05, 2010

Self-discovery is indeed a key to an individual's educational success. Self-discovery is where education begins for everyone. The life of a child before he enters school is full of learning, from the beginning of the day to the end. Most of this learning is through exploration and experience. The child notices everything. In most cases this learning is encouraged by parental involvement as cheer leaders. There is pleasure in being praised, even for an infant. This pleasure serves as a motivator for the learner. It encourages further exploring and discovery.

What is this thing called "self-discovery? It is the ability of an individual to learn through personal experience and natural exploration, often motivated by curiosity. Self-discovery can also be prompted by an external teacher such as a parent, or school teacher. Through the active use of our senses, and the ability to make mental connections, learning takes place.

If the child is encouraged to experiment, and exercise his mental processes by asking questions and connecting facts, his learning will go far beyond what just a teacher can teach him. The child is actually teaching himself. Unlike learning from lecture and reading, experiential learning is retained at a very high rate.

Teachers can and should continue to encourage self-discovery. Unfortunately it is too often the case that self discovery decrease as external teaching begins to take place. By the time a student enters high school he depends on others to provide for him all the information he has to learn.

Educational professionals would do well to develop ways to maintain a high level of self-motivating educational materials and projects for the classroom that will encourage hands on learning and real life interaction experiences with the subject of the class. The more the child reaches out to learn and understand on his own, the more successful he will be once he is out of school in the work world.

How do we promote self-discovery? I remember a coworker walking by my desk one day, handing me a pen and saying, "Here, play around with this and see what you think." It was a calligraphy pen. It had a flat edge instead of a point. I had no idea what a calligraphy pen was for, but I played around with it and discovered it to be very unique. I discovered that writing with this pen produced a whole new world of lettering styles. It was fun, and motivated the creative person that is within me. I have now been doing calligraphy for about 30 years, and

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