The only person who can stop you from learning is

Ourselves.

Was trying to teach my child the importance of learning. I must not forget to not to take fun away from learning.

I wished someone would tell me this when I was younger. So that I wouldn't just go through the motion to learn for the sake of passing exams. So that I wouldn't limit myself to the things that I can learn which I feel resulted in my losing my passion in pursuit of good examination results. In the past, being a good student, I always felt that I cannot spare time to learn anything else because I was not exactly a bright student. I was just hardworking. I had to devote whatever time I have to my studies. During my university days, I have got classmates looking at stocks, free-lancing in software development etc. I thought nothing of those. Ok, perhaps for a start, due to stigma, I shunned away from stocks and investments. The point is, I should have done something more fun!

Kids Can Teach Themselves

Sugata Mitra showed with his "Hole in the Wall" experiments conducted in slumps in India that children can teach themselves.

Basically, he put up computers with Internet connectivity on the streets in slumps in India. Without any manuals or guide on using the computers, the children on the streets got all curious with the computers and began exploring and learning themselves. He brought his experiment to different countries and found that it was regardless of nationality, language and whether the children came from rich or poor families.

Subsequently, Sugata Mitra brought his experiment to the classroom where he assigned children into groups, provided them with access to the Internet and gave them a topic to research into. He even tried this with Italian children who don't even know what he was talking about. The result was astonishing. Children who were interviewed picked up knowledge that were way beyond their age. They could articulate profound knowledge with great confidence.

Sugata Mitra went on to prove that the knowledge that was obtained was retained. Tests were given to a group of students after his experiment and they could score as well as they did during the experiment itself. Some students got even better scores as they continued to google and find out more on their own after the experiment.

Lesson learnt: Children can learn very well autonomously in groups, with access to the Internet.