Empowering Your Skills Through Adult Education Learning

Adult education learning is something that you ought to try if you are thinking of reviving your career or going through the career ladder a notch higher. For folks who have graduated from school a long time ago, you should never feel that age matters when it comes to going back to school. This is also a good opportunity for those who may not have had the chance to finish college on time.

Various factors may take its toll on someone's education at one point in time. Usually it's about the financial capacity. A medical condition might have previously prevented you too from finishing your degree. Family issues might also be a reason yet adult education does not really take these things as important anymore. It doesn't matter which career you would like to pursue so long as you are willing and resolved to finally get the diploma you've always wanted.

Preparing for Re-Skills Training

If it's been years since you last entered school, there are a few important things to keep in mind so that you can prepare yourself. First, you must clearly define your goals. What do you intend to do and how do you think entering school will help you? Being goal-oriented will also help you cope in school because you are going to go through a series of school works and examinations which would all take its toll on you.

Another important thing to have as a trait is the ability to take directions. If you have been used to having your own way, that's going to be challenged once you re-enter school. You have to follow the rules and regulations implemented by the learning institution as well as your teacher within the classroom.

Thirdly, you should also be able to take in constructive criticism. Your fellow classmates and your instructor would not always agree with your ideas. Sometimes, the way you do things will be questioned. You should also learn not to be too hard on yourself and let yourself learn things while still managing to enjoy the fact that you are back in school.

Benefits of Taking Adult Education Courses

There are many good reasons why you should take some adult education courses if you can. Among the main ones is that you can finally boost your skills level. What's even better is that these courses are flexible enough to fit into your schedule so you can end up juggling work with school effectively.

Also, adult courses are mostly done through distance learning modules. This way even stay-at-home folks would have no problems with education because they no longer have to leave home just to attend a class. This is also perfect for those who are always on the go. In the end you can manage to learn at your own pace in the environment that's most suitable for you.

Despite its flexibility in schedule, most adult courses are still comparably cheaper compared with traditional classes. Some schools even offer their students the ability to adjust the number of hours that they can fill in for class. Most distance learning courses still offer some consultation days wherein the students are going to meet in a typical classroom setup.

There are many different institutions these days that offer adult education learning. In fact, almost every school within cities are capable of doing this. The only thing you need to consider is the course that you will be taking and how you are going to be able to maximize it after you have totally graduated from the course. Some also offer special scholarship programs which you might also want to get into.

Learn the Importance of "Montessori" Education

Dr. Maria Montessori is a pioneer because she was the first person who understood the value of self determination and understanding of the environment in helping a child succeed later on and she did so when she was an assistant doctor at the Children's Psychological Ward at a hospital in Rome. She was the one who first pointed out that a child has a great desire to discover the world all around and is also extremely inquisitive. So to enhance the education of the child, this natural curiosity has to be properly channeled and all the questions needs to be answered, instead of ignoring them, which many tend to do. Some of the fundamental factors of Montessori school education are as follows.

• It is necessary to treat children as individuals and differently than adults. It should also be remembered that no two children can be the same.
• Children are unusually sensitive and are keen to learn from the environment and so should be encouraged to do so.
• Always try to nurture the child carefully in the first six years because this is when the unconscious learning progressively reaches the conscious level.

The child should realize his/her full potential and become successful in all spheres of life -this is the aim of Montessori school education. Specially trained teachers are very valuable here because they can help the children enjoy and also show them the way. And as a result, the child can go through the process of learning in a playful but correct manner where nothing is imposed on the child-student.

The Montessori Method allows the child to experience and comprehend what is all around him or her and thus learn better. This leads to an atmosphere of mutual trust and regard and the bond between the mentor and the child deepens, and the child feels self-confident too. The Montessori education method also involves the following objects and principles through which a child starts learning.

• Materials: There are many objects that often generate a lot of curiosity and attention among children, and the teacher presents them to a child and takes this opportunity to impart teaching as the child becomes engrossed.
• No gap in learning: Tasks are planned in such a way that each new learning step will follow whatever has been taught earlier and hence, there is no learning gap between the tasks or the steps. This is the best teaching method to remove any sense of uncertainty among the child.
• Positive attitude towards learning: As most learning activities relating to Montessori school education are individualized, the child automatically feels a strong attachment towards the process of learning. And it is this attachment that finally leads to regard, which is important for successful education.
• Power of concentration: Montessori education can also help the child understand about concentration.

We Need An Educational System That Addresses Both Aspects Of The Brain

Educated to be Ignorant

Our modern system of education, which is mostly left-brain oriented, often stifles the student's spirit of love, creativity, spontaneity and intuition. This current approach of learning may have greatly contributed to the unrest, disorientation and confusion experienced among so many young people today.Knowledge is structured in the consciousness. Without developing consciousness, the benefits that arise from the acquisition of knowledge are trivial. Instead of teaching young people to unfold their infinite creative potential, they are stuffed with information that has little or no relevance to their lives. By the time they have reached adulthood and are ready to find a job, most of the learnt information has slipped from their minds and will never be used again.

The purely academic approach to learning judges a student's intelligence by his ability to memorize information. This turns the student into a machine, although sometimes a very efficient one. Kids who have 'played' with computers for a year or so have often mastered complex programs and created new ones simply by using their intuition, imagination and resourcefulness. By contrast, those who are forced to learn the same programs are likely to have great difficulties with them and rarely become efficient programmers.

The more a student is encouraged to use his left-brain, which supports the analytical, rational, logical mind, the less he is able to enliven his right brain, which could unfold his creative, artistic and intuitive faculties. An educational system that addresses both aspects of the brain could turn any student into a truly resourceful, self-sufficient, and responsible human being who knows from within himself what is right or wrong. The modern standard system of education makes the students conform to a restrictive social system that is governed by 'cold' figures, rules and money, with only little or no room for human values. Yet life is all about human values.

Consciousness - The Missing Link

Education, as it is presented by today's schools, colleges and universities, causes a division within the student, separating his heart from his mind. Intellectual abilities are favored over those that develop his heart or the creative spirit within him. A purely academic approach to education turns economics into a battlefield where career-oriented people fight for superiority over others. Modern competitiveness has led to the current loss of humanness in society. The consequences of such an education are immeasurable.

All problems of life, whether they are individual, social, national or international are directly linked to one crucial flaw in our educational system - the lack of development of the student's consciousness. This missing link could make modern education complete and fulfilling. Instead of expanding the student's mind through meditation, visualization, intuitive training or other techniques of self-development, it is overloaded with a lot of information that has little or no relevance to his life. This suffocates a young person's creative spirit and stresses him to the point of depression, anxiety and even severe mental and physical disturbances that can propel them to take such 'emergency exits' as recreational drugs, alcohol and violence.

Young people are released from school with a paper in their hands that can determine the rest of their lives. The dependency of a person's destiny on his ability to pass exams is a frightening prospect, particularly when learning by heart has nothing to do with a person's intelligence. I personally never did well at school. Being forced to repeat a grade and just barely making it through the others, I experienced the 14 years of my German school education as a living 'nightmare', both during the day and the night. My fear of failing exams never left me, even during the eight weeks of summer vacation. Apart from the basic skills of writing, reading and counting, I cannot remember anything else that I had learnt. Yet today I believe I am at the height of my creative skills, covering many more fields than I had been presented with during those 14 years of education.

The great minds and successful people of our historic past like Plato, Einstein, Michelangelo, etc. received their insights, skills, and creative power from within themselves and not through an acquired ability to repeat what others had said or created before. Today's system of education prevents the student from using his own infinite potential by emphasizing mainly mechanical approaches of repetitive thinking and learning. Such approaches ignore the important issues of life. For one thing, they may give us the (false) impression that we cannot fulfill our desires other than through struggle of some kind. Most people in the world seem to have made the collective agreement that in order to earn a reasonable living, one has to work hard. The strong competitiveness among people and businesses in our modern societies reinforce this belief system.

Many claim that suffering is necessary or that once you have reached a certain age you are no longer fit enough to earn a living. Ignorance about ourselves and the nature of reality is so ingrained in our collective consciousness that we no longer object to such actually quite nonsensical statements as: "Sickness is a natural part of life", "To err is human" or "Everyone must age and grow old." We even seem to have gathered enough proof to substantiate our beliefs. Wars, famines, statistics on old age, heart disease, cancer and AIDS leave no doubt in our minds that this is how life is supposed to be and there is not much we can do to change that. All these experiences support the validity of our original belief systems, which are based on the old paradigm of understanding human life. However, the time has come to surrender our past and let go of these limitations, because they do not really exist, except in our mind.