It's possible to achieve a high level of knowledgement in various subjects?

Open Forum in English
1

I´ve listened a Steve’s Podcast (#232 - Learning to Speak), where he told to Mark at the end something like “Because the educational system…”, referring to the reason why older people speaks better than younger people. Sadly, I don’t figured out the continuation of thought in the following chats.

Steve are a tough critical of system education, as I’m.

I want to ask to Steve and all fellows whom read this post about overall learning process, not necessarily about language learning, I mean.

In my opinion, the educational system today do not allow the learners to think. In Brasil (where I was born and live for until today), the main concern of the educationals institution is give to the learners the diploma and make money, without make nobody think throughout the period of college.

My question is: in yours opinions, it’s possible to someone really interested in get knowledge achieve/to get it, on her/his own? I mean, nowadays we’ve all sort of knowledgement in the Internet and Libraries, unlike was 100 years ago.

If we can learn a language, which is a very complex thing to get (but is not impossible to do), because is not only about words or phases. Beyond all, there a different culture, habits, thinkings and so forth to learn, or, in other words, to understand.

I’m sorry if this do not made sense, or if do not made clear because my actual poor English. But here is the place to make mistakes and share ideas, is not?

Cheers

2

I think we need to be independent learners and encourage our young people in school to learn on their own and not depend on teachers. Unfortunately schools and teachers prefer that students depend on them.

3

Something more related to languages: Professor Arguelles has proposed a language school which I find to be very interesting. At this school, the languages themselves wouldn’t actually taught directly. The idea is to teach indiviuduals language learning techniques. Combined with various other things like focus and logical training for a broad development of the mind. I’m hoping that this one day gets off the ground, because I’d go in a heartbeat.

I wish that schools would take education seriously and teach people to learn, then give them time to specialise in whatever they felt they enjoy most, while getting a basic education in other facets, which they can pick up later if they felt the need to take to a higher level.

Teachers still have a place, I think. But, the current position they take is not a positive one, in my opinion. They need to be well versed in actual learning themselves. If you don’t know how to learn yourself, how on earth can you teach that to somebody else? That was my feeling while going to school!