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MODERN SCHOOLS ARE
THE BASIS FOR LIFELONG LEARNING
AND SELF-EDUCATION OF STUDENTS
T. Kompirovic P. Zhivkovic T. Radoevic
In the spectrum of the universal life-long concept, the ability for selfeducation is becoming an increasingly important necessity. In the continuous development of science and the growth of information, the development of need for self-education among students is a key task of every school and a pre-condition for lifelong learning.
Lifelong learning and lifelong education have currently acquired great importance. This is indicated by the numerous UNESCO documents which emphasize that in the 21st century each person individually has to be more selfreliable, and have be able to conduct self-evaluation and be responsible for the performance of public goals, and that no hidden talent should remain undiscovered. The UNESCO report entitled “Education is a Hidden Treasure,” prepared under the direction of Jacques Delors, provides the guidelines of the general concept of education, the foundation of which are the four core areas: (a) training to acquire knowledge, (b) training for action (practice), (c) training of society, and (d) life-long learning.
One of the biggest challenges of the modern school is to discover and develop skills for self-education. To perform this task, we should teach students to master the methods and techniques of intellectual work with which students will get access to many sources that lead to acquiring new skills and knowledge. Therefore, even at school, students should be familiar with the experience of independent work.
Research works on androgogy describe self-education as a “social and personal activity of an individual to acquire, expand and enrich knowledge, skills and abilities, regardless of whether an individual does it himself or with the help of an instructor”. (Alibabich, 1994, p. 118) Self-education is a strategy that restores the imbalance between rapid change and vast knowledge that is necessary for their assimilation. In interpreting the essence of self-education two approaches are taken into consideration. One approach focuses on the self-activity and the other focuses on the social environment where an individual exists, and the educational category. Since self-education is both a projection of an individual and the society (which is influenced by and influences the development of a person), then the definition of the essence of this term should include both of the mentioned approaches, and self-education should define both social and personal activity of an individual in order to acquire, promote and multiply knowledge, skills and abilities with the possibility of doing them either independently or with the help of a mentor. Self-education is essentially a learning process where a student plans, organizes, realizes, directs, supervises and evaluates this process independently.
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The development of skills in the process of self-education can be implemented using various techniques: by mobilizing diverse sources of education and linking them into a system of permanent education. School training is expected to create favorable conditions for self-education of students in an efficient way, and for regular use of efficient teaching methods.
Due to the fact that a student is part of the educational process, we should consider the interaction between self-education and teaching. In the modern context, self-organized training is a reflection of the right life orientation of an individual. That is why education is increasingly becoming a form for self-education as an integral part of continuous (lifelong) education today. T. Prodanovic said more than forty years ago that “The process of learning in the broadest sense, and the process of stabilization of a functionally balanced personality, always takes into account both self-education mobility and an individual’s activity." (Prodanovic, 1965, p. 114). Self-education activity is implemented in the very first years of primary school, and the older students get, the more space these activities acquire in students’ learning and self-education. Teaching is not part of self-education, but self-education is part of teaching until teaching becomes obsolete, and training is integrated into continuous education as related to lifelong learning. So selfeducation is not just a secondary mechanical addition to the educational process, but its most important part.
The issue of whether or not it is worth it, and if so, how to synthesize the elements of independent learning, research and discoveries with elements of classical teaching and learning still remains open. In other words, the most pressing question is the introduction of self-educational labor in the process of modern teaching. Today, the self-education approach is used to teach students to independently learn and develop responsibility for decisions related to desire, need and assessment in education, and to encourage students to continue their education without the help of mentors. Independent learning as a process in which a student takes the initiative in determining the needs and learning objectives, and sources of knowledge in the discovery and selection of learning strategies, as well as in the evaluation of the resulting knowledge, is a new concept of self-education that plays an important role. This concept of self-education changes the roles of the teacher and the student. The teacher helps students learn the content that they have chosen themselves, and instead of a regular testing, the student chooses a topic of independent work, and evaluates the results of his or her own work.
Modern education and teaching should encourage high-quality independent work, make it possible to find solutions to different problems, give students the opportunity to participate in work and in its planning. It is necessary to give students the opportunity to actively and independently demonstrate and use their knowledge, to learn from their mistakes and develop their inclinations and abilities. It is obvious that modern society is, and even more so future society, is becoming a society that learns, in other words it is a “learning society". The task of school should be development and promotion of the abilities of independent work and selfeducation. Thus, students become the subject in the center of didactic activities and at the same time start the process of lifelong learning.
The structure of the school, the organization of its operations and responsible training of teachers is not yet capable of changing the nature and
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efficiency of education, teaching and learning. And so the goal is not only to restructure the real components of the school, but also to transform the school into a learning environment within the “learning society”, a society in which both teachers and students together will be able to develop their abilities, and schools will be enabled to promote the need for teaching.
The most radical change of work methods at the future school will be individual teaching, learning, and working with different kinds of educational opportunities for students.
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