Part of being a productive individual and being a citizen of any country is to learn a way to earn a living and not be a burden to society. Towards this end, all governments are tasked to provide free education to their citizens, and in turn, all citizens have the responsibility to acquire education for their own benefits. Indeed, children go to school to learn how to read, write and do math, and they continue to acquire new knowledge and skills as they grow older. And after graduating from college, and now as adults, they are expected to get a job or try their hands at putting up their own business, and become responsible adults and citizens.
However learning is not supposed to stop after graduation; it should continue long after finishing academic pursuits in school. In fact, adult learning should be one of our priorities as education should be a life long process, never stopping at one particular body of knowledge but going through different disciplines in order to make a person well-rounded and knowledgeable. Of course, this is quite impossible in the real world – no one can know everything there is to know. However, you could always have a reason to want to learn more, and that is to have self-improvement and become qualified for more responsibilities, especially at work where you could aim for a promotion or a salary increase.
Adult learning is quite different from what we have gone through as children and during our teens. Young people would lack self-direction and autonomy that allow learning to proceed unimpeded. Adults are capable of directing themselves towards their real goal in life and have acquired the basics of life experiences and posses practical knowledge about activities related to family relationships and work responsibilities through their previous formal school education. Adults want to learn something that can lead to the realization of their goals and they would be willing to go through any kind of training as long as they are relevant to what they are after. Because they are practical, they can focus on lessons that are proven useful in their line of work.
We can find many adults today who are willing to learn new skills but are hesitant to take the first steps. They think that because they are past their prime, there are no more opportunities for them to acquire new knowledge and much less to live by what they would have learned. They are afraid that they will not find any open doors that would lead them to a renewed career path. But this is just not true. You can find plenty of help when it comes to adult learning opportunities. In fact, you can find many online offers for career advice that is right for you. You can contact them through email or over the phone and ask for career advice.
You can go through self-assessment by asking yourself what exactly is it that you want to achieve at this point in your life. Can you afford to learn new skills and knowledge, or can you afford not to? One relevant question that you should not forget to ask is the timing – is this the right time to take adult education classes? On a personal level, are you disciplined enough to go through the lessons?
Many adult learning courses are designed to take advantages of today’s technology, which usually means through online courses that you could access anywhere in the world where you could bring a computer and there is internet connection. You don’t have to sit inside a physical classroom, if that is what you are afraid of. Some are designed to let you learn through volunteer work at your community, or by doing research in your local library.
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