Good idea. Sixth form should encourage self-publishing and students could be taught how to before the age of 16. 

ps. I think you're question is phrased wrongly. Students should always be self-learning but maybe no always self-publishing.

Dear Basema Younes,

Generally speaking, age does not play a determinant role in publishing because there are numerous instances of young writers who started writing at the age of 16. Exemplifying this would be Benjamin Lebert's book "Crazy", which was written and published at the age of 16. Although age is not an index reflecting how good of a writer an individual is, publishing agents may be reluctant to take young writers seriously. As such, the young writers need to get an adult to sign the related contracts for them. Nonetheless,  people in the academic world believe that getting engaged in writing is mainly for the fun of it, not for getting it published.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Its quite a good opinion, self learning should start from.the age of 18 atleast.

I think its good idea, but  how to encourage students to do so, but it's important to think about the ways and to seat instructions for this issue.

Thank you all for your answers , and i agree with Anne , my sentence was phrased wrongly maybe .I meant that a 16 year youth mentality qualifies him /her to  start self -learning  , if we refer to some prominent successful figures who made their way alone and followed a target at a very early age .

Neurologists now know that the maturation of the brain continues away from later development than previously thought. Significant changes in brain anatomy and activity are still occurring during young adulthood, especially in regions prior to the frontal lobe which are important for future planning, anticipating future outcomes of single decisions, controlling motivation, comparing risk and reward. In fact, some brain regions and systems do not reach full maturity until the early or mid-20s. Perhaps, but it is not as obvious as it seems, for at least two reasons. First, different brain regions and systems mature along different time scales. There is no age when the adolescent brain becomes an adult brain. The systems responsible for logical thinking mature at a time when people are 16 years old, but those who participate in self-regulation are still developing in adulthood. That is why 16-year-olds are as efficient as adults when it comes to studying, writing and publishing a lot of valuable scientific research.

I agree with you Fikrat , and i think that schools should start this by assigning them at this age with more research work and don't tie them on chairs in classrooms . They need to enjoy their freedom that at the end is tied by their responsibility to deliver a task.

i appreciate all your answers . I think you all agreed that  16 is a suitable age for a  student to be mature and able to start  self-learning 

It is a good idea, but not in all countries. Kids of some countries are not qualified to perform this kind of learning for various reasons.

Se debe considerar la variable HISTORIAL DE ESTIMULACIÓN de cada joven, si esta a sido positiva o negativa desde temprana edad y fortalecida o no en las instituciones educativas nos dara la respuesta a su pregunta.

Estimado Carlos

Las instituciones educativas necesitan reclutar calificado para ayudar a la formación de estudiantes sobre cómo iniciar y luego autoaprendizaje viene el papel de los padres en los maestros.

Gracias por su respuesta y saludos

Why not?  It might be as well, though, for an educator to know what they are doing so they can make judgements on what to take seriously from the Internet and to spot the rubbish and the mendacious.

I agree with you , and i think we all want our children and the new generation to be able to screen this load of information and make good choices independently.

There should be a balance between a guidance led form of learning, and independent learning. But I think people around 16 years of age should definitely be given a chance to study something they choose by their own. The problem with ineffective education is not that people don't have passions, but that they can't get involved in the specific passions of their own, in their own way, at their own pace. 

I am with this idea Martina , that 16 years old should be given a chance to choose their education and know their life objectives. This self -learning responsibility needs to be planted in children from a very early age. The educational system should plan that and get the child understand that education is a must and he/she will be responsible for that by him/herself . In this way people will know that education is not only inside schools but it goes on life-long.

Please remember- and this is my field- that our educational structures are not 'natural', but historical developments over centuries of two original sources: religious education and military training. So, we have this 'normal order' of putting together kids of widely-differing capacities and expecting them to be 'of the same grade', and why we give them marks,be it percentages or letters, as these grew out of criteria used in Medieval monasteries and field commands. Some children, everywhere, are 'gifted' for their age--but this is epiphenomenal to our concept that children of the same age must be 'normal' to others of their same age. The concept is -sometimes- counterproductive: societal and cultural rules tend to normalize us- but humans are not always so willing or even capable of being so-normalized. That's why we occasionally see geniuses like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example.

Thank you very much for this fruitful explanation , and i really benefited a lot from your answer as i did from all the previous answers. I agree with you that we are used to group all children from one age under one umbrella and teach them all in the same way and curriculum .Actually i am working on gifted and talented issue and i am surprised that nothing is done for them yet because  what we see around is like individual efforts and then again they are disputed . I think we need an accurate scale to discover and identify the differences not only in gifted and talented but also in many other categories like them .We need  one unified definition for gifted and for talented who are not yet defined , not yet separated  in addition to the lack of researching in this area.(most of the researches or studies are made in limited places and certain countries ) 

Basema; I agree that we need a uniform definition of gifted and talented; but, I would caution against pressing for 'a single definition' applied across skills areas or forms of intelligence. We might say, for example: "Giftedness constitutes the regular demonstration of skills related to knowledges that exceed the normal capacities of a child at that age, by four or more years"; and possibly then, "Talented constitutes regular demonstration of skills and related knowledges that exceed the normal performance for the age, by two-to-three years", or what-ever. In dealing with the various modes of potential giftedness, please look at Gardner's Intelligences. In considering these different forms of intelligence, we could rank children on each, and then evaluate whether they are performing 1. well-behind/Endangered (more than 4-years below normal); 2. behind/Delayed (2-3 years below); 3. just below normal (1 yr behind); 4. at normal (on-timing) ; 5. just above normal (1 year ahead); 6. above normal/Talented (2-3 years ahead); or 7. well-above normal/Gifted (4 or more years ahead). The problem with this, or course, is that we don't yet have all of these 'base-lines', so we don't know, for example, what is the normal level of skills and knowledge for a fourth grader, regarding the Naturalist intelligence. I am inclined to speculate that ALL of our children have the capacity to be or become 'gifted' in at least one area- but the problem is that we do not show them that, and we don't utilize this to direct them into a satisfying life. Please let me know what  you think, and Thank you.

Dear Lehman ,

I read your answer more than once because i liked your way of analyzing it besides that i discovered my mistake in asking the question . I think what you explained was what i meant exactly but i guess i didn't explain or write my question well . When i said we need a uniformed definition i meant : One unified definition for gifted , and one unified for talented , . I agree with you and i know that this minority faces problems through education because of this one definition that combines the gifted who is brilliant in class and school subjects with the talented who is brilliant in arts and other areas that need different approach and method of learning.

Dear Younes,

So, you are following me on both this and my 'story' work? Great! I appreciate this communication.

What is the current state of organization for schools in Dubai? We tend to have public schools, usually organized into school-districts that are coterminous with state counties. I am guessing that Dubai has sub-regions, but are their smaller divisions that are still not individual towns or cities? How does your system account for different sorts of population within the same school district? The county I live in, for example, is mostly the city of Augusta Georgia, but also includes some very rural areas. These two kinds of school, lumped into the same governmental oversight, can be quite difficult to manage.

I will write for you some facts about schools in Dubai .I think you will be amazed to know that UAE  has the highest number of private English median schools globally (511) .We have schools from the closest point to the very far one because education is compulsory here till grade 12 . The government have built schools in every district in order to make education easier for families and closer to houses. All over UAE , there are public , and private schools . We are a multicultural country and ready to receive any nationality at any time. The education is regulated by Ministry of Education and each emirate lets say mainly the capital Abu Dhabi , Dubai and Sharjah have educational councils to look after schools in that emirate.

Teaching your child life skills is not only important for self-care and sufficiency— it also allows him to feel empowered, works on socialization and reasoning &helps develop healthy self-esteem. If you want to study with other people, you could study for your extra A-level in an evening class. This is a “self-study” option in that it’s something you undertake independently of your school, but your learning is still structured and taught to you by someone else distance learning is that it’s up to you to organize your own time and to motivate yourself to learn.  Thus, teachers can use modern telecommunication technologies including instant messaging and blogging to provide consistent guidance and obtain timely feedback on student engagement and motivation and to promote interaction and collaborative learning. A teacher plays six roles in self-directed learning – content resource, resource locator, interest stimulator, positive attitude generator, creativity and critical thinking stimulator, and evaluation stimulator.