Is it even self taught f a program is used? I always thought self taught was kids just picking it up frill signs and daily life....
Interesting question. I never really thought about this in depth but if I used a site similar to Starfall in concept to learn a new language (not that I'd ever manage to do that), I'd still consider that as independent learning. It's really not that different from a child picking up a calculus book and teaching himself/herself except that it has a lot of visual-auditory materials. I tend to think that self-teaching does not require that you discover everything from scratch but you learn without the guidance from or support of a teacher.
It's hard to trust young children to know how to learn; after all, that level of metacognition isn't supposed to kick in until much later but if they can drive their own learning process, that is a wonderful thing. I try to support my DD by keeping our apartment organized so that she knows where all the library books are as well as hunting down cheap used copies of old and new classics for our home library. Whenever I try to help beyond that, DD rejects whatever I suggest so I've learned my lesson to keep out of her way.
