Word-humanitarian foundations of self-education: biographical time reflection

The article reflects the author's view on self-education in three facets: as necessary element of human's life, as the biographical time dynamic reflection (from early childhood to old age), and as informal mode of lifelong learning. The main way of analysis is the combination of scientific reflection and reflection in the process of self-observation and analysis. Giving assessment to personal biographical time and the facts of her own life, the author reveals the essence, principles, sources, and individual direction of self-education. Self-education is shown as a condition of personal and scientific development and the beneficial factors of self-education in comparison with institutional forms of lifelong learning are evaluated. Self-education as the manifestation of a person's initiative, commitment, responsibility overcomes the inertia of life existence and routine of professional activities. The author tried to show word-humanitarian essence of self-education, revealing the importance of reading belles-lettres, study of scientific texts, perfection of professional discourse and creation of his/her own scientific writings in life and work of a higher school professor.