Primarily - motivation and discipline. Obviously motivation is what gets people to start something new. However, once people have made that first step, they'll

Primarily - motivation and discipline. Obviously motivation is what gets people to start something new. However, once people have made that first step, they'll realize that learning is not instantaneous and requires effort. This is where individuals need the discipline to continue learning. Personally, I think this is one of the reasons why we have such great success learning as children - we're forced to. Not necessarily personal discipline, but anyone would have an easier time learning if they were forced into 5-8 hours a day classes. Discipline and lack of penalty is also why I think free learning materials suffer their high drop-off rates. The low barrier of entrance means anyone can join and the lack of penalizing you for not practicing means you can just stop. Secondary - western education argues against memorization for "higher level" learning. Knowing all the syntax structures of a programming language doesn't mean you know how to code, so there is a de-emphasis on learning them. However, I agree that you do need some degree of memorization to serve as your foundation for higher level knowledge. As someone else said, imagine trying to write an essay without knowing any words. My PhD research is actually focusing on this to identify students that need that foundational knowledge. Finally - our "fear of incompetence". I believe we don't want to be viewed as unable to do something and if we are presented with something that challenges our competence, we avoid it in lieu for things we do excel in. Children are given a sort of "free pass" because we know they don't know things.