Making Kids Future Smart
Making Kids ‘Future Smart’ ®
By Wendy Berliner
Parents are the most important people in children’s lives and the effect they have in helping those children develop good intellectual habits makes a dramatic difference to how they do at school and in life. The words of C.J. Simister, a world expert on thinking skills in a talk to GEMS parents in Dubai this week.
Jane, Director of the Cognitive Development Programme at Northwood College in the UK, was in Dubai to work with teachers and students at GEMS Wellington International School but gave a one night only talk to a rapt audience of parents from across the GEMS schools network in the UAE as part of the GEMS parent engagement programme.
In an evening in which she gave a raft of practical tips and advice to parents on how they could develop thinking skills in their children, she stressed again and again that getting good grades and passing examinations was not enough in a world where the pace of change was so fast.
She showed a thought provoking video 'Did you Know?' which made it abundantly clear that children at home and at school are being prepared for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that have not yet been invented . You can watch the video below.
“The messages we are getting from universities and business are that kids are not coming out with the kind of skills they needs for the unpredictable life beyond school,” said Jane. “Regurgitated facts are not enough. Far more important than what we know,it is how we learn that will matter most”
“As parents we can’t rely on asking teachers ‘how many A grades is my child going to get?’– and I am not knocking high grades at all - they still have a hugely important role. What we should be asking as well is ‘is my child developing the flexibility, the creativity, the initiative , the confidence and the communication skills that will be needed in the future?’”
What can parents do to get their children future ready?
Start with children as young as possible to develop good intellectual habits regardless of intelligence, said Jane. Teach children to take the right kind of risk, to enjoy solving problems and how to learn from failure. These qualities make you ‘future- smart’,” she said.
She then gave a great series of practical tips and ideas ( more on this later) to put children on the thinking skills road and to improve their communication skills. “Intelligence is often judged by how good someone is at communication. How we talk to our kids will mould those skills. Take time out from your busy schedules and decide what qualities you would like to see your children develop.”
She urged parents not to squash the differences that their young children had to try to make them fit into society. “By fitting in your child becomes less likely to stand out, “ she counselled. “Employers and universities are saying young people lack initiative and creativity. We must encourage this in our children.”
Top UK universities, she said, were increasingly setting thinking skills tests to differentiate between candidates with equally high exam grades. Oxford University has published a list of the kind of questions which candidates cannot revise content for – they need good thinking skills for a candidate to be able to give their unique reply. The brightest students with the highest grades can freeze and flunk an interview like this if they have not learned how to think well. (For the intriguing questions that Oxford University admission tutors have asked, click here).
Parents needed to encourage what is known as a growth mindset – a habit of mind that didn’t see intelligence as a fixed commodity but something to be used to enjoy change and challenge, to take considered risks and to learn from things that went wrong. Bright girls particularly, she said, were prone to avoiding risk and keen on staying within their comfort zone , repeating the things they knew they could do well because they had developed a fixed mindset.
By resisting the temptation to always talk about what grades their children could expect, parents could help build a growth mindset in praising the strategies their children took to solve problems rather than plain achievement, and to discuss how these strategies turned out and what had been learned from them.
“We must be able to see imperfections and celebrate them. As parents we must be fabulous role models. The good news is this means you need to be far, far from perfect. Talk to your children about situations you find difficult and the risks you take on a day to day basis,” she said.
>How to ensure the brightest future for your child
Parents need to help children develop 16 secrets of success, which include:
- >Curiosity
- Ability to sort sense from nonsense
- Flexibility of mind
- Considered risk taking
- Creativity
- Inventiveness
- Attentiveness
- Reasoning
Jane offered her audience some terrific ideas to develop these areas easily at home. To see a few of them, click here.
