Everybody agrees that progress depends largely on innovation. But can we teach it? And if so, what are the skills that should be encouraged?
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Children are naturally curious and creative beings. What kind of guidance do they need in order to become the innovators of tomorrow? What should they learn early on so that they might transform our world into a better one?
Studies have shown that not only math, science and technology move things forward. Innovation and outside the box thinking of any kind imply social skills. Empathy plays a crucial role here.
Empathy means seeing things form another person’s perspective. Therefore, in order to know what other people need and want you have to be able to walk a mile into somebody else’ s shoes.
But empathy is not given, something that you are born with or not. It can be taught. It implies a certain kind if vulnerability, an effort to relate with others that needs practice. What exactly should we encourage in our children’s education?
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- They need to learn to question everything, to challenge authority and to ask if there aren’t other possibilities available.
- Children are good at observing things and the attention to details is also crucial to the process of innovating.
- Normally, children easily make friends and this capacity for networking permits later on to have different perspectives from different individuals.
- Children love to experiment, to take things apart and this constant testing is also a key factor when searching for new discoveries.
- Making unexpected connections between ideas and notions is also decisive for creative thinking and children are prone to it.
All this is not something that happens very often in our current educational system. But if we start putting more emphasis on these skills now, our children will have bigger chances to bring about a brighter future. Please share this!
