“I don’t believe in the idea that we get our children ready for the future. We get them ready to create the future. The future is created by our children. The future is not inherited by our children.”
Welcome to Vanguard Gifted Academy’s education blog. This is installment one in our series Educating Children for the Future. I’m Yong Zhao from the University of Kansas and also the University of Melbourne. Today, I’ll be covering how to shift the paradigm in education.
What Should Children Learn?
When discussing educating children for their future, we need to examine what we do today. I’ve been thinking about three things. The first one is: What should children learn? There are so many new topics, new skills and knowledge that others deem necessary in the 21st century, and there are many new subjects as well. But I think the most important thing is not so much trying to prescribe new goals for children.
Instead, we should make education strength-based and passion-driven — that is, we should assume our children are natural-born learners, that they are diverse learners, and that they are intentional learners.
Because all three are true, in accordance with human nature. We humans know that we want to learn something meaningful, and we want to learn something that matters to us. So we first need to think about personalization.
Every child has a “jagged” profile with one-of-a-kind abilities and qualities. What we need to do is help them deliver their strength to become unique and great.
What Problems Are Worth Solving?
The second thing I’ve been thinking about has to do with pedagogy. All good learning starts by identifying problems worth solving. It is not only solving problems or creating products — it is knowing what’s worth solving. Our children need to identify the kinds of problems people in the world have and ask themselves, “How can we solve that?” Since every child has a unique jagged profile, they have strengths as well as weaknesses. So they should use their strengths to help solve other people’s weaknesses. And then they should outsource their weaknesses to other people who can help them. This is a very complex process, one I call the entrepreneurial and creative process.
How Does Learning Connect to Others?
The third paradigm shift in education requires us to reimagine our learning context as globally connected. COVID-19 has made it possible for a lot of children and teachers to work online. It also has taught many parents and students that learning is globally connected. So what we need to do is make sure we can learn from others globally, we can learn with others globally, and we can learn for others globally. Learning for others is essential. That is, we have to create solutions to other people’s problems.
Why Shift the Paradigm in Education?
Overall, I believe the future of education will first be about finding a job and sustaining your life. The second big challenge is: How does everybody become happy? Happiness is key. Happiness — genuine happiness — comes from self-actualization and self-transcendence. That is, to realize who you are and your unique strength in service of the world and other people. So when all human beings are interdependent and interconnected, we can achieve a better future for all of us. And we can get closer to this goal by taking on a passion-driven, problem-centered and globally focused perspective in education.
Thank you for reading. We hope that Vanguard Gifted Academy’s educational blog will continue to be a resource for you. If you have any comments or questions about what we discussed today, please visit our website or call us at 224-213-0087.
Please enjoy our next entry when Dr. Judy Jankowski, a Head of School in the Chesapeake Bay area, writes on creativity and the Torrance test.