#005 - Preparing Children for Success in the Real World 👦🌍💼
In this episode of Neuroeducation, host Angie explores the concept of self-directed learners and the importance of building skills that will enable children to be independent and successful in the future. She challenges the traditional education system's approach of treating children as if they will be children forever and emphasizes the need for innovation and fostering a growth mindset. Angie discusses the end goal of education and how it should prepare children to become self-sufficient adults. Join her as she revolutionizes children's learning and shares effective teaching techniques, parenting strategies, and educational advocacy.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:10 - The Importance of Building Skills for Independence
00:01:16 - Gradual Increase of Freedom and Responsibility
00:02:31 - Teaching Children Skills for Real-World Success
00:03:37 - Ineffective Punishments in Education
00:05:15 - Addressing Mental Health and Stress in Education
00:07:26 - Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation in Education
00:08:32 - The Power of Effort-Based Affirmations
00:09:48 - Embracing Mistakes and Failing Forward
00:10:52 - Long-Term Benefits of Praising Effort and Building Skills
Transcript
Sometimes I feel like in our education system, we're treating
Speaker:children as if they're going to be children forever. And if you have
Speaker:children who are too scared to make a mistake and
Speaker:too scared to try something harder, we're basically scaling
Speaker:back the process of innovation for our children. How can I ensure
Speaker:that what we're doing right now is
Speaker:building a skill that will allow them to leave
Speaker:and be independent and succeed when they're on their own? Welcome
Speaker:to Neuroeducation, where we're exploring the neuroscience of
Speaker:how to switch on the brain to supercharge learning. I'll be sharing
Speaker:with you innovative teaching techniques, effective parenting strategies,
Speaker:and educational advocacy. I'm your host, Angie Dee.
Speaker:Together, let's revolutionize children's learning. Today,
Speaker:we're going to be talking about self-directed learners
Speaker:and what is the most important characteristics
Speaker:that our children need when they get out in the world. Often
Speaker:in education, we can be looking right here at the
Speaker:child in grade four, in grade five, or in grade six,
Speaker:grade 10, grade 12 and beyond. But
Speaker:we focus on that level of education
Speaker:and just that grade without thinking about
Speaker:what's the end goal? What is the end goal here? So
Speaker:what is the end goal for education? We
Speaker:will have children that become adults that
Speaker:walk out of the doors of education, out
Speaker:of the educational halls. And even as parents, we
Speaker:will have children that will walk out the doors of our home and
Speaker:they will go on to lead their lives. And sometimes I
Speaker:feel like in our education system, we're treating children
Speaker:as if they're going to be children forever. When we look
Speaker:at teaching children skills, Sometimes I'm
Speaker:amazed that the way that we teach a child in
Speaker:grade 4 and in grade 7 and
Speaker:grade 10, I still see us teaching children in
Speaker:the same manner in grade 12. They
Speaker:don't have a lot of freedom. They're still being told
Speaker:to do certain things every single lesson, every
Speaker:single week, and they're not given enough freedom because
Speaker:what we want to do is slowly prepare them for
Speaker:the real world. And we want to be able to give them
Speaker:greater and greater freedom. A lot of adolescents have
Speaker:said they didn't feel prepared for the real world because we
Speaker:taught them like children and we didn't give
Speaker:them that freedom. And then day one,
Speaker:as soon as they leave school, they have a hundred percent freedom. So
Speaker:where is the graduation of freedom? Maria
Speaker:Montessori talks about this concept of freedom
Speaker:within limits. That as a child shows they are
Speaker:more and more responsible, we give them greater and greater freedom. And
Speaker:I think this is incredibly important in parenting and
Speaker:in teaching. Why? Because when
Speaker:the children walk out those doors for the final time, then
Speaker:life is up to them. They have to make their decisions
Speaker:based on their own inner compass, their intuition, their
Speaker:guidance, their values and their morals. When
Speaker:we punish children in schools, I'm amazed that
Speaker:often the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Maybe
Speaker:a child is bullying, well you
Speaker:get a detention. What is that teaching them in
Speaker:life? Is that teaching them to be more compassionate? Is
Speaker:that teaching them about how that affected maybe let's say poor
Speaker:Jane who was bullied? Or does it just give them an arbitrary
Speaker:punishment that has nothing related to what they've done? In
Speaker:the same respect we have the
Speaker:same thing that happens for other punishments. Maybe you're
Speaker:not wearing the right uniform. I remember when I went to
Speaker:high school, I was always late. Unfortunately,
Speaker:after multiple times of being late to high school, I was giving
Speaker:an afterschool detention. Did it help me with my punctuality? No.
Speaker:When I got to university, one of my friends, Jodie, who's
Speaker:always on time, I asked her, I said, how are you on time? all
Speaker:the time. And so she said, well, this is
Speaker:how I do it. Wherever I need to be. I make sure I'm going to be
Speaker:there 10 minutes early. And then I give myself a five
Speaker:minute buffer before getting into the car. Just in case
Speaker:I forget my keys or I forget something, I've got to go back in the house. So
Speaker:sure enough, I implement Jody's very simple
Speaker:instructions and my punctuality improves at least
Speaker:by 50% much better than afterschool detention. So
Speaker:Here we have skills in learning,
Speaker:academic learning that they're going to use maybe in university or
Speaker:maybe in their creating their own businesses that we
Speaker:can give children to have greater and greater freedom and
Speaker:greater and greater responsibility, teaching them the skills of what
Speaker:they're going to use for life. So in grade
Speaker:10, usually in Montessori schools, A
Speaker:lot of the time children begin to do much more
Speaker:self-directed projects. They're deciding what
Speaker:they're going to be learning about and they're setting themselves up for
Speaker:what they want to be learning after they leave school. In
Speaker:the same respect we have life skills that we want to teach children. Sadly
Speaker:in Australia we have an incredibly high rate
Speaker:of suicide and teenage depression. What
Speaker:are we not teaching our children in schools to be able to
Speaker:deal with these kind of stresses that they will face in
Speaker:life? If we give children greater opportunities
Speaker:to be able to deal with certain pressures and maybe have
Speaker:to organize their own time and their
Speaker:projects, when they become adults and when they walk out
Speaker:those doors in the final days of schools or at
Speaker:home from parents, we know that they're going to have skills
Speaker:to be able to manage their time, to organise themselves
Speaker:and to deal with the problems of the world. If
Speaker:you have a adolescent, I
Speaker:would be always thinking of them as
Speaker:what's going to be happening in five years. Okay. I'm going to deal with this situation now,
Speaker:but maybe I might be able to give them a punishment and not let them do
Speaker:something. Or I can be thinking, how
Speaker:can I ensure that what we're doing right
Speaker:now is building a skill that
Speaker:will allow them to leave and
Speaker:be independent and succeed when they're on their own. In
Speaker:the same right our current teaching method of
Speaker:education has basically formed
Speaker:a way of an extrinsically motivated
Speaker:feedback response. If you do well on a test in
Speaker:primary school, maybe you get a sticker. If you do
Speaker:well in a quiz, maybe you
Speaker:get something on a star chart. All of these things are outside of
Speaker:the child. Intrinsic motivation is
Speaker:something where motivation comes from the inside. And
Speaker:in Montessori education, ironically, there's
Speaker:no stickers, no star charts, no reward
Speaker:charts. And people say, well, how can children be motivated in
Speaker:this classroom if they're not
Speaker:getting any rewards for doing the right thing? Well,
Speaker:what we've discovered actually in psychology, that
Speaker:the more you attune the child to their own intrinsic motivation,
Speaker:to learn something to become better, to reach a
Speaker:goal, ask them what are their goals for different subjects, where do
Speaker:they want to improve, that the better the learning
Speaker:is and the more effort they put in. And the
Speaker:same thing goes with tests that they have basically looked
Speaker:at two groups of children that were given
Speaker:extrinsic and an extrinsic reward and
Speaker:also extrinsic motivation. So these two groups of children
Speaker:that they studied were given a problem to solve.
Speaker:And the first group of children, when they finished that problem and
Speaker:they solved it, they were given a lots
Speaker:of congratulatory verbal affirmations of
Speaker:saying, good work, good job. You're so smart. And
Speaker:the other group, They praised the
Speaker:effort involved. So they said, wow, I
Speaker:really saw you trying really hard. You're really trying to work that
Speaker:out. You're trying to figure out those problems. Of
Speaker:these two groups, when they were asked if
Speaker:they wanted to do another problem that was even harder, the
Speaker:first group that got the extrinsic affirmation, 90% of
Speaker:them said no, not interested. They didn't want to. And
Speaker:every single child in the intrinsic group
Speaker:where got given affirmed for their effort all
Speaker:said yes, they wanted to try something harder and something
Speaker:more difficult. So what is that showing us? When
Speaker:we are allowing the child to
Speaker:see what's their inner effort that they're putting into something and
Speaker:we're affirming the effort that goes into the process rather than
Speaker:the end result or rather than their intelligence or academic results
Speaker:in something, it helps them come back to that inner
Speaker:in a compass where they can guide themselves.
Speaker:And when it comes to real life, to
Speaker:achieve anything greater life, we know that we have to
Speaker:make mistakes. We're going to make mistakes and we're going to learn
Speaker:from it and try again. We call it failing forward, learning
Speaker:and trying again, learning and trying again. But if you have children who
Speaker:are too scared to make a mistake and too scared
Speaker:to try something harder, we're basically scaling
Speaker:back the process of innovation for our children. So what we can
Speaker:do is always make sure we praise the
Speaker:effort rather than the end result and we can
Speaker:think long term what's going to benefit our children
Speaker:in terms of these skills, academically, emotionally,
Speaker:socially, long term when they walk out those doors of
Speaker:our school rooms and also of our homes. Thank you so
Speaker:much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this podcast
Speaker:and it would be an amazing help to us
Speaker:at the podcast if you leave a review. at Apple
Speaker:Podcasts or on Spotify or subscribe
Speaker:on YouTube. There'll be more information below in all of the links. Thanks
