How to Raise Brilliant Children According to Science

A new developmental framework, created by professors Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, suggests that the skills people really ned to succeed  being social, navigating relationships, being citizens in a community. The new skills that will help your children achieve success in school, and out of school involve being social, navigating relationships, being citizens in a community. We need to change the whole definition of what success in school, and out of school, means.  Success involves being social, navigating relationships and being citizens in a community.

The 6 skills children (and adults) need to develop:

collaboration,

communication,

content,

critical thinking,

creative innovation and

confidence.

The authors explain how these 6 skills relate to one another and how to instill them at different ages.

The first, basic, most core is collaboration. Collaboration is everything from getting along with others to controlling your impulses so you can get along and not kick someone else off the swing.

Communication comes next, because you can’t communicate if you have no one to communicate with. This includes speaking, writing, reading and that all-but-lost art of listening.

Content is built on communication. You can’t learn anything if you haven’t learned how to understand language, or to read.

Critical thinking relies on content, because you can’t navigate masses of information if you have nothing to navigate to.

Creative innovation requires knowing something. You can’t just be a monkey throwing paint on a canvas. It’s the 10,000-hour rule: You need to know something well enough to make something new.

And finally, confidence: You have to have the confidence to take safe risks.  There isn’t an entrepreneur or a scientific pioneer who hasn’t had failures. And if we don’t rear children who are comfortable taking risks, we won’t have successes.

Here is how it works:  For example,  critical thinking. First you have to have content, right?

Most people at their desks at work have papers, books, magazines all over the place. Information is doubling every 2 1/2 years. We have to figure out how to select and synthesize the information we need.

So, at Level 1, we call it “seeing is believing.” If someone tells you alligators live in sewers in New York City, you buy it.

At Level 2, you see that truths differ; there are multiple points of view.

You learn Columbus discovered America, then you learn that there are alternative narratives — the Native Americans already lived here. This is kind of when critical thinking starts.

At the third level, we have opinions. All of us have used the phrase “they say.” That will get you into trouble because it shows little respect for science or evidence.

At Level 4, we talk about evidence, mastery, the intricacies of doubt.  When we’re getting to be more at Level 4, we’ll see the gaps and the holes in a line of reasoning. Critical thinking is what leads to the next breakthroughs in any area.

If you’re going to have a kid who engages in critical thinking, you’re not going to shut them down when they ask a question. You’re not going to settle for “because.” You’re going to encourage them to ask more. And you want them to understand how other people think.

Read more…http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/05/481582529/how-to-raise-brilliant-children-according-to-science?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160710&utm_campaign=bestofnpr&utm_term=nprnews