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As our world is emerging at an accelerated pace, the future would be here earlier than our expectation. The emerging new world is throwing challenges which were not heard of or even imagined. Our kids have to be ready and capable to address these challenges and build a better world for themselves and for coming generations. While academic is a critical part to prepare our children, unfortunately only school education is not enough to prepare our kids to be ready and with the challenges of tomorrow.
One of the most important skills required for the coming future is “Innovation”
Unfortunately many of us associated innovation with “lighting of a bulb” and think all of a sudden an innovative idea comes to few people as a spark. But it is not true. Innovation is not a magic happening at any single moment but is the outcome of a structured process of exploration, ideation, trials, and learning. For the outside world, it may look like that few people are innovative and we think that they have the special ability but these skills can be mastered by anyone with hard work and perseverance.
Enabling Environment: We parent must create a supportive environment to enable innovation. School book and classroom are not the only places where learning happens. The new generation should be allowed to spend time beyond classroom and electronic gadget. These interactions with the real world will make them understand the real issue being faced and they will come up with own answers.
Accept Uncertainty: As a parent, we must show the willingness to accept the uncertainty. The classroom teaching promotes structured and ordered learning with task-based evaluation. But some amour of messiness and acceptance of ambiguity fosters innovation.
Appreciate Curiosity: Being curious is the first step towards being innovative. While newborn has inherent curiosity and exploratory nature. Somewhere during formal education, this quality is discouraged which may not be intentional. We should encourage kids to be inquisitive and curious.
Make Interconnections: Most of the innovation happens on the interface of subjects. This needs kids to learn the interconnection and ability to connect the dots. We must ask them to explore the unexplored area, apply to learn in a new paradigm and make inferences which are not visible to common people.
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