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- Tomorrow's Ancestors by Zelda Poem
Take kids seriously! Image credit: Zelda Poem
This week’s issue of Education & Catastrophe features Zelda Poem, a young creator whose newsletter Tomorrow's Ancestors by Zelda Poem talks about
Future of education
Navigating the Gen Z existence
Practical wisdom from past & present
One day, all that will be left of you will be tales of who you were in this lifetime. You have the power to craft what your offspring will narrate though! It depends on two things:
- How you educate them
- How you’re behaving & what you’re accomplishing while you’re here
Let’s dive into one of Zelda’s recent posts Take kids seriously!.
From Sarah Fitz-Claridge’s writings and the work she does through her organisation Taking Children Seriously, Zelda learnt how coercion inside the family and at school is the root of all the issues that surface in educating kids.
Non-coerced children do not have tantrums; they do not discount the wishes of their parents; they do not steal, lie, commit suicide, intentionally destroy other people’s property, go out alone at 3 a.m. to play in the park, or drink bleach. They do not coerce their parents.
From her friend Jean-Pierre, a father of 5 and former school teacher, Zelda learnt that
A good education doesn’t follow precepts. Instead, educators need to develop a certain set of skills: a sense of observation, care, respect, nuance and intuition.
Kids are both your top source of inspiration and your most important feedback providers. This requires the humility to be proven wrong by children and then to adapt to the child’s needs,
Small things are important. EdTech should pay attention to this: we like to think of innovation as big, sensational changes, but oftentimes, a successful transformation lies in the details.
Taking kids seriously simply means accepting them fully, offering genuine respect and attention to their needs, and loving them unconditionally.
He (Jean-Pierre) speaks about how loving his children without expectations built into each of them a deep quality of trust and gave them the confidence to explore the world as much as needed.
And finally from Ryan Delk, CEO of Primer - an edtech startup trying to rebuild childhood education from A to Z - Zelda learnt the importance of building a system that prepares kids for the real world.
One of the biggest issues with our current school system is that it has become a bubble in which children are completely disconnected from how the world really is.
Primer takes kids seriously by helping them develop the skills they will need to thrive in real life. They teach them creativity and original thinking, while giving them a solid base in core academics.
Primer’s mission to help kids develop the skills they need to thrive in real life is exactly the same as my own startup Doyobi’s. The disconnect between school and the real world is the fundamental problem with modern day education.
Schools exist in a bubble that bear little resemblance to the needs of employers, governments and civil society. Young people graduate from high school and university armed with academic credentials but few practical skills that can help them make their way in the world.
It’s quite remarkable how someone so young can pack so much wisdom in her. Zelda’s newsletter deserves your time and attention. Please give it a read and subscribe to it if you find it useful.
If you enjoyed this week’s issue, you may want to check out issue 34 of Education & Catastrophe ‘Beagle Voyage with Jane Liaw’.
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Till the next issue!