INSPIRATION: What can we learn from children?

Posted on by expeditiondoctorlong

Listen to 12 year old Adora Svitak mesmerise a room of TED delegates.

child as teacher

So what can we learn from children? Answer …… anything, if we only just listen. Children have not been stifled by years of education and work place environments where they are only minimal solutions. The younger they are the greater their divergent thinking, they can think of multiple solutions to one problem if given the opportunity. They are not scared to dream the unfathomable and often see no reason why greatness can not be achieved. That is until we ignore them as teachers and tell them to sit down, be quite and answer the questions on the work sheet.

Adora is a strong advocate for youth empowerment, having published 3 books and the first at the age of 4. See her website for more information:

“COMING OF AGE IN A DIGITAL WORLD, YOUNG PEOPLE LIKE ME ARE

redefining ourselves. We are not stock characters in a storybook: the victims in distress waiting to be rescued when the grown-ups arrive, or the narcissistic villains of the “me generation.” Our world is no fairytale. And yet perhaps one of the most precious things about people my age is that, even as we break free from the dichotomous assumptions about us as characters within the story, we strive for the same ending. You see, in all the naïveté, or hope, of my youth, I want to believe—no matter how great the conflicts, how vicious the problems—that our story will end with the same oft-heard line as so many childhood tales: “and so they lived happily ever after.” (http://www.adorasvitak.com) 

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