Which method shall we adopt for our children? Montessori? Glen Doman?Kumon? Waldorf? Mental Math? Right brain, Left Brain? The choices out there are many! But we are practitioners of none. Here are our reasons:

1. Because we adopt the understanding that children have the capacity to practice self-directed learning with little intervention from well-meaning adults. When we stop viewing kids as helpless learners who have no self capabilities to learn without adult help, we shall begin to see the beauty of the evolution of the human mind! When we respect their minds like we respect life, we shall see that their minds are fine as they are. We do not need to fill them with all sorts of “educational enrichment” to enrich their minds. The only people we are enriching are those who make money out of our fears and insecurities!

2. Because we are living the 21st Century lifestyles with 21st Century challenges, not the 18th, 19th or 20th! We need to understand the history of educational developments, their reasons for their creation and development, and the time for their demise. We need to understand how our current problems have been shaped by our past, and how the present is shaping our future. Those who despise current developments in learning and working will only look to the past for solutions. But to truly prepare for a future that is speedily appearing in front of us everyday and every minute, we need to see the future from where we currently stand, and be the changing agents for posterity. Only then can we effectively prepare our children for a future that we can’t fully predict. The enormous changes that is happening everyday around the world is a preamble of the tsunami wave that is going to engulf the world – the age of Creativity and Innovations!

3. Because life will never be the same again in this new Century of sweeping changes in education, in economy and in the way countries are run. The question we need to ask is: what kind of knowledge will our children need, to be better prepared to face their future? What kind of skills will they need to be relevant to their future careers? What kind of power will there be that can protect them from the often harmful and irrational ways of the world? The answers cannot be found if we only keep looking outside for the solutions. Because the answers are sitting inside us – in the peripheries of our unchartered minds – the untapped wisdom that each and every every one of us possess that when combined together, can have the potential to create a common wisdom, or an uncommon wisdom, depending on how you look at it!

So instead of asking others, “Which method shall we adopt?” we should be asking ourselves, “What approaches shall we create or innovate?”

Because if we cannot create new thoughts or systems or approaches that are relevant to our present generation of future leaders, their future will be bleak indeed! Our task, as informed and educated parents, is to help our children make their way to their future! Do not make them dig their way back to the past!