Brilliant Minds

A lot of you are familiar with my frequent status updates on Facebook, where I put up snippets from conversations held between my son and daughter, aged 7 and 4 respectively. I know that most of you find these conversations entertaining, humorous and some even tell me how smart or witty these kids are. I thank you all for the feedback and as much as I do find them amusing myself, there is an element of analysis involved in a lot these conversations.

A child has a mind where he is curious and finds a mysterious side to the most mundane things. What we must ensure is to never kill this thirst for the mysterious. We must encourage their minds to explore the world as if it has infinite discoveries and not educate them in a 2D world, rather allow them to enter the 3rd or even 4th dimension. “The world is your oyster” – a phrase we have all heard and used, but very few actually put to use.

Children have this ability to ask you for answers to questions which quite often just don’t have an answer because “it is what it is” and we are left stumped. I will give you an example of my own son. “Does a rainbow come out after the rain because the sun is happy so it is smiling to the world?” A question and an answer in the same sentence!  I can assure you most parents reading this are full of examples, and I urge you to write these down next time. I really do feel in such questions lie the vivid imagination of all children. We must not suppress such questions, it’s important to participate in their fantasies. I actually encourage my son to write stories about his dreams and try to understand why he feels the way he does. 

Is there always a correct answer?

Under the Spanish education system in which our children are being schooled today, there is little concern for what the child is really asking. The fundamental priority is given to inculcating values, rules, a common base where there are fixed answers to the basic questions they ask. I don’t disagree with this approach of course, but perhaps an added bracket needs to be created in the curriculum. This was recently addressed in the 3rd Congress for Brilliant Minds in Madrid. (III Congreso de mentes brillantes). The president of the education institution SEK and Vice President of the Universidad Camilo José Cela – Nieves Segovia concluded that under the current system only the student fails because we only evaluate the student and not the teacher or the system. She called the Spanish system a failed model. 

Segovia clearly emphasised the road to take is one where the student must be given preparation for the uncertain possibilities and not just the certain ones. It’s important to consider the world as a web of connections and the education system must focus not just on a critical thoughts process of the child, but also allow room for a process which involves higher capacities that may otherwise be suppressed; to be interactive, creative and free from boundaries.  

Einstein used to say "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society which honours the servant and has forgotten the gift” This is the gift children have and it is our duty to see the world through their eyes and help them to discover complexities through simplicities. As teachers it is more important to ask their students what they think, rather than tell them what to think.

How are video games and television stunting our children’s 3rd dimension?

I will give you a clear viewpoint on this matter, which will sum up in simple terms my opinion on the subject. "Where possible, it’s important that the games we pick, should not be battery operated or have buttons for that matter. The batteries must be born within the child. It is not the games which must work, it’s the child that has to be activated thanks to the game he plays” Catherine L’Ecuyer 

When you over stimulate a child externally through television or video games, this starts to overshadow the child’s capacity to wonder and suffocates the creativity and self - motivation of the child. In addition it also saturates the child’s basic senses and impedes the child from perceiving the less noisy stimuli. Ultimately, these over stimulated children actually bore easily as they are constantly seeking new stimulus and are addicted to the noise that these new technologies are artificially providing them with. An example would be the perception of a child in seeing an animal on TV and how they see these animals on a real farm. The smell, the feeling and even the visual stimulus is completely jaded for a child who has only ever seen animals through a screen.

Do you think it’s fair that the panda your child identifies with belongs to an animated 3D film and not the panda he can see and probably touch at his local zoo? 

A real life example of a creative genius

I live in Barcelona, so for me our local creative genius has always been Antonio Gaudi.  As a child Gaudi kept very ill health due to his rheumatism, and this disabled him from playing like a normal child. His mother spent long hours with him, taking him for walks in the woods and provided him with endless hours of direct contact with nature. 

As an adult Gaudi recalls nature to be his first window towards wanting to discover the mysteries of life and nature was in fact his inspiration for his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia. He was able to translate the beauty of the divine and bring it to the streets and ultimately elevate through the skies this wonderful cathedral we all admire and are in complete awe of. Gaudi did not go to day care at the age of 4 months, he did not have toys that spoke to him, nor did he watch Baby Einstein. His guide as a child was his mother and his best friend was the silence in the nature he was subjected to.

The importance of home education

Gaudi spent long hours with his mother, who dedicated her time on him simply teaching him moral values and although these values have little to do with an academic education, the link comes in when a child with high moral values will certainly question the academics far more than a child who has not been allowed to express his needs and wants. If you take this from a business point of view, well we must consider the child as the client and address his needs first, in order to provide him with the correct solution / education, thus enabling him to flourish as an adult. Spiritual education is vital as this also helps the child in deciding whether his creative ideas are tangible and acceptable in a morally sound society. As a parent we must understand that 80% of a child’s moral education is received at home, which means it is imperative we dedicate this time towards them. 

In conclusion I’d like to stress that we all must keep the creative child in ourselves alive because it is far more difficult to generate ideas and then develop conclusions from them, rather than have your ideas set and then look for arguments to defend these ideas. The most successful companies in the world spend millions of dollars on research and development teams, which allows them to think ahead of the market trends and the results are your Apple, Google and Samsung. Need I say more?  

Our children are the best thinkers and have an innate ability to be rational without bias. Let’s allow them to invent and discover to then teach them with discipline. If you have a brilliant mind living at home, let him shine.