Children Make World Peace

John Hunter invented the World Peace Game. With that, he posed real world problems to his students for them to solve on their own. Through the World Peace Game, he let his students have a glimpse of the problems plaguing the world at the moment and taught them empathy. What intrigued me more was how his students came up with solutions to save the world. They approached the problem through their lenses and seriously perhaps we could consider their way of solving the problems!

Another demonstration of how children can get together to solve problems on their own, without adults' intervention.

Kids Can Teach Themselves

Sugata Mitra showed with his "Hole in the Wall" experiments conducted in slumps in India that children can teach themselves.

Basically, he put up computers with Internet connectivity on the streets in slumps in India. Without any manuals or guide on using the computers, the children on the streets got all curious with the computers and began exploring and learning themselves. He brought his experiment to different countries and found that it was regardless of nationality, language and whether the children came from rich or poor families.

Subsequently, Sugata Mitra brought his experiment to the classroom where he assigned children into groups, provided them with access to the Internet and gave them a topic to research into. He even tried this with Italian children who don't even know what he was talking about. The result was astonishing. Children who were interviewed picked up knowledge that were way beyond their age. They could articulate profound knowledge with great confidence.

Sugata Mitra went on to prove that the knowledge that was obtained was retained. Tests were given to a group of students after his experiment and they could score as well as they did during the experiment itself. Some students got even better scores as they continued to google and find out more on their own after the experiment.

Lesson learnt: Children can learn very well autonomously in groups, with access to the Internet.

Parenting in the West

There is this article on Facebook that describes the parenting style of a western daughter-in-law through the eyes of Chinese mother-in-law (MIL). The boy is 3 years old.

Mentioned in the article:

Mummy prepared breakfast and left it to boy to eat by himself.

MIL wanted to help boy to tie his shoelaces. Mummy stopped her, saying that, if the boy felt uncomfortable he would learn to wear his socks in the way that was comfortable. It turned out that a neighbor commented on boy's socks and from that day onward, he learnt to wear his socks properly.

During lunch, boy threw tantrum at the dining table and refused to eat. Mummy forbade him dinner. Boy didn't have anything for lunch, MIL thought of making his favorite dishes for dinner. During dinner, boy wanted to eat but mummy reminded him that he said he wouldn't have food till tomorrow. And he didn't have any food for lunch and dinner that day. Boy asked if he could eat after he woke up the next day. Mummy said of course.

Boy hit another child with a toy. After mummy understood the whole situation, she took the toy and hit boy in exactly the same way.

A child played with boy's favorite toy. Boy complained to mummy, but mummy asked him to settle that himself. Boy snatched the toy back and made the child cry. Mummy pacified the child. Later, after playing by himself for while, boy wanted to play with the child. Boy went to ask mum. Mummy did not interfere. Mummy told boy that he had made the child cry earlier, he got to make friends with her himself.

Boy spilled a pail of water. Mummy wanted boy to clean himself and the floor up. Boy refused and started throw tantrum. Mummy let boy have time-out. Later, boy apologized and did as mummy told.

Grandfather shared with MIL that for them, raising children was the responsibility of parents. Grandparents had to take a backseat and check with parents even if they wanted to get a gift for their grandchildren.

Oh, note that mummy may appear harsh but boy loved his mummy very much. Their relationship was not at all strained.

This story reminds me that raising children is not all just about providing for them and making sure that they have "the best of everything". As parents, I think it is important build resiliency in children from young. That is, letting them learn how to handle failure, how to stand back up after falling and how to handle things on their own. Being young allows them to make mistakes and learn from mistakes. We have to keep in mind that we will not be by their side forever. 

photo credit: Collin Key via photopin cc

Secret of Acing Art Lessons

Yesterday, Girl said: "I hate drawing, I hate art lessons".

I got her to sit beside me and shared the secret of acing art lessons with her.

Art is subjective. Technically, no one should or can comment on whether others' artwork is nice or even give a score. How to? When Picasso embarked on his new style of drawing, the one which humans were not drawn realistically and sometimes even disproportionately (like one eye lower then the other eye), it wasn't accepted by people at that time. Now his paintings are selling for millions! And, do we have real artists in our education system to teach art lessons? No! Not sure if they received any formal art training at all...

Question is, how then can an art teacher tell if a student's artwork is good? My answer: effort.

I remember during one art lesson in secondary school, I was told to do paper cutting. I thought to myself, what an easy assignment for the week! I took the little square piece of paper and cut some geometric shapes in it. It was so simple that I even did another piece as a bonus for my teacher. To my horror, my teacher showed my paper-cutting to the class as a negative example. The other classmate's paper cutting had many more incisions, many small and delicate ones that almost fill up the entire piece of paper. Clearly, my classmate was perceived as spending more effort, not that his paper cutting was all that pretty.

So my advice to Girl: You have a great drawing, now fill up the entire drawing block with colors. Leave no space untouched. Add some blending. You will be fine. Even if trees are not green, skies are not blue, that's fine as well.

photo credit: Zellaby via photopin cc