Why is it that many child prodigies end up failing in their areas of expertise? Or abandoning them for other activities and pursuits? So often, when children are taught at an early age that they are special, whether it be in the field of arts, academics, or athletics, they become prone to the idea of success and victory. Becoming accustomed to success may lead children to feel as though they deserve success, and due to this, lack motivation to continue putting effort into their area of ‘expertise’. One of the worst possible things to see in children is a slow regression into losing motivation to try. Effort and hard work are integral in helping kids grow into motivated and hard-working individuals, who do not give up easily, nor do they lose sight of their dreams.

The argument lies that success is more often than not fuelled by passion. Passion is hardly ever something that is taught or enforced through diligent practice and upbringing, but rather something that is discovered through curiosity and personal interest.

Copyright: bonzodog

Creativity isn’t something that can be forced onto children. There are no specific rules or tips to follow to ensure children focus on expanding their imagination and creativity. On the contrary, allowing your children to follow as little rules as possible will allow them to develop a wider imagination, and become more in-tune with their own creativity and mental capability. In an increasingly competitive world, being skilled in a particular field no longer guarantees a job or success; rather it’s creativity and ingenuity in otherwise regular fields of work that often yields great success.

The best way to foster creativity in children is to allow them to think for themselves. Children who are disciplined while encouraged to think for themselves and make decisions based on their own thoughts and interests tend to become more creative as adults. Freedom and individuality of the mind is integral, not just in developing characteristics, but in helping instil a sense of individuality and uniqueness in the child at an early age.  

This sense of individuality will not only help children find their own interests and passions at an earlier age, it will help them respond to life’s challenges and opportunities in their own unique way.

For example, some children may cope with stress or uncomfortable situations by expressing themselves artistically, through drawing or writing, and others may prefer athletic options. Allowing children to discover their own coping mechanisms and reactions to different types of situations at an early age is largely impacted by how rigidly their parents enforce their ideals upon them.

Copyright: ISchmidt

Step One: Back Off

There is also the argument that the more pressure a child faces to succeed, the less they will enjoy the activity at hand. Since enjoyment is integral in motivating the child to put forth effort and dedication to the activity, the more pressure they face, the less they will want to perform well in the activity, in turn veering them much off the course

Research has found that most children who grow up to be creative adults, from fields of music, art, athletics, even science, weren’t forced to follow strict rules and directions from their parents. Of course, rules and discipline are an important aspect of raising children, and should not be neglected, but they also shouldn’t be so diligently enforced by the parents that the child is left with no freethinking capacities at all.

If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.

Everyone wants the best for their child: for them to succeed, be ambitious, and not give up easily. This desire for the wellbeing of one’s child may often overpower the consideration that a child, although a child, does have the ability to discover their own interests and passions. Even at an early age, children are incredibly curious and are constantly exploring different things and activities they have interests in.

Copyright: Jaromir Chalabala

It’s important to remember that you can’t force talent. You can encourage it when you see your child displaying interest, but forcing your child to excel in an area they hardly care about will only result in wasted efforts and money. The best possible course of action is to allow your children to explore their interests at their own pace, and encourage a sense of direction and commitment when they display interest in a specific field.

After all, children are children, and their malleable and easily influenced brains may easily pick up on their parents forced sense of direction, but such actions will only teach them to follow the path set by them, and rid them of developing a sense of control and leadership of their own life.

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Male and females are treated identically and there are no materials present to draw distinctions between the two specific sexes.  Is this truly a society in which students will benefit from as adults, or is it overly progressive and giving children a false perception of the world?

The Egalia School is primarily focused on eliminating gender-specific social conventions.

This pre-school passionately fights against the expectations that come along with being either a male or female.  It wants its students to develop by using their own unbiased emotions and motives as opposed to being influenced by stories and games that clearly draw distinctions between the roles and/or personalities of men and women.

Copyright: PAKULA PIOTR

The school accomplishes this difficult feat by excluding a lot of material usually present in traditional pre-schools.  For instance, the classic children’s story Cinderella, is prohibited in the Egalia School due to its archaic depiction of marriage and the role of males and females in the courting and marital process.

In addition to banning certain stories and games with conspicuous gender distinctions, the school further instills the idea of sex-neutrality by altering their language.  Pronouns such as ‘his’ or ‘hers’ are never spoken in the Egalia school.  The word ‘hen,’ (a Finnish pronoun) is supplanted, as it has identical meaning but is genderless in its connotation.  Furthermore, children are often referred to as “friends” instead of boys and girls.

All the girls know they are girls, and all the boys know that they are boys

Although these actions may be seen as a bit excessive and even confounding to the children as they try to navigate through the early stages of life, the director of the Egalia School, Lotta Rajalin, assures that the children are by no means confused.  “All the girls know they are girls, and all the boys know that they are boys:

We are not working with biological gender, we are working with the social thing.

The main goal is not to diminish gender itself, but wane the social stigma that comes along with it. Children often grow up with a mindset that they can only do so much and only achieve certain things because they either a male or female.  This ideology forms at an early age due to all the material that solidifies these gender roles.  The policy at the Egalia School was created to fight this predisposition many people grow up with.

Rajalin cites this mission as a way of giving children the opportunity to see all of reality.  

We [the Egalia School] want to give the whole spectrum of life, not just half – that’s why we are doing this. We want the children to get to know all the things in life, not to just see half of it.

Even though the intentions are definitely genuine and favorable, some believe the Egalia School is idealistic and quixotic.

Copyright: Liudmila Pleshkun

The Egalia school is priming children to grow up without the emotional or societal limitations that prevail with gender identification.  However, the rest of the world is not necessarily going to be in accordance with this ideology. Gender is one of the most distinctive qualities of a person. Dismissing the importance of, or mitigating the inherent role gender plays, is perhaps increasing the limitations on children as opposed to removing them; the school’s primary objective.

Who do they [the Egalia School] think they are fooling?

Philip Hwang, a professor of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg argues that the school’s efforts are not only foolish, but completely ineffective.  Hwang argues that the policy is “naive to say the least.”  He goes on to add that he finds the whole idea “a bit funny – who do they [the Egalia School] think they are fooling?”

Past research also laboriously debunks the mission set in place by the Egalia School.  The scientific community has consistently and comprehensively proven that boys and girls are different, very different. The differences between genders, however, extend beyond what the eye can see.

Research reveals major distinguishers between male and female brains.  Therefore, allowing a child to choose a gender is not as simple as letting him/her select a toy.  In fact it would seem to cause more confusion in the child’s developing mind because most children are not born into the wrong gender, in fact it is quite rare.

Gender researchers have also proven that there is indeed a difference in the brains of males and females.  These differences begin at conception and continue to develop in the fetus throughout birth and beyond.  It is imperative that a child know their biological identity.  If the lines are blurred too much, it can be successfully argued that the child would in fact feel genderless and not be able to identify with either gender at any point in their life: leading to a plethora of developmental issues and extreme feelings of isolation

Stripping away gendered meanings would eliminate an essential part of our own identity.  The main impetus of why people transition away from their biological gender IS because they do not identify with that gender.  Raising children in an agender world is unrealistic and impractical.  A genderless society is a society of complete uniformity sorely lacking in self expression.  Our unique gender expressions would cease to exist.

Copyright: Robert Kneschke

Join the #NDFDebate about The Egalia Schools! Share your opinions at @novakfoundation

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Pismenost je ključ promena i instrument za osnaživanje tri glavna stuba održivog razvoja: ekonomski razvoj, društveni razvoj i zaštita životne sredine.

Bivši generalni sekretar UN, Kofi Annan

Pismenost za održivi razvoj

Međunarodni dan pismenosti, 8.septembar, danas se obeležava u mnogim zemljama. Organizuju se različiti programi i manifestacije, sa ciljem da se ukaže na na neophodnost opismenjavanja i obrazovanja miliona ljudi širom sveta, posebno žena i dece. Glavni grad Bangladeša, Daka, tim povodom biće domaćin centralne proslave koju Vlada Bangladeša organizuje u saradnji sa UNESCO. Reč je o međunarodnoj konferenciji pod nazivom “Pismenost i obrazovanje devojaka i žena”.

Naša Fondacija se, takođe, pridružuje naporima ljudi širom sveta da se unapredi pismenost na globalnom nivou, kao sastavni deo procesa učenja koji traje celog života.

Šta je pismenost i zašto je ona toliko važna?

Oksfordski rečnik engleskog jezika daje dve definicije pojma pismenosti:

(a) sposobnost čitanja i pisanja

(b) obrazovan ili učen čovek

Bez obzira na navedene definicije, čitanje i pisanje su osnova svakog učenja.

Koreni UNESCO-ove borbe za globalnu pismenost kreću od 1946. godine, kada je njihov Odbor za obrazovanje osnovao i promovisao inicijativu “Fundamentalno obrazovanje”, koja je kasnije prerasla u svojevrstan akcioni program. Sam pojam fundamentalnog obrazovanja stvorio je ideju šireg koncepta obrazovanja, priznajući da sticanje znanja i veština predstavlja osnovno ljudsko pravo. Pristup formalnom školovanju je od vitalnog značaja za ljude, kako bi mogli da vode kvalitetan i pristojan život. Sposobnost čitanja omogućava deci da ostvaruju uspehe u školi, i otvara im spektar novih mogućnosti i izbor različitih karijera. Svaka godina obrazovanja povećava potencijalnu zaradu tokom života za 10 odsto.

Pismenost za sve: jednak pristup obrazovanju

Inicijativa pod nazivom “Obrazovanje za sve” (Education for All – EFA), usvojena je 2000. godine da bi se obezbedilo kvalitetno obrazovanje za svu decu, mlade i odrasle. Ona počiva na šest ključnih obrazovnih ciljeva koji bi trebalo da se ostvare do 2015. godine: razvoj brige o deci i obrazovanje u ranom detinjstvu; obezbeđivanje besplatnog i obaveznog osnovnog obrazovanja; odgovarajuće obrazovanje u sticanju znanja i veština važnih za život u okviru programa za mlade i odrasle; poboljšanje nivoa pismenosti kod odraslih; iskorenjivanje rodnih razlika i postizanje rodne jednakosti u obrazovanju; poboljšanje opšteg kvaliteta obrazovanja.

Uprkos značajnim pomacima i dan danas na planeti ima mnogo funkcionalno nepismenih ljudi – čak 781 milion odraslih i 126 miliona mladih ne umeju da čitaju i pišu. Dve trećine njih čine žene. Prema podacima Svetske banke, u Maliju, na primer, žene sa srednjom stručnom spremom ili visokim obrazovanjem u proseku imaju troje dece, dok neobrazovane žene imaju čak sedmoro. Obrazovanje, dakle, igra značajnu ulogu u kontroli rađanja.Svaka godina koju žene provedu u školovanju smanjuje stopu nataliteta za 10%.

Ovakve cifre dodatno otežavaju globalne napore u cilju smanjenja siromaštva. UIS je pripremio elektronski atlas, koji ilustruje razlike u pismenosti među odraslima, mladima i starijim osobama, čime su želeli da skrenu pažnju na alarmantne podatke. Kompletan UNESCO e-atlas pismenosti sa podacima o razlikama između stope pismenosti mužkaraca i žena dostupan je ovde.

Pismenost je ljudsko pravo i osnova za učenje tokom celog života

Pismenost označava širok skup veština od osnovnog do naprednog nivoa koje čovek stiče tokom života. Jedna od definicija pismenosti, takođe, ističe kako je reč o sposobnosti potrebnim za “kritičko razmišljanje, participativno upravljanje, održivu potrošnju i način života, smanjenje siromaštva, i smanjenje rizika od katastrofa.”.Jednostavim jezikom rečeno – pismenost je suštinski važna za život.

Sa razvojem modernih tehnologija, pismenost se više ne vezuje samo za knjige, već je proširena i na digitalni svet. Razvojem online tehnologije, kvalitetno obrazovanje je sve više dostupno internet korisnicima širom planete. Tako možete da pristupite kursevima koji vas spremaju za različite testove, ili da od kuće pohađate časove poezije, finansija i preduzetništva.

Međunarodni dan pismenosti je prilika da pomognete deci da učenje dožive kao zabavno iskustvo, ali i da ih usmerite kako da provedu vreme učeći sa razumevanjem, kako da razviju sve svoje potencijale i obrazuju se što više. Međunarodni dan pismenosti je trenutak da se prisetimo reči generalnog direktora UNESCO-a Irine Bokove da “pismenost ne samo da menja živote, ona ih i spasava”.

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