Empathy
Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, said at Davos that in a world filled with AI and machine learning, ‘ human values such as common sense and empathy will be scarce. I think of empathy as not just as something nice to have but it is core to the innovation agenda in the company.” The message resonated with leaders and educators alike.
Empathy is emerging as the big theme in Education especially as we see polarization trumping globalization across the world. It may seem daunting to even begin to address the big issue of racism and xenophobia. …
A number of friends and fellow parents have been reaching out to ask about resources that they can use to keep their child’s learning on track during this unprecedented period of school closures across the world. As such, I have put together a quick list
The first step is to create a structure for learning at home and communicate it clearly to children. This includes
- Weekly learning outcomes and daily schedule of activities
- Goal setting with your child at the beginning of the day. Check-in with the child at least once the end of the day.
- Well defined learning space…
By Paul Tough
Michael Meaney is a neuroscientist at McGill University who does much of his research with rats because humans and rats have similar brain architecture. His lab is full of plexiglass cages and each cage holds a mother rat and her small brood of baby rats called pups. One day, some scientists in Meaney’s lab observed that when they put the pups back into the cage after picking them up to examine them or weigh them, some mothers scurried over to their pups and spent a few minutes licking and grooming them. Others just ignored them. This observation…
A book by Ken Robinson
Gillian was eight years old but her future was already at risk.
The Element launches with the powerful story of Gillian that touches a chord deep inside and is hard to forget. 8-year-old Gillian is referred to a psychologist for attention deficit disorder owing to complaints from her teachers about her incessant fidgeting, not submitting homework in time and getting bad grades. …
If yes, then celebrate because they are the most likely to change the world says, Adam Grant
‘Originals’ by Adam Grant is not about ‘parenting’ at all. Instead, it explores what it means to be an ‘original’ — to take the road less traveled, to champion a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better. Using a combination of research and stories from the field of politics, business, sports, and entertainment, Adam Grant takes us deep into the world of incorrigible non- conformists who refuse to accept the status quo and attempt to seek…
Gardener or Carpenter?
Alison Gopnik, one of the most eminent developmental psychologists, uses a wonderful analogy in the book ‘The Gardener and the Carpenter’ to illuminate the role of a parent. She opines that there are two broad categories of parents -
- Carpenter: Parents who hold a vision for their child and believe that it is their responsibility to bring it to life by providing the right stimuli, enrolling children in the right schools and after-school classes and doing ‘right things’ as parents. …
by Adele Faber & Elain Mazlish
My eight-year daughter was visibly upset about messing up the class quiz in Math. As she threw up her hands in frustration, she declared that she was terrible at Math, and that she would never amount to anything. It was heart wrenching to see her beat herself up like this and my instant reaction was to say that’s not true, you are being terribly hard on yourself. You have always done well in Math, mistakes happen, you learn from them and try and do better next time.
In a bid to make things better for her, I broke the cardinal…
When I met Ananya a few weeks after she had delivered her baby, her eyes were blood shot, shoulders sagging, and hair dishevelled. I, of course knew that bringing a baby into this world (having brought two of my own) is no mean feat but she seemed overly rattled. She was undoubtedly sleep deprived, hurting and felt like a cow from nursing night and day, but there was something deeper.
She felt that none of this was enough, that she was failing as a mother because of which her daughter Mia was crying so much through the night.
In the…
Behave by Robert Sapolsky
I have a few recurrent dilemmas that torment me from time to time.
Are some people inherently evil or are mostly good people driven to evil acts because of circumstance, mental derangement or group-think? Think Rwanda genocide or atrocities during India Pakistan partition.
How is it possible to get human beings to kill children in the name of religion when no religion would support murder?
If there is no free will as neuroscience and biology are leading us to believe, then how can there be human agency- the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free…
I recently did an online course on Coursera called ‘Learning how to Learn’. The course was conducted by two acclaimed educators and neuroscientists, Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski, who have done significant research on how we learn. What I liked about the course was that they connected the theory of neuroscience to practical tools for learning and even some counter-intuitive insights for test-taking.
One such learning tool I discovered is called Spaced Repetition. …
Pooja Goyal
Entrepreneur, Thinker, Reader, Parent. Interested in how we learn and communicate, why we do what we do. Deeply interested in Neuroscience and Neuroeducation.
