Here is the full transcript and summary of Dr. Laura A. Jana’s TEDx Talk titled “Skills Every Child Will Need To Succeed In 21st Century” at TEDxChandigarh conference. Is the current education system sufficient to make kids succeed in 21st century?
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Dr. Laura A. Jana – Pediatrician, Educator, Health Communicator
Around the world, everyone from governments and business leaders and economists to parents, teachers, and pediatricians are all asking the same question: What skills will our children need to succeed?
Now, you may think you know the answer to the question, but consider this. It has been estimated that two-thirds of children today will work in jobs that don’t currently exist. Now, what skills do you want them to have?
In 2016, the World Economic Forum released a list that every parent and, quite honestly, anyone who cares about our children’s future needs. It’s a list of the 21st-century skills most valued in today’s complex, globalized, and rapidly changing world. A third of these skills are the traditional hard skills—the reading, writing, and arithmetic that I call IQ skills.
More notable, however, are the other skills: social and creative skills like creativity, curiosity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking, along with grit, leadership, and adaptability.
It is these so-called soft, non-cognitive, and other skills that are gaining prominence in playrooms, classrooms, and boardrooms around the world. Now, I feel the need to point out that calling these skills soft doesn’t do them justice, and referring to them as non-cognitive is just wrong given that they involve the complex functioning of the brain.
That leaves us with other. And as somebody who has spent decades translating facts and figures into practical information, I can assure you that if you ever want to convince somebody that something is really important, don’t call it other.
So I’d like to propose that we call these other skills QI skills, spelled QI. Now the fact that it sounds like the word key as in K-E-Y fits because these skills are certainly key to future success. It also reflects the fact that they are the complement to the IQ skills, IQ and QI. And finally, the word QI, sometimes also pronounced QI, has been used across cultures and centuries to represent a positive life force that you can be born with but that can also be developed.
And that brings us to perhaps the most important insight. Based on the science of early brain and child development, we now know that these QI skills can be developed far earlier than most people realize. With 85% of brain growth thought to occur by age 3 and up to a million new neural connections forming per second, it is during the first five years that we have a unique opportunity to more intentionally build babies’ brains and to assemble this toolkit of skills we know they’ll need to succeed.
Now to help you better understand why these early years are so critical, I find it helpful to use the analogy of comparing the electrical wiring of the brain to that of a house. It is entirely possible to rewire an old house. It just always takes longer, costs more, and never turns out quite as good as when the wiring goes in before the walls go up.
With respect to the wiring of babies’ brains, caring, responsive adults play the role as chief architects. Neurons don’t just connect and babies don’t just learn what they need to know all on their own. Unlocking children’s early learning potential is deeply dependent on social interactions, which explains why cultivating the QI skills involves a whole lot of talking, cooing, singing, playing, and reading books to babies.
Seven Qi Skills
With that in mind, allow me to introduce you to the seven QI skills. The first of the QI skills are me skills, defined by self-awareness, self-control or impulse control, along with focus and attention. In other words, me skills are what allow us to be in control of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Now to put me skills into a bigger picture perspective, just think about how often these days we hear about everything from mindfulness apps and mindful breathing to the introduction of chief mindfulness officers into corporate culture. One renowned business visionary, Peter Drucker, predicted that while the 20th century was the era of business management, the 21st century is going to be the era of self-management.
And a good self-management day in the life of a toddler is when no one bites their friends. That’s because the ability to resist one’s impulses or urges is really dependent on impulse control, which happens to be one of the three defining features of what neuroscientists call executive function skills.
What research now tells us about these all-important executive function skills is that they develop most rapidly between the ages of three and five.
After me skills come we skills. We skills are people skills, the relationship skills, like communication, collaboration, teamwork, active listening, empathy, and perspective taking, all needed to play well with others. We skills are especially valuable in a world where it’s become as important to be able to read other people as it is to read.
Now given that I don’t ever have to actually convince anybody that these skills are worth developing, allow me instead to translate. Put your listening ears on, use your words, learn to play nice with others, and in the same sandbox.
The fact of the matter is that these highly coveted social-emotional skills are preschool skills and they can be developed very early. Toddlers can be taught to understand other people’s perspectives, nine-month-olds begin to show signs of empathy, and even very young infants are sensitive emotion detectors, able to sense others’ emotions even before they can walk or talk.
Now before moving on, I should point out that it is the combination of me skills and we skills that fit the formal definition of emotional intelligence, described not only as two of the hottest words in corporate America but recognized around the world as absolutely critical to thrive in all aspects of 21st-century life.
Next are the why skills, which obviously include asking the question why, but more broadly include exploration, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and asking all sorts of questions to better understand how the world works.
Fueled by technology, the information age has now put so many answers right at our collective fingertips that it is no wonder that the ability to ask good questions has become so much more valued than simply knowing the right answer.
As Albert Einstein put it, the important thing is to never stop questioning. Now think about some of the corporate training programs, like the Five Whys, that train business leaders to better get to the root of a problem by repeatedly asking why. Implemented by some of the top companies in the world, these formal questioning and training techniques ironically leave one fundamental question unanswered. Why should we have to go to such great lengths to train adults to do something that comes so naturally to two and three-year-olds?
The answer I’m afraid is that we train this skill out of children. While it is natural for young children to question the world around them, making sure that they continue to see the world as a question mark very much depends on our commitment to encouraging rather than squelching their natural sense of wonder.
When I think of will skills, I’m reminded of when my own three children first began school and they became members of a club called the Can Do Club, which recognized young students not just for their grades but for their drive and determination, both key aspects of will skills. Will is also about grit and perseverance and it’s evident in people with get the job done and stick with it attitudes. At the heart of will is motivation.
Now there are actually two types of motivation. The first, extrinsic motivation, involves rewards and punishment. This approach may work in the short run and for relatively simple tasks, but the complex challenges of the 21st century are going to demand a lot more from our children. Simply relying on rewards has been shown to all but kill creativity and, in the long run, actually decrease motivation.
Intrinsic or self-motivation is what we’re really after, the kind of motivation that comes from within. To foster this kind of self-motivation, we perhaps need to rethink how we parent in the earliest years when even the most routine tasks, brushing teeth and peeing in the potty, are all too often rewarded with sweets and treats rather than with praise and pride.
Now you may not be accustomed to thinking of wiggling as a skill, but the best way to understand wiggle skills is to recognize that physical and intellectual recklessness go hand-in-hand. Just think about how we commonly describe successful adults as movers and shakers and go-getters who set stretch goals, spring into action, reach for the stars. They’re all about action.
If you read the innovation literature, you’ll find that innovators are almost always described as physically restless. And at work, you’re more likely to see walking meetings and treadmill desks and manipulatives on tables all meant to more actively enhance our ability to think, create, and innovate.
Now think about the words that we use to describe active young children: fidgety, antsy, restless. I can honestly say that in all my years working with children, I’ve never heard any of those words used in a positive sense. Whether out of fear for their safety or for our own convenience, we tend to favor the calm, quiet child who doesn’t reach, touch, grab, or poke or get into things.
Instead of giving young children the wiggle room they need, we strap them in, we insist they sit still, and we tell them to look but don’t touch. All of us, but most especially young children, learn about the world by physically interacting with it. Instead of working their wiggles out, what our children really need is for us to help them learn how to put their wiggles to work.
After wiggle comes wobble, a set of skills defined by agility and adaptability and the ability to face, overcome, and learn from failure. The word wobble comes from a phrase, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down,” a reference to a very popular classic toy called Weebles that are egg-shaped with a weight at the bottom so they could wobble back and forth but ultimately remain standing.
As skills needed to adapt to a very rapidly changing world, wobble skills have gained special prominence. College applications and job interviewers routinely ask, “When have you failed and what did you do about it?” Silicon Valley’s unofficial motto is said to be, “Fail early, fail often, and fail forward,” a motto that we really should be applying to how we raise young children.
On that note, I want you to think for a moment. What might the earliest developmental milestones for wobble look like? But don’t think too hard because there are none. The fact of the matter is that milestones only represent successes, not failures. If we want to raise resilient children, we need to get in the habit of celebrating not just their milestone moments but their ability to fall down, brush themselves off, and get right back up again.
The culmination of the QI skills are what-if skills or what I think of as possibility skills, defined by innovation, imagination, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking. It’s the what-if skills that give us the ability to imagine the world not just as it is but how it could be.
In a global survey of over 1,500 CEOs, creativity was identified as the single most important factor for future success. Our world clearly rewards those who can imagine the world they want to live in and then create it.
Young children excel at imagining new worlds, from make-believe and superheroes to imaginary friends and fanciful stories. Young children really are, as futurist Peter Diamandis puts it, some of the most imaginative humans around. But it has also been said that the creative adult is the child that survived.
In our efforts to teach our children how we see the world, we run the very real risk of convincing them that there’s only one right way to do or see things. We must, therefore, ask ourselves the question raised by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. Are we forming children capable of only learning that which is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds capable of discovery throughout life?
I’m here to tell you the answer is the latter. Giving children the best is about maximizing their potential, not their possessions. It’s about cultivating their sense of purpose and passion, not subjecting them to unnecessary pressure. And it’s about caring, responsive adults and starting early.
We now know that what happens in early childhood does not stay in early childhood. By applying what we now know about all of the QI skills and applying it early—me, we, why, will, wiggle, wobble, and what if—I believe that we can achieve success in our shared goal of giving all children access to a world of possibilities.
Dr. Laura A. Jana’s talk discusses the skills that children will need to succeed in the 21st century, emphasizing the importance of a combination of traditional hard skills (IQ) and what she calls QI skills (soft skills). These QI skills are essential for thriving in a complex, globalized, and rapidly changing world. Here’s a breakdown of the key points in the text:
1. The Changing Landscape: The talk starts by highlighting the uncertainty of the future job market. Two-thirds of children today are predicted to work in jobs that don’t currently exist, making it crucial to prepare them with the right skills.
2. 21st-Century Skills: In 2016, the World Economic Forum identified a list of 21st-century skills that are highly valued. These skills include traditional hard skills (reading, writing, and arithmetic) as well as soft skills (creativity, curiosity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, grit, leadership, and adaptability).
3. Redefining Soft Skills: The talk challenges the idea of calling these skills “soft” or “non-cognitive,” asserting that they are more complex and important than those labels suggest. The speaker suggests using the term “QI skills” to emphasize their significance and complementarity with IQ skills.
4. Early Brain Development: The talk underscores the importance of early brain development, with 85% of brain growth occurring by age 3. It’s during the first five years that children have a unique opportunity to develop these QI skills.
5. Analogy of Brain Wiring: The speaker uses an analogy of comparing the brain’s wiring to that of a house. Just as it’s easier to wire a house before building the walls, it’s more effective to develop these skills in children during their early years.
6. Role of Caregivers: Caring, responsive adults are depicted as the chief architects of children’s brain development. Social interactions, such as talking, playing, and reading, play a crucial role in developing these skills.
7. The Seven QI Skills: The talk introduces the seven QI skills:
Me Skills: Self-awareness, self-control, focus, and attention.
We Skills: People skills, including communication, collaboration, empathy, and perspective-taking.
Why Skills: Curiosity, inquisitiveness, and the ability to ask questions.
Will Skills: Drive, determination, grit, perseverance, and motivation.
Wiggle Skills: The importance of physical activity and restlessness in enhancing creativity and innovation.
Wobble Skills: Adaptability, agility, and the ability to learn from failure.
What-If Skills: Imagination, creativity, innovation, and thinking outside the box.
8. Intrinsic Motivation: The talk distinguishes between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, emphasizing the importance of fostering self-motivation in children rather than relying solely on rewards and punishments.
9. Encouraging Questioning: The ability to ask questions is highlighted as a valuable skill. The text questions why we need to train adults to ask questions when it comes naturally to young children.
10. Cultivating Creativity: The importance of nurturing children’s creativity and imagination is emphasized, as it is a crucial skill for success in a rapidly changing world.
11. Resilience and Learning from Failure: The talk encourages celebrating not only children’s milestone achievements but also their ability to face failure, learn from it, and persevere.
12. A World of Possibilities: The talk concludes by stating that early childhood experiences and the development of QI skills have a lasting impact on a child’s life. By focusing on these skills from a young age, we can provide children with access to a world of possibilities.
In summary, Dr. Laura A. Jana’s talk underscores the significance of QI skills (soft skills) alongside traditional hard skills in preparing children for the challenges of the 21st century. It emphasizes the role of caregivers and early childhood experiences in shaping these essential skills.
