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Sometimes I feel like in our education system, we're treating

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children as if they're going to be children forever. And if you have

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children who are too scared to make a mistake and

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too scared to try something harder, we're basically scaling

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back the process of innovation for our children. How can I ensure

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that what we're doing right now is

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building a skill that will allow them to leave

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and be independent and succeed when they're on their own? Welcome

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to Neuroeducation, where we're exploring the neuroscience of

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how to switch on the brain to supercharge learning. I'll be sharing

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with you innovative teaching techniques, effective parenting strategies,

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and educational advocacy. I'm your host, Angie Dee.

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Together, let's revolutionize children's learning. Today,

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we're going to be talking about self-directed learners

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and what is the most important characteristics

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that our children need when they get out in the world. Often

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in education, we can be looking right here at the

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child in grade four, in grade five, or in grade six,

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grade 10, grade 12 and beyond. But

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we focus on that level of education

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and just that grade without thinking about

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what's the end goal? What is the end goal here? So

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what is the end goal for education? We

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will have children that become adults that

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walk out of the doors of education, out

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of the educational halls. And even as parents, we

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will have children that will walk out the doors of our home and

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they will go on to lead their lives. And sometimes I

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feel like in our education system, we're treating children

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as if they're going to be children forever. When we look

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at teaching children skills, Sometimes I'm

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amazed that the way that we teach a child in

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grade 4 and in grade 7 and

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grade 10, I still see us teaching children in

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the same manner in grade 12. They

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don't have a lot of freedom. They're still being told

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to do certain things every single lesson, every

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single week, and they're not given enough freedom because

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what we want to do is slowly prepare them for

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the real world. And we want to be able to give them

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greater and greater freedom. A lot of adolescents have

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said they didn't feel prepared for the real world because we

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taught them like children and we didn't give

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them that freedom. And then day one,

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as soon as they leave school, they have a hundred percent freedom. So

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where is the graduation of freedom? Maria

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Montessori talks about this concept of freedom

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within limits. That as a child shows they are

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more and more responsible, we give them greater and greater freedom. And

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I think this is incredibly important in parenting and

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in teaching. Why? Because when

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the children walk out those doors for the final time, then

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life is up to them. They have to make their decisions

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based on their own inner compass, their intuition, their

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guidance, their values and their morals. When

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we punish children in schools, I'm amazed that

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often the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Maybe

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a child is bullying, well you

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get a detention. What is that teaching them in

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life? Is that teaching them to be more compassionate? Is

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that teaching them about how that affected maybe let's say poor

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Jane who was bullied? Or does it just give them an arbitrary

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punishment that has nothing related to what they've done? In

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the same respect we have the

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same thing that happens for other punishments. Maybe you're

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not wearing the right uniform. I remember when I went to

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high school, I was always late. Unfortunately,

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after multiple times of being late to high school, I was giving

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an afterschool detention. Did it help me with my punctuality? No.

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When I got to university, one of my friends, Jodie, who's

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always on time, I asked her, I said, how are you on time? all

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the time. And so she said, well, this is

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how I do it. Wherever I need to be. I make sure I'm going to be

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there 10 minutes early. And then I give myself a five

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minute buffer before getting into the car. Just in case

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I forget my keys or I forget something, I've got to go back in the house. So

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sure enough, I implement Jody's very simple

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instructions and my punctuality improves at least

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by 50% much better than afterschool detention. So

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Here we have skills in learning,

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academic learning that they're going to use maybe in university or

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maybe in their creating their own businesses that we

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can give children to have greater and greater freedom and

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greater and greater responsibility, teaching them the skills of what

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they're going to use for life. So in grade

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10, usually in Montessori schools, A

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lot of the time children begin to do much more

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self-directed projects. They're deciding what

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they're going to be learning about and they're setting themselves up for

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what they want to be learning after they leave school. In

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the same respect we have life skills that we want to teach children. Sadly

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in Australia we have an incredibly high rate

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of suicide and teenage depression. What

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are we not teaching our children in schools to be able to

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deal with these kind of stresses that they will face in

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life? If we give children greater opportunities

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to be able to deal with certain pressures and maybe have

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to organize their own time and their

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projects, when they become adults and when they walk out

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those doors in the final days of schools or at

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home from parents, we know that they're going to have skills

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to be able to manage their time, to organise themselves

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and to deal with the problems of the world. If

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you have a adolescent, I

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would be always thinking of them as

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what's going to be happening in five years. Okay. I'm going to deal with this situation now,

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but maybe I might be able to give them a punishment and not let them do

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something. Or I can be thinking, how

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can I ensure that what we're doing right

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now is building a skill that

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will allow them to leave and

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be independent and succeed when they're on their own. In

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the same right our current teaching method of

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education has basically formed

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a way of an extrinsically motivated

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feedback response. If you do well on a test in

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primary school, maybe you get a sticker. If you do

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well in a quiz, maybe you

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get something on a star chart. All of these things are outside of

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the child. Intrinsic motivation is

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something where motivation comes from the inside. And

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in Montessori education, ironically, there's

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no stickers, no star charts, no reward

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charts. And people say, well, how can children be motivated in

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this classroom if they're not

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getting any rewards for doing the right thing? Well,

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what we've discovered actually in psychology, that

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the more you attune the child to their own intrinsic motivation,

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to learn something to become better, to reach a

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goal, ask them what are their goals for different subjects, where do

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they want to improve, that the better the learning

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is and the more effort they put in. And the

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same thing goes with tests that they have basically looked

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at two groups of children that were given

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extrinsic and an extrinsic reward and

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also extrinsic motivation. So these two groups of children

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that they studied were given a problem to solve.

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And the first group of children, when they finished that problem and

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they solved it, they were given a lots

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of congratulatory verbal affirmations of

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saying, good work, good job. You're so smart. And

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the other group, They praised the

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effort involved. So they said, wow, I

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really saw you trying really hard. You're really trying to work that

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out. You're trying to figure out those problems. Of

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these two groups, when they were asked if

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they wanted to do another problem that was even harder, the

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first group that got the extrinsic affirmation, 90% of

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them said no, not interested. They didn't want to. And

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every single child in the intrinsic group

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where got given affirmed for their effort all

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said yes, they wanted to try something harder and something

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more difficult. So what is that showing us? When

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we are allowing the child to

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see what's their inner effort that they're putting into something and

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we're affirming the effort that goes into the process rather than

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the end result or rather than their intelligence or academic results

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in something, it helps them come back to that inner

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in a compass where they can guide themselves.

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And when it comes to real life, to

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achieve anything greater life, we know that we have to

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make mistakes. We're going to make mistakes and we're going to learn

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from it and try again. We call it failing forward, learning

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and trying again, learning and trying again. But if you have children who

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are too scared to make a mistake and too scared

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to try something harder, we're basically scaling

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back the process of innovation for our children. So what we can

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do is always make sure we praise the

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effort rather than the end result and we can

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think long term what's going to benefit our children

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in terms of these skills, academically, emotionally,

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socially, long term when they walk out those doors of

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our school rooms and also of our homes. Thank you so

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much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this podcast

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and it would be an amazing help to us

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at the podcast if you leave a review. at Apple

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Podcasts or on Spotify or subscribe

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on YouTube. There'll be more information below in all of the links. Thanks