A BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY WITH EAGER PARENTS

Yesterday morning, a group of eager parents spent a beautiful Sunday - about an hour - at the Arts House with Dilip Mukerjea. He gave a presentation on 'Brainchildren', under the auspices of the Asian Parents Forum 2010.

The focus of his presentation was "The First Wonder of the World is the Mind of a Child".

He started off the presentation with an interesting & useful idea. Every participant was given a blank A4-sized paper. Each piece of paper needed to be folded four times. When opened, each side consisted of sixteen "noteboards", plus the flip side, that made 32 "noteboards".

The surprised participants were asked to fill in the "noteboards" with the multiplicity of insights captured during his presentation. What a great idea!

Naturally, besides talking about VUCA perspectives of the rapidly-changing landscape of the world, & the important role of parents (as well as teachers) in forming learning communities, also, inculcating self-efficacy & future-savvy skills, with the elements of learning through play & joy quotient, in the education of our younger generation, he played some brain-teasing games with the participants.

The games really tested the limits of the participants' mental boundaries, so to speak. Dilip's point: Expand your consciousness! Don't restrict yourself!

He ended the fun-paced presentation with some fascinating insights:

1) What is the opposite of 'OUTSTANDING'?

Participants threw up a good number of responses, but the most appropriate answer should be 'VERY GOOD', according to Dilip, who explained that in today's context, 'VERY GOOD' was not good enough.

We have to be OUTSTANDING in whatever we do. In other words, BE DISTINCT or Be EXTINCT!

2) An antidote for handling FAILURE in a child, posed by a participant. Dilip's response: Note the 'ILU' or 'I LOVE YOU'.

According to him, "Love is the only operating system".

What a beautiful Sunday!

[VUCA stands for VOLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY & AMBIGUITY. To deal with these dilemmatic perspectives, we need VISION, UNDERSTANDING, CLARITY & AGILITY.

These come from the brilliant work of futurist Bob Johansen, who wrote 'Leaders Make the Future'. I have already reviewed it in an earlier post. Dilip has also done a beautiful splashmap on the book's key ideas.]