The New Smart

In the world our children will face, neither static definitions of intelligence nor traditional ideas of training will be good enough. To prepare them, parents and educators need to reframe the question of how we educate and come up with an answer that uses different terms than we are accustomed to.

If we want our children to thrive in the 21st century, these are the things we will need to prepare them to do:

• Blend multiple intelligences in ways that might be described as synthetic or even symphonic.
• Be ambitious and focused without being self-obsessed.
• Value asynchrony and even seek it out.
• Use their own marginality to generate novel perspective and new work.
• Exhibit a steadfast resilience in all phases of life.
• Measure themselves by what they produce over the course of a lifetime and not by any static notion of capacity or quotient.

In the fractured environment of the 21st century, true success will be unique and unexpected―the result of a creative response to complex, shifting challenges. In light of that, how do we prepare? How do we educate ourselves and our children for life in 2050?