This week we’re looking to the future! My guest is Dr. Terry Roberts, a lifelong teacher, educational reformer, and novelist, whose book The New Smart: How Nurturing Creativity Will Help Children Thrive seeks to answer the questions: who will prosper in the year 2050? How will schools need to change in order to support the students of the 21st century? And in what ways will the markers and paths to success for our children look different than our own? In exploring this topic, Dr Roberts draws on his decades of teaching in the public school system and his deep personal interest in the ideas of creativity and intelligence, and the ways in which our schools define, recognize and foster talent in all students.
In this episode, we share a deep conversation about what the schools of the future will look like, how parents can shift their thinking about success, and the importance of creativity in our rapidly changing world.
About Dr. Roberts: Dr. Terry Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. Since 1992, he has been the Director of the National Paideia Center, a school reform organization dedicated to making intellectual rigor accessible to all students. Roberts has three children of his own: Jesse, Margaret, and Henry.
THINGS YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
- What inspired Dr. Roberts to write The New Smart and how the premise differs from other books on education
- A broad overview of the effect of standardization in the public school system over the past 30 years, for both good and bad
- How schools of the future will need to change, according to Dr. Roberts
- Why “creative” might replace “smart” as the adjective most closely related to 21st century prosperity
- Dr. Roberts’ tips for how parents can shift gears and embrace different models of “success” for their children
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Dr. Roberts’ email: troberts@paideia.org
- The New Smart: How Nurturing Creativity Will Help Children Thrive by Terry Roberts
- Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on Redefining Giftedness and Intelligence (TiLT Podcast episode)
- Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined by Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman
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