Proposition: HI-tech to incorporate lifelong learning in our youth!

Last week at the HRSquare summerseminar Professor Lynda Gratton (London Business School) made a great presentation.

A couple of things caught my attention:

1)      we haven’t changed the way we educate (young) people in the last 30 years

2)      China’s youth (and that of other emerging countries) have learned to speak English in only one generation

3)      Even more due to a one child policy Chinese parents have given their attention to that single child en therefore the country has a whole generation of highly educated people

4)      All kinds of (high level) courses become freely available on the web

5)      Professor Gratton stated that the brain develops differently when using technology like I-pads at very young age. As a psychologist I can only agree with that point of view. As learning to use a computer – i.e. communicating with it could be seen as learning a new language.. According to several theories this starts best at very young ages: “The younger learned, the better spoken (or used in this case)”

6)      Lynda Gratton suggests that companies should introduce experimentation.

So here my proposition for an experiment:

Let’s convince our governments to introduce hi-tech equipment in a couple of kindergartens and measure the differences in skills as they become 3-4-5-6 years of age. When communicating with a computer is an automatism more brain capacity is available to learn. We all talk a lot about lifelong learning: let’s prepare the coming generation by taking all the necessary initiatives and developing learning as a permanent habit and automatism. Let's invest in learning!