Vishen LakhianiFounder of Mindvalley | NYT Bestselling Author | Transforming Lives Globally

One Piece Of Advice About Education To Parents - Adora Svitak (part 4 of 4)

24 Jun 2014 · 1 min

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Adora Svitak advises parents to value the intangible, non-quantifiable aspects of education—curiosity, enthusiasm, joy in learning—rather than judging children solely by numeric metrics like test scores. She challenges parents to ask whether their children are curious and excited about learning, arguing those unmeasurable qualities are better indicators of educational success.

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I think my one piece of advice when it comes to education would be to not lose sight of what is important beyond the numbers. Because so often we try to think. Think of things only in terms of what we can quantify. That something is only worthwhile if it leads to an increase in profit or if it makes you grow some kind of test score or other number on a sheet of paper. And that's an extraordinarily reductive way to look at education. So much of what is best about education is the intangible, it's the curiosity, it's the smile on my face when I learn something new about a topic I love. And you can't assign a number to that. So I would challenge parents to really consider in how they're looking at the value of an education, or when they're trying to think of metrics to see if their kids are doing well. Ask yourself questions like, are they curious about learning? Do they come home bursting with enthusiasm about something new? Instead of, did they get a 2400 on their SAT? Why are they doing well on finals? Because ultimately, it's the things that we can't measure that are far better measures for success.