Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

After my post about the fabulously audacious questions children asked me about Afghanistan last week, I came across this TED talk today and knew I needed to share it with you.

Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

Comments

[Beaut Commute]

I love this – not only for her sentiments but her humour and the fact she is wearing a brown cardy. Sometimes I might be described as ‘creative’ but really I think that’s just a nice way of saying I’m ‘childish’. I have a very strong play instinct and often this transfers itself into my professional life.

For example, I work for the highway department in Melbourne. It's called VicRoads. It has some big offices in Melbourne and then lots and lots of Customer Service Centres and road workers depots all over Victoria.

In our team, we try and get out and about as often as we can to the regions. So I bought us a gnome. He's called Vicktor Rhodes, Vic for short. He goes to all sorts of events and reports back. And he gets his photo taken at various locations which goes onto our intranet and people have to guess where he is. The flat version (like the
US Army flat daddies) has recently been spotted outside the Petronus towers in KL, in Cambodia and in Dubai with our international projects team. He has also attended a geotechnical drilling on a barge and driven the road workers’ asphalt laying truck,

The winning person who guesses where he is gets a signed photo to go on their desk. He's a total celeb. But best of all, the rest of my large organization is really engaging in the work my team does – and that’s what I am there to do.

[Shaista]

I just listened to this talk a few days ago - she is quite something! And is going to continue to inspire no matter her age.
She has a blog too :)
Happy belated Easter, Marianne, the daffodils are in full and riotous bloom in Cambridge... x