What should we start teaching our children in the age of AI?

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Best of Live Well With Michelle.

Explore what it means to live better with Live Well With Michelle. From mindset and personal growth, to money and everyday living, through thoughtful conversations and practical insights, feel balanced and in control. Live Well With Michelle, every day.

Michelle Martin (0:22)

All right, let's all get gifted. This is Live Well With Me Michelle. We're talking preschool. I did not know this until doing some research. UNESCO says that 90% of your brain's development occurs before the age of five. This is why being in preschool, the preschool years are such a critical period for shaping how children learn. One of my enduring memories of preschool has to be receiving my grades for Chinese. So I remember looking at the grade thinking, how is it possible I got a zero? I mean, how is it humanly possible that I got zero out of 40? When I know that, at least for the oral, I understood what ren was.

Ren means people.

So I should have at least got one, but no, that was my first zero. And yeah, I still can feel how it felt back then, not so great. But today we're going to get gifted as we ask, how do you prepare your children for a future world as AI changes? How we learn, how we work spits out answers at us, summarizes so impressively.

Academic knowledge, we know, remains important for now, but will it be enough? What abilities can be developed from preschool years? And could teaching methods designed for gifted education really benefit children of all abilities? That's the premise of a homegrown Singapore company. They've been around for over 20 years. Founded by a mother in her 50s, who was trained in gifted education and early childhood education, and it combines all these disciplines to encourage children to do the same thing that gifted children do with their curriculum, basically. Question, explore, make connections. And its premise on the idea that gifted education methodologies should be accessible to all, not just high-ability learners. Parvin Kaur is Center Director for the preschool, where I understand parents have been amazed because they see 18-month-old has sat still for 15 minutes in the center. True story, right, Parvin?

Parvin Kaur (2:20)

Yes.

Michelle Martin (2:22)

Welcome to the show, and good morning.

Parvin Kaur (2:24)

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Michelle Martin (2:25)

How is AI changing? What do you think children need to learn?

Parvin Kaur (2:29)

AI is changing because, first of all, AI is very advanced. It's there, available, efficient for young kids nowadays. But I think what's important is that, though they give answers, but we want kids to actually know how to use it. Yeah. So it is changing definitely in learning because kids are then learning how to be independent.

But going back again, I think for young kids like preschoolers, using the AI, like some schools have started using it as a learning tool, still you will still need to know the basic foundations on the information. So you know what to ask, how to actually use the AI in the right way.

Michelle Martin (3:09)

So do you think that just, how we grew up, accessing knowledge becomes less important, not just accessing knowledge, I guess, but that old paradigm of preschool where you sat down and the teacher just spoke at you and tried to fill your brain with facts?

Parvin Kaur (3:26)

Yes, it is important, but I won't say that should be the main focus now, because back then, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, we all grew up memorizing, recalling information. But we, I will say for myself, like, you know, you are limited to ask questions, right? And then today, we shouldn't stop that. You know, when kids ask questions, they are very curious.

Michelle Martin (3:47)

I was so curious. I asked so many questions, I made my teacher cry.

Destined to be a journalist. But yeah, so you think that asking questions is a key component of this new era?

Parvin Kaur (4:01)

Yeah, because that actually builds up confidence in young kids, you know, so like at Growing Up Gifted, we strongly encourage this, because when kids are asking questions, they get to analyze, they actually reflect on what they're actually thinking, they actually get to generate information. Yeah, so it's a learning journey.

Michelle Martin (4:19)

Remind me how old you are in preschool again? Not you, the preschoolers. How old is considered preschool?

Parvin Kaur (4:25)

Eighteen months and above. Eighteen months to six years old. So we start seeing a lot when they are about three years old. So it's very normal. Parents who have kids who are three, four years old, they definitely know they ask a lot of questions, a lot of whys.