New perspectives on how to guide and activate the child's and teen's mind to realize its great potential. Unpacks the concept of metacognition, to make available to all of us the workings of our minds as we think and learn.
Excerpt
Astounding universes of thought, judgment and learning, vast and intricate, chaotic and orderly, foreign and familiar, are available to each and every one of us. All we have to know is how to use our minds. All we have to do is think—think well. And make good decisions.
But who will parent our mental and moral potentials into full realization? Who will guide us on the journeys of thought and judgment required to travel to such new places? In the end, we are our own captains, our own teachers. No one else can push us to those towering pinnacles of expression
and achievement—to the heights of actual thought and of sound judgment of which we are each capable.
We are so alone in a world hungry for real mentors, intellectual guidance, personal tutoring in decision making, reasoning, and the science of the mind.
But our children are not. They have us—their parents and teachers—their elders. They have us but for a few years before they become us.
The mind of a young person is so very precious and special. In that mind is forming the paths that future generations will travel. In that mind are indeed awesome streams of thought—mental workings so exotic that only the future will find a place for them. The wealth of mental ability locked away in a young person’s mind is immeasurable. All we can do to touch it is to help that person find the key that will unlock her or his own mental vault.
