A Capacity Crowd at Future-proof Your Child Launch
When Graeme Codrington, co-author of Future-proof Your Child, moved his family to London, he discovered that his three young daughters did not know how to cross a road. Accustomed to being driven everywhere, these Joburg dwellers had to shift their knowledge of road safety – which their parents had dutifully taught them – from theoretical “head knowledge” into life-preserving practice.
At the well-attended launch at the Indaba Hotel last night, Codrington said that writing the book with co-author Nikki Bush had not been an academic exercise. By moving his family into a new environment he was living the theories propounded in the text.
A multi-media presentation flashed a series of mind-boggling facts about the speed at which the world is changing on to two huge screens. To a clip of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury’s “Under Pressure” it was brought home how true the maxim is that the future isn’t what it used to be.
The facts and figures are profoundly astonishing: every day some 3000 books are published globally; some 92 000 text messages were sent per second in 2007; kids are more screen hungry and brand conscious than ever before; for the first time in human history you have four generations in the work force; and educators and parents are trying to prepare children for jobs that don’t yet exist because the technology hasn’t been invented.
At the end of the presentation, Codrington said, “This is a remarkable world. It is an amazing world, frightening and fascinating.” As if in agreement, a loud clap of thunder rumbled through the auditorium: this was a fact that did not go unappreciated by the gathering of some 200 parents and educators.
And yet for all the change in the world, the developmental needs of childhood have not changed.
“How do parents balance the needs of a newborn baby when as functioning adult humans, they hardly understand what is going on in the modern world?” said Codrington. “The question is: What do parents need to know about tomorrow today, in order to prepare their offspring for the future?”
When it came to crossing the road, the author said he knew how to teach his daughter, Hannah, how to do so because his own parents had taught him how to do it. “But our parents didn’t have home computers when we were growing up. When it comes to crossing the superhighway that is the Internet, do we know to look left and right? Do we, as parents, even know what the rules are?”
For parents who are justifiably concerned about their children’s future, this is the book that may well provide some much-needed guidance and reassurance.
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- Future-proof Your Child by Nikki Bush & Graeme Codrington
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EAN: 9780143025801
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