“A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic table, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.” –Einstein to Vivienne Anderson, May 12, 1953, AEA 60-716.

If you are a parent to school age kids, mark my words:

You need to get yourself firmly into the driving seat in terms of “educating” them.

Exposure to formal academics, especially via conventional schooling is only one part of what is required to equip young people for the real world.

There is another important but often ignored factor.

To illustrate what I mean, have you ever stopped to ask yourself what happened to the classmates of geniuses like Einstein, Achebe, Soyinka, Chimamanda Adichie etc?

How many of them are famous for being exceptional today?

Few if at all any.

The difference is in an intangible non-academic element identified by Edison in his quote above: “imagination and creativity.”

But money cannot be used to buy it. You have to DEVELOP that aspect of yourself. For your kids, you have to support them to develop it too.

Their teachers will rarely be able – talk less willing – to do it.

That’s why it’s up to you to make it happen, if you want your child’s true genius to be unleashed so her full God given potential can be actualized.

The following quote by Einstein provides a fitting end to this write-up by further underscoring the points made here:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. ” – Albert Einstein

I recommend you take a cue from Einstein.