The most important thing parents should teach kids are the mechanisms for self-improvement. This is basically what differentiates people from computers. When computers will be endowed with such a power, they will become more powerful than humans. And most likely humanity will disappear 🙂

Humans have self-improvement built into their DNA, but different people expose totally different capabilities, something like several orders of magnitude in better/poorer. I think that this is something that can be taught in the early ages. After a certain age, it becomes extremely difficult.

Unfortunately, school does not help us in this respect. By punishing mistakes, it lowers the desire of self-improvement, because kids will mistakenly believe that self-improvement equals higher grades. So, in the world we live in, higher grades means playing by the rules. And that is not necessarily an improvement.

Kids are very smart at finding shortcuts – so much more capable than teachers imagine.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY[/youtube]

One of the most viewed TED talks of all time is that of Sir Ken Robinson on how school kills creativity. Watching this entertaining, yet extremely realistic talk is totally worth your time.