Tremaine Du Prez - Raising Thinkers: Preparing Your Child for the Journey of Life

2016 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

Text Tremaine du Preez

Design: Benson Tan

Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data

Name(s): Du Preez, Tremaine, 1978

Title: Raising Thinkers : preparing your child for the journey of life / Tremaine du Preez.

Other title(s): Preparing your child for the journey of life

Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd., [2016]

Identifier(s): OCN 956281293 | eISBN 978 981 47 7142 9

Subject(s): LCSH: Early childhood education--Parent participation. | Parenting--Study and teaching. | Thought and thinking--Study and teaching (Elementary). | Critical thinking--Study and teaching (Elementary). | Decision making--Study and teaching (Elementary). | Problem solving.

Classification: DDC 649.98--dc23

Printed in Singapore by JCS Digital Solutions Pte Ltd

For Thane, my wisest teacher

You will travel far. But we will never leave you. The richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that Ive learned, everything I feel... all this, and more, I bequeath you, my son. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine.

~ Jor-El, Supermans dad, 1978

The desire to understand the origins of our universe is as old as thought itself. Weve searched the stars and listened to the darkness beyond for millennia, analysed the celestial crumbs that fall to earth and pioneered technologies to help us extract the smallest facts from the grandest theories. In the late 1970s a team of European scientists dreamed of journeying through both space and time to land a probe on a speeding comet to find an answer to this oldest of riddles. It was a whimsical idea at a time when mankind hadnt even seen a comet up close. But their outlandish notion grew and grew with complete disregard for the confines of reality until there was no stopping it. It gathered 250 scientists from 11 countries and $1.7 billion of funding for a 30-year journey back to the beginning of the beginning.

Christened the Rosetta Mission, it is the most conceptually and technologically audacious act of discovery ever undertaken: to chase a comet across the galaxy for 10 years with a probe the size of an SUV ricocheting across our inner solar system at speeds of 66,000 kilometres per hour through megalithic asteroid belts, ice, gas, dust and whatever else is out there. After 19 years of research, committees, permissions and setbacks it was done. The Rosetta probe was launched in 2004 on an unknowable journey that would, hopefully, last a full decade.

For three years of that journey Rosetta slept in deep space hibernation, alone in a faraway orbit, in the coldest regions of space, 520 million kilometres from home. Then in 2011 she woke herself up and figured out where she was in space by comparing what she saw with stellar images stored in her databank. After hours of searching she finally found earth and called home, Hello its Rosetta. Im fine, Ive just woken up and here I am. Mission control in Germany couldnt have been happier or more proud.

In November 2014 Rosetta reached her target, her raison dtre, in the outer reaches of our solar system an ice and dust ball a mere four kilometres wide, tearing through space 130 times faster than the top speed of a Boeing A380. Rosetta released her Philae lander to rendezvous with this icy comet known as 67P, and the real work of looking back 4,600 million years to figure out how our solar system developed from ancient primordial chaos, began.

Were there risks to this operation? Could the team at mission control have done everything possible to ensure that the mission, their reputations and taxpayers money werent compromised in any way? Yes, of course there were both known and unknown risks all of them huge. Despite 19 years of planning and research the team could never have guaranteed the success of this mission. In fact, when Rosettas lander reached the surface of the comet, it was greeted with ice and dust far softer than expected. It drifted, bounced twice, failed to fire its harpoons and came to rest in a dark, shadowy crater, well hidden from sunlight. With its last ounce of solar power, it radioed home to say that it was out of energy and shutting down till it found the sun again, or the sun found it.

Parenting today is not too different from running a space exploration programme. As far as funding goes, kids and space bots usually cost more than we budgeted for. The first 18 years, maybe more, are a flurry of designing, learning, testing, correcting and improving the skills and personalities of our offspring. Despite preparing them for the journey of life with the utmost care and attention, there are simply too many known and unknown variables at play for us to be confident that nothing will go wrong. Come launch day we still wont know exactly what lies out there on their path. The unknown is risky business and exactly why NASA, the ESA and their global peers employ a team of the smartest brains with specialist skills in every area needed for each project. To quote from their website: It takes hundreds of people; machinists, engineers, scientists, programmers and many others to get a spacecraft from the planning stages to its destination in outer space. The Rosetta Mission took over 1,000 brains to get to launch and even then, success was merely one of the possible outcomes.

Can you imagine the parenting equivalent? Beginning with fertility specialists, a maternity team consisting of prenatal yoga instructor, nutritionist, nursery decorator, financial planner and second hand car dealer. Followed by the prelaunch team of early childhood specialists, paediatricians, fitness trainers, life coaches, caregivers, babysitters, party entertainers and we havent even started on school and extra-everything class specialists.