Children in Their Talents a Basic Right
it’s the basic
right of every child to be seen
in its talent and in their talent we
need educational environments
that enable every child to be in their
talent
and we need people that are skilled to
give words to those talents
at the moment those children are in
their talent
my name is luc i’m an educational
scientist and i had a look
to do a lot of visits in the united
states to study positive psychology
appreciative inquiry and strengths-based
development
i remember a magic two-day conference
where
on stage was david cooperrider ron fry
barbara frederickson mikhail
and also marcus buckingham it was
wonderful and it helped me to understand
much
better the concept of talent when it’s
about talent many people think that
talent is about being excellent in a
certain activity
being the best in something like an
excellent cook or an excellent supporter
or
an excellent top manager but that’s not
my definition of talent
for me talent is not about being the
best in a certain activity
but it is about what an activity does
with you
so my definition of talent is talent is
about
any activity in your life that goes
totally at ease
and that satisfies you that fulfills you
and if you find words
for the thing that satisfies you you
come in the neighborhood
of your talent and my definition has
four layers so the first layer
is about activities that go totally at
ease and satisfy you
the second layer talent is about
activities that make time fly
and for the time flying there’s a word
and it’s the concept flow of shakes and
behind
flow is both a mental and a physical
state
that makes us to engage in such a way in
a situation in a situation
that we lose track of time we’re on a
party we are dancing we’re talking we’re
coaching
we’re working and we lose track of time
and at a certain moment you look our
watcher we say it’s already
four o’clock time has been flown that’s
flow
and we sit down on a chair and then we
feel that we are tired while you’re in
flow you don’t feel you’re getting tired
20 of the people on this planet
experiences flow every day
20 of the people on this planet never
experiences flow
and to those people it’s very difficult
to explain what flow is
and what talent is the time is flying
well maybe when i sleep but i don’t know
the third layer of my definition is
talent is about
activities that load your batteries
if you have worked hard during a day you
were in flow you were coaching or you
were
in a meeting or you were teaching and
time was flying
and you come home in the evening you can
be even exhausted or very tired
but at the same time you have positive
energy
you have you are fueled and you look
forward to the next day
or talent makes us tired but also gives
positive
energy towards the future and the fourth
layer of my definition is
talent is about activities that make you
to be your authentic self
and i have a little trick for that if
you look back to the last week
you could say that every hour that the
time was flying
you could say you were your authentic
self
well if you have this kind of a
definition of talent it doesn’t make it
easier to discover your talent
and a basic point of my theory is
there’s
only talent when it’s seen by others we
only become aware of our talent and the
first time
someone gives words to those talents and
for that
there are two conditions and the first
condition with children or with adults
with
children is if you see someone doing
something very good
that you say it but only when you mean
it
and not in the sense of good well done
great
but that you try to give word to what so
was so special in the act
of the child and the second condition is
with the child
that it is touched by that remark
because there’s a belonging
in that child to be good at that and
then
you get magic because then you get
remarks that even at the end of the life
they maybe still will remember
i’ll give you an example there’s a boy
in a discussion in the in the classroom
and you say so so wonderful how you were
doing that you had a discussion together
and
everybody was talking loud and
discussing
and you you were the only one who was
listening very calm
listening to each other and as a result
of that everybody started to calm down
and started to listen to each other so
beautiful how you do that
and then that boy could say well i was
not interested so i said nothing
but maybe also he had a belonging in
that situation
to play that kind of role and maybe he
will do that as an
adult too it’s so important that we help
children uh to to enable to be there in
their talents but also to give words
to their talents so that they become
aware of their talent because
when you come become aware of your
talent you can start to work
hard to develop skills with your talent
and to find contexts
in which you can apply your talents and
that’s what i call
talent in action talent in action means
i have a talent
i have developed skills and i found a
context in which
i can apply those talents many children
have the chance
and the luck to be seen in their talent
when they’re 7
8 years old some people are seen for the
first time in their talents when they’re
17 18 19 years old
some may be at their first workplace but
some
at 45 have never been seen in their
talents at that age and that’s
very very sad we have developed a set of
talents 39 talents and we work with
those talents in schools with children
but also with adults
and i’ll explain some of you maybe first
the talent of the
of the knowledge sponge who of you reads
a book or watches a documentary every
evening before sleeping okay then you
could have the talent of a knowledge
sponsor children adults with the talent
of a knowledge point they are very
curious by nature
they love information they love to
process information
it gives them a lot of satisfaction it
fulfills them when they learn
new information when they’re under
stress
and they read a book they will relax and
they read in the evening before sleeping
before because their head is filled with
information they can disconnect from the
day
and they fall asleep it’s a very good
talent to have when you’re
at school it’s a talent that will be
seen at school
you will be seen in that talent there’s
a big chance
the second talent is the talent of the
selective perfectionist
children with the talent of selective
perfectionists and adults are people
that
when they’re motivated so when they are
motivated
but only when they’re motivated they’ll
start to perform
and what they will do will be excellent
they want excellence at that moment
when they’re not motivated it’s much
more difficult
they won’t learn and develop when
they’re not motivated
and the thing with children with the
talent of selective perfectionists
they first have to develop to discover
their passion before they start to learn
many of them are dropouts they leave the
educational system they become
adult and then maybe they find their
passion and then they say
i should have studied more but then
sometimes it’s too late
another talent is the talent of the moot
reader
children with the talent of the mood
reader when they or for adults if they
enter a room where there was just a
conflict happening
they will feel it immediately they see
at one
tiny movement in your face that you
didn’t like a remark
and they love to do very small things in
other
in a way they make other people feel
better a very beautiful
talent can you imagine how it has been
for children being in lockdown
with this talent of mood reader i don’t
think they feel happy at that moment
it’s a basic right of children to be
seen
in their talent when you look at schools
sometimes you think schools are
designed to make time fly for teachers
and not for children
and of course it’s important that the
time flies for teachers because
you can only see children in their
talent as a teacher when you are in your
talent
but how would it be that time flies at
school
every day both for teachers and for
children
imagine your 14 year old son saying
every evening almost
oh it’s already 4 o’clock time has flown
that’s cool
what you see in education is that you
have to have luck
you have to have look that your talents
match or fit
to the educational system i always say
if you’re able to sit on a chair for a
long time
if you’re able to make legible notes
if you structure well if you analyze
well if you memorize well
and if you’re able to reproduce your
knowledge without too much stress at the
exam
then you are very very lucky because
then you have talents that match the
educational system
if not you could feel stupid you could
feel average
you could think i have no talents and in
a lot of cases we give those children
labels an example
one of the most best photographers in
belgium
when he was young when he was at school
he thought he was stupid
below average he said i have no talent
he was diagnosed with dyslexia he
thought i’m stupid
and until a certain age and then he
discovered that he had magic eyes he had
the possibility to make pictures
he got international prizes how can it
come that we don’t see that talent
before the age of 18 or 19 years old
another example is a belgian cyclist
when he was a small boy his mom went
with him to the doctor and she said
doctor i think my son has adhd
and the doctor smiled and he said ma’am
just let him do what he’s good at
give him time and he will become
excellent in it and he became world
champion
how is it that we don’t see it the
problem with education is
that we have to know that school is
not life that means the talents you need
to be good at school
are not the same talents that you need
to be good in life they
overlap of course but there are children
they have a cluster of talents
that don’t match the educational system
and they think they won’t succeed in
life
and that’s not true why don’t we tell
that
to our children together with my
colleague ells bronch we started a
movement an international movement
while we were not aware of that movement
and it started in ghent in belgium in my
home city where we started to organize
free talent interviews with children in
coffee bars
on wednesday afternoon and the first
afternoon was full and the second was
full
and the third was full and hundreds of
people followed us on facebook
and then people phone and they say can i
learn this also how to
to talk with children about their
talents have you said yes you can that
you can learn it
and you even get a certificate but the
certificate accepting the certificate
means
that you probe that you promise that you
engage
to organize those kind of free talent
interviews with children
in your community we are four years
later
and we have almost 1000 of those people
who do talent interviews in the
netherlands
in belgium and almost any village in
almost any city
all over the country and they’re very
enthusiastic
then we got phones by schools and they
said can you do this in our school
and we say yes we can do this in your
school we give the training but only if
you promise
that afterwards every child that follows
school in your school
will learn how to learn about its
talents their talents
and i think we told a story already in
hundreds of schools
all over the country belgium and the
netherlands and then
the city council of ghent my home city
contacted us and they said
we want this in this city could you
could you learn
all people involved in this city how to
do talent interviews with children
so we certified a city that has the
intention
that every child in the city of ghent
will be seen in their talent
the dutch city zwolle is the second city
hundreds of people have been trained
hundreds of people
are supported to see talents and
children it’s beautiful
and then we got thrown from from curacao
from bonaire from south africa
and so this is an international growing
movement and we didn’t intend
to start a movement
it’s the basic right of every child to
be seen
in their talent
you know every individual if you if you
take the 39 talents that we have
described every individual
has a unique combination of those 15
talents
that we select out of the 39 talents and
the chance that you have
the same combination as someone else
that chance is lower than one on three
million
that means each of you and each child
has a unique combination of talents
so they can do something unique that
nobody else can do
so beautiful to say that to know that
and no they won’t become a world
champion every
not everybody will become world champion
not everybody
will become a star but each child can
shine what i dream about is a world
in which we help every child before the
age of 12 to be seen to
be seen in their talents and that we
have found words
to give name to give words to the
talents of those children
so that they become aware of their
talents in such a way
they can develop skills and they can
find a context
in david in which they bring their
talents in action
imagine that people that work hard as an
entrepreneur as a teacher as a nurse
that come home in the evening that are
tired may be exhausted
but have positive energy towards the
future
less burnouts less depressions much more
people that feel
happy and do good in the world to end
i would like to quote picasso
and picasso said
the meaning of life is to find your gift
the purpose of life is to give it away
thank you very much
you