Why Talking At Your Children Is Quietly Breaking Them
There is a sentence I have heard parents say to me, almost word-for-word, in different rooms and communities for the better part of my Life. It goes something like this: “I talk to my child all the time. I have no idea why she won’t open up to me.” I believe them. They do talk […]
We Can’t Give What We Haven’t Built in Ourselves!
A week ago, a three-part series was offered. Mattering, Formation, Adult Responsibility: three blogs, one argument, one closing call to the grown-ups in young people’s lives to stop diagnosing the youth and start examining ourselves. In the week since, we pondered the question, which many readers may have had and who may have taken the […]
The Adult Is the Curriculum
Part 3 in a Rudder4Life Series on the Quiet Crises Shaping South Africa’s Young Where we have been Part 1 asked whether a child knows they matter. Part 2 asked who they are becoming. This final reflection turns the conversation in a direction that is harder to write and, frankly, harder to sit with. It […]
Children Matter. Now, Who Are They Becoming?
Part 2 of a Rudder4Life Series on the Quiet Crises Shaping South Africa’s Young Where Part 1 left us In our last blog, we answered a question drawn from Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Never Enough and Dr Mark Potterton’s Daily Maverick reflection on it: Does this child know they matter? We made the case that a […]
Children Matter: Our Answer to The Achievement Trap
Part 1 of a Rudder4Life Series on the Quiet Crises Shaping South Africa’s Young South Africa celebrated the Class of 2025’s record 88% matric pass rate, then, almost in the same breath, returned to its more familiar mood: anxiety. Twenty-five applicants for every seat at UCT or Wits. A youth unemployment rate above 62% for […]
8 Truths That Will Change How You See Yourself
There’s a moment most of us know well. You walk into a room, a classroom, a boardroom, or a party, and something inside you shrinks. Not because the room is dangerous, nor because you’re incapable, but because a voice you’ve carried since childhood whispers, “I’m not quite enough for this.“ That voice isn’t the truth. […]
Why Our Children Need Whole-Mind Learning
Part 4 Throughout this series, we’ve explored why teaching kids about feelings is as important as maths, how to make social, emotional, and academic learning work in practice, and what university engineering programs teach us about whole-child development (Read here). Now we arrive at a deeper question: what happens when our entire education system becomes […]
Why Good Intentions Don’t Make a Damn Difference?
The science of why we do what we do: here’s why anyone who has ever started a diet on Monday or promised themselves this year would be different, and it turned out, not. You have been there. The night before feels full of possibility, the plan is clear, the motivation is real, and the version […]
What Higher Education Teaches Us About Whole-child Learning?
Part 3 In our previous blogs, we examined why teaching feelings is just as vital as teaching maths, and how to effectively implement social, emotional, and academic learning in our schools (Read here). But here’s an intriguing question: what happens when universities, the institutions shaping future professionals, adopt these same principles? In the paper “Infusing […]
Making Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning Work
Part 2 In our previous blog, we explored why teaching kids about feelings is just as important as maths. We talked about how social and emotional skills aren’t “soft extras” but the foundation that makes academic learning possible. The research from Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, and Walberg showed us that you can’t separate emotional development from […]