Self-Reliance is Necessary Now

This man submitted nearly 2,000 job applications but was never hired. So he wised up and started his own business, which is doing well. He used his personal experience to come up with the idea for his business. Smart! This is the kind of thinking that pays off in the new economy. It's how our children will need to think.

The Delicate Balance Between Tech-Savvy and Tech-Addiction

One of the Seven Strengths for the 21st century that our kids will need is to be tech-savvy. This means they need to be very comfortable with computers and how they work.

Difficulties arise when kids go beyond tech-savvy to become tech-addicted, particularly to social media. This article does a great job of showing that too much time spend on computers and other tech toys is likely causing changes in kids' brains that make them very distractible. It also takes time away from other important activities that are vital to their development, particularly reading.

How do you maintain the delicate balance between tech-savvy and tech-addiction? You'll find out in early 2011 when Thriving in the 21st Century is published. Stay tuned!

Help Your Teen Understand the Enormous Federal Debt

Most of us don’t understand the extent of our government’s indebtedness, but we do know that we’re saddling our kids and grandchildren with a ton of debt. No one’s happy about that, but what can we do?

Here’s an interesting interactive graphic that will help you and your teen get a handle on exactly what can be done to reduce deficits. It’ll get you both talking about where cuts should be made and/or taxes should be increased. Each decision you make reduces the debt….but also has repercussions.

Try it and see what I mean. It will help your teen (and you) understand what kind of tough decisions need to be made to get us back on track.

Why Jobs are Disappearing

Here's a short but informative video that explains why jobs are disappearing. Note how few people are needed to build a car these days. The location of the factory is another red flag. Automation and off-shoring are changing the U.S. employment situation.

We need to be aware of things like this. No, it's not good for American jobs. But it's better to prepare our children for the future as we see it, instead of the past that we were prepared for. Telling our kids what we were told ("Get good grades and a college diploma and you'll always have a job") isn't going to be very helpful.

Best and Worst U.S. Industries

Here's an interesting post that lists best and worst industries in the U.S. in terms of revenue growth or lack of it. When combined with my post last week regarding career areas that are growing (or not), you should get a clearer picture of job areas that are worth considering for your older children who will face the world of work in the next decade.

Which Career Areas are Growing?

Here's an excellent resource: a spreadsheet that shows the change in the number of jobs in a variety of careers; stats are for the time period May 2008 to May 2009.

The first page shows general career areas; click on the link "all job catagories(sic)" to see specific jobs. Note that frequently off-shored jobs are italicized. Numbers are from the BLS.

Paints a bleak picture, doesn't it? But some areas are doing better than others, which gives you an idea of where the least affected areas are, i.e. those to encourage your kids to look into for future employment.

Here's Your Diploma....and Your Bill for $24K

According to a recent survey, the average new college grad owes $24,000 in student loan debt at a time when the unemployment rate for college grads has set a record by jumping from 5.8% to 8.7%....in one year!

Keep in mind that the lower-than-average unemployment rate of college grads is partly due to them taking jobs that don't require a college degree because they need something to help pay back the loans that come due within a year after graduation. That explains why there are an awful lot of college-educated truck drivers and burger flippers at work these days.

Entrepreneurism vs. College

The writer of this article makes the case that increased entrepreneurism is what our country will need in the future, and that a college education is highly overrated when it comes to preparing people to fix what ails us economically.

There are many interesting points in this article, and some thought-provoking comments after it, adding up to more evidence that we need to be raising entrepreneurial kids!

Public Schools are Old School

The public school system was designed to train children for the 20th century world of work in factories and offices. Those days are gone, but the school system just keeps doing things the way they've always been done.

To truly prepare our children for the 21st century, public school is not the answer. But maybe you've already wondered about this. You might be interested in reading "Ten Signs That You Need to Find a Different Kind of Education for Your Child."

Underemployed College Grads: There are LOTS of Them

It's been a long time since most people went to college solely for the purpose of expanding their minds. In recent years, it's been all about getting that degree so you can get a good job. Colleges and universities didn't disagree with this view; in fact, many emphasized it by bragging on each graduating class's employment rate.

But the stakes are higher now: students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and they expect a way to pay it back so they can get on with their lives----and with earning a decent living.

That's why this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Why Did 17 Million Students Go To College?" is so striking. The author points out that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 17 million college grads employed in jobs that don't require a college degree. Hmm, how are they going to pay back all that student debt on a lower salary than they'd planned to earn?

Are Schools Killing Our Children's Creativity?

In a rapidly changing economic environment, thinking creatively can help people make good decisions when faced with challenging problems. Our children will need to be creative in order to make a living in the 21st century. But are schools crippling their creativity? This video makes the case that they are.

What do you think?

Learning a Foreign Language (or Two)

Our 19-year-old wants to be a police officer and was recently told by our local police that the way to move to the top of the new hires list is to be able to speak Spanish.

Many employers now look for bilingual employees, and Spanish isn't the only language they seek. Chinese is becoming increasingly important in the new economy, and other languages are also considered an asset. In a world where employment is not always easy to come by, our children will need the advantage of knowing a foreign language.

Young children pick up foreign languages quickly. Why not let them learn another language with some of the great products now available?

Our Children Will Need to Be Good Communicators

It's vital that our children grow up learning how to communicate effectively through writing. In an era of texting and chatspeak, this isn't always easy to manage.

But employers will always value workers who can get across a point clearly and concisely. It's an advantage for the self-employed, too, because being able to write your own website copy and do it well is a real money-saver.

Schoolchildren aren't always taught to write well. But we parents can make sure our children learn this important skill. This report (PDF), while written for homeschooling parents, offers plenty of tips and ideas for all parents who want their children to become good writers.

The Truth About Unemployment

According to government statistics and recent polling, the U.S. unemployment rate currently hovers at around 10%.

But economist John Williams includes both the short-term and long-term discouraged workers in his statistics, and estimates the current unemployment rate to be over 20%. Who's right? It doesn't matter; 20%+ is awful, but 10% is nothing to brag about.

Many pundits tell us this is "the new normal." If they're right, we'd better get started teaching our kids how to stretch a buck so that they can get through bouts of unemployment without going hungry.

Americans are Catching On

More and more people are realizing that the economy of the 21st century isn't going to get better any time soon. This is why we need to prepare our children carefully for the future: preparing them the way we were prepared makes no sense, because getting a college degree is no longer a guarantee of anything except a big expense.

It's not that none of our children will need to go to college. But all of our children will need to develop the specific strengths that will get them ready to thrive in the 21st century.