It’s impossible to predict exactly what our children will do as adults. Perhaps they’ll become designers, physicists, or startup founders. Some will become all three–and much more.
Regardless of the future of our children, we hope that they will:
- exercise good judgment;
- collaborate to solve difficult problems; and
- leave the world around them a bit better than they found it.
In all possible futures, these three traits stand out as essential–not only to prepare kids for the future but also for them to live lives of freedom, meaning, and joy. We call people with these traits supercollaborators, the kind of people who can work together to solve our civilization’s most challenging problems.
So, how do kids become supercollaborators? How do they develop good judgment? How do they make better sense of a dynamically changing world? How do they learn to navigate the complexities of competition and collaboration?
They need practice.
Unfortunately, practice is hard to come by, especially as a kid. Practice happens in sports and music, but the greater focus tends to be on discipline and execution. If students get to exercise true agency, it often happens by accident rather than design.
At Synthesis, we aim to fill this gap.
We’re creating an environment where mistakes are turned into opportunities. We’re giving kids the chance to get lots of things wrong so that they can figure out what it means to be right. We’re designing experiences that are complex yet welcoming, collaborative yet competitive. Experiences that are highly engaging, centered on the student, and designed to help kids feel high-level concepts while navigating the complexities of teamwork.
Our goal is to help students collaborate more effectively and become better equipped to solve thorny problems than anyone (adults included).