Introduction by Michael Parker, author of Talk With Your Kids About Things That Matter

I believe that thinking critically is amongst the most important skills that students can have as they approach the large academic challenges of their lives. Being able to provide reasons, ask ‘why’, spot distinctions, present arguments logically and use criteria are great building blocks that are used in dozens of ways each year. It can and is done at school, but I believe that so much of it can be done at home as well. And not at the kids’ desks, but at the dinner tables or in the cars.

These critical skills have to be teased out and practised with our young men and women. You can’t teach someone how to chew without giving them food, though. So too, it is very difficult to get kids to think critically without great things to think about.

This is where I hope the book Talk With Your Kids About Things That Matter comes in. I have tried to distil conversation questions on a hundred and twenty or so topics – from the pandemic to pushing in at the canteen queue, from fake news to free will – and everything in between. Hopefully if this books sits at the dinner table or the car glove box you can be chewing on metaphoric as well as literal food night after night or trip after trip. Your kids may be getting more engaged, more curious, more able to reason, even smarter, after a steady enough diet. And the dinner table or car trip might get more fun as well.

Of course you can’t just drop a question like ‘what do you think about fake news’ into a conversation and just hope that it fires up.  It usually takes a bit of careful nurturing. That’s why I have also written an introduction about how to get conversations going – with a handy explanation of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’.  

I think that exciting, rigorous, probing conversations about things that matter is its own reward with kids. Just as importantly it nurtures those thinking skills that I think they need for all sorts of academic ventures. I hope that one way or another you get as many chances as possible to do this with your own children.

About the author

Michael Parker is the Headmaster of Newington College in Sydney. He studied Arts/Law and briefly worked in a corporate law firm before turning his attention to Education. He has a Masters degree in teaching Philosophy to children and is the author of seven books. Before Newington he was Headmaster of Oxley College in the Southern Highlands of NSW.