Creating Capable Kids : Twelve Strategies That Will Elevate Kids in School and Life

Here is a compelling, thought provoking and practical guide to parenting and educating today's children. It is derived from Amartya Sen's Nobel Prize-winning approach to human development which has proven highly effective at freeing people from the chains of poverty. Educators Bruce and Caitlin Howlett apply Sen's approach to child development at home and in school and offering fresh, effective ways to rescue parenting and revive education, while providing parents, teachers and caregivers with a proven foundation for creating rewarding childhoods, academic success and fulfilling lives.

By incorporating the twelve key capabilities, such as sensory awareness, creative imagination, emotional and self-awareness, parents and educators can promote the three most critical tools for children's survival and success: continuous learning, problem solving, and increased knowledge and meaning. Using stories of three different types of children - Zoe, Mia and Daniel - the authors demonstrate the value of life and of the "Capabilities Approach" theory on how to cultivate inquisitive, actively engaged, motivated, perceptive and resilient children.

Bruce Howlett, a former biological researcher at Cornell University, has over two decades of teaching experience that includes working in settings as diverse as a Montessori primary school and a residential school for emotionally disturbed teens. For the last twelve years he has been an elementary school special education teacher and has founded two educational technology companies, Sound Reading Solutions and Mind4Learning, which span the gap between cognitive research and the classroom.

Caitlin Howlett has a Masters Degree in Philosophy from the University of Oregon where she studied the effects of social and economic inequality on students' outcomes and educational experiences and she is working on a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education at Indiana University with a minor in gender studies.

They both live in Ithaca, NY.