Self-made billionaire Mark Cuban is committed to life-long learning and often says it is key to his success. In fact, Cuban has said time and money spent on learning is “the best investment” he has ever made.
And now, “we’ve got to teach our kids how to learn, because that’s the ultimate skill going forward,” Cuban said during a Q&A session at the George W. Bush Center on Oct. 21.
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“My dad always said that you don’t live in the world you were born into, and that’s not going to change. The rate of change is only going to accelerate.”
Rather than reading books like he often did, Cuban says his kids use social media and YouTube to learn.
“The reality is, they learn differently than we used to. With my [10-year-old] son and my 14-year-old daughter, trying to get them to read books is a battle,” Cuban said, adding that his son has surprised him with his understanding of business, learning what a royalty is or what gross margin is, by watching ABC’s “Shark Tank” on YouTube.
Cuban, on the other hand, has said he spends “four to five hours a day” reading, he told CNBC Make It in 2018. “I read everything I can. I don’t care what the source is.”
“The fact that I recognized that learning was truly a skill, and that by continuing to learn, to this day, I’m able to compete and keep up and get ahead of most people,” Cuban told Men’s Health in September. “The reality is, most people don’t put in the time to keep up and learn. That’s always given me a competitive advantage.”
So, going forward, “not only do we have to teach [kids] how to learn, but we as their parents and teachers have to recognize that they’re going to learn differently,” Cuban said at the Bush Center.
To start, Cuban and his fellow “Shark Tank” co-star Daymond John, who also participated in the Bush Center talk, agree that “financial intelligence and coding” should be taught at “a very, very early age,” John said.
“Those things should be [taught] in the second grade, third grade, fourth grade, not when you’re 17,” about to graduate high school and enter college with a student loan, John said. “Today, a kid graduating college will end up retiring with a job title that doesn’t exist yet. We have to understand where we’re going and we have to be implementing that at a very young age.”
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”
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