We acquire a lot of knowledge at school and generally, formal education should ease the process of learning and teaching concepts to the next generation by giving them the necessary skills and knowhow that would help them develop into fine adults who could contribute to society.
But out of all the things that children learn from school, there are certain things that should be taught. These five skills, which include communication and financial literacy, are pretty basic life skills that anyone should know before they go out into the world.
Why is it then that many adults today are able to coast in life without having knowledge of these basic life skills?
Education too frequently focuses on preparing people for the workforce. While we will always need well-trained and knowledgeable mathematicians, engineers, teachers, and therapists, work is just one part of our lives. For a truly competent, intelligent, and healthy population, more attention needs to be paid to the skills that everyone needs on a daily basis.
(Image credit: Kimberly Farmer/Unsplash)
We used to teach financial literacy, nutrition, and civics in schools. Those were done away with in the rush to concentrate on reading and math, which are more easily tested. Kids used to learn communication and emotional intelligence from their large families, including many siblings, grandparents, and cousins.
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I think we should teach kids logic and critical thinking. Once they got those down pat, then the rest would/should follow easily.
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The ancients thought that the core of education was rhetoric: communication and critical thinking.
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I agree with all 5 of those life skills, and I've seen many people lacking in 1 or many. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but (as a person who's worked for 25 years) I can tell you determinism plays a bigger role than people want to admit. People really don't change that much over the course of their life. I've watched many employees over a 1/5/10 year period. It's not a bad thing though - the good people don't change either. If we lived in a world where people constantly changed (as people tend to believe they do), everything would be chaos.
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