12 things they don’t teach in school, but should
Don’t you think that years ago we seemed to learn less and know more about life? Maybe we read more books? Let everyone try to answer for themselves. Well, it can also save it as a comment.
Languages, science, art, computers – are these things enough to prepare a person for an independent life?
No, school does not give the child the necessary knowledge and skills for real life.
Maybe he relies on family. But did parents teach these things? They are not. So how should they teach their children? Obviously, both parents and children have to fill this gap themselves.
Unfortunately, school teaches us how to become hired workers for successful people. Is this what we want? Hardly.
We want WE TO BE THE SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE!
Surely someone here will insert the well-worn phrase: “School teaches us to think.”
And it really is. But surely this is completely insufficient.
Few are lucky enough to find courageous teachers, teachers by profession who go beyond the curriculum and who, by their example, become not only teachers but also mentors for children. The curious thing is that the management of education oppresses such people. Management has no interest in developing successful and creative individuals.
Let’s think about what we are missing after years of learning.
1. Self-care
We have been taught for generations that selfishness is a negative quality and must be fought against. Or we misidentify self-care as selfishness. Decide for yourself.
No matter what you think, what happens if we don’t take care of ourselves?
Every parent, like a mother-eagle, cares for their child and makes sure that it is well. He neglects his own life, his own dreams, his own health at the expense of his children.
And at one point he lay down sick and weak in the arms of his children.
Who, having just raised their own children, must give everything for the survival of their parents – they owe it to them. This is what they have seen, this is what they have learned about real life.
When do people live THEIR lives? Probably never…
It does not take miracles of bravery to break out of this vicious circle. We simply need to take control of our own well-being into our own hands.
This is not selfishness. This is a concern for future generations. By aging gracefully, in full health and full consciousness, we provide freedom for our children to achieve their own dreams and live their own lives.
And let’s not underestimate them. They will appreciate this and love and respect us no less than the other case of the vicious circle in caring for others.
What is self-care? There are two main directions.
1.1. Weight control, healthy eating, active lifestyle and wellness, sleep and rest
It is in this area that we are trying to fill the knowledge gap. That’s why I won’t go into theory – it’s enough to join one of our challenges and you’ll be treated like a VIP.
1.2. Mental and mental health
Depression is now one of the leading causes of a variety of problems in students at all levels of education. Years ago we neglected her.
“Two slaps and back to work, where do you come up with these depressions!”
We are already convinced that this is a serious disease and should not be underestimated.
And it’s not just her.
In general, the mental problems of teenagers are often ignored and complaints are not taken seriously, attributed to their age.
No one teaches children how to live with negative emotions, no one teaches them to talk about them, or how to overcome them without hurting the feelings of others. They themselves do not understand what is happening to them and how to live with it. They often do not even meet understanding from their parents.
Neither the school nor the parents are prepared for effective communication with teenagers. In case of need, it is good to turn to a specialist and there is nothing shameful or worrying about it.
2. Value Management
Prioritizing and setting goals. forming good habits and changing bad ones. If all this had been learned in school, in adulthood we would probably work more efficiently, get a lot more done, tire a lot less, and generally live a richer life.
3. Financial management
The statistics are disheartening. On average, about 15% in our country consider themselves financially literate. Another question is to what extent this is really the case.
A large part of people know almost nothing about banking services, they do not know when to use a credit card and when to debit, in most cases they immediately withdraw the money received in their accounts, they do not know what their fees are and when they are formed.
Could such people become investors or at least choose an optimal banking product for passive income? Impossible.
At school these things are not mentioned, parents rarely discuss financial problems with their children.
And suddenly the children have grown up and have to deal with banks, budgeting, spending and savings, taxes and all kinds of fees on their own.
Further harm is done by the continuous advertisements of gambling and quick loans, which can further bury them if they give in to the temptation. And why not? Right: “You have a car, you have money…it’s easy.”
Perhaps books on financial literacy can be found, but another problem arises – how do we motivate children to read them?
In most cases, young people act on the “fire” principle – if a problem arises, they look for a solution on the Internet, trust it too much and… “whatever the sword shows”.
In our club, people get a basic knowledge of it and we show them how we do it.
4. Time management
Much has also been written about time management. There are suitable books. But nothing is learned in school.
The barracks helped somewhat, at least for the boys, but it can’t be relied on anymore either.
Perhaps the most successful again is the personal example of parents and teachers. They can show the principles of their personal effectiveness, how they deal with procrastination, how they invest their time instead of wasting it or using it. As and what these three things mean: to waste, to use, and to invest one’s time.
If the parents themselves know this.
In our club, people get a basic knowledge of it and we show them how we do it.
5. Communications, programming and both together
In the very near future, many professions will disappear. They will simply be superfluous.
Many new ones will appear, usually related to engineering and development.
Programming skills will be useful not only for technical specialists, but also for the humanities: for processing and analyzing large amounts of data or for automating routine tasks, for the needs of artificial intelligence.
Already many majors include programming, even in secondary schools, but my personal experience shows two main problems:
- Unprepared teachers, often laughing in front of the children;
- Too narrow specialization in programming education.
With the first problem everyone must have faced through the complaints of their own children, I will explain what I mean by the second.
Wonderful programmers are emerging.
Wonderful communication specialists are also emerging.
But in most cases they are too narrow specialists, but rarely does one of them know enough about the others and this arises as a problem.
Everything now happens in a network environment and in the “cloud”, and in different conditions, which are never ideal. And for both programming and communication to be effective, they must be aligned with each other. It’s inevitable. And you don’t learn this way anywhere. There are few people who could teach children in this way.
6. Marketing, Business, Advertising
The school prepares wage workers.
It does not prepare entrepreneurs.
Teenagers are interested in business, sometimes even succeed in it. But for most, creativity comes down to being influencers promoting products or services they don’t even know.
The successful achieve it by trial and error.
Few of them reach the knowledge of how to prepare a business plan, come up with an advertising strategy, create their own “brand” and a successful business.
7. Public speaking skill
No matter how prepared, knowledgeable and capable a person is, it may not matter at all if he does not know how to present his ideas in a correct and good way.
Many people try, but they make basic mistakes and sound edifying instead of intriguing with interesting exciting stories.
There is enough literature on how to speak in front of an audience, including in Bulgarian, but it is not taught in school. And it should.
8. Relationship Management. Harmonious relations
Some schools have been trying to include family life lessons for some time. And as usual, one does not rely on the opinion of psychologists, sexologists, sociologists and doctors, but on religion and “out of nowhere” authors.
Most schools do not talk at all about how to build a harmonious and equal relationship with a partner, how to respect each other, how to share household chores and solve problems in school and personal relationships. No one is talking about what to do about domestic abuse, and many people don’t even believe it exists. No one talks about love disappointments and how to overcome them. No one talks about friendship, parent-teacher relationships, how to have a discussion and how to take a stand. And such lessons would help to avoid many problems and worries and build successful personalities.
9. Sexual literacy
Most of us are convinced that children need sex education. According to statistics, only 30% of people trust the school in this matter. And 61% are sure that in these lessons children should be talked about not so much about contraception, respect for the partner, safety and pleasure, as about morality.
In any case, despite the statistics, there is still no sex education in schools. It relies mainly on the Internet. But there children are unlikely to find what they are looking for and the way they are looking for it. Serious wars are being waged around this topic involving parents, teachers, clergy and politicians. And it seems that none of these groups consider the real needs of children’s sex education, but pursue their own goals. And the problems are growing: sexually transmitted infections, early pregnancy and violence.
Without competent sex education, children draw knowledge from the most unreliable sources, for example, from peers or from pornography, which has little to do with normal sex between living people. Studies show that watching porn provokes violence against women (from 37 to 80% of such videos contain scenes of violence) and creates unrealistic ideas about the human body in general and sexual relations in particular.
Some children are saved only by antisocial behavior caused by addiction to computers and the Internet, but at the same time, the same addiction slows down their development as mature and full-fledged individuals.
10. Housework
Work training in schools is constantly changing its name, but this does not make it more adequate to life. To some extent, it still supports harmful gender stereotypes. It wouldn’t hurt any boy to cook and clean, nor a girl to paste wallpaper or repair a car. And this has nothing to do with the “new European values” for many sexes, but with respect and mutual help in the family.
11. Cybersecurity
People are still incredibly naive: they do not know the rules for working with bank cards, they trust dubious sellers of goods and services, they open dubious e-mails.
Can you imagine how dumb someone would have to be to open a letter that his account was closed at a certain bank when he never had an account with it? And it happens more and more often.
And more and more people are succumbing to get-rich-quick ads, to lose weight fast, and to achieve very quickly whatever they desire. And now it is easy to create a profile of every person who has entered the world wide web even for a short time.
Someone needs to tell the child about the schemes criminals use, teach them how not to fall for their tricks, how to handle bank cards, how to shop online, etc.
Someone needs to teach kids (and adults too) how to keep their personal information safe, how to create complex passwords for different accounts and how to keep them, how to ignore strangers who show interest in communicating with them.
12. Ability to learn, read and memorize (mnemonics)
Everyone knows we have to be good at it, but it doesn’t always happen with just “practices”. Yes, we should read. Let’s read a lot! But we also need a strategy.
According to forecasts, the generations after 2010 will live in a completely different way. To successfully cope with life, learning in schools will not be enough at all.
They will be able to choose what to study, they will need to be able to check the accuracy and reliability of information sources themselves, set goals, plan, allocate time and workload, evaluate their own knowledge and look for opportunities for implementation .
Shouldn’t we be preparing for this from now on?
We will be glad if you share in a comment.
