Last Thursday I was in Homer to lead a parent training. Toward the middle of the presentation I asked the group to identify the skills that our students will need to be successful after they graduate from high school. A lot of good conversation ensued, but what was most interesting, was a sharp disagreement between two parents over whether a school or a family is responsible for teaching life skills. Both parents clearly agreed that our students need more in this area but had different views on the role that school should play with educating the whole child.
This dilemma is of course not new and schools, as you know, have been asked to do more and more in this area. While it is easy to dismiss the teaching of life skills, for example character, as not within a school’s domain, it’s my experience that students lacking in these skills usually do less well than do their peers who have them. My sense is that the parent who was arguing in favor of our schools teaching these skills recognized that many of our students are not learning these skills at home and hence, need to acquire them at school. One of the advantages of our district is that by and large, our students have a personal experience at school that includes employees knowing their names and layers of support to prevent them from slipping through the cracks. I support the teaching of life skills at school and know that our smaller size allows this to be a more seamless effort with our core than it would be in a larger setting.
3 Comments
I agree that the teaching of life skills can help level the playing field and thereby support the educational mission.
Who get the job? The 3.6 GPA with no etiquette or social skills? Or the 3.3 student who is gracious and thoughtful in greeting his/her future boss?
While manners are somewhat timeless and always a student’s choice to use them or not; I’d suggest that practical skills should be very forward-looking. How to write a check or answer a landline is pointless as today’s student will never do either. But on-line issues, dealing with different cultures, and shifting through uncertain information will only become more important.
The frameworks evaluation system and its focus on student driven, constructivist education demands that we teach life skills. How are students going to be classroom leaders and active contributors to their peers’ education without the life skills of character, empathy and respect.
Our children are in school for most of their waking hours for a substantial part of the year, how is there even a question on whether teaching life skills is part of the school’s domain or not? Students do not cease to be humans when they enter school halls and schools aren’t just academic factories.