Recently, Seth Godin blogged about “What’s high school for?” He listed a 10 super skills we should be teaching our kids in high school. Including some of my favorites:
The power of being able to lead groups of peers without receiving clear delegated authority.
Project management. Self-management and the management of ideas, projects and people.
An insatiable desire (and the ability) to learn more. Forever.
Thinking back to my high school days in a top-notch high school with fantastic teachers, very few of these skills were explicitly addressed (except maybe public speaking, critical thinking, and the scientific method). I’m sure some of the gifted teachers tried to impart some of the other ideas into our hard headed teenage brains, but there was no explicit discussion about most of the items in Seth’s list.
Few of the items on Seth’s list are controversial, but many of these skills are difficult to measure (e.g. how do you test for “self reliance?”) In a climate of teaching to the test, we (parents, politicians, educators, etc.) should figure out how to address the life skills in Seth’s list while preparing our children for careers in the 21st century.
As a parent, I’m am helping my elementary school aged kids (why wait for high school?) to begin the process of chipping away at some of the ideas on Seth’s list. I hope we can find a way for our teachers and school districts to do the same.
