What They do not Teach You in School

Think about it, we spend a significant part of our life in formal education, nearly 16 years or more in school / college, which is expected to equip us with the required knowledge and skills to prepare us for life. We learn languages, mathematics, science, history, geography, etc in school, and in college we focus on career building skills such as engineering, commerce, medical, etc. There is no doubt that this education adds a significant value, and helps one to get a jump start in life. A major challenge in India today is that a large part of population is still deprived of this opportunity, and remains uneducated and illiterate.  

Another aspect to think about is the inadequate quality of our education. Students spend four years in an engineering college in order to acquire necessary skills to start as an engineer, but very often all they get is theoretical knowledge, and the practical skills required for the job are barely touched on the surface. Clearly, there is an urgent need to improve our college education in this direction. Most companies pitch in here with elaborate technical training programs for college graduates to prepare them for their job.

With so many years spent on education, it is expected that it will prepare us well for life in all aspects, which is far from the reality. Our curriculum has a single minded focus on job and career, and it works on the assumption that if you have a well-paying career or business and have enough money, you are going to be successful and happy in life. We discover from experience later that there are several other life skills that are needed to face life. These most vital life skills are largely ignored in our formal education, and our schools and colleges do not make any attempt to teach these competencies. If anything, they attempt to address them only indirectly, letting each student struggle on her own to develop these. Even at the job, these abilities are bundled under "soft-skills", and get minimal attention in employee education programs. This is one of the factors responsible for growing sense of unhappiness in youngsters who are immensely successful by conventional yardstick.

In this post, I discuss some of these abilities that are so vital for everyone that they deserve to be in our formal syllabus.

Self-Management

You are at the center of your universe, every outcome in your life depends on how you think and act. Hence it is natural that the most important life skill is about managing yourself. It ultimately decides how successful, happy, and satisfied you are going to be. You must have experienced days when you take right steps and get a lot of stuff done, and other days when you do not seem to find the right rhythm and struggle to take things forward. For example, look at these abilities that come into play in our day to day life, have you seen any course in school or college that deals with these topics? 

• How to manage your time effectively?
• How to handle stress and worries of everyday life?
• How to deal with failures / personal loss?
• How to make right decisions
• How to control our anger, envy, frustration, mood swings? 

Social behavior 

Next to managing yourselves, is managing your interaction with others. We come across people in every situation, at home, work, on road, in society. Why should we be left to ourselves to learn the inter-personal skills? How we get along with others can have a major impact on our life. For example, look at these social abilities that come into play in our day to day life. 

• How do we ensure positive interaction with others?
• How to work well in a team?
• How to communicate our thoughts to others?
• How to convince people about our ideas?
• How to be a good listener?
• How to take criticism from others?

Relationships

Humans have a need for having close meaningful relationships that provide a sense of love and belonging. But this is like a beautiful garden that has minefields all around. As you take a walk in it, you may enjoy sweet fragrance of flowers, taste of sweet fruits, but step on a mine by mistake and it may blow away everything. This is an area that certainly deserves to be given more direct attention in our education system.

• How do we form meaningful, long-lasting relationships with family, friends, and co-workers?
• How to sustain a relationship and keep it energized?
• What to do for damage control when things go wrong?
• How to reconcile the differences in a relationship?
• How to handle discussions, arguments, and conflicts?

Marriage

This fundamental aspect of human life is completely overlooked in our education. Ask any couple getting married – are they prepared for the life ahead? And the answer will be an eye opener for you. In some cases, people do more preparations for a short air travel than what they do for a journey that is going to last a lifetime. Somehow when it comes to marriage, we believe that things will take care of themselves. Little wonder that many youngsters find it a challenging endeavor, and marital discord is on the rise.

• How to choose the right life partner?
• How to develop a close bond with our partner and form a family?
• What to do to make a marriage successful?
• How to bring up kids?
• Signs to look for when things go wrong

Positive Attitude

The ultimate desire in life is to be happy, and it is influenced mostly by how we see our life and situation. It is so important that there should be a class in school from the very beginning to teach the art of positive thinking. Let us bring up a generation of positive thinking youngsters and we will equip them with the mental toughness required for the roller-coaster ride of life.

• How to develop control over our thoughts?
• How to grow a positive mindset?
• How to be happy in life?
• How to handle adversity with a positive approach?
• How to keep our belief and enthusiasm even when faced with hurdles?

How to Develop These Skills?

Educationists may wake up some day and include these topics in the curriculum. Possibly our kids may not have to struggle to learn them. But that consolation does not help you right now. How do you go about acquiring these skills now?

You would notice that through every day experiences, you have subconsciously attained a certain understanding and proficiency in these life skills, so you are not at the start line. You may also realize that improving your level in some of these areas can bring in big positive changes in your life.

Don’t just depend at hacking around, and and learning on the fly by doing what comes to your mind. Do take time to read and learn from others. Read good books, blogs, and articles on the subject. Take time to discuss it with friends, spouse, or kids. You have worked really hard to develop career skills, and the life skills need equally strong attention from you.