A CALL FOR AN EDUCATION OVERHAUL
What have you learned as an adult that you wish you had been told or taught at a much younger age?
When I switched careers at the age of 26, I was fortunate to join a company that is consistently ranked as a top training company in the country. Over the past 15 years, I have been exposed to incredible trainings that cover conflict resolution, understanding personality profiles and communication styles, neuro linguistic programming, goal setting strategies, financial planning, in addition to the day-to-day technical training required to put together a sales contract. Outside of the work environment, I’ve read books or listened to podcasts covering resiliency, family legacies, creative living…the list goes on and on. There are so many things I’ve learned as an adult where I’ve thought to myself, “Damn! Why didn’t they teach this to us when we were kids? Life would have made so much more sense!” Every single one of these topics would have been valuable to have been exposed to at a much younger age.
Outside of my own experience, I’ve also observed trends within society as a whole. Because of pendulum swings in parenting styles mixed with rapidly advancing technology, each generation of kids brings new challenges to the forefront when they enter the workforce. It is also evident that many adults enter the workforce without certain life skills in place, which has created a need for many non-profits to fill the gap and teach topics like…
- How to interview for a job
- Improve credit
- How to create and manage a budget
- Anger management
- How to buy a home (or get financial aid to do so)
When I think about all of the useful things I’ve learned outside of formal education and contrast that with so much of what I don’t even remember from my formal education, it makes me wonder…Is it not time to revamp the education system?
Who are the Wizards of Oz who write and decide the material in the first place?
Every 5–10 years, these wizards should pay attention to the new and current social issues and then write up new curriculum to help the next generation of kids.
When I think about the topics that get highlighted during the elementary school years, I question why. I honestly don’t care if my (fictitious) child can name a single damn dinosaur. The dinosaurs are no longer around, there is no risk that we’ll accidentally run into one, and there is just no relevance to a child’s life or need for life skills. The only reason I’ve needed to google types of dinosaurs at this point in my adult life is because pranksters keep leaving them on our front porch! (#dinowatch)
What children could be, and should be learning instead:
· Breathing techniques to self-soothe & calm themselves down in stressful situations
· Conflict resolution (aka “Fierce Conversations”)
· Understanding personality profiles; how people have natural tendencies to see and react to the world differently, gaining better insights into their own natural tendencies and understanding how others are different
· Positive psychology
· Empowered Language (aka Language of Sales): how to ask for what you want; how to ask powerful questions to others to help them identify what they want
· Going Three Deep: the skill of staying in curiosity and asking the follow-up questions to gain clarity and understanding
· Identifying unpleasant emotions/feelings and how to process them
· Identifying what you can and cannot control in given situations (the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer — but you don’t have to make it religious if you don’t want to)
· Having an attitude of gratitude
· Saying thank you; how to write a proper thank you note/email
· How to apologize
· The 5 Love Languages: understanding that people feel & share love in different ways and you can learn to “speak” other languages
· Communication styles
· Learning styles, and the best study habits for those styles (i.e., synergy is not cheating!)
· Etiquette: place settings, restaurant manners, travel etiquette on trains, planes, automobiles, busses, uber/lyft/cabs, etc.
· Building empathy
· Understanding one’s gifts and how to spend a lifetime being curious and honoring your gifts (we are not good at everything, be ok with that and lean into your strengths and/or passion)
· Handling criticism
· Using your powers for good versus evil: understanding how your traits are both strengths and weaknesses and what your “shadow self” looks like
· How to forgive
· How not to be a bully; leadership vs bossy; when sarcasm is mean vs funny, etc.
· Understanding parenting styles, identifying your own patterns, learning how to meet your own emotional needs
· Active listening skills
· Sex Ed: how to be respectful & empowered in your sexual relationships, regardless of age/sex/gender identification/gender attraction/waiting for marriage/not waiting etc. (i.e. you are more than a tool or a vessel); also educate about decisions having consequences
· Financial Literacy
· Understanding debt
· How to open a bank account
· The dangers of co-signing loans/accounts
· Balancing a checkbook (even if the kids don’t use checks anymore, understanding your ‘balance’ still matters! When you spend money, your balance goes down. When you hit zero, you have NO MONEY left to spend. Even if you have a credit card, that is now considered DEBT. Teach them this before they go to college or start working.)
· Math problems can be structured like so:
You want to buy a brand new iPhone. Your minimum wage job pays $9.50/hour. The iPhone costs $800. How many hours do you need to work in order to pay for the iPhone? (My fictitious child would be required to write out this equation every time they asked me to buy them something.)
· Teach gross versus net: gross pay minus taxes, then save-invest-donate = net income; set living expenses off net income
· For public schools, create a secular version of Financial Peace and make it a little less rigid than some of Dave Ramsey’s over the top guidelines
Now, if you want to USE dinosaurs to TEACH some of the topics in this list, then I’m game for that!
We cannot rely on parents to do all of these things because so many of the parents don’t know it themselves. It has been pointed out to me that many teachers won’t know these things either, and that’s why I’m saying the change has to happen at the top. Once the curriculum is provided, the teachers will pick up on it quickly, just like I did.
When we think about what we were forced to memorize when we were in school versus the information we actually have to access on a daily basis now, the people skills would be SO MUCH MORE important than the stupid periodic table, or the exact date that such-and-such king sacked whatever country. If I’m curious about those things now, I can look them up! Outside of trivia nights, which is a fun game for people who store useless information in their brains (like my husband), most of what we had to memorize for quizzes and tests is pointless.
While memorization can be a useful skill and is required for certain subjects, like math and learning new languages, critical thinking is a greater need than memorization. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we saved our memorization energy for those classes alone? Or for when we get to higher education at which point we’ve decided we want to specialize in something for a particular career? Why does the current curriculum have it backwards?
Anytime dates and names are tested, it should be in multiple choice form only. Excessive memorization is such a waste of brain power. Children should learn a ‘sense’ of time regarding history — knowing the general century and what else was happening at the time is good — the exact year is just unnecessary. Discussing WHY something is significant is so much more important than regurgitating isolated facts. Discussing the pros and cons of a treaty is more important than the exact year it was enacted. Are these discussions happening outside of prep schools or AP classes? Is it happening enough prior to high school?
Let me be crystal clear that I am NOT blaming teachers. I don’t think the teachers are failing us. They are hired to do a job and given the tools to do that job. I’m calling out the wizards who are writing the materials in the first place, the ones designing the curriculum, the ones creating the state-wide or national tests so that the teachers then teach to the test in order to make sure their school doesn’t lose the national or state funds attached to the test results. The system is broken at the top.
And to address the people whose knee-jerk reaction is to say that I’m not allowed to be an armchair quarterback because I’m not a teacher and therefore I don’t know anything or what’s it like blah blah blah, well here’s the thing… I am qualified to have an opinion because I WAS A STUDENT! Actually, I still am a student. I am fully qualified to assess and critique the institution I was brought up in. I spent half my years in private school and half my years in public school, so I also have insider information on both sides of the public vs private discussion.
When we look at the list of things we learned as adults that we wish we had learned earlier, don’t you agree that it would be amazing if kids were exposed to these teachings as early as Elementary School?
How many non-profits could we make unnecessary if we empowered our students to thrive in life by the time they graduated (or in areas where the graduation rates are lower, take the average year the kids drop-out)?
I hear of some charter schools adding some cool new curriculum, or a class here or there in specific districts, but to really have impact on future generations and our society as a whole, this needs to happen at the top and across the board.
Sign the petition below if you believe we should do an overhaul of the American education system >>> JUST KIDDING!!! I don’t have a petition. But I do want to know what you think should get added to the list! What did you learn as an adult that you WISH had been taught to you when you were a child that would have made life easier, better, or just make more sense?
© Catherine Ham 2021
