Critical life skills we don’t teach (but should!)
We spend most of our K-12 education learning information which we do not retain, because it’s not particularly useful in our lives. Could we make better use of this learning time?
Summary:
A thought experiment: what would you teach Mogli to integrate him into modern society?
How to interact with people
Emotional wellbeing
Physical wellbeing
Societal institutions (personal finance, healthcare, legal system)
Imagine a child got lost in the wilderness and has survived to adulthood before being found (let’s call him Mogli). He quickly regains language skills, but has no education and does not know anything about society. You are tasked with integrating him into society. What do you teach him?
Obviously, you would start with the most critical knowledge he needs to participate in society: covalent bonds, endoplasmic reticulums, isosceles triangles, and igneous rocks!
…Just kidding…
You would probably teach him how to interact with people (social cues, communication, building relationships), how to function in society (personal finance, taxes, voting; institutions like hospitals, schools, government), and how to live a healthy life (hygiene, nutrition, fitness, medicine, emotional wellbeing).
Yet in our years of mandatory education, we spend very little time teaching these practical life and societal participation skills.
We do however dedicate years to technical concepts, facts, and dates which most people do not retain (more about why we do this here). If everyone reading this not only remembers what an endoplasmic reticulum is, but also finds themselves casually dropping it into everyday conversation — like, “sorry I’m late, my endoplasmic reticulum had too many proteins to fold this morning” — then I humbly stand corrected.
We may expect that practical skills like communication and personal finance are taught by children’s families. But many families do not have the knowledge, resources, or time to teach these. Leaving these critical life lessons up to families is a great way to pass on generational inequality…
So here is a non-exhaustive list of what I wish we could learn in school, to help us all be happier, healthier, and better-functioning members of society.
How to interact with people
Humans are social animals, we live in families, communities, and societies, and depend on other people for everything (unless you are Mogli and live in the woods, alone). So knowing how to interact with people is useful for absolutely every part of life.
Some of us are born with amazing social skills, but most of us can benefit from some guidance.
I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my mom at the beginning of 6th grade. I had just started at a huge middle school where I didn’t know anyone. At lunch I would sit alone and read (like the nerd I was). I saw other kids making friends and forming groups, but I didn’t understand how they were doing this. So I asked my mom.
Me: How do you make friends?
Mom: You ask people if you can sit with them. Then you ask them questions about themselves.
Me: No you’re old and you don’t know anything. Cool kids don’t ask people questions…
Mom: …
So anyway, I made friends eventually, after a very stressful few months. I don’t know how I did it, considering I didn’t ask them any questions…
To this day, I’m shocked at how many adults I meet still have not learned to ask questions in a conversation. For example, have you ever been on a date with someone who responds to your questions but then just stops, leaving an awkward pause because they don’t realize they are supposed to follow up with, “and what about you?”
The good news is that social skills can be taught! A few specific skills we can teach in a classroom setting:
Conversations: taking turns speaking, asking questions
Reading social cues: how to tell if someone wants to talk to you and is interested in what you are saying
Communication: how to structure a logical argument
Conflict resolution: how to politely disagree and how to take no for an answer
Emotional wellbeing and self awareness
Starting in middle school, most of my life became geared towards getting into a good high school, in order to get into a good college, in order to get a good job. So at the age of 22, I had achieved my main goal on which I had been working for 10 years. This left me quite lost…
I had picked my college because it was the best ranked of the ones I got into, and my major and hobbies only because I thought they would look good on my resume, to get me a job that looked good on my resume. I didn’t know what more there was to life, what I cared about, or how to make decisions for myself…
Understanding oneself is a skill which can be taught, just like math and science! Some examples of how we can teach this:
“Science of Wellbeing” (course at Yale) — what makes people happy, common misconceptions we have about happiness and why we have them
“Designing Your Life” (course at Stanford) — how to know what your values and priorities are, how to make choices in alignment with your values, and why doing this is worthwhile
Personality tests like MBTI, Big 5, Enneagram
Physical wellbeing
Having finished college and gotten a job, my main afterwork activity was sitting on the couch and watching TV (sound familiar, anyone?). I could enjoy the hedonistic freedom of eating whatever I wanted, and watching TV for as long as I wanted, and having absolutely no responsibilities outside of work. I didn’t realize this was not particularly healthy for me, until one day I woke up with excruciating back pain, unable to stand up. It turned out I had herniated a disk. Shockingly, sitting for 9 hours a day at a desk and 4 hours a day on the couch and not exercising led to my having such a weak core that it couldn’t support basic human motion…
Of course I “knew” that exercise is healthy in an abstract sense, but how exactly not exercising could lead to real problems in life — I had no idea…
What if… you guessed it… we taught this in school? Not in the way we do today, like “let’s run some laps; also lets memorize carbohydrates, proteins, fats”, but in a practical way that is applicable to life.
Examples of topics we could teach:
How to find forms of exercise that you enjoy and can fit into your schedule and lifestyle
Common ailments and how to treat them
Best practices to fall asleep (limiting screen time, not having blinking electrical gadgets in your bedroom, etc.)
Navigating societal institutions
So much knowledge is required to participate in society. Much of the “adulting” knowledge I’ve gained over the years was learned the hard way…
I was 21 the first time I ever had to find my own doctor for my first post-college annual physical.
Not only did I get billed for asking one question about an existing issue (apparently, asking a single question qualified this as a “specialist visit”, which was not free unlike the annual physical I had actually signed up for), but also, this in-network doctor’s office sent my bloodwork to a lab which was out-of-network. So I got a huge bill. It had never occurred to me that I needed to confirm not only that the doctor was in-network, but also the lab they used was in-network…
I then proceeded to avoid all medical professionals and procedures for years.
Many might agree this system is absolutely insane, but this is the way it currently works. And that is all the more reason to teach people how to navigate it.
Some topics we can teach:
Healthcare: types of medical care (primary care, urgent care, bloodwork, imaging, surgery), types of insurance (HMO, PPO, POS, EPO, HDHP), key concepts (in network, out of network, copay, deductible, annual maximum, FSA, HSA)
Personal finance (banking, budgeting)
How government works (voting, taxes, police and legal system)
So what might society look like if we taught these?
Imagine the different choices you might have made years ago, had you known even a bit of what you know today about yourself…
Imagine a family Thanksgiving dinner where your drunk uncle reads the room and resists sharing that political hot take which he knows is likely to start a food fight…
Imagine how much less you would have suffered at the hands of evil dentists, had you truly understood the benefits of flossing, but, like, 20 years ago…
Imagine the voter turnout if people were slightly less intimidated by confusing lists of elected offices and hundreds of pages of local ballot measures and counterarguments…
What are some other life skills we may be under-teaching?