by Junaid.Tahir | Dec 3, 2021 | Blog, Opinions
Schools play vital role in upbringing the kids and help them become best of human beings. However, the role of schools has widely been limited to professional knowledge and help earning money. Auther of this article has listed down and elaborated 13 life skills that are not taught at schools.
1- Communication / Conversation Skills
Regardless of our educational qualifications and certifications, our success or failure in life heavily relies on how we express ourselves to others. Effective conversation skills will make you a likable person. Schools, unfortunately, only focus on the information and knowledge whereas there should be dedicated subjects on we interact with others. This should primarily include speaking to family, friends, teachers, shopkeepers. Later at college / university level, enhanced courses on how to speak to managers, boss, spouse need to be introduced
2- Relationship Management
Relationship management starts with tolerance, better listening skills, empathy and respecting others’ opinion. At young age students do not understand these concepts. By the time they become adults, some of them learn these skills through their parents. However not everyone has good-guiding parents and not all parents know these skills in details. Hence introducing Emotional Intelligence based courses at different grades of schools and colleges will help develop more tolerating pupils that would lead to tolerant societies and nations
Our relations stay alive as long as we live on the face of earth, hence it is imperative that we learn the skills that enable us developing and sustaining amazing relationships, be it with our loved ones or with colleagues or even with strangers. These skills include but not limited to trust development, emotional intelligence, ‘lighter’ talks, giving gifts, staying in touch and so on.
3- Financial Crisis Management
Not each family enjoys same level of blessings. Several medium and low class students develop inferiority complex due to natural tendency of comparing themselves with the upper class. Such students may not become better leader as their personality will have serious limitations in terms of shyness, less assertiveness, lack of decision making and so on.
Schools should introduce some subjects on how to be adaptable in different phases of life. If specic courses cannot be prepared then schools should encourage students to write essays on such subjects. They should be given certain situations to produce essays such as
- How to survive in joblessness.
- How to develop, modify, adapt different spending habits
- How to manage life with 3low income situations
- How to look at life from needs vs wants perspective
4- Failure Recovery Skills
Deaths, job loss, accidents, financial jerk are inevitable situations are life. No one is free from such situation. Even if someone sounds perfectly happy on social media, they will have their private problems which they do not want the world to know. A resilient person can return back to a normal human being as soon as life throws a challenge at him/her. A resilient person detaches himself/herself from the life challenges emotionally and addresses the problems logically. A larger problem can always be broken down to smaller problems and address one by one.
Crisis management can also be done using Stoic techniques. A stoic is a person who is indifferent to pain. While humans primarily are emotions based creature, yet practicing for being a stoic will help achieving a state that life challenges do not cause emotional breakdown.
Spirituality plays a major role for recovering from failures. A strong connection with God enables us for the same. Universal laws of God teach us that problems are inevitable. Problems are not road blockers, instead problems are the path to success. God takes men into deep waters not to drown them but to cleanse them. While schools/colleges may not teach these skills, students should start reading articles on such subjects to get insightful tips to achieve mental toughness.
13 Life Skills That Are Not Taught At Schools
5- Health Management
Life was different a couple of decades ago. Kids used to have organic food and stayed healthy due to immense physical activities after schools and on the weekend. Due to the easy availability of technical gadgets, less interest in physical games and general safety measure, many students stay home.
Due to ease of fast food ordering and home delivery, the physical inactivity issue becomes more alarming for our current generation of kids. While there have always been game breaks during schools hours, it is very important that Education Ministries introduce Health Management courses where students are emphasized to prioritize their health. They should be given guidance about obesity, diabetes and cholesterol.
Some of the countries have already taken necessary measure, many of the developing countries need more focus on this critical subject.
6- Work Life Balance
Happiness attainment through balanced life. Each segment of life should be given fair time and attention. While making money is critical act however not have health relationships, not having good company of friends, not having good health will lead to stressful state of mind
7- Self Assessment and Self Improvement Skills
One of the critical Keys to success is to believe in continuous improvement. If the kids today understand this concept and initiate their life-long learning journey now, they will become better leaders for tomorrow’s world. Key triggering point on what to learn comes from self-assessment. Schools should ignite such concepts in student’s brain that they should assess their skills in line with their interests and start their learning process, even at smaller scale. Every single minutes of learning will constitute towards the success of student.
Check out this resource “100 Most Powerful Life Coaching Questions”
8- Spiritual Health
Spiritual health is important for peace and tranquility. With the continuous advancement in entertainment industry, our youth is moving away from the Connection-with-God. Parents these days are bringing up the kids by instilling the desires for best career and a lot of money. As a result of which, general chaos is seen in society since everyone is taking aggressive part in this rat race.
Spirituality also means to take escape from the daily life and spend time with oneself. Following thoughts might be helpful to establish spirituality:
- Who am I? What is my higher purpose of life?
- What can I do for the less fortunate people of society
- How can I tune my thoughts to align with the plans of God?
Check out this outstanding resource “60 Thought Provoking Questions”
9- Cognitive Skills
You might have noticed that people who do not have good reasoning skills tend to enforce their opinions on others, that leads to brawls consequently. Logical thinking is a skill that you can practice and improve on. As a practice, consider writing benefits of watching television. Once you have listed down your points, challenge these points and prove yourself wrong. Once you prove that some of your original postulates were wrong, think again and convince yourself that the original concepts were absolutely correct. Confusing?
Basically by practicing this, you are enabling and empowering your brain to consider a situation from different perspective. You got the idea? Basically, this skill will help you to manage different situations in life specially when people are opposing to your thoughts but you are already mentally prepared on how to respond since you have already pre-assessed the possible confrontation situation
10- Failing Honorable
Every billionaire failed at least 5 times, before finding success and I mean major failures, like when Mark Zuckerberg lost 4 billion dollars in a day. How many of you will almost commit suicide if you lost 0.5 percent of that?
Summary
There are other skills that are not taught in schools as well
11- Personal and Professional Networking
12- How to Choose Life Partner
13- How to Live Socially Responsible Life
Checkout this life changing article that provides 7 Super Power That Students Must Possess to Succeed.
Also, here is another article covering some skills that are not taught in schools
by Junaid.Tahir | Sep 11, 2021 | Blog, Opinions, Parenting, Students, Teachers, Tips, YoungWriters
If you’re a parent, teaching your children how to write is an essential skill that will help them succeed in the future. This post will provide tips to improve writing skills for children of all ages.
What Is A Good Writing Skill for Children? Simply put, it’s one they can do. There are things parents and teachers can do to help children learn how to write, but the best way is for the child to start writing. You don’t have to force writing or make the process anything exciting. It should be fun and enjoyable. Tell your child to write about anything they want to; it doesn’t matter what it is. Just help them get started writing and encourage them as they go along.
Forcing a child to write when they don’t want to could have the opposite effect of making them hate writing forever. So just let them do their own thing, as long as they’re physically writing (not typing) on some paper.
The benefit of a Good Writing Skill to Children
Good writing skill has a huge benefit to children as it helps them in all subjects at school. Reading, writing, and spelling are the basic building blocks of education, so that most schools will put a lot of emphasis on these skills. The sooner kids learn these skills, the better.
Here are some examples of the benefits of a good writing skill:
Writing letters helps your child learn to spell correctly and adequately make their letters. It will help them in the future when they start learning to write paragraphs, stories, and any other written work they may have to do in school. It’s easy for anyone to know letter names when you write them out by hand and ask your child to say each letter. You can also play the game where you tell your child to find the letter, and they have to copy it down or come up with a word that starts with that letter.
Writing short stories helps in writing paragraphs and makes your child practice writing sentences. Your child must start learning about the idea of different sentences to use in their writing. You can also play the game with your child to give them a word and ask them to come up with a sentence or a story that ends with that word.
10 Creative Tips to Improve Writing Skills of Children
Are you looking for ways to improve your child’s writing skills? Are they having trouble learning how to write? This post has ten creative tips and ideas to help your child become a better writer.
Tip #1: Tell them “Just Write.”
Please don’t force them to write but let them do it on their own. Make sure they are physically writing on some paper rather than typing. You want them to learn the feeling of holding a pencil or pen and moving it across the paper, forming letters and words as they go. If they are typing their work, though, they won’t be able to use the same muscle memory and will need to focus and be careful when doing so.
Tip #2: Set up a “Catch Phrase”
As your child is writing, ask them if they are ready to share, but don’t put words in their mouth. It will help them learn to express themselves in writing. Ask open-ended questions such as “What do you think… ” and “I wonder what happened next.”
Tip #3: Encourage them to write down their ideas
They must learn to write down all their ideas as they come up and don’t forget them. Let them know that you want to hear about their ideas and plans, not just what they have written down. Your child needs to learn how to write out goals, create a storyboard or outlines so they can use these later at school when doing projects.
Tip #4: Look for Errors
Looking for the errors in your child’s writing will improve their skills. It’s easy to fix a simple misspelled word or mistake in a sentence but harder to fix the errors in letters and paragraphs. One major thing you want to watch out for is if they accidentally write their name backward or use different capitalization in their writing. It may take time, but it will help them learn how to use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation more efficiently.
Tip #5: Read and Discuss
They must practice reading their work to see how it sounds when spoken out loud. It may feel a bit silly, but it will help them learn how to read their writing aloud and clearly. It’s also essential that they discuss their work with you. Please encourage them to ask questions, explain what they don’t understand, or create new ideas for stories based on what you share. It will help them learn to think and collaborate more.
Tip #6: Create Compelling Stories
Please encourage your child to create stories based on anything they want to. They may have seen a movie, read a fairy tale, even heard a song, and want to use those ideas in a series of books or short stories. These are great examples of the type of things that could work well for children’s writing.
Tip #7: Look for Great Read-Alouds
Many excellent books will inspire children to read, write and learn. These books should include exciting characters, stories that can be used as examples for children, and beautiful illustrations. It will show your child what they need to do to create a compelling account.
Tip #8: Write an Article
Have your child write a news article focusing on something they have experienced or want to talk about. It will help them learn to create news articles using interesting language, facts, and even personal feelings. It is a good way for your child to practice writing stories and use good grammar and spelling.
Tip #9: Create a Storyboard
Help them develop characters, setting, plot and create a storyboard for their story. They need to understand how all these parts come together to create a fantastic piece of writing. Also, they must know that they can change any part of the story along the way if needed.
Tip #10: Encourage Their Interest
Identify what your child is interested in and find ways to work with them on their writing. If they are fascinated by dinosaurs, then help them create a series of books based on the topic. Once they have developed their ideas, ask them to share them with you. Children need to have a creative outlet, which could be just the thing to help them get started.
Please help your child develop as a writer by providing them with the tools to become a great author, whether they like to write fiction or nonfiction. Have them behave in the same way when they illustrate their work as when they are writing and reading. These tips will help your child quickly learn how to write better and more creatively.
Thank you for reading this post! I want to ask you for your opinion on this article. If you agree or disagree with any of these ideas – please leave me a comment below!
