“Why don’t schools teach [insert personal life-skill I have struggled with here]?”
From tax returns to wiring a plug (I KNOW THAT DATES ME!), this is one of those complaints that appears with remarkable regularity in the press, usually accompanied by a list of supposedly useless things that schools insist upon teaching instead. Why study Dickens when you could learn about mortgages? Why learn about the life-cycle of the moth when you could learn how to change a tyre? Why spend time analysing poetry when you could be finding out about investments? Such criticisms are superficially appealing but fundamentally baseless.
Firstly, schools do in fact teach many of the things people claim they do not. Budgeting, careers education and interview skills all feature in modern citizenship, which is compulsory in all schools. Whether students remember these lessons is another matter entirely, as in my experience they were spectacularly uninterested. Who wants to learn “life skills” from a boring old teacher? Most teachers can testify that the average teenager is not an enthusiastic participant in discussions about tax codes and household budgeting. They didn’t even seem particularly enthralled when it came to sex ed. There is a certain irony in hearing adults complain that schools never taught them something when I know for a fact that this is impossible. So, next time you bemoan the fact that you weren’t taught something in school, do please consider the notion that you were actually taught it and you simply weren’t listening.
Even this revelation misses the bigger picture, which is that the most important life skills children learn at school are often not formally taught at all. Educationalists sometimes refer to this as the “hidden curriculum”. The phrase sounds faintly mysterious, as though schools are secretly teaching children things behind closed doors or using subliminal messaging to indoctrinate the next generation. In reality, the hidden curriculum refers to everything that children learn simply by participating in school life.
Consider punctuality and equipment rules. No school offers a GCSE in arriving on time. There is no examination in remembering your stuff or organising yourself for the day ahead. Yet children spend years learning that other people are affected by their reliability, that deadlines matter and that poor preparation has consequences. This is one of the many reasons why the most successful schools have made this a huge focus. As the Headteacher of Harrow once said, “we make a fuss about the little things.”
In a good school, children learn to remember books, equipment, homework, revision materials and commitments. They learn that forgetting things has consequences. They learn that somebody else will not always be available to solve every problem on their behalf or cover for them when they mess up. Some master these skills quickly, while others take considerably longer and need more support. Many adults are still working on them.
Consider social interaction. A significant proportion of school life involves learning how to function alongside a diverse range of human beings and this is a good thing. Friendships must be formed and maintained, disagreements navigated and conflicts resolved. Children learn how to join groups, leave groups, compromise, negotiate and apologise. They learn that not everybody thinks the same way they do. They learn that some people are easy to get along with and others require considerably more effort. Adults frequently underestimate how complicated this process of socialisation is and how long it takes for young people to develop these skills. No formal lesson on “interpersonal skills” could fully replicate that experience.
School provides one of the first opportunities for children to participate in a community that exists beyond their immediate family. At home, rules are usually created by people who know and love us unconditionally. School introduces something different. Children must learn to operate within a larger institution, one designed around the needs of hundreds of people. This is where they begin learning about cooperation, compromise and collective responsibility. Lest we forget, for some children who do not come from loving and stable homes, school can provide a safe and predictable sanctuary from the chaos. I will never forget being profoundly affected during training when I was told that as a form tutor I may potentially be the first adult that some children have interacted with positively (or indeed at all) on that day. I never forgot it.
Contrary to popular belief, providing a stable school environment with clear boundaries is not primarily about obedience or authoritarianism. It is about helping young people to recognise that participation in any community requires a degree of give and take. Adults encounter this reality constantly in their workplaces, neighbourhoods and organisations. School is the crucial dry run.
In addition to all of this, and perhaps most controversially, schools also provide children with regular opportunities to fail. A disappointing test result, not making the team, forgetting their homework, falling out with a friend, getting something wrong in front of the class. None of these experiences are enjoyable and some of them, as I discussed a few weeks ago, may loom large in our memories for life. Yet they provide opportunities to learn a lesson that becomes increasingly important with age: disappointment is both inevitable and survivable.
Much of adulthood consists of recovering from setbacks, adapting to changing circumstances and continuing despite occasional failure. As a tutor, I occasionally encounter students who are academically capable but deeply uncomfortable with making mistakes. Somewhere along the way, they have absorbed the idea that getting things wrong is evidence of inadequacy rather than a normal part of learning. Yet mistakes are not evidence that education has failed. More often, they are evidence that education is happening. Schools provide a relatively safe environment in which these experiences can occur and students can learn from them.
Most of these lessons never appear on a timetable. There is no examination in resilience. No coursework assignment on conflict resolution. No formal qualification in learning to cope when things do not go according to plan. Yet these skills often prove every bit as important as the academic content that receives so much attention. This may help to explain why so many adults remember school in emotional rather than academic terms. When people reflect on their education, they rarely begin by discussing a particular worksheet or textbook. They remember the teacher who inspired confidence. The friend who taught them loyalty. The setback that taught them perseverance. The embarrassing moment that taught them humility. In many respects, these experiences are part of the curriculum.
So, the next time somebody on television or on social media complains that schools should spend less time teaching academic subjects and more time teaching life skills, it may be worth remembering two things. Firstly, schools already do teach far more practical skills than many critics realise. Secondly, some of the most important life skills cannot be taught through lessons alone. The most important life skills are not learned from lessons about life. They are learned through living. School is where much of that living takes place.
