By Scott Murray
What is the goal of secondary school education? Good grades? Good Friends? Good university or college? Some combination of all of these? Hard to really nail down. Should it be any of these? Not at all.
The primary goal for secondary school education should be to start students on the path towards their future careers. This unfortunately is not truly possible under current educational systems. The focus there is all too often content and retention. What the focus needs to be is an introduction to the importance of soft skills. Interview skills, people management, the importance of teamwork and respect, servant leadership, asking questions for clarification and demanding answers. Employers are asked all the time, what they want in a new hire. The answer is almost always that they want employees that have strong soft skills, which are often describes as intangibles, skills that are somehow genetic and not learned or developed. Historically, universities and colleges have been the place where students were prepared for their future careers, and content wise, absolutely, but there is virtually no focus on soft skills in many university programs. They don’t have time for it. This is where students learn the nuts and bolts of their careers, and certainly where they learn that the world is a big competitive place, but not where they learn how to be successful. So, where does this have to be taught? Secondary school.
How does it fit into the current curriculum?
By and large, it doesn’t, and short of asking teachers to try and find a way to cram even MORE into a school day, it won’t. So how is this done you ask? Great question! Most modern assessment and evaluation practices have loads of room to incorporate soft skill development as assessment pieces. Group assignments teach teamwork, and this should be assessed. Review activities can be staged as interviews, and this should be assessed, tests can and should have self-assessment elements and this should be assessed. It’s not about changing the curriculum, it’s not about changing the lessons, it’s about changing the focus.
If education focused on the importance of soft skills, it will become second nature to students, and both them and their future employers will reap the benefits.
Scott Murray is the head of school at Fulford Academy, a grades 7-12 boarding school located in Brockville. His career started as a history teacher and he still teaches a class a week.
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