Learning soft skills like self awareness, self management, self control, perseverance & responsible decision making will help the child to face life squarely! Moral education should also be included in this as it is the foundation for good behavior!
Schools are finally teaching what kids need to be successful in life
It's not all about STEM. (Fanqiao Wang)
Jenny Anderson
April 13, 2016
Research shows that teaching kids things like perseverance and self-control can improve their health, academic achievement, and happiness in life.
But teaching character, or social and emotional learning, has proven dicey. The science was sometimes squishy, the curriculum often felt driven by those trying to set a moral agenda, and schools had too much else to do, like close the academic gap between high- and low-income kids, and the skills gap between US kids and some of their global counterparts.
That’s beginning to change.
From Singapore and China to Britain, policymakers and educators are investing more time and money in scientific research on character. California will start testing for character this fall; in 2015, for the first time, the OECD’s Program for International Assessment, a widely-followed barometer of national educational attainment, included a lengthy character assessment. The subject is even on the agenda at the upcoming G7 meeting in Japan.
The debate is no longer about whether character matters, but which traits—grit, open mindedness, optimism—matter the most and how to effectively teach those. Researchers are also focused on how to measure character traits, which is a fraught undertaking: ask kids about their grit levels—how much do you persist with a task that is hard—and answers are bound to be tainted by lying, or just widely varying reference points (one person’s “working hard” is another’s person’s lazy). But educators and policymakers say it’s worth figuring out: the labor market does not need kids who test well as much as they need people who can solve problems, stay on task, and not be a jerk.
“Success in today’s world puts a higher premium on character qualities,” says Andreas Schleicher, head of education and skills for the OECD. It’s still not what most schools focus on. “Most employers tell you how important collaborative skills are becoming at the workplace, and that is also what we are seeing in our data. But then you see still see most students sitting behind individual desks and learning to take their individual exam,” he said.
“That just does not add up.”
What’s character?
Dave Levin, co-founder of KIPP, a US charter school network, has focused on character for a long time. He calls the combination of academics and character the “double helix” of education.
“There isn’t a moment in school where these two things aren’t happening together,” he said. “But we have come to see them separately.”
He offers this example: Your kid is reading a book. He gets to a hard part. What does he do? Does he close the book? Does he give up? Does he use “academic” strategies to figure out the words and meaning?
Of course academics play a role—if he can’t decode the words, he won’t get far. But he also needs a bunch of character skills, like self-regulation, grit, and optimism, Levin says.
KIPP schools have been issuing “character growth cards” (pdf) for years. Kids are measured on seven qualities and multiple behaviors, from self-control (“remained calm even when criticized or otherwise provoked”), gratitude (“showed appreciation for opportunities”), and grit (“finished whatever s/he began”).
But using the growth cards to figure out how to instill grit or optimism has proven challenging. In 2013, Levin teamed up with Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur Genius, and Dominic Randolph, head of Riverdale Country Day School, to apply scientific methods to character research. The Character Lab is currently running five projects to see which interventions work best, including one called “gratitude as a trigger for self-improvement in adolescents” and another to improve curiosity.
https://qz.com/656900/schools-are-f...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Schools are finally teaching what kids need to be successful in life
It's not all about STEM. (Fanqiao Wang)
Jenny Anderson
April 13, 2016
Research shows that teaching kids things like perseverance and self-control can improve their health, academic achievement, and happiness in life.
But teaching character, or social and emotional learning, has proven dicey. The science was sometimes squishy, the curriculum often felt driven by those trying to set a moral agenda, and schools had too much else to do, like close the academic gap between high- and low-income kids, and the skills gap between US kids and some of their global counterparts.
That’s beginning to change.
From Singapore and China to Britain, policymakers and educators are investing more time and money in scientific research on character. California will start testing for character this fall; in 2015, for the first time, the OECD’s Program for International Assessment, a widely-followed barometer of national educational attainment, included a lengthy character assessment. The subject is even on the agenda at the upcoming G7 meeting in Japan.
The debate is no longer about whether character matters, but which traits—grit, open mindedness, optimism—matter the most and how to effectively teach those. Researchers are also focused on how to measure character traits, which is a fraught undertaking: ask kids about their grit levels—how much do you persist with a task that is hard—and answers are bound to be tainted by lying, or just widely varying reference points (one person’s “working hard” is another’s person’s lazy). But educators and policymakers say it’s worth figuring out: the labor market does not need kids who test well as much as they need people who can solve problems, stay on task, and not be a jerk.
“Success in today’s world puts a higher premium on character qualities,” says Andreas Schleicher, head of education and skills for the OECD. It’s still not what most schools focus on. “Most employers tell you how important collaborative skills are becoming at the workplace, and that is also what we are seeing in our data. But then you see still see most students sitting behind individual desks and learning to take their individual exam,” he said.
“That just does not add up.”
What’s character?
Dave Levin, co-founder of KIPP, a US charter school network, has focused on character for a long time. He calls the combination of academics and character the “double helix” of education.
“There isn’t a moment in school where these two things aren’t happening together,” he said. “But we have come to see them separately.”
He offers this example: Your kid is reading a book. He gets to a hard part. What does he do? Does he close the book? Does he give up? Does he use “academic” strategies to figure out the words and meaning?
Of course academics play a role—if he can’t decode the words, he won’t get far. But he also needs a bunch of character skills, like self-regulation, grit, and optimism, Levin says.
KIPP schools have been issuing “character growth cards” (pdf) for years. Kids are measured on seven qualities and multiple behaviors, from self-control (“remained calm even when criticized or otherwise provoked”), gratitude (“showed appreciation for opportunities”), and grit (“finished whatever s/he began”).
But using the growth cards to figure out how to instill grit or optimism has proven challenging. In 2013, Levin teamed up with Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur Genius, and Dominic Randolph, head of Riverdale Country Day School, to apply scientific methods to character research. The Character Lab is currently running five projects to see which interventions work best, including one called “gratitude as a trigger for self-improvement in adolescents” and another to improve curiosity.
https://qz.com/656900/schools-are-f...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
