10 Life Skills Not Taught in School

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Without a doubt, some of you have already asked yourself countless times why did you even bother going to school in the first place. Honestly, what’s the point? Does it really help you become the kind of person society expects you to be? Does it help you cultivate those skills that are essential to your survival in the real world? If yes, to what extent is this done successfully?

No matter how governments around the world are trying to make their country’s educational system better adjusted to the students’ needs, there is always going to be room for improvement. However, what needs to be taken into consideration when making such changes to the curriculum is the overall learning development of students. Are they ready to face the challenges in the years to come?
See Also: Top 10 Universal Skills You Need to Be Successful
Apart from the academic perspective, the learning that takes place outside of education is equally important. Ensuring that students are building on the right skills is essential to their success as well as adopting a constructive and healthy lifestyle.
Check out these ten life skills that are critical to all school graduates and to you but are not being taught in school:

1. Networking

Quite often, teachers and other professionals neglect to refer to the importance of networking as a means of making friends, offering their help to others or even finding a job. Since they are used to doing it, most of the times they take it for granted and they don’t give much attention to it. However, for you the student, to learn how to improve your communication and negotiation skills as well as starting a conversation, is vital for success.

2. Basic Marketing

Whatever you choose to do in life, you’ll need some basic marketing skills to start with. Whether you are opening your own business or you are a freelancer and want to promote your work, becoming familiar with key marketing principles is important to reach the right target market and generating profits. Similarly, as soon as you are finishing school you are ready to dive in the job market and start promoting yourself to employers. How are you going to sell your key skills if you don’t know how to promote yourself through social media?

3. Calculating Taxes

The ability to handle money and, hence, calculating taxes is not inherent to many. However, money management is valuable to many aspects of life and this is the reason why basic accounting and finance principles should be incorporated in the school curriculum. Apart from personal finances though, the ability to calculate taxes is necessary if you are interested in becoming self-employed as it can help you set up your business, pay the right amount of taxes and, finally, manage corporate finances.

4. Decision-making

There comes a time in life where you are required to make an important decision. Whether this is deciding on a career or being faced with a serious life dilemma, this should clearly need effective decision-making. The ability to weigh up choices and think through possible scenarios and situations will make a big difference in your life having to carefully choose from right or wrong, success or failure.

5. Cooking

Cooking should also be taught in school. This could have helped you learn the basics such as pretreating and preparing food as well as following safety and hygiene rules. In this sense, home economics is not only relevant to female students but also to male students, and it can help them realize how home cooking can be beneficial to their life, health and …wallet, for that matter.

6. Good Manners

While these can be developed to a certain extent through school, there are other factors that can influence a student’s behavior, such as their family and home environment. If an etiquette class was introduced at school, however, it would be easier to encourage civilized behaviors and good manners. It is important for everyone to learn how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ as well as addressing others the right way. This should ensure social norms and boundaries are respected in the long run, not only in the workplace but also in their personal lives.

7. Basic Self-Defense

Don’t you think if you knew the basics of self-defense, everything would be much easier? Basic self-defense classes will not only help students and their physique but will also help them become stronger and healthier. It will allow them to respect as well as defend themselves from potential harm without going to extremes using guns or other dangerous equipment.

8. Time Management

Having to deal with all of these deadlines is difficult – not to mention extremely stressful. While you are doing your best to catch up with the school workload, you are struggling to balance life and school, and in the end you are wasting your time without doing anything productive. If there were time management classes, however, it would be very beneficial for you as this could help you set goals and make the most of your time every day.

9. Study Skills

Did you know the majority of students don’t know how to study effectively? Despite the fact that many teachers stress out the importance of finding a good place to study or taking regular breaks, not every student is doing that while they are studying. If school offered study skills as part of the class, students would use more efficient ways of studying and would improve their note-taking which is a technique that comes in handy while at university.

10. Coding Skills

Even though not every student is going to be a programmer or a website designer, it is important to become familiar with the process of coding. Since computing and the Internet have become so interwoven in our everyday lives, this means students should also be exposed to the basics of computer science, and the sooner that happens the better for them. Besides, Code.org says anybody can code!