The future belongs to those with ‘soft skills’
Schools must develop whole persons instead of teaching to the test, explains GREGG BEHR, executive director of Pittsburgh’s Grable Foundation
The winter holidays are behind us. Meals have been eaten, gifts unwrapped, the corks popped on another New Year. Now it’s time to test our resolve: This year, an estimated 100 million Americans have committed themselves to resolutions such as eating healthier and exercising more. It’s a time of hope and optimism.
If we’re lucky, this determination lasts about a month. According to one psychologist, 80 percent of resolutions fail by February — we’re led astray by leftover cookies, we succumb to the pressures of everyday life or we’re simply no longer motivated by fitting into a swimsuit. Most of us quickly fall back into old habits and ideas.
But what if, this year, we returned to an old idea — one that served us well in the past but has since been overlooked?
Our public education system has come under mounting pressure to raise scores aimed at gauging achievement. This ignores the fact that the system originally was designed to help learners thrive not only in school but also in work and life by providing both content knowledge and “soft” skills, such as communication and critical thinking. Over time — and the objections of many educators and parents — an increased emphasis on memorization and test prep became the new normal, sometimes to the exclusion of so much else.
Recent research suggests that this approach holds our learners back. The focus on raising academic achievement isn’t incorrect, experts say, but it is incomplete. As the world changes in rapid, unpredictable ways, tomorrow’s most successful learners will “need more than the ability to read, write and do arithmetic,” according to researchers writing in the journal The Future of Children. To thrive, they’ll also need to understand and manage their emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show concern for others, establish positive relationships andmake responsible decisions.
Now, many educators and parents are leading the charge to restore these skills — often called social-emotional or 21st-century skills — to their deserved role in a learner’s development. After all, as any teacher will tell you, kids don’t discover their purpose in textbooks or state standards; they fall in love with a novel or the way paint spreads across a canvas. They’re asked a question that sparks a lifelong search for answers. Or they find solace and adventure in a virtual world. Regardless of the paths they take, learners must know how to understand the perspectives of others, connect complex ideas across diverse disciplines and solve problems as part of a team.
These skills cannot be luxuries afforded only to well-off or high-performing students. Though it may seem counterintuitive to push for social-emotional learning while students struggle with curriculum and exams, research suggests that academic and nonacademic skills actually complement one another.
A review of 82 social-emotional learning programs, conducted last year by a team of international researchers, found that students with soft-skills training scored 13 points higher academically than their peers — a boost that persisted well into adulthood. So,
perhaps it’s no surprise that 90 percent of educators on the front lines think soft skills are both beneficial and teachable, according to The Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development.
These benefits aren’t limited to academics, either. Writing in The Washington Post, author and educator Cathy N. Davidson recalled how Project Oxygen, a 2013 analysis of Google’s humanresources data, “shocked everyone” by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, expertise in STEMfields — science, technology, engineering and math — “comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills.” In fact, 80 percent of employers said they value such skills above all.
Returning soft skills to a front-row seat in our public education system is a resolution well worth keeping. Here in Pittsburgh, we need only to look to those who’ve shown us the way — people whose teamwork, generosity and empathy elevated them from great to legendary.
Roberto Clemente was more than an all-star Pirate; he was a humanitarian on a mission to inspire and nurture kids. Rachel Carson was more than a scientist; her writing, speaking and ability to connect with skeptics changed the course of environmentalism. Fred Rogers was more than a guy in a cardigan sweater; he made kids feel loved, supported, respected and safe.
As we work to remake learning in this New Year and for a new era, let’s resolve to keep these inspirational figures in mind. Let’s show learners that we define ourselves by much more than what we know or what we can do. We define ourselves also by how we treat others and take care of the world we share — that is, by who we are.