Suppose your job is to prepare people for adult life, and your part of the curriculum is devoted to imparting skills. Which skills are most important for your charges to learn?
One answer, of course, is the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music), but perhaps that’s a bit esoteric.
Communication skills are obvious: skill in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These (except for the last) are frequently taught.
What else? Dustin Wax has an interesting list, to which I would add (besides reading and listening):
1. Negotiating skills
2. Foreign language skill (at least one)
3. Planning skills (PERT, for example—as a *planning* technique, before work starts)
4. People management/leadership skills (communication, evaluation, training, organizing, assigning effectively)
5. Drawing (not in the sense of portraits or scenes from nature, but in the ability to make freehand graphs, diagrams, floor plans, and the like—see the book Thinking With A Pencil.)
6. Creative thinking, rather different from critical thinking and definitely a skill that can be taught. See, for example, Edward De Bono’s CoRT program.
7. Body awareness/movement skills—we are often judged on how we hold ourselves and how we move, and so movements skills should be learned (through dance, martial arts, or the like)
8. Touch typing—certainly today a high level of keyboarding skill is important.
9. Observational skills—people can be taught to observe better: we all see, but (as Sherlock Holmes pointed out), few observe. (Cf. the difference between hearing and listening.) See (observe?) this post. And this post, too, might be of interest: how to describe a person.
10. Etiquette skills—grace and courtesy in social contacts is vital knowledge, and it is best studied and learned rather than faked. Awkwardness and uncertainty are thus avoided, and everyone feels better—especially yourself, since you know what you’re doing and how to do it.
And in decision-making, I would include long-term after-the-fact evaluation of decisions.
Relevant books:
Negotiation: Getting to Yes
Decision-making: Decision Traps and/or Winning Decisions
People management: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
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