What Should Be Taught In School
Edition 28: Let’s help our kids find meaningful work that’ll have an impact and contribute to the world
This newsletter was updated on November 24, 2023.
“What, after all this time, is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be?,” asks John Taylor Gatto in his book, Dumbing Us Down. It’s such a simple, but powerful question.
Most would say academics. That’s what I thought as a student working through the system. Now, as a parent, I realize how one-dimensional school really is.
Sure, I want Hayden to grow up as an informed person. But I want him to have an education, too. Academics is only one aspect of an education.
I also want Hayden to grow up to know himself—including his passions and strengths—and have the tools to put this self-knowledge into action. Fundamental skills, like how to learn, make decisions, and problem-solve, will help him throughout his life. I also want him to learn self-leadership, so he can effectively direct his own life. Collectively, these skills and knowledge can help him find meaningful work that’ll help contribute to the world in some way, be it big or small.
That’s why the best educational model is a combination of academic and self-knowledge. Both are important. You need knowledge of the self in order to best put the academic knowledge into practice. In other words, you can cram your head with information (academic knowledge) but you need to figure out how to mold it and apply it (self-knowledge).
The problem is that self-knowledge isn’t taught in school. And that’s a shame. Japanese samurai Suzuki Shōsana advised: “No matter how much you have learned and how much you know, if you don’t know yourself you don’t know anything.”
Besides, to do meaningful, purposeful, and fulfilling work that’ll have an impact, you need to learn what you can uniquely contribute and how to go about it. That means doing the inner work of self-development starting at a young age.
Lay the Foundation
You’ve probably seen a tree that’s strapped to the ground. There’s a reason for the straps: the roots of the tree aren’t established. Without the straps, the tree would fall over.
When applied to education, it’s when people focus exclusively on academics. The fundamentals of who we are as individuals—the roots—are neglected.
That’s a problem. Academic knowledge can only take you so far. Think about someone who:
Makes good money but hates their day-to-day job.
Has wandered from job to job trying to find a fit.
Is really good at a skill, like programming or writing, but feels unfulfilled and bored using that skill each day in their work.
Is in a dead-end job, but doesn’t know where to go from there.
Does the same thing each day with zero impact.
You can fill your head with academic knowledge to get your foot into the door and land a job. But most people don’t want just a job.
They want to have an impact and do something that’ll help others in some way. They want to enjoy their day-to-day. They want to do meaningful and purposeful work. Self knowledge can help fulfill these aims.
Knowledge of the self consists of five pillars: mind, gut, emotions, body, and leadership. The reason why there are multiple pillars is because there are many facets of the self. It’s important to work on and learn each of them in order to fully understand what makes you, you.
Besides, each pillar impacts you and the work you do. It’s really hard to focus on meaningful work if your emotional life, for example, is out of balance.
Once you know yourself, you can then determine what you can contribute to the world. Podcaster David Senra put it this way in a recent interview: “Discove[r] who you are as a person. Everybody's born with some innate interest . . . then [ask] how can I use what I'm naturally interested in, in the service of as many people as possible.”
That’s the key to finding meaningful work that so many of us are looking for. You’ll also have a solid body of knowledge to navigate life. It starts with getting to know who you are and what you’re about.
Self knowledge forms the roots of the tree. The base of the pyramid. The foundation of a house. Aristotle put it best: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Fuel Your Mind
A cornerstone of the mind pillar is learning, and I’m not referring to academics. Rather, I’m referring to learning about and from yourself and others, as well as developing key skills that’ll help you put these learnings into action.
A core theme in this newsletter is learning about yourself. So a place to start is by creating a vision: a picture of your future self. The very act of thinking through and creating a vision will help you better understand who you are, including your interests and strengths. Most importantly, a vision will give you a sense of purpose—something to strive for.
A common misunderstanding is that a vision needs to be this iron-clad, detailed life plan. It may be that for some people.
But it can also be much more simple, like “I’m going to teach myself to program, so I can build X app that’ll help people do Y.”
It can even be more simple than that. Something like “I’m going to teach myself to program” or “I’m going to write X book” or “I’m going to build Y” can be enough; you can always add to or modify your vision once you get going.
What matters most is that you take some time upfront to think through your interests and strengths; how you can apply them to something that’s meaningful to you; and how the result can benefit others. Then, take action. So much will be learned by putting knowledge into practice.
Think Long-Term
Creating a vision is useful for another reason: it helps foster long-term thinking. This is an important mindset to cultivate since most great things in life are a result of working on something consistently over a long period of time.
A challenge is that long-term thinking isn’t advocated in school. Rather, kids learn to prioritize short-term thinking like getting an “A” on the next chemistry quiz.
As a result, students learn to make everything mission critical. Reactive, short-term thinking can turn their focus away from what they truly enjoy, detract from what really matters, and take them away from where they want to go.
What’s more, the emphasis school places on the short-term deprives students of the deep learning—about oneself and a field—that occurs when a project is pursued over a long period of time. It’s hard to go deep on something when you have just two weeks to complete an assignment or project. As a result, kids learn to shortchange the learning process: doing the least amount of work to check a box.
For these reasons, it’s worth helping our kids take a step back to think about the answer to these kinds of questions:
What are you passionate about?
What do you value?
What are your natural strengths?
What impact do you want to have?
What skills are you building, and how will they help you in the future?
Will this <class, activity, or test score> impact what you ultimately want to do or become?
The idea is to help kids at a young age to put things into perspective (not every little thing is worth stressing over), apply their interests and strengths to use, and identify something to go after.
Mathematician Richard Hamming summarized this latter point succinctly in his book, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering:
“In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.” He goes on to conclude that “the accuracy of the vision matters less than you might suppose, getting anywhere is better than drifting.”
In other words, having a vision is about identifying a target and aiming for it. The target is the crucial element: have something to shoot for. Once you know what you’re after, it’s much easier to filter between the important and unimportant. It’s also personally satisfying to work on something meaningful that puts your interests and strengths to good use.
Learn From Yourself
As important as it is to learn about yourself, it’s equally important to learn from yourself.
An incredible amount of learning can take place if you take time to reflect on your failures and successes. This rarely happens in school. A student may get a fantastic grade or a failing one but have no idea why. Yet, so much is gained when you take time to reflect—and really understand—the positive and negative outcomes in life.
Failure is considered a bad thing in the eyes of the school system. Getting a “D” or “F” on an exam sends the message that you don’t get it; you’re not smart enough. But in the real world failure is how products and ideas are built and refined. The key is taking time to reflect on the failure or setback so you can learn from it.
Instead of disciplining or ignoring failure, schools should help kids embrace it: understand what didn’t go well and why? If you never learn from your mistakes, you’re bound to make the same ones over and over again.
It’s equally useful for students to understand what they did right. “I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures,” wrote Hamming, “there are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.”
Teachers and parents can help in this process. Comments like “great essay” or “nice work” are meaningless. What specifically went well, and why? If you know what you did well, you’ll know what to do again.
Learn About and From Others
Many people, including my past self, are guilty of learning from a single source. In school, it’s usually the teacher. But so much can be learned by broadening your perspective and learning from others.
Reading biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs of the great men and women of this world are underrated ways to learn. There’s a wealth of information people of all ages can benefit from by reading more of these kinds of books. They’re filled with wisdom, insight, and inspiration.
At the same time, talking to interesting people from diverse fields is another way to enhance one’s knowledge. Most people love to talk about their craft and are more than willing to share their knowledge. This exposes kids to new fields, thoughts, ideas, and vocabulary. My husband and I began doing this with Hayden earlier this year; it’s been enlightening and fun for all of us.
Sharpen the Saw
Knowledge is powerful when you have some basic tools to put it into practice. That’s why developing some core skills is another component of the mind pillar.
These skills include:
Problem-solving
Thinking creatively, independently, analytically, and critically
Learning how to learn
Making decisions
Writing is another crucial skill to develop, whether or not you want to be a writer. That’s because learning to write clearly will help you learn to think clearly. “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard,” said David McCullough, the popular historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
It’s also useful to learn basic time management skills and effective work habits, such as working in blocks of time, instead of long slogs, should also be addressed. This knowledge is essential as a student and adult.
Competency in these skills will be useful no matter the path you take in life.
The parts that make up the mind pillar seem so obvious. Yet I learned them as an adult after graduating from high school. How amazing it would’ve been—and how much time and effort I would’ve saved over the years—if I had the knowledge and skills that make up this pillar at a young age. It’s a whole lot easier to get where you want to go when you have a set of foundational skills to rely on and solid habits and routines in place.
Listen to Your Gut
When it comes to making decisions and determining how you’ll contribute to the world, it’s worth tuning into another pillar: your gut. You know, the instinct or inner feeling that you get when faced with decisions you need to make or situations you need to take care of.
Scientists refer to the millions of neurons that line your digestive tract as the “second brain.” “When you approach a decision intuitively,” explains Harvard Business Review, “your brain works in tandem with your gut to quickly assess all your memories, past learnings, personal needs, and preferences and then makes the wisest decision given the context.”
The challenge is that kids are taught from an early age to listen to their brain—not their gut. Their brain may say: “I need to take an extra math class in order to stand out to college admissions.” Their gut may give you a different reaction. “I hate math and really don’t want to take yet another math course if I don’t have to.”
Listening to your gut is a skill that needs to be taught and strengthened. It’s helped me make better decisions. I’ve never regretted listening to it and acting on it. However, I’ve always regretted the times I’ve gone against my gut; it’s taken me away from who I really am.
Tuning into my gut has also helped me learn what I really want out of life. This is no simple task. “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life,” explained Mark Twain. “The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."
Twain was right.
Most people don’t know what they really want in life. They’re guilty of taking a path that’s popular or championed by the masses—the one that makes sense logically, but it may not be a good fit personally.
The key is learning to listen to your gut. You can do this by giving yourself ample time to think, write, and explore. Walk in nature. Journal for a few minutes each day. Start a side project to pursue one of your passions. Give yourself time and space to let your gut—your inner voice—speak to you. It will.
Above all, I’ve found that listening to my gut and following its advice has made me happier. That’s because my gut reaction towards decisions and situations is where my true colors reside. That’s something I want for Hayden and all kids. I want them to understand their true selves and act on it. It starts by listening to your gut, your inner voice. Lao Tzu was right: “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want."
Deal with Emotions
There’s a common theme in many of the resources I’ve come across about communication and emotions: be aware of an emotion and effectively deal with it, instead of suppressing or denying it.
Parents can help the process by being empathetic, labeling the emotion, talking about it with their kids, and helping them express the emotion effectively. The book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish is an excellent resource for doing just that.
Dealing with emotions may seem obvious. But it runs counter to what many teachers and parents teach their kids. More often than not, adults deny emotions instead of helping kids through them. You may have heard things like this growing up:
“You really don’t mean that.”
“Grab a snack and you’ll feel better.”
“It’s really not that big of a deal. There’s no need to get upset.”
Kids need to understand their emotions, even if the context of the emotionally-charged situation seems trivial to us, in order to become aware of them. When you’re aware of something, then you can deal with it. You need to “feel those feelings to release those feelings,” as author Robin Sharma explains in his course, The Empire Maker’s Method.
However, the opposite tends to happen. We learn to deny or suppress emotions. This comes at a cost.
Just think about the many emotionally unstable adults you probably know. They never learned how to handle their emotions as a young person, and that baggage has stayed with them through adulthood. Instead of dealing with emotions, they suppress them.
That’s a problem for two reasons.
First, suppressed emotions can bleed into other areas of life. An emotional situation at work or school that goes ignored can affect your home life.
Second, suppressed emotions compound over time. Say you are irritated about a situation, but don’t do anything about it. You suppress or deny it. Days, weeks, months, or even years later this irritation has turned into anger—a lot of anger. In the process, you’ve been carrying around a lot of emotional baggage for a long time. That’s draining.
Plus, you’ve missed a learning opportunity. According to Carl Jung: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Helping kids, and ourselves, deal effectively with emotions takes time, patience, and a bit of ingenuity as I’m finding out with Hayden. But it’s definitely worth it. It’s an investment for the long term.
Take Care of Your Body
I treated my body the worst during my school years.
My poor diet is the first thing that stands out to me. I ate junk for lunch from the school cafeteria. In elementary school, the cafeteria served a steady rotation of things like foot-long hotdogs, pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, and macaroni and cheese. In high school my lunchtime diet included chicken nuggets, pizza, or a bagel with cream cheese.
“You were young! You can eat those kinds of things when you’re young!” you may say.
Perhaps.
But I can’t help to think about how my physical and mental performances could've been improved if I ate healthier. After all, food isn’t just about filling a grumbling stomach. What you eat affects you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Recovery is another aspect of taking care of my body that I wish I had known more about at a younger age and prioritized. Sleep is a form of daily recovery that I often neglected. I usually went to bed late, typically due to sports games and practices, and got up early to make it to class (which during some years was a first-period study hall where absolutely no studying took place).
If I knew something about the benefits of sleep—and how to manage my time—I would’ve done things differently. In the process, I’m convinced I would’ve worked much more efficiently and effectively. It’s hard to be at your best when you’re running on empty.
At the same time, there’s a tremendous benefit to periodic breaks from whatever your pursuit is. I always thought the key to success meant doing more, more, more. Years after graduation, I learned this key insight: you can’t be 100%, 100% of the time.
A major component of success is making time for downtime. Time to recharge. Time to refuel. Time to recover. Somewhat paradoxically by doing less, you’re doing more.
Five hours of quality work followed by a relaxing evening with family or friends is far better than eight, ten, or more hours of mediocre work and going straight to bed in order to get up early to do it again. More still, taking the weekend off or going on vacation can refuel your body, mind, and spirit. Or simply making time for other interests or hobbies on a regular basis can give you the boost you need to keep plowing ahead.
Exercise is a final component that that needs to be emphasized in today’s youth. Exercise not only impacts the body, but also the mind. When you feel good physically, you do better mentally, and emotionally.
Sports usually come to mind first when thinking about exercise. Sure, that’s one option. But there’s a lot to be said for having pockets of time throughout the day to walk or run outside in nature. Yes, there are physical benefits to periodic exercise. But there are also mental benefits. I find walks in nature to be therapeutic, as well as a great way to generate ideas and make connections.
Schools may talk about diet, sleep, and exercise in health classes. But Mark Twain was right: “Action speaks louder than words.”
All the talk about a balanced diet goes out the window when the school cafeteria offers a host of high-calorie junk food. The importance of exercise is quickly forgotten when recess is cut out of the school day and kids sit all day in a classroom. The value of sleep is neglected when basketball practice ends at 8:30 or 8:45 at night and there are hours of homework left to do.
The way you treat your body affects everything, including your mood, appetite, focus, weight, and emotions. If school aims to prepare youth for the future, these topics not only need to be addressed. They also need to be lived out.
Be a Leader
As parents, we are leaders. Our children watch our every move. They imitate our behavior. They’re influenced by our reactions. They take on our preferences and attitudes.
Part of our role as leaders is imparting our knowledge of what it means to be a leader to our children. Self-leadership is an important skill to learn and develop no matter the path your child takes in life.
They may or may not have a fancy title, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t need one to effectively lead your own life, be your true self, and do great work each day, as Robin Sharma points out in his appropriately titled book, The Leader Who Had No Title.
Self-leadership is personal; what matters to you as a parent-leader gets at the core of who you really are and what you value. It’s worth taking time to think about these things because our kids are watching, learning, and picking up a lot of information based on what you say, how you react, and what you do.
By identifying and living out your own leadership principles, you'll give your kids a framework of a life well-lived. These are a few leadership principles that I want Hayden to grow up learning and embracing:
Have a vision: something important and compelling to strive for.
Do everything with excellence: do quality work, even on the seemingly most mundane tasks or projects.
Have a good attitude: be optimistic and find the good even in the bad.
Give: one of the best things in life is to be giving to others.
Provide value.
Communicate: don’t sweep problems or your true feelings under the rug. Communicate them effectively.
Be kind: Mister Rogers succinctly explained the path to success: “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
A key quality of the best leaders I know is to have a set of values. Know what you stand for, and stand for it. Communicate these values regularly to your children: internalize them and live up to them each day. When difficult situations come up, they’ll have their values to rely on for guidance.
This idea of being a leader makes sense, right?
The problem is that kids are taught to be followers in school. Follow the rules. Follow the teacher. Follow the curriculum. Kids may get reprimanded if they don’t follow along. There’s even pressure to follow a particular life path: get good grades so you can get into a good college so you can get a well-paying job so you can buy lots of stuff.
Being a leader is about getting clear about who you are, who you aspire to be, and where you want to go and living up to these aspirations. Ralph Waldo Emerson summed it up perfectly: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
Putting It Together
Self-knowledge isn’t taught in school. That’s too bad. According to Leo Tolstoy: “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.” So it’s up to us parents to impart this information to our kids. And it doesn't need to come in the form of a formal lesson.
You can convey the ideas expressed in this newsletter in situations that come up from everyday life. And that’s the best way to go about it. The information will stick because there’s a concrete situation the child can tie the information back to. Consider the following ways to incorporate the themes from this newsletter with your kids.
First, you can interleave pertinent information when a situation arises.
Say your child wants to give piano lessons to younger kids. This is an opportunity to talk about time and money management. How many lessons can you realistically give each week? What supplies will you need? How will you fund them? You can also talk about goals and long-term thinking. What’s the aim of giving lessons? What do you want to learn, achieve, do, or provide?
Or consider problem-solving. You can demonstrate how to solve a problem by helping your child thorough the problem-solving process when a problem arises—instead of just giving her the answer.
A second way to share the ideas from this newsletter is to involve your child in family tasks. Here are a few examples:
Talk about the family budget with your kids: discuss how much money should be allocated this month for groceries, clothes, restaurants, and so on.
Plan the next family vacation together.
Start a family book club where each member of the family reads a book and discusses it.
Exercise together.
Cook together.
Have a family meeting once a week where you discuss each person’s responsibilities for the week ahead and any problems or challenges.
The list goes on.
By involving your kids in these kinds of tasks, there’s no lecturing about the importance of exercise, budgeting, or reading. They get the message: this matters and here’s how you can go about it. Besides, the best way to learn is to do.
It’s also worthwhile to demonstrate the skills and principles you deem important. This is a third way to incorporate themes from this newsletter.
For example, I want Hayden to grow up to appreciate reading. So I make it a point to read a few pages from a book for myself while we’re together at some point during the day, even if it’s only for five minutes. There’s no doubt he’s picking up the message that reading is important. He sees me doing it each day.
Seeing you, the parent, make things like reading a priority will speak volumes to a child. Leading by example is a great way to convey the ideas expressed in this newsletter. It’s worthwhile to repeat Twain’s quote: “Action speaks louder than words.”
Above all, give your kids time. Time to think. Time to write. Time to read. Time to play. Time to run down rabbit holes they find interesting. Kids need this time, starting at a young age, to figure out what their interests, passions, and strengths are. Then, they need time and space to explore them. Free time isn’t wasted time. It’s time to discover, learn, and make connections.
The Big Picture
All parents want their kids to grow up happy. And the happiest people I know play a different game than the rest.
Many people play the comparison game: when you compare yourself to others. It’s a game that begins early in life, as kids compare grades, GPAs, SAT and ACT scores, and college names. This comparison game continues through adulthood, as adults compare salaries, homes, vacations, and cars.
This game has no winner.
You always need more or better—more money, more things, more accolades, better titles—which makes it exhausting. This game also puts your thoughts and energy toward things you can’t control. And it detracts from what really matters.
Happiness and success aren’t the result of accumulating more: more classes, more extracurriculars, more money, more things. We’ve all heard stories about all-star students who dropout of college completely depressed. Or famous movie stars who have tons of money and fame, but are completely empty inside.
Happiness is the byproduct of doing the work you are meant to do and contributing to the world in some way by helping others. In order to be of service to others, you’ve got to know what you can uniquely contribute to the world. It starts by getting to know yourself.
That’s why we need to teach our kids a different game to play.
Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself. It’s a small change that can have a huge impact.
Learning what it means to be you is within your control. Becoming the best version of yourself is within your control. Figuring out the meaningful, impactful, and purposeful work that’s unique to you—and acting on it—is within your control. These things get to the heart of the matter, and they build the foundation where anything is possible.
The happiest people I know and have read about really know themselves. They do meaningful and purposeful work—work that’s having an impact. They may have money and fame as a result, but that’s not their primary aim. As Henry Ford put it: “Money comes naturally as the result of service.”
So let’s help our kids discover who they really are, and provide a few essential skills to put this knowledge into practice. Let’s guide them down a meaningful path, where they’re doing purposeful work that’s having an impact and helping others in some way. Let’s help them build a foundation that’ll set them up for the years to come. This should be the purpose of school.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
–Carl Jung
Thank you for reading! Feel free to reply to this email and let me know what you think.
-Amy