Necessary Skills for Students (It’s not just academics)

Students need three different kinds of skills to succeed in life:

·         Academic- Every student needs some academics. High achieving kids focus on rigorous academics, but even students with disabilities need minimal reading and math skills, and some can handle even more.

·         Vocational- there are two kinds of vocational skills

v  Income-generating vocational skills- auto mechanics, culinary arts, handicrafts, technology (keyboarding, data entry, graphic design, etc), painting, carpentry, construction, etc, etc

v  Everyday vocational skills-

§  Organizational skills- This involves both mental and physical organization.

·         Mental organization is the ability to plan, visualize where things are, foresee problems, anticipate the next step and be ready for it

·         Physical organization is the ability to keep backpacks, files, binders, assignments, papers, and all other school and personal supplies neatly organized, and to be able to find and produce the right paper at the necessary moment

§  Time management- The ability to track multiple due dates and plan for completion by each due date

§  Project management- Know the various steps from the beginning to the end of a project or assignment. If a big project has multiple and simultaneous steps, then it is the ability to keep track of it all, and get to the end successfully

§  Attention span- Projects and long school assignments take a week, a month, or even a semester to complete. The student has to keep attending to it over a long span of time, even over weekends and holidays.

·         Life skills- Teamwork, asking for help, telling time, handling money, balancing the check book, managing due dates, checking schedules, cooking skills, shopping, conducting transactions, resolving conflicts, cleaning, etc

Schools do a good job of imparting academics indiscriminately. One size fits all. In fact, students who cannot absorb the intensity of academics are made to feel like misfits in school. It almost feels like the fire hose of academics is turned on at full blast, and it has no other speed.

Students who can handle this level of academics can also absorb the vocational and life skills necessary without explicit instruction. So, schools which cater to academically inclined students do not focus on teaching them the auxiliary skills necessary for success. But students with special needs do need explicit and direct instruction to learn the soft skills. And they don’t really need the intense level of academics. While every student needs all these skills, the stress is different for different kids.

Why, then, do schools cater to only one kind of student? Isn’t it our responsibility to equip every student to become an independent and productive citizen?

Measurable Achievement Targets

          How does one measure something as intangible as learning? But schools are commissioned to deliver on such a product, anyway, which means we have to figure out a way to measure it. In an age of age-based promotions, automatic pass till 8^th standard, how can one figure out what exactly a student has learned? An 8^th standard pass student could have passed with 90% marks, or with 30% marks. So this kind of information is essentially useless. There is another tool that is always bandied about by successful students- rank. I got 1^st rank in my class, or 5^th rank, etc. Again, what information does this give students, parents, potential employers, about the student’s actual capabilities?

          This kind of scoring is useful neither to the high achiever, nor to the struggling student. High achieving students still have to prove their actual learning and abilities by taking a rigorous entrance exam to enter college or employment. School-based evaluations are apparently not worth much in the real world.

          As a special educator, I’m more concerned with what students with special needs get from school. Is school merely a substitute for a crèche, or is it contributing to true and useful learning? What is true and useful learning for such students? Has it been defined? What do parents expect that schools will do for their children with special needs at the end of about 8 years of schooling?

          Is it really useful for a student with a lower IQ or mild to moderate disability to learn how to divide a 3 digit number by a 2 digit number? Is it really useful to make them memorize the capital of every European country? What about the symbol for every element in the periodic table? Is such specialized knowledge useful for some students? Absolutely! But what if such knowledge comes at the expense of truly important learning, such as basic literacy and math, balancing a check book, resolving a problem, or a vocational skill? Many people reading this went to school, maybe even to college. Yet, how many of you remember the capital of Tuvalu? Is it knowledge itself, or the skills to access knowledge when needed, that is more useful?

What, then, is the minimum that every child should know at the end of 8+ years of schooling? Targets have to be tightly defined. Standards-based report cards reflect exactly what the student has learned. Some minimum academics are necessary- basic literacy and arithmetic. These contribute toward enabling them to live independently.

What is basic literacy? It could be what some official definition, national or international standard, says it should be. Or it could be a school’s adaptation- a consensual definition. As long as it’s achievable, measurable and tightly defined, it will suffice.

Basic literacy is the minimum level of literacy required for independent living. The ability to tell a bottle of poison from a bottle of medicine. The ability to read road signs and billboards. The ability to write a two line note to your child’s teacher.

·         Read any language at 20 words per minute, of 3 syllables or less, with 5 errors or less, with comprehension of material read- such might be a tightly defined measurable target.

·         Write at least a 40 word paragraph in any language, with fewer than 10 errors each in spelling, mechanics (punctuation, capitalization) and grammar. Stay on topic, be legible and convey meaning.

Basic arithmetic would be the ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide rational numbers- whole numbers, decimals and fractions. More importantly, this knowledge would only be useful if students could apply it in real life.

Apart from this, real life skills like problem solving, shopping, reading train schedules, making change, paying rent, managing due dates, ability to find answers, and so much more- these are the main lessons needed for independent living. Students with disabilities need direct instruction to learn these.

And some vocational skills. After all, how independent can anyone be without a source of income?

(By the way, the capital of Tuvalu is Funafuti- I Googled it…)

Soul Searching- My Thoughts on Special Education

          The first questions that are asked in any teacher training program are, or should be- ‘What is the purpose of education? What is the mandate of schools? What do we expect that they will do for our children? And lastly, who is education for?’ Unless these questions are answered, the entire educational system will be an inequitable, rudderless ship, full of busy work for the achievers, and baby-sitting for the strugglers.

          Let’s tackle the last question first, because it is the bedrock basis for this soul-searching. Who is education for? For everybody. Every child. Every child is educable. At this point, it is important to stress that education is not academics; education is learning. Academics would be part of learning, a subset, if you will. Most children need an academic education; all children need to learn.

          What, then, is the purpose of education? Simple. To make the child as independent as possible. Now we need to define what independent means. It means different things for different students. As a special education teacher, it is a question that particularly impacts the demographic of students I work with. Independence for a child with IQ below 70 would be different from independence for a student with a higher IQ.

For students with lower IQs, independence would be to have and master as many life skills as possible in order to live as independently as possible as an adult. Life skills would include basic academics- some literacy and arithmetic, along with the very important and necessary skills of shopping, navigating public transport, balancing the check book, telling time, following instructions, resolving conflicts, asking for help, appropriate social behaviors and relationships, etc.

For students with higher abilities who can handle a more rigorous curriculum, the purpose of a school education would be to prepare them for employment or college. It certainly implies an academic education, of varying rigor, along with all the life skills mentioned above, and vocational skills, if necessary.

This, then, is why we send our kids to school. This is the mandate of schools, what parents expect that schools will do for their kids. Schools will produce capable adult citizens, with the necessary skills to contribute to society to the extent that they can.

Next: Setting measurable achievement targets