Skills You Don't (Necessarily) Learn In School

I usually don't review other blog posts/articles here, but this one is great. I found a post on Zen Habits (courtesy of Parent Hacks) that lists "27 Skills Your Child Needs to Know That She's Not Getting In School". The suggestions range from Practical to Happiness, and from Financial skills to Social ones. This list just gets the conversation started, as over 100 commenters add their suggested critical skills to the list.

My favorites:

• Saving. Spend less than you earn. It’s such a simple maxim, and yet very few young adults understand it or know how to follow it. Teach your child from a young age to put part of money he receives or earns in the bank. Teach him how to set a savings goal, and save for it, and then purchase whatever it is he was saving for.
• Critical thinking. One of the most important skills not taught in school. These days, we are taught to be robots, to listen to the teacher and not to question, to accept what we are told and not to think, to be good employees and to shut up. If you’re an employer, you might want your employees to be like this, and if you’re a politician, you might want your citizens to be like this. But is that how you want your child to be? An unquestioning, naive, ignorant citizen/employee/student? If so, carry on. If not, just start introducing the habit of questioning why? And the skill of find out the answer. And how to question authority — there is no one right answer. Conversation is a good way to accomplish this skill.
• Compassion. Not taught in the schools at all. In fact, instead of teaching children how to empathize with others and try to ease their suffering, our schools often teach children to increase the suffering of others. Learn to put yourself in the shoes of others, to try to understand them, and to help them end their suffering.
• Love. Compassion’s twin brother, love differs only in that instead of wanting to ease the suffering of others, you want their happiness. Both are crucial.

What's great about this list and the additional suggestions that follow is that these are also great skills that we should master - not only for ourselves, but so that we may better teach our children, by example if necessary.