Education shall Emphasize Soft Skills that translate into Cold Hard Cash

No Child Left Behind mandates have school systems scrambling to improve teaching, update curriculum, improve the quality of teachers and analyze data from different populations, to name just a few of the many actions each school faces. However, given the nation's recently released Report Card, securing significant change we need some non-traditional solutions.

Perhaps it is time for public education to take a lesson from corporate America, which is only now realizing the impact of soft skills on the bottom line. Over the past two centuries, companies focused on the control of their employees. The work environment was one of the control actions in which individual applications for approval of a chain that went vertically, then vertically down. This type of management style and excessive waste products failed to capitalize quickly when opportunities were presented.

According to the Annual Survey of National College Michigan State University work, knowledge workers of today must have the following skill sets:

Capacity Analysis

Communication between verbal and written

Decision Making

Higher order (Thinking Skills HOTS)

Individual and group leadership

Personal attributes including work ethic, flexibility, initiative and motivation

Troubleshooting

Team Building

Time management

Yet, looking at most of the curriculum, the focus is on the cognitive content-specific academic disciplines. The presumption is that this knowledge and the ability to support itself as mentioned above can easily transfer the workplace. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs Americans know that this is a mistake because of information that is retrieved from the type of investigations conducted by Michigan State and other organizations.

For example, American students spend more than 12 years to learn to read and write. Yet, if the communication is nonverbal than verbal depending on how much of the research of Dr. Albert Mehrabrian of beliefs, then most young people except those in the speech and debate have already been set up to fail because they do not understand that effective communication extends far beyond reading and writing.

Time management is another great example. Many adults have problems with time management or self management better with better since you can not manage a constant now. However, the osmosis learning strategy once again rears its head inefficient and ineffective during the learning experience for kindergarten through high school. Can you remember as a young student when he actually had a class on effective time management? In court today with the ever-expanding curriculum, it would make more sense to educate young people on a really valuable skill instead of leaving the osmosis learning strategy?

Develop and improve soft skills are critical employers know what it will translate into success for their employees, and cold hard cash for them. If public education is to be truly effective, then the leadership needs to get on the ball and watch the end results desired. Drill another 33 years of reforms at the national level, where 17 years have been absolutely no improvement in reading will be removed from the world's number one economic power. Leanne Hoagland-Smith, http://www.processspecialist.com

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