to think children should be taught social skills, public speaking and conflict resolution at school?

[CailinDana]

And that those skills and the confidence they give are just as important as academic skills, if not more so in some ways?

Some people just are, Cailin. I am a teacher. For 10 years I have stood in front of groups of children and spoken confidently. I have my lessons filmed, I teach student teachers how to teach. At university I debated for my college. I'm also terribly shy and in a social situation would not be able to speak to people I don't know without huge anxiety.

Xpost. Parents/ family members are a child's biggest influence. The community they live in, including school, plays a big part. Schools are doing their bit! See my last post!

No i think it was aimed at me. I already said though that these things are taught in schools. But these skills are really gained just throughout life, encouraging your child's independence and confidence is part of parenting .
The reason some teenagers/adults are socially awkward is probably mainly because they're just shy, just like you get outgoing and introverted children.
Can you imagine a world where we all the same, confident and outgoing?
It would be a nightmare.

Claudius, if someone explicitly showed you how to talk to people in new situations, and read the situation for you so you could pick up signals on how to behave, do you think that would help?

The way I see it Velvet, teaching maths is part of parenting (as in, encouraging your child to use their number skills, count etc) but school do the technical stuff and take it to a higher level. The same is true for social skills. Parents do the foundations and basics, but school can develop the more complex skills.

Also, some people aren't social and don't want to interact with groups. That's fair enough. But plenty of people want to be sociable, make friends and feel at ease in groups but lack the skills to do so. Isn't it better to teach those skills then just say "oh well you're shy, tough luck." Practically every week there are threads on MN from people who really struggle to make friends. It's a lonely situation to be in, and unnecessary IMO.

Your points are a good part of the reason my (ASD spectrum) son has taken drama GCSE. He is lucky to have a very good drama teacher who really develops these skills in even the least likely students.

A good school drama/performing arts department is so valuable to young people in secondary school but is often dismissed as too soft.

At my work place, we recruit the very best talent. All my peers are extremely bright academically and personality wise, pretty alphas both for males and females. For every post at my company advertised, hundreds apply from the global workforce. We are competing in an international multilingual stage, and its no coincidence my peers are comfortable public speaking and giving polished presentations. Including the 17yo interns.

I think its very important this is addressed early. I can only talk from my experience but when I was at state school, there was no emphasis on public speaking and debate. I got a scholarship to private college... HUGE MASSIVE difference in terms of soft skills taught and the confidence of its pupils. There is huge inequality at schools and it extends way beyond academics. I truly commend my college and their tutors in helping me be equipped for the professional world and even more...to level the playing field.

Fyi. I'm from a very poor immigrant family to the UK and was the first in my family to obtain a degree.

Interesting you should say that OddBoots, as I used to teach children with ASD and a very big part of what we did was to teach them how to deal with social situations, step by step by step. In one extraordinary case a child went from being quite violent angry and volatile to polite and sociable in one year. He was highly intelligent but just couldn't understand social situations and it gave him massive anxiety. Once it was all explicitly shown to him he was able to use his memory and intelligence to interpret social situations in a logical way. His manner was stilted still but he was very charming and his life improved massively.

It struck me - why do we expect children without disabilities to just pick this stuff up? Clearly given the behaviour of many children they just don't.

I know exactly how to behave in social situations, Cailin. You cannot teach someone not to be shy. It isn't a lack of confidence, that can be dealt with, it is my nature. I can think of nothing worse than having to make small talk with a random group of people. Similarly, I can think of nothing worse than being forced to study maths again. I've done it, got the GCSE, I don't want to do that again.

As I say, I've yet to see a school where all of the things you view as important aren't taught in some way. Teaching things in school doesn't automatically mean that people will be good at them. Gove seems unable to grasp this with his edict that all children must be above average.

I think "social skills" are learnt by osmosis by the process of being immersed in day to day living. This is shaped by the culture in which we live, children assimilate and learn to act in ways that are predictable, socially sanctioned and adaptive/functionally useful to them.

I agree though that public speaking is a valuable skill but again, I still think this is best learned through debate. Children spend too much time being spoken at, it would be great if they were encouraged to think critically, empowered to ask questions, follow their own lines of inquiry through discussion and even challenge authority, and accepted wisdom. Creative, critical thinking combined with curiosity and courage would benefit us all.

Fyi..I didn't want to emphasise any debate on private vs state schools. Just the inequality of it all. I went to a poor performaning state school in Tower Hamlets. The teachers were lucky to even finish a maths class vs trying to break up a fight of someone getting being hit on the head with a chair. Yes...I kid you not its pretty rough and I've witnessed a lot at my school. I went to two state secondaries as the first one closed down and public speaking was never on the menu for either of them.

My private college however, I got to chair their Lit and Debate society. Just saying....!

A simple example - on a thread about making friends one poster mentioned how she couldn't get involved in boring conversations about tiles. I said those boring conversations were necessary as the openings to friendship and described how a conversation about tiles led to a close friendship of mine. She expressed surprise and said she knew nothing of this kind of process.

Making friends is seen as something you "just do." But in fact, especially as you get older, it requires quite specific skills that a lot of adults seem to lack. A lack of those skills also stands in your way in the workplace as getting on with your colleagues and making connections is very important IMO.

Like I said Claudius if you're not interested, fair enough. I hate maths and only use the basics now. Still had to learn bloody integration and differentiation at school though.

I agree with you, some of my students at university are terrible at public speaking or presenting or indeed speaking in class- one problem is that they do get given presentations to do, but in our happy clappy world where everyone's a winner, they don't get any constructive feedback on how they present- just the content. A lot of the women in particular struggle with this, it's all batting eyelashes and mumbling, and these are reasonably high achievers.

The thing is- giving a presentation or speaking at a meeting or whatever is a skill. You can learn how to be pretty good at it, even if you are not a natural. There are lots of tricks and tips on how to speak clearly, engage the audience, make eye contact (not too much, staring is awful), and my favourite- practice loads. Once a term or less of a mumbling presentation is not going to help.

I do suspect a lot of top private schools are better at this, it's a shame when lovely students with lots to say just don't make the most of their abilities because no-one can hear what they are saying or they are just unused to articulating themselves in front of others.

CailinDana I agree with you but I wonder why people now have so much trouble making friends when in the past people lived in strong communities surrounded by people on whom they could depend? Modern life eh...neo-liberalism even? the idea that we are all individuals in competition with others for scant resources, working long hours as a walking talking CV and parody of ourselves, whilst not actually being either ourselves or connected to others. Technology has a lot to answer for too, all those people around you that might otherwise share in your humour when something funny happens, don't even look up from their iPhones and so it goes on. Japanese men watching robo-porn instead of forming relationships and british men playing games instead of talking to their wives, all of whom are on mumsnet and the kids are all stuck in doors because there is a self interested menace prowling the streets and the people on the iPhones won't look up if anything happens.

and I say all this because children learn their social cues from the process of living in what is perhaps an increasingly fucked up society. The skills they learn are functional and adaptive though. If you start a campaign to demand debating in state schools, I'll join you though.

Yes Cailin, the maths thing was pointing out that you can learn it at school and still hate it later and not use it - same as 'social skills'. Some people are naturally outgoing, some people aren't and can fake it when necessary (me) and some people just don't bother at all.

In your example about the tiles I wouldn't get involved in the conversation because my God I would find it as dull as dishwater. A conversation about politics or history I could get on board with, but I wouldn't get into a conversation about something meaningless just to have one. I'd feel anxious because I would be feigning an interest and I don't like to be fake. I can do it when necessary (e.g. at work) but I wouldn't do it socially because it would be of no benefit to me to make a boring friend who talked about tiles.

ClaudiusGalen, I'm the same, some conversations are simply not worth having and anxiety inducing. I fear lots of situations where I have to engage in small talk its not something to be commended because the vast majority of people are threatened by you if you open a conversation by saying "that Bacon chap was really rather brilliant with his ideas on the limits of deduction" Children generally don't have that problem though, do they?

Some do, Mini. I was just pointing out that I know exactly how to have a pointless social conversation, but I still don't do it. Just like I know exactly how to solve equations, but I really don't bother with that either. Some children will be the same - they may leave a school where these things have been taught but still not feel comfortable in some social situations.

We are actually agreeing with each other Claudius!

BTW my friend is not "a boring friend who talks about tiles." My point was that learning the skills of making friends (if you want to do it) teaches you that thr boring conversations about tiles are an important first step in getting to know someone. We don't talk about tiles now, we talk about religion, politics , the merits of tattoos :)

ClaudiusGalen, that's made me think, actually DS1 did have problems making friends when he started school for just this reason. But it has resolved as his peers have caught up a bit. I think he finds it easy to talk the silly stuff and they engage better with him on the things he is interested in. Your right though.

We differ, though, Cailin, because I don't think schools need to do more. Plus anyone who ever wanted to talk about tiles would be automatically classified as boring in my world (I picked my own bathroom tiles by scientifically opening a random page of the catalogue with my eyes closed and sticking a finger on a picture). If people are so desperate to make friends they will talk about tiles, that's a world I have no insight into, just as I know some people will find my obsession with Clement Attlee disturbing.

I do think though that we are in danger of prizing extroversion far, far, more highly that we do introversion. Some people will never be comfortable speaking in a group, for example and that is OK. It is totally fine. I have a DF and ex-boss who was the only introvert in a team of screaming introverts and it's something we had to work at as a team - valuing her content over her presentation. Sometimes that mean recognising our own amazing presentation skills were only skimming the surface of the issues at hand and that what we needed was to be still and focus more deeply.

I'm making it sound woo, it really wasn't . But as a drama school, extrovert and completely NT parent of an introvert with social communication difficulties I have had to learn to appreciate difference.

DF and ex-boss was introvert in team of screaming extroverts. prefix fail!

I think it can be mortifying and more off-putting to try to force some children to be more extrovert. It can in fact send them the opposite way. It is all about skillfully drawing out - find the one thing that they are passionate about and encourage it.