Things Every Kid Should Master | Hacker News Reader

Things Every Kid Should Master

bostonglobe.com

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My son is six and I take him to school each day (its about 25 minutes). He started asking me to tell him stories on the way to school, so I told him stories about how I was a spy and the missions I went on.

Eventually I put him in my stories too -- he was member of the Omega Force. At some point he didn't like how his character was acting in the story, so he began to tell me what his character should do. Well over the course of about a month we now do a full on role-playing game on the way to school. The level of role playing matches nearly anything I did when I played D&D. He now leads the Omega Force and I lead the Alpha Force. His squad is larger, but mine is more specialized.

That 25 minutes of rather sophisticated verbal interaction is pretty incredible. I can weave in interesting scenarios and discussions, and the level of engagement is great. I have no data to support it, but I feel like its something that almost every kindergartner could benefit from.

You should have him write down his thoughts as well - it sounds like his story development and verbal communication skills are getting a bunch of work, would be awesome to have his written communication match

That's a good idea! Thanks.

I'm reminded of this Radiolab segment where they talk about how younger kids are entrenched with imagination and fantasy, and than a few years later they begin obsessing with rules, fairness, and civil relationships more.

[0] http://www.radiolab.org/story/153809-rules-set-you-free/

You and he will both have some incredible memories when he grows up.

I did something similar when I drove my daughters to school a few years ago. The story and characters were different (in our case, woodland creatures having adventures), but the overall idea — and, it seems, many of the benefits — were similar.

One of the great outcomes of it was that when my wife or I heard the girls say interesting things about their social dynamics at school (another child getting picked on, kids with "fancy shoes", questions about kids with different-colored skin, a new kid to the school, etc.), I could weave those situations into the narrative. It gave us a safe space to explore the issues, and to help the girls process various lessons in an enjoyable way.

Eventually, we moved on to audiobooks and then the girls reading to themselves. But what started out as frustration at a "long" commute ended up being one of the highlights of the day.

Interestingly enough my father and I do this for a couple of hours straight about once a week.

One of the few differences is that the story is usually finished within said few hours, and a new one begins next week, unless it's considered interesting enough or needs a continuation.

I believe that it's a wonderful idea to do this in general. It exercises creativity and thinking, et cetera, and it's fun to do. :)

s/every kindergartner/everybody/ :P

> Conversation

I know barely any adults (late 20s, early 30s) who know how to do this. The concept of "conversationalist" is lost in modern society, you have to be watching whatever junk is on TV in order to communicate with people - god forbid you want to talk about something genuinely interesting.

The problem is one of feedback. One who is extremely bad at conversation would likely be too socially unaware to recognize s/he is.

I wouldn't say that. I know I'm bad at conversation, and I'm always mildly awed when I see e.g. my parents striking up a half-hour long conversation with random strangers in trains. I still have no idea how they do it, and I don't see many people in my age range (20-30) able to do the same.

The trick is to know a little about everything, which can be acquired by:

* Reading from a variety of sources (HN does provide a lot of this, click on more than just the tech articles).

* People in our age group seem to have more interest in being heard than interest in listening. Don't do that. Ask questions (which is in itself a good way to hold a conversation), even about things you wouldn't think you would be interested in.

* Learn to at least listen to opinions that differ from your own. Big bonus if you can dedicate energy to contemplating those opinions.

In addition:

* Nobody wants to hear about Game of Thrones or the latest computer game that you play. Entertainment media rarely makes for good conversation unless you share the specific entertainment piece in question (mostly sport); however, you are doing little for your future conversation ability by participating in an echo chamber.

* If you screw up people will probably forget about you, not remember you as an idiot. Don't be scared to practice on strangers.

* Keep your bloody phone in your pocket and ignore it.

>Ask questions (which is in itself a good way to hold a conversation), even about things you wouldn't think you would be interested in.

This is really the only trick. People love to talk about themselves.

As the saying goes: "Interested people are interesting."

I find the people who interest me the most are those whose view differs from others but is well thought out. If everyone listened but did not talk, the world would be a boring place. I'm a fringe dweller at HN. Someone mentioned relevant conversation and that's very true. I find some great things on HN that make me think. I used to frequent Ars Technica, but it became too sexist, so I now frequent a variety of non-mainstream sites for varying views of the world. I'm lucky enough to have very interesting and diverse friends off the Internet.

Thank you for writing this. I use to be good and patient listener, yet at one point it is like a switch and now I am very impatient and even though I am aware I am doing it, I still can't wait to tell you :) what I think. Anyhow, thanks for writing it out.

Knowing a little about everything is helpful. But being interested in what you can learn from others is even more helpful! Get other people talking, and just encourage and steer them so you get value from it.

When people complain about uninteresting conversations, they often mean, "I wish that other dude would shut up so I could talk about the stuff I like!" They're not listening. If they were listening and interacting with what the other person has to say, they wouldn't be bored and frustrated.

That's not the only trick, but it does help. A much more important factor is the openness/candidness with which you present yourself, and the amount of perceived empathy & compassion you have for the person you're engaging with. A one sided conversation is not a conversation at all.

The biggest trick is to find someone who would like to have a conversation (most people would rather not). The most important sign here is eye contact and whether they're actively observing their surroundings as opposed to reading a book, talking with friends, staring into nothing. Then you have a good chance if you use an icebreaker, e.g. talk about things they have on them. (A monosyllable answer and avoiding body language means they do not want to talk, find someone else.)

Some people won't shut up at all, especially older ones. If you want to hear interesting things you might have to steer the conversation a little, so eg you can hear about how the city used to be in the past as opposed to how their doctor's visit this morning went. However, the most important part is to find the ones that want to talk and broadcast the same intent. (There is better luck when it's not just people going to/from work, those usually want to be left alone.)

Age is a big part of this. Your parents are competing in a very different social landscape than people in the 20-30 range are.

People in their 20's are engaged primarily in mate selection an career building. Those are very focused and somewhat desperate endeavours, where random conversations with strangers are high risk and low payoff, particularly when talking with people in your own age group who are likely to want something from you, just as you are likely to want something from them. It's like being at one of those networking events where everyone is there to make connections that can help them but aren't able to offer much in return: an unpleasant waste of time.

Older people are much more pro-social. Their investment in their offspring will be enhanced by a more friendly, connected world, and they can afford to indulge themselves in random social connections. Human society is fundamentally kept intact by grandparents. The reason we have these ridiculously long lives is most likely because troops of early humans who had more grandparents around were better at transmitting culture to new generations.

I'm putting this in brutally evolutionary terms, and there is obviously much more to the story, but the evolutionary forces are always there, under the surface, and we can't just wish them away (however much we might like to.)

I have no idea why this is being downvoted. That's a fantastic insight.

Probably because it's a just-so story not based on reality. Building a career and finding a mate surely must be more influenced by the breadth of your social network than is your ability to help your children and grandchildren. Think about how many people you know who have gotten jobs or met their significant others through friends or acquaintances. I think anyone who sees interactions with strangers as adversarial should take a closer look at why their own stance is so suspicious. Getting to know new people definitely isn't easy, but it's incredibly rewarding in itself and opens so many doors.

I said it was a fantastic insight. I didn't say it was right. :)

Actually, I think you're both right. The idea that young adults should be suspicious and selfish is limiting and wrong. But the idea that older adults have different motivations socially is spot-on. In part, even the introverts and misanthropes have learned to value just talking to people, eventually.

On the other hand some people are too socially aware and are worried that they are bad at conversation when they are not.

This is definitely something I have been deliberately practicing over the last few years.

Sounds like you're the one that struggles with conversation.

You just shut the conversation down. Congratulations.

nah, I presume like in everything else, one should strive for quality, not quantity. this being highly subjective, one does not want to be one of those people desperate to talk at all costs, just to avoid moments of silence.

people write here about being good listener, and encourage your counterparts to talk about them. this might be OK if you are trying at all costs to be liked by somebody else (ie find new friend). otherwise, be yourself, find interesting people that share your view with. and don't be desperate, worthy friendships take time to build, and are not meant to be had with everybody out there

I agree with you and I'm the same way.

I look at it in a different light, though. It's not a deficiency in their ability to have a conversation, it's a trait of the way that we are. We don't waste our time on people that don't interest us. That's bad in some ways and good in others, but it does make us the bad conversationalists, not them.

As one of the proponents of active listening... well, motivations vary. Personally, I think the purpose of listening is to learn. Being liked for it is a useful side effect, but not the end itself. Just about everyone I meet knows something interesting and potentially useful that I don't know.

I'm not sure I agree that the purpose of conversation is to create "worthy friendships", either. Often, it's just to pass the time, or be polite, or to discover if there's a common ground for future business. Conversation is what you do with other people, not just with friends.

So how do we strive for quality? What makes a "quality" conversation? Is it what we talk about, or who we talk with?

> So how do we strive for quality? What makes a "quality" conversation? Is it what we talk about, or who we talk with?

Do what you love. You'll find everything you need there.

Why else do you think "conversationalist" is lost in modern society? I know countless people who are wonderful conversationalists.

Something to consider... the first step to good conversation is being genuinely interested in other people's interests. If they're talking about something you don't know, take it as an opportunity to learn. Sneering at the values of others is poor attitude, which leads to poor conversation. If you really believe people only want to discuss "junk on TV", and that it's not "genuinely interesting", you're forgetting that it's interesting to them. Declaring an objective view that makes you superior and them inferior is, well, rude.

A little more about tv, weather, and other "uninteresting" subjects here - conversation is about finding common ground, something to talk about. We talk about the weather, or tv, because it's a place to start. It gets the conversation rolling, to help us discover bits about each other, and eventually find that "genuinely interesting" common ground.

Can't say I've experienced that. It always seems to decline into the size of a celebrity's arse. Even one of my friends, an ex-physicist and current private jet pilot has nothing to say past the size of an arse.

I just go and read a book now.

> It always seems to decline into the size of a celebrity's arse

That's the type of issue I typically encounter. You can only talk one subject for so long, especially if the conversation has more than two participants (as diving too deep into a specific subject risks boring everyone else).

If you can have a deep conversation, I'm a big fan of boring the other people so they'll go away and leave us to our conversation!

Unless they have no way to escape. Then it's rude.

Celebrities are an important part of generic conversation... they give us someone to gossip about that neither of us actually know. Public shaming is an important (if offensive) social ritual.

That said, just about anyone can talk about something other than Kim Kardashian. No one actually cares about her. Talking about something like a celebrity's arse is a way of avoiding talking about stuff we actually care about - as someone else noted in this thread, the fear of being seen as uninteresting, or weird, or an outsider, if you talk about stuff that matters to you.

The way to get people to talk about what they care about is to ask them. Your friend the physicist/pilot? Ask him about physics. Ask him about airplanes. Ask him about his clients as a pilot. Pretty soon, he'll be talking about much more interesting things - interesting to him, and probably interesting to you.

And all you have to do is listen, and he'll think you're awesome.

With some people that's really hard. They don't see your interest or disinterest in a topic at all, even if you make it really really obvious (not looking at you, one word answers and even descending into rudeness vs making eye contact and participating in the conversation). Some people just want to complain about trivial things, even if they could tell you about antarctic expeditions instead.

It's interesting that the great limiter of conversation may be the fear of being objectively labeled "uninteresting" by your counterpart in the conversation.

There was an aid in a lab at my school who would routinely berate students when he was programming or playing a video game on his laptop:

Student: "Is that C#?"

Aid: "What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you ask questions you already know the answer to?"

The aid was rejecting a universal ice-breaker because, in his mind, it was beneath him.

I would imagine he didn't have very diverse conversations.

Worse than being labeled "uninteresting" is being labeled an outcast.

That's why people closet their real interests when talking to strangers.

I've long since become accustomed to the fact that people around me don't share the same interests, and I don't share theirs. There's basically no reason to try to have a conversation with people.

If you only interact with people who mirror yourself you will live your life in a bubble of sorts. I say embrace the differences. Argue your world view and listen to theirs. In the end you will be wiser than you were before.

I used to think this way. Becoming "wiser" meant realizing that most people are in fact incredibly boring and thoroughly uninteresting to me.

In most ways, this has not been an improvement.

I should expand a bit. I know the idea is that by engaging with more people, one acquires empathy for more people and becomes a broader, more mature person.

In my case, the result was the opposite. I acquired misanthropy by discovering that most people aren't worth the time and energy to talk to.

At the very least, it's good practice to make the effort to refine the skill of small talk with strangers, ice breakers, and acknowledging our shared existence on this hunk of rock flying through space.

We're all in this together, and we all have our daily grinds and griefs.

Feel free to scoff, and scoff aloud at least because maybe someone else will hear you and let you know they're in the same boat.

Useful skills? Absolutely. I just prefer not to invest energy in using them more than I must.

My thought process runs like this:

> I've acknowledged our shared existence. Over. Done with. No mas. Can I go back to my book now? It's way more interesting than all this dreary existence-acknowledging crap.

I don't want someone to hear me and tell me I'm not alone. I already know that. I want to go back to my book or whatever.

It's a bit pie-in-the-sky to say, "everyone has a fascinating story of some kind and you just have to get it out of them." I think that's largely true, but I understand why you might disagree.

That said, I think you need to revise what you consider "worth it" to mean - it's not necessarily the case that you'll learn some useful new skill or hear a great story or derive some other immediately-tangible benefit from talking to people.

Not every interaction is equally valuable, your time is precious and you are an autonomous human being perfectly within your rights to reject a given social interaction, or interactions.

But human interaction is not reducible to an ROI calculation. It's far too complex and multivariate to be computable by your or anyone else's brain - the best you can do is a rough approximation.

I guess this is scattershot, but the phrase: "Just because I find many people uninteresting does not make me a broken person lacking in basic skills" stuck with me because it alone does, in fact, provide us ample evidence that there is a problem. I would never describe you as "broken" - I'm an introvert, I get it - but if you find "many" people uninteresting, that is a priori evidence that it is you who is uninteresting.

>I guess this is scattershot, but the phrase: "Just because I find many people uninteresting does not make me a broken person lacking in basic skills" stuck with me because it alone does, in fact, provide us ample evidence that there is a problem.

I agree! The problem is that people are remarkably intolerant of those who are different. For instance, if you don't find randomly selected people all utterly fascinating, it must be that you're a broken person.

> but if you find "many" people uninteresting, that is a priori evidence that it is you who is uninteresting

Well. No. The two are not bijective. You can be a very interesting person to most people while still finding most other people not very interesting. The reverse is also true.

> The two are not bijective. You can be a very interesting person to most people while still finding most other people not very interesting.

Indeed, that theoretically can be true. In every instance I have ever heard of, witnessed or been made aware of in any way, however, it holds. The plural of anecdote is not data, granted.

But ask any advice columnist. If you find other people boring as a matter of routine, that's not because they're boring, it's because you are.

Same as with any other part of life. If X keeps happening to you over and over again, and X is statistically uncommon, then either you have weird luck or X is related to something inside you, rather than something to do with the world at large.

From experience, people who engage with me for any length of time tend to find me very interesting. Perhaps I'm simply an exception to your rule.

Now that I write it, that sounds egotistical.

[I wrote another reply earlier. In retrospect, it was pretty ranty. I'll try a different angle.]

I've been an introvert forever. My parents in particular would tell me things like "conversation is a game of throw and catch". When I got older, I realized I wasn't shy -- I just hated making small talk. So I responded "Believe it or not, I know how to hold a conversation. I just don't like small talk."

Whenever I tried to steer the conversation towards what I considered more interesting topics, "Um, I didn't want to turn this into a philosophical conversation." Cool. We have divergent interests. I'm capable of keeping myself busy. But my parents would continued to repeat "you gotta throw back the ball sometimes".

So one day, as a teenager, I decided I would try this whole "congeniality" shtick. You know, for science. I was genuinely congenial for several months. I can assert this with confidence because people noticed. Several complimented me on how I came "out of my shell".

At the end of my experiment, I decided congeniality was exactly as overrated as I thought it would be. I've generally been schizotypal-by-default ever since, and never looked back.

Have you considered the inverse? That perhaps people find it very worthwhile to talk to you? Any way, thanks for explaining. You live your life the way that works best for you:)

Bully for them. Why might I wish to indulge them? I have limited quantities of time and energy, and sometimes I have things I want to do besides indulge the whims of randomly selected strangers.

Which is to say yes, I have considered that. And I'm pleased to have brought you an alternative perspective.

You probably won't understand where I'm coming from here, but I'll say it anyway, since that's the type of person I happen to be:

There is a fine line between using rational and reasoned thought to explain an unpopular way of thinking and using it to simply disguse being an asshole. My guess from reading your comments is that this isn't something that is really important to you, which is perfectly valid of course.

As an introvert that hates conversation myself, particularly small talk, I've come to realize that life is infinitely more enjoyable when you are aware of what side of the line people are placing you on at any given time.

One of the things I've learned is that "asshole" is basically a stand-in for a host of social norms. Thus, "being an asshole" is not complying with someone else's idea of social norms.

I'm generally aware of where I stand, but isn't always the same as wanting to be on the polite-and-not-an-asshole side.

> know the idea is that by engaging with more people, one acquires empathy for more people and becomes a broader, more mature person.

I'm not sure where you get that conclusion, but the source doesn't really matter - I think it's a bit backwards. Engaging with more people might broaden your perspective, but I don't think the outcome of engaging with people is more empathy. My experience is that empathy is something you should cultivate if you want to have a better understanding of others and their motivations. This is something you may want to do if you wish to have a relationship of some kind, or to influence their behavior.

Exactly. Going out of your way to spend your leisure time engaging people in their interests doesn't enrich your life, or make you wiser, it just takes time away from you.

You're not going to be wiser listening to someone go on about some sports team. You're not going to be wiser listening to them go on about their kids. You're not going to become wiser listening to them talk about whatever TV show they like. They're not going to be any wiser listening to you talk about what you did the other day. Everyone is just going to be bored.

Life is too short to waste on trying to fit in or pretending to share interests with people you don't.

I mean no disrespect, so I will say this to the general reader, and not to you directly.

This comment and its parent are incredibly disheartening, given that I assume the people writing them are of above average intelligence and likely have a very creative bent - people on the top end of "ideally educated" in some of the categories the article lists.

I would forward this: If you find yourself both agreeing with the comments, but often marginalized or ostracized in ways you do not enjoy, (and only you can know this for sure, but we've all been there) it isn't 'other people' that have the issues, it is you. You are lacking in the skills mentioned in #4, #5 and possibly #7. You may think this doesn't matter, but I'd put forward that you are missing a large part of a fulfilling life experience without them.

There is a fine line between sharing every possible interest with every possible person and completely shutting yourself off to new viewpoints, ideas and experiences simply because they aren't your preferred topics. You will learn from unexpected sources, because you yourself are changing, each and everyday. I would encourage everyone to take some of their precious time and converse with people that aren't simply mirrors to your own innate desires.

It won't matter a lick to me, but it most certainly will help you grow and learn.

Just because I find many people uninteresting does not make me a broken person lacking in basic skills. I possess the skills discussed in spades. Spare me the insults, if you please.

What I've found is that taking your advice does not lead to the results you anticipate. It's really that simple. Upon experimentation, your hypothesis goes from "most certainly" producing positive results to "almost certainly not". Your expectations and reality are disjoint and you assert that the fault lies with me.

If I may return the favor and dispense unwanted advice, might I suggest some empathy? Take us at our word when we say that we've tried what you advocate and it hasn't produced what you say it will. Consider how this makes us feel and why we would choose to not continue to throw good money after bad (so to speak).

And hey! Maybe don't look to marginalize people because they are different from you. That'd be nice. We might actually consider taking you seriously once more.

You certainly have a very passionate view from a very different perspective than mine.

As I said, I'm not indending disrespect, but I won't pretend that I can in any way understand what motivates you aside from the reasons I put forward. Sorry if that angers you, but that's just where I stand. We'll have to agree to disagree.

> Upon experimentation, your hypothesis goes from "most certainly" producing positive results to "almost certainly not". Your expectations and reality are disjoint and you assert that the fault lies with me.

Well, the simple reason I suggest such a thing is that, assuming you are varying people, situations, and topics, it is the only variable that remains constant throughout. While you may not agree with how I see things, perhaps you can at least understand why.

Rest assured, i can only have empathy for you if I view your passionate reaction to the topic from my position. It seems to be a very negative place. I don't wish you any ill will; simply trying to do the very thing I'm suggesting to everyone else.

Thanks for the conversation, particularly if you found it difficult.

> Well, the simple reason I suggest such a thing is that, assuming you are varying people, situations, and topics, it is the only variable that remains constant throughout. While you may not agree with how I see things, perhaps you can at least understand why.

And that's fine. You're not wrong. Your perspective is just incomplete. You erred in assuming that new experiences and ideas can come only from a particular set of sources.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio.

You, and several others in this thread, seem to be dead set on framing everyone who does not go out of their way to converse with people at all opportunities about things they do not have an interest in as people who lack social skills and are not open to new ideas as if they live in a physical bubble.

We all interact with people that do not hold our beliefs every day. We actually do not need to go out of our way to associate with them, mainly because we all have to go to work. In fact, people in general have to work at making sure everyone around them thinks exactly the same way and most can not do that. We basically all have to talk to people about shit we don't care about all day.

It's called polite conversation and it isn't anything I care to engage in in my limited free time, which is of course limited by the aforementioned work where I'm forced to interact with people.

> I assume the people writing them are of above average intelligence and likely have a very creative bent

If you did actually believe this, you would have taken what has been said as, at least, another viewpoint. You didn't, you proceeded to say those holding this view are missing parts of life and proceeded to imply they were immature needed to grow as people.

I would consider both positions more 'attitudes' than well-formed opinions on how one should act. You've been accused of having a 'bad attitude,' which I think is fair, but it ignores where you're coming from. You may be relying on this attitude to counterbalance a history of fruitless attempts at relating to people with seemingly little to offer. I bet you feel emancipated from worrying about doing something you don't actually feel inclined to do. That's fine, but just note that you may, later in life, find that people who are different from you might have a lot to offer. Or you may not. You can't make a definitive statement about this sort of thing.

To give an example from my life, a few years ago I realized I had become completely out of touch with "mainstream America," so I decided to make a project out of discovering why so many people live such apparently bland lives, watched so many television shows, liked fast-food chains, etc. Since then I've learned to relish conversations with people who seem to have nothing to offer me. I'll ask them probing questions and try to expand my own mental framework to incorporate a reality where their answers make sense.

Turns out a lot of people who hold positions of great responsibility, such as entrepreneurs, executives, and politicians, live quite boring lives by my standards, and I learned through this inquiry that there's a very good reason for this. Obviously this is a lossy generalization, but it seems to me that in many cases, because they are so burdened with risk in their work lives, they need to counterbalance this with total security and banality in their personal lives. And then others just see no reason to challenge themselves. C'est la vie!

On the flip side, I've also, like you, learned not to spend too much time with people who don't challenge me. Sometimes that means making difficult decisions, and sometimes it means maintaining a sour attitude temporarily. We all have our own energetic-emotional phase-space to navigate.

>the first step to good conversation is being genuinely interested in other people's interests

I'm skeptical of this advice. Coleridge was one of the most famous conversationalists ever (there are multiple books recording his after-dinner chats), and his "conversations" were pretty much monologues.

I think being interesting yourself is more important than being interested.

That's a good point. Frankly, I'm more of a talker than a listener myself. But that said, I really do find other people's interests to be interesting and valuable to me.

Part of "being interesting yourself" is being aware of when your listeners are and are not interested. That is itself a listening skill. If you can educate and entertain, wonderful! But to do that, you have to be continually aware of your listener's attention. That can be really difficult for the talkative extrovert.

You're really on point, though - the balance of a conversation has to be mutually agreed by the conversationalists. It doesn't have to be equal, and probably shouldn't be. And, since most people aren't really good at conversation, being the one who is good, who is interesting and sensitive, can be a relief to others.

> If they're talking about something you don't know, take it as an opportunity to learn.

Are we not permitted to be disinterested in subjects we are not ignorant of?

I know how football, baseball, basketball, and hockey work. I do not find them interesting to discuss. I am also not interested in being "educated" on them because someone else finds them interesting to discuss. I do not find the existence of passion on someone else's part to be a compelling motivation for me to expend energy indulging them.

Not all of us share your belief that conversation is valuable for its own sake. If the options on offer are conversation on subjects I find bereft of interesting content and silence, I will take silence every single time. Especially when there's a magazine or book with content I do find interesting that I could be reading.

There is a difference between not enjoying a particular topic and extending that feeling onto the person speaking as well.

>I do not find the existence of passion on someone else's part to be a compelling motivation for me to expend energy indulging them.

Why not? Certainly, if you were speaking about something you were passionate about, would you not agree that I would learn at least a little bit of something by trying to grasp the source and fuel of your passion? Could I not relate quite directly if you say "Space is so amazing due to its complexity and movement..." if I replace that with "Football is so amazing due to its complexity and movement..."? Have I not just related to you as a fellow human in a meaningful way? Has making this connection not just better my understand of what drives my own passion and interests?

Surely you cannot be ready to say that you have learned all there is worth knowing about yourself and are now stagnant in desire and interest? Why close the door on an opportunity to learn? I find it incredibly interesting (and admittedly, perplexing) that you see the value of gaining knowledge from a book but see limited value in gaining knowledge from another human.

> Why not?

As a rule, the intellectual return on energy invested is less than what I would get from picking up my phone and going back to my ebook.

> Certainly, if you were speaking about something you were passionate about, would you not agree that I would learn at least a little bit of something by trying to grasp the source and fuel of your passion?

What if I already understand that, and find it uninteresting to me? Am I now obligated to review it all over again, because someone else hopes that I will have a Damascene conversion that failed to happen the previous fifty times someone went on about how much they love football?

> Have I not just related to you as a fellow human in a meaningful way?

Perhaps it's meaningful for you. That doesn't make it meaningful for me. I don't consider the sort of compulsive extroversion you seem to be in favor of to be a meaningful or valuable thing for me.

> Surely you cannot be ready to say that you have learned all there is worth knowing about yourself and are now stagnant in desire and interest? Why close the door on an opportunity to learn?

Because the alternative is not "not learning", as you seem to think. The alternative is investing my time and energy in something that I know has a much greater probability of being valuable to me.

Bluntly, I don't share your priorities. This does not make me a broken person. I am not broken. I do not need your "fixing".

Did you read the article "When Nerds Collide" posted a few days ago? You should. Read it here: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c

Now I'll quote a section for you:

> Humans are social animals, and part of what makes a social species social is that its members place a high priority on signaling their commitment to other members of their species. Weirdoes’ priorities are different; our primary commitment is to an idea or a project or a field of inquiry. Species-membership commitment doesn’t just take a back seat, it’s in the trunk with a bag over its head.

I'm one of those weirdos. You aren't. That's fine. Stop trying to force me to be like you.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your views to me. Sorry to have bothered you and eaten away at the precious time you could be spending on more meaningful persuits.

It's actually very important for me and people like me to engage on this subject. If we don't, we get marginalized by people who don't even realize that we exist.

I agree and would add others along the lines of . . .

- a hobby-skill (playing piano, ping-pong, billiards, surfing)

- playing a team sport

- telling a joke

- defending one's self / fighting / disarming with humor

All the above designed to build confidence.

If you dismiss people's interests as "junk" and as not "genuinely interesting", don't be surprised when nobody wants to have a conversation with you. Nobody wants to have a conversation with somebody so condescending.

I find it encouraging that we're starting to discuss skills that allow young people to teach themselves rather than remaining reliant on guidance of others.

Some of the skills discussed in this article are difficult to instruct in an educational setting (though they can certainly be structurally reinforced) - but I see far too many young people who see 'education' as a task to be completed/survived rather than a series of personal skills they will need/want to apply to life at large.

The comments about testing aren't particularly interesting (as other commenters have pointed out) - but we should certainly be aware of the distorting effects of high stakes testing on the values/goals of our schools.

"Dumbing us Down" by John Gatto is a great eye opener about schooling and how schools are great at killing creativity.

I would give anything right now to have had someone actually have taught me collaboration and conversation when I was a kid. I remember crying multiple nights in elementary school because I didn't have friends and didn't know how to work with people. At the very least, I wish I'd known about How to Win Friends and Influence People before high school.

Yeah, my parents always told me "hard work" was the answer but that's only half of the story.

Nice to see a shout out to the greatest book ever written on being a good conversationalist! "How to Win Friends and Influence People" ought to be required reading in high school.

My wife struggles with introversion. She hates talking to strangers and non-friends, calls networking "schmoozing", and generally sees only the negative in meeting new people. I've tried to get her to read this book for years, but she fights me on it.

I read that book and I've gotta say fans of it have really oversold it. It has some good advice but I found some tactics questionable due to appearing as insincere to me.

I also find it weird that you characterize your wife's introversion as a struggle like introversion is some sort of abnormal condition. Some people just don't enjoy random conversations about random topics because randomness is usually not a great way to select for quality.

Really? I thought sincerity in conversation was the entire point of the book! He says quite explicitly that if you're insincere, people will sense it and distrust you.

As for my spouse... yes, it hurts her, and she's aware it hurts her. It limits her effectiveness as an artist, and it limits her career options. You can't "cure" introversion (it's not a disease, it's a personality), but you can compensate for it. And part of that is just cultivating internal attitudes - for example, not thinking of networking as something deceptive and selfish ("schmoozing"), but rather as something sincere and generous.

As an artist, introversion has its benefits too. Extraversion reduces time spent pondering, employing imagination and intuition.

That’s because they aren’t “tactics”. One of the greatest things Carnegie teaches is becoming interested in other people. You can’t fake that. It’s not a tactic to use on people—faking being interested in them—on order to get them to like you. It’s about actually being interested in other people.

For some, that may come naturally … for others, it may be something that they need to work on. But it’s not about smiling and nodding while they talk about themselves … it’s about genuinely being interested in them as a person and caring about what they have to say.

I also wish I'd been able to make my mind take an interest in sports. On an intellectual level, I recognize there is nothing inherently less interesting about the exploits of Brett Farve or Kevin Youklis than Zhuge Liang or Joshua Chaimberlain... But I just don't know how to make myself care and it is really frustrating.

I feel like the writer doesn't fully understand how deep some of the flaws in our educational system can run. Take, for example, the section on collaboration which hints only at educator behavior influencing students to exclude others. There are so many other factors that would cause a child to segregate and organize themselves into cliques, and as much as our educators may impact the social structure of the students, the behaviors of parents, guardians, caretakers, and other adults in a student's life play just as important a role in their development, especially if students spend more time with them than their teachers. This issue extends beyond the scope of our education system and is not easily remedied through changes in the institution. Some of these habits may not be fixable.

This isn't to say the article doesn't raise good points, especially that elementary and early school years should focus more on developing social skills than academic ones. However it fails to assess how varied children can be in terms of background, home life, opportunity, and development. Would it be fair to assess a student to whom English is a second language on the same scale as one that grew up in an English speaking country? Can we compare a student on the autistic spectrum with a socially and verbally mature student? The author makes these topics seem simpler than they actually are, and that hurts the message that they're trying to get across.

good points, especially that elementary and early school years should focus more on developing social skills than academic ones.

I hold that United States schools are stultifyingly boring for a great many pupils, because the lessons are too easy,[1] and as a consequence many pupils languish in their social development because they are not allowed the opportunity to pursue development of knowledge and skill while engaged in group work at school. One reason I think this is that I know a whole country, where my wife grew up, where most school pupils were instructed in school in a second language that they didn't speak at home[2] and where the school lessons were much more challenging. That seemed to produce better social results than have ever been found in United States schools.

[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/201...

[2] My wife is part of the majority population of Taiwan in her generation that grew up speaking Taiwanese at home but was only permitted to speak Mandarin at school. (Mandarin is approximately as different from Taiwanese as English is from German, or as Spanish is from French.) The school lessons in Taiwan were, and are, much more ambitious in promoting deep thinking than United States lessons are, and include a mandatory requirement to begin studying high-school-level algebra and geometry by seventh grade--even for below-average pupils. Oh, and of course school pupils all over the world begin study of modern foreign languages--usually English--by much earlier ages than most pupils in United States schools, even if they are going to school in a second language, as many school pupils do in many countries. United States schools are too wimpy academically to fully develop young people socially.

Yes, in my experience elementary school was hellishly boring, but I believe that comes from them being focused on teaching mechanical processes, such as the times table, rather than thought processes. In that way it'd be just as beneficial to a student's social faculties to teach critical thinking as critical thinking would benefit from the teaching of social skills. Having to simultaneously master another language provides students with a direct method of developing their communication skills and requires them to better rationalize their thoughts, so naturally it would foster better social habits.

To also touch on one of your notes, I also think that the United States is slow in teaching foreign language, and exposure to other cultures and languages would help to dispel the myth in American culture that the U.S. is the center of the universe. Perhaps American schools should start teaching only in Mandarin as well. :p

How about empathy and self control? How about humility? These 3 skills are sorely needed.

I very much agree with the Buddhist thought process that compassion, empathy are pivotal to well-being. I was a bit disappointed that these were absent from the list. In my opinion they are foundational in regards to points 4 through 7.

Empathy is probably the greatest thing we could teach children or anyone for that matter.

We do a very poor job in general of teaching emotional skills such as these in schools.

Misleading title. Should have been "Things every child educator should master."

Children should be children, it's the adults that are messing up.

This article seems to be flame-bait for the standardized test world, rather than pointers on how to direct children.

e.g. "If only our standardized tests measured this amorphous thing!" rather than "Here are tips for promoting [inquiry] in children".

Looking at BG's comments show the article's content is ignored and instead is people blasting their opinion of the current state of educational reform.

I agree with this. By opening with a diatribe on standardized tests, and focusing on assessing skills that are inherently difficult to assess, Engel moves the discussion from helping children to condemning our education system (it's bad, but this article shouldn't be about testing or schools at all).

By opening with a diatribe on standardized tests, and focusing on assessing skills that are inherently difficult to assess, Engel moves the discussion from helping children to condemning our education system

Exactly. The article just comes across as so silly. Take this part:

There are several ways we might measure a child’s disposition to inquire. We can easily record the number of questions the child asks during a given stretch of time.

It's been a while since I've been in a classroom but I would probably jump out the window if every class period each student had to get their average 1.4 questions in to maintain their grade.

It's like the article writer lives in a fantasy world.

"Testing these concrete things is bad, let's instead attempt to test these poorly-defined subjective things."

Nothing about being a creator rather than a pure consumer? Too many are caught up in the cycle of chasing grades and completely forget what the point of an education is supposed to be.

What is the point of education? Not the point of learning, but the point of schools and degrees and such?

One could argue that it's mostly about learning obedience, how to worship the clock, and how to tolerate doing things that are arbitrary and stupid. School isn't to make us good people. It's to make us good employees.

You're confusing education with schooling. They are not the same, as much as their equivalence has been deeply ingrained as a public axiom.

I do agree, otherwise. Schooling has an orthogonal purpose to education at large, even though individual schooling systems might have higher educational value than others.

Actually, I was trying to de-confuse them. Formal education and learning are often conflated, which leads to cognitive dissonance when education doesn't equate to effective learning.

But all that math, biology and stuff, that has nothing to do about beeing a "good employee". There's a lot of things that the school system genuinely tries to teach. To me it seems that those life skills are an added bonus. Some of them are also requirements to mass teaching. For example, every needs to be at the same place at the same time.

That beeing said, mass teaching like we do it might not be the best thing. We have tools to facilitate teaching that for example does not require everyone to be at the same physical location. Those same tools could also be better utilized in work to enable remote work. Which would then mean one less life skill to teach at school.

Is it learning obedience and worshipping the clock, or is it patience and self-control?

I went to lunch with some coworkers the other day. The restaurant we went to told us there would be about a 5 minute wait because some machine or other was just repaired. One of my coworkers had a little freak-out about how long it was taking and stormed out to go to another restaurant. (And this was a "fast food" restaurant we were already at.) I'm pretty sure he hadn't finished walking to the next restaurant by the time we got our food, but waiting an extra few minutes was too much for him.

The rest of us had a minimal amount of patience and it was no big deal. He wasn't a slave to some clock and he didn't have to obey anyone telling him to wait. But he also didn't get what he claimed he wanted (to be served faster).

Why can't it be both?

The article is talking about elementary school kids. It's great to teach them to put together peeler beads, Lego, or IKEA furniture. But there is a bit of a safety constraint, at least as far as many parents are concerned.

What's wrong with encouraging them to be creative? At that age many are already learning artistic skills that need to be encourage, not snuffed out in favour of grade chasing.

I have no idea how playing the piano, creative writing, drawing is somehow "unsafe".

If there's something that I'm seeing suffer badly it's being able to express yourself. Too many are caught up just saying what others want to hear, conditioned to be the poster-child for college admissions reviewers to fawn over.

Was pleasantly surprised by the article. Turns out there's some excellent guidance for the new parent there, given that very few of us can expect these lifeskills to be taught at school; folks can at least take a stab at teaching these at home.

Boom, I was expecting to find "Programming, every kid should know how to program" at any point in the article. Glad I didn't.

This is a great start and very well intentioned. I worry that all of the assessment methods, though, are very geared towards extroverts.

A shy kid just won't perform well on most of those metrics. If a kid isn't comfortable with the tester, they'll be unlikely to pepper them with questions.

Now, we should _definitely_ be trying to give that shy kid the tools they need to deal with that situation. In-person collaboration and meeting new people is a vital skill. We can't let our entire testing regime be blocked behind that skill, though.

"Why not test the things we value, and test them in a way that provides us with an accurate picture of what children really do, not what they can do under the most constrained circumstances after the most constrained test preparation?"

Because the purpose of testing is to use it as a weapon to punish political opponents and brag about your own accomplishments. Also it can be used as a weapon to reduce funding, if you want to reduce funding and need to provide an acceptable theoretically 3rd party evaluated reason, ditto if you see firing people as an inherent good. Along the lines of security theater logic, the more painful and obnoxious and offensive the testing is, the better it must be and the more the school must care about kids, for a similar example see the logic behind corporal punishment in schools from decades past (we only beat the kids because we love them or somesuch nonsense). Finally if you carefully design racially biased tests or socioeconomic biased tests, then even a proud liberal can select the lilly white rich subdivision for their kids "because of the test scores" in an abstract public sense, not the highly politically incorrect race and income data.

The analogy with security theater is the truly critical point from above. School testing exists to improve schools in exactly the same way TSA jackboots molesting women at airports improves security.

I strongly disagree.

The latest round of standardized testing, Common Core, is quite good. However, some schools and teachers and administrators will always act like:

> TSA jackboots

This doesn't mean that the testing or the test material is a bad idea.

When speaking proper English and studying are looked down upon as something for "lilly white" people the game is already lost.

This is an excellent thought experiment I genuinely wish were reality. That said, the root problem with standardized tests is that they're inherently hackable. Standardized tests are like desktop software: you write once and ship everywhere, and once you do people start reverse engineering it.

Any sufficiently hackable test will appear to work in the short-term if you just place it in front of admission to prestige, because of the large subset of high-achieving people whose lives' missions are to game any test placed in front of them, which drastically skews how well the test appears to predict achievement.

The things mentioned in the article are excellent things to test, but if you start measuring e.g. the number and type of of questions a kid asks within x minutes, cram schools will just adapt, and in a few years you'll hit the end of another cycle.

> The educational philosopher Harry Brighouse has suggested that the ability to think about something for 20 minutes at a time (sustained focus) may be one of the most powerful cognitive skills we acquire in school.

What school did this guy attend? The one I was sent to as a child was little more than a zoo. If anyone left there able to concentrate for 20 minutes (myself included), it had nothing to do with the curriculum, the teaching methodology, or even the values espoused by the teachers and administration.

I am surprised about the lack of math/algebra emphasis.

The traits that we should be testing for in this article are great but what do you think it would take to adopt this type of testing?

It seems like public school are stuck continuing with the current tests because these tests are used to procure federal/state funding. For schools to change, the country's consciousness needs to change about how society defines a "well rounded" individual

Where does "who invented the cotton gin" fit into all this?

#7 is arguably even the most important.

If only administrators and those above them would be made to understand that there is more to child development than standardized test scores.

Please don't say "#n is adjective..." without specifying what #n actually is. This is a clickbait trend that has ripped through social media spam lately and it's vastly annoying imo. If you're going to talk about the article, talk about it like a normal person, not a spammer trying to trick people into following the links.

#7 in this article is "well-being".

My reaction was the opposite. Of course well-being is important, but it's a state isn't it? How do you learn it, or teach it? It sounds perilously close to the whole "self-esteem" thing that became prominent in elementary schools a few years back. As if self-esteem was not something developed through accomplishment and the subsequent increase in self-confidence, but rather a piece of information to be conveyed by an instructor. "Shazam! You now esteem yourself."

Lots of people with impressive accomplishments don't have self-esteem. Impostor Syndrome, Dunning-Kruger etc. If you don't have self-esteem, you'll let yourself get pushed around because you think you're not really worth anything. But with it, you'll start to see your own potential, which is a good motivator to start working toward it.

Self esteem is a double edged sword as it does not consider empathy and may lead to narcissistic values. That's the flaw with the self only aspect.

It's a state, but you can learn quite a bit on how to get and maintain that state. Things like "ecstacy/sex/[whatever] works short term, but maybe you should see a therapist instead" isn't something that goes without saying. Lots of people take the wrong choice every day.

Well-being is a complicated topic, which only drives home why we need to teach it to children. Not only in respect to self-worth and work ethic, but in terms of empathy, morality, and the ability to rationalize the world around them. If we can help children think about why they feel the way they do, it can clear up confusion about the emotions of everyday life and prevent anxiety. If we do not, they'll simply have a more and more complicated world to deal with as they grow up, without the tools to help them simplify it.

You can absolutely teach it. At the age of 25 I think I'm only now beginning to understand the specific actions and skills that go into making your life a good one.

Skills like: coming up with ideas for ways to be kind to people, being truthful with myself and others, communicating my feelings and problems early and calmly (instead of too late and tearfully), eating well, keeping my environment clean, exercising enough, and managing my time by making sure I don't overcommit myself.

I definitely didn't do most of these things when I was in school - looking back, I can see the useless, arrogant teenager I was, and want to slap myself. But honestly, no one bothered to teach me these skills, except (kind of, in a confusingly packaged, disorganized way) in Sunday school.

I got the fundamental concepts of how to conduct myself properly by reading books, mostly fiction, and learned to apply them largely by observing adults for what NOT to do - it was also a long time before I learned to find good role models.

Empathy is probably the most important thing kids should learn.

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