We tend to think of education as the learning of hard-skills. These hard-skills are sometimes in the form of technical training - as in music or sports - otherwise they often take the form of established world-knowledge, like knowing maths, science, or geography. When educating our children, these are the types of skills we value most. We want our children to grow up having the most opportunity. We want them to get into the best schools, have the best marks, be the best in each school subject. This is how we value education. Throughout all this however, it seems we’ve completely lost sight of soft-skills. Soft-skills are the ones that humanize us, like communication, confidence, empathy, kindness-- and these are the skills that have the power to change our society for the better, yet they are the ones we push aside in our education system.

As educators, we must be conscious of the string of behaviours, one leading into the other, that our culture has created. From the youngest possible age, we treat our boys like kings and our daughters like maids. We teach boys to be “strong” – not in a way that frames strength as emotional and open, but rather, as closed-off and physically intimidating. We teach our girls to be “flexible” because we expect them to be the adaptable ones in a pair, putting their own needs behind those of their male counterparts. What this does is create boys who are incapable of emotional expression, introspection, or true empathy, and girls who are riddled with self-doubt or a muted-independence.


There are, of course, exceptions to this. However in our culture as a whole, these are the types of children we are raising. And, when they get to school-age, rather than dedicating time and efforts into fixing these behaviours and creating independent-thinking and self-aware young minds, we tend to value high performance in standardized tests above all. This, in turn, leads to higher anxiety which students then do not have the tools to deal with, as they were never able to develop the emotional capacity to express themselves in a way that is positive for their mental health. This lack of emotional capacity, or introspection, or empathic understanding (call it what you will), is precisely what then leads to the pent-up aggression and violent behaviours we are seeing across the country today.

The bottom-line here, is that open communication and emotional growth are two of the most important skills we can possess as human beings. While developing these skills is no easy task, as educators we are in the privileged position to impact young minds in time to make real positive changes. We have the power to focus our lessons on these softer-skills. We can teach our students how to use open dialog to express their feelings. We can be progressive in our methods, and implement hour-long lessons designed to teach independent thinking, self-growth, or positive interpersonal communication. We can teach our students – especially our boys – that crying does not equal weakness, that communication does not equal argument, and that sensitivity is a strength. Most of all, we have the capacity to impact tomorrow’s youth to create a better society for the future; one based on equality, on compassion, and on respect – both for ourselves and for others… why not use this power?