Hard Skills to Learn

This is the first of hopefully many blog posts by a partnering cohort member.
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By: Zac Shutler

Hard Skills to Learn: LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner says the biggest skills gap in the US is not coding

As a school superintendent in the state of Ohio, I get the opportunity to attend numerous conferences that stress the importance of “preparing students for careers that don’t yet exist.”  These conferences are led by many intelligent people from the state education department and by various officials from universities across the state. When they begin these lectures and they use that phrase about preparing students for careers that don’t exist, two thoughts immediately come to mind.  The first is: “It is impossible to prepare someone for something that doesn’t exist.” And the second thought is: “Isn’t this a challenge that our society has always faced?” I believe that is why this article by Simone Stolzoff resonated with me.

Prior to entering the administration side of education, I was a high school social studies teacher.  My role was to discuss issues of the past with our students and connect those lessons to our modern lives. One example is how Guttenberg’s printing press changed the way that books were consumed and put many calligraphers out of work.  Another example is how prior to Carl Benz inventing the first automobile and Ford’s assembly lines making the vehicles affordable, city streets were over crowded with the horse and buggy model of transportation that came with pollution problems of its own. A more recent example would focus on how the internet and Amazon have changed the game for traditional retailers.  What I am saying is that public education did not specifically train students to create these technological shifts, nor did they prepare people to fill the jobs that these new industries created. What the combination of formal education and supportive parenting did do was give our kids the social and emotional capacity to adjust and meet whatever challenge or change the world had to offer.
 
When I reflect on my time as teacher fifteen years later, I see how understanding our past validates my belief in the ever-evolving nature of technology and how the education system and more importantly, families, have instilled timeless principles into the next generation.  I believe that it is a growing concern that the standardization of the American education system and the toxic stress that many students face at home is threatening our ability to meet the next wave of challenges. In his book, How Children Succeed, author Paul Tough details the importance of “non-cognitive skills” or, as the article refers to them, “soft skills.” These skills can also be referred to as character traits or grit.  Whatever we want to call them, research shows us that these principles can be taught, and we are missing the mark in education if we don’t make the concerted effort to educate the “whole person,” especially for our students who are immersed in “toxic stress.”

In closing, I would like to share a brief story that started me on a path of personal growth.  First, I was blessed with supportive parents that modeled leadership through their actions. Not every child is born into a situation that lends itself to a strong foundation built on universal principles.  Even though my parents modeled personal leadership, I did not think about it, study it, or realize I could improve as a leader until I took a course during graduate school at Franciscan University. I can’t remember what the title of the course was, but we mainly studied Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  In short, it changed my life and improved me as a person. A story that always stands out to me from one of Covey’s books is the story of the ship and the lighthouse. The ship is on a collision course with what the captain believes is another vessel and the ship’s captain is desperately radioing for the other object to change course. The light house represents universal principles that are unchanging.  They do not move and are effective in any era. Principles like: Commitment, Courage, Generosity, Initiative, Listening, Integrity, and Teamwork. Modeling these principles at home and within our educational system will prepare the next generation for the “careers that don’t yet exist.” They always have and if we are vigilante, they always will. Modeling universal principles and teaching social emotional intelligence to students who are lacking those skills is imperative.  

One of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, summed up the importance of these skills with a powerful message.  He wrote, “To whatever we face, our responsibility is to respond with: hard work, honesty, and by helping others the best we can. Duty is beautiful, and inspiring, and empowering.  That’s all that has been asked of us. No more and no less. Sure, the goal is important. But never forget that each individual instance matters. The whole isn’t certain, only the instances.  How you do anything is how you do everything. We can always act right.”