The emphasis in high school and college is still on teaching details and facts, not dealing with everyday living once a student leaves school. But is school a place to learn about the real world?
Of course!
Young adults are concerned with choosing a career, getting great reference letters, knowing how to interview, accumulating savings, resolving conflict, building self-esteem and, most important, heading toward independence and self-reliance. It doesn’t take much effort for teachers to pass these and other skills on to the next generation.
For example, in the Introduction to Computer Science course I teach at Metro State University of Denver, one of the assignments is a book report on “The Richest Man in Babylon,” by George S. Clason. It’s an easy read that shows how to accumulate wealth even while still in debt, as most students are. I claim that a student can be the fastest, smartest software programmer around but not know how to save some of the money he will earn at that first job. A life includes the skills for a career and the skills for a life outside the career. Both are important. (A majority of my students thank me for “forcing” them to read a book they might otherwise not have known about.)
During most class periods, I inject an idea to help with entering and succeeding in the real world. Each high-leverage idea is simple, quick to relate and almost always well-received by most students.
Here’s an example: Students can get great reference letters simply by writing them themselves. Of course, there is a catch. If students have a good enough relationship with a teacher to ask for a reference letter, most teachers will welcome the offer to write the letter for them, saving their time. If students are reasonable about what they write, teachers will sign the letters and maybe even add to them.
One of the many benefits to this approach is that over time, the student can build up an impressive library of reference letters. And, of course, students of all majors or disciplines can write these letters.
In one semester, teachers in all majors and disciplines can inject from their own experiences many powerful practical ideas. They can also include ideas they’ve tried that don’t work, possibly saving students similar difficulties. This also makes the teacher more believable when students learn the reality that some successes come only after many failures.
At a college with a two-semester school year, a student takes at least 30 courses at about 30 sessions per course for a total of 900 sessions. Knocking off, say, 10 percent of the sessions for tests leaves 810 sessions of instruction. If each teacher gave one idea per session, a student would leave college with 810 ideas on succeeding in the real world.
Currently, that number is close to zero.
Great ideas have been around for millennia. To illustrate: Published in 1926, “The Richest Man in Babylon” suggests saving 10 percent of all income as a way to start accumulating wealth. Real world time-tested ideas like these are new to students simply because they haven’t learned them yet.
But isn’t that what school is about? Isn’t it about passing the knowledge and experience of previous generations to the one about to take its place in the world? Every teacher has unique experiences that his or her students can learn from. School can prepare students for the real world.
David Kramer is a former software business entrepreneur turned educator, now teaching at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He is the author of “Entering the Real World: Timeless Ideas Not Learned in School” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Nov. 2014).
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