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I often see folks say that schools should teach finance management from a young age. Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy

I often see folks say that schools should teach finance management from a young age. Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy management, people management. It's just a basic life skill, keeping things in balance. Extremeness in an area can often be disastrous, it might also come with high reward, but very few people know how to be highly engaged and yet sort of keep other parts of their life balanced.

gizmo686 7y ago
Don't they? School is one of the more difficult environments for time management: students have half a dozen (or more) different bosses, all of whom reguarly impose hard deadlines, and have a tendency of imposing major deadlines at a simmilar time to each other. The social environment is probably one of the most diverse that many people will see in their entire lifetimes (not nessasarily along racial lines), with some of the most difficult to deal with people (children) many will face in their lifetime. Granted, schools often take a trial by fire approach to these lessons (I should know, I burned out during highschool), but I don't see how you can get through school without learning them.
- civicsquid 7y ago
  I don't think school teaches time management. Sure, there are plenty of people who learn time management due to the constraints of school, but I don't think they are the majority. The people in my major usually either put all of their effort into something, or they put nothing into it. Only extremes. Personally, I burned out in high school then again in college. I went 100% in everything related to academics and did exceptionally well, and yet I never realized until the end of college that the only reason I was so successful is because I sacrificed everything to be good at one thing. I'm still figuring out how to get that balance down and having some sort of more formal education in that area would have been beneficial for me.
- afarrell 7y ago
  There is a difference between teaching some skill and imposing stress on people who lack that skill. To illustrate this, Think about the difference between giving an 8-year-old swimming lessons and tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    Imposing a problem is one way of teaching a solution - it may not be the best way, or a way that you like, but it is a way.
    - afarrell 7y ago
      No, its one way of motivating a student to re-invent (and thereby learn) or to apply (and thereby learn) a solution. But if the student doesn’t ever get the solution, they don’t ever learn it. It is possible for someone to face a problem for decades, to care* deeply about it, for others to succeed at it, and for them to not know how to find a workable answer. For me, happens for “obvious” problems like “how do I learn to how to estimate how long software takes to write?” or “How do I write a first draft of a letter to a friend?” where the answer people have is “just do it” or “just do it and multiply by 2”. ——— * By “care” about it, I mean feel the emotion of wanting a solution. Some people define “care” such that if someone fails at something it means they didn’t care about it. I’m not using that definition.
- rjf72 7y ago
  A couple of big differences I can think of there. The first is the quality of your peers. I imagine like most people on this site, I excelled at school with literally 0 effort. In my opinion burnout is largely driven by excessive exertion for a task that seems ultimately pointless, often paired with minimal reward for such. In school people of the mindset who end up getting into STEM are generally going to have excelled with near 0 exertion while also reaping the various rewards for such. As the quality of your peers increases so too does the required exertion to rise above. To test this hypothesis I'd expect we'd see much higher rates of young burnout at elite/preparatory schools, which is certainly true. The second is that there aren't really any short term consequences for failure in school. Maybe you get a bad grade but it doesn't really have any immediate impact. In the absolute extreme case, you have to repeat a grade, which isn't a particularly big deal. Once you enter real life, if you don't come up with $x,xxx per month - you're homeless. This shift in consequences radically reshapes people's approach to the game. Imagine playing a video game; now imagine playing that same video game where if you score below average - your home and entire livelihood is put in jeopardy. And you're only playing against other people who are also, at worst, decent at the game. To test that latter hypothesis we could try to determine rates of burnout compared to the independent wealth of individuals. And on that front, I've no idea.
- fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  Can you tell a teacher that the demands they have of you do not match up to what they are providing in return? Obviously not and that is the very skill that needs to be learned.
dahfizz 7y ago
> Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy management, people management. I would argue that's about the only thing that schools do teach. After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. What middle school and high school does is force you to learn how to get your work done on time, be social, have hobbies, work with "bosses", and interact regularly with people you don't like. That's the real value in high school IMO. 99.9% of the people who took calculus in highschool would fail an exam 10 years later. The brain just doesn't hold onto info it doesn't use. I think it would be the same if there was an explicit class on e.g. time management. Nothing you say to the kids will have any impact. OTOH, giving them homework and deadlines let's them actually figure out and practice these skills in a safer environment.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. Uh, I think you’re going to have to cite that.
  - solveit 7y ago
    I mean, you're right. But I'm inclined to believe this because most people cannot in fact articulate the difference between metals and nonmetals, complete the square, name the three branches of government, etc.
  - flukus 7y ago
    What's the formula to calculate the volume of a conical pyramid, off the top of your head? I learned that in grade 5, was drilled on it, haven't had to know since and no longer remember. A small example but one I think is fairly representative of at least 50% of what I learned in school. We waste a tonne of time teaching very specific things of limited use, formulas, dates of historic events and busy work like plotting exponentials on graph paper and long division, there's a lot of room to be teaching higher level concepts instead.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
rsj_hn 7y ago
There used to be a time, and in many places still is, when parents, relatives, and the community you grew up in would teach you these things. When kids used to play outside together unsupervised, lots of lessons were learned, even from simple things like playing a game. You had to take losing. If you threw a tantrum, then quickly you weren't invited to play again. I remember growing up, the "coolest" kids were, in retrospect, the most emotionally mature ones, and they were the ones everyone else emulated. This business of emotional development and learning self-control is too important to leave to classrooms. Parents would teach their kids about money by giving them an allowance, sometimes you would work for the allowance. I mowed lawns. I can't believe that kind of stuff doesn't happen, but I notice a lot of lost, lonely souls out there who are really struggling with basic concepts, like maintaining friendships with people they get into arguments with, or disagree with. We do a lot of self-isolating behavior and then struggle with impulse control; I think because being part of a community forces you to engage in some impulse control.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > This business of emotional development and learning self-control is too important to leave to classrooms. It’s also not really any of the schools business. You can’t fix delinquent parenting in the classroom. The idea of an emotional development curriculum sounds terrifyingly dystopian to me.
  - rsj_hn 7y ago
    terms like "delinquent parenting" are a bit incendiary, and of course part of the job of a school is socialization. But I think a lot of changes have happened in how kids are raised that don't promote good childhood development. Specifically, unsupervised play with other kids. It just disappeared. Now parents have to supervise everything, which puts incredible pressure on parents, especially if they are working. In previous generations of our own society and other more traditional societies today, parents had kids younger and there were grandparents and relatives around to help raise them. At the same time, you can open your door and let the kids run out and play in the street. Then ring a bell when it's time for lunch and they come home. That takes huge pressure off parents and lets kids learn some tough lessons that helps them mature. In every species, play is how the young prepare for adulthood. Play and spending time with older peers. When you take that away and allow only supervised play time -- well, that's too much pressure on parents; they'd have to be superhuman to give their children the same richness of experience in childhood that kids used to have. I think the consequences of this are huge. For example, I've noticed how even people in their late 20s and early 30s, when they run into some kind of difficulty, immediately call for an authority figure to complain to. You'd learn not to do that if you were engaging in a lot of unsupervised play. But if everything is supervised, then you always have that authority figure to call. Even universities now are acting 'in loco parentis' -- in a very paternalistic manner, and it seems the students demand it. To me, it's as if a part of growing up and taking care of your own problems is missing. Then they go out into the working world and expect 'in loco parentis' from their employer. Well, the employer is happy to help, but now you are in an unhealthy relationship with your job. Then you have people in their 30s saying "God, I wished someone had told me about emotional maturity" -- well, that's really sad.
kulu2002 7y ago
I think this [1] article (Not only applicable to US as it says) is in a way related to discussion. Schools can teach finance/ time/ emotion management may be theoretically to certain extent...but when it comes to it's application for day to day activities which are often linked to our priorities, many people still not able to manage things in right fashion. [1] https://www.businessinsider.in/wealthy-americans-dont-have-enough-time-in-the-day-to-spend-their-money-and-its-stressing-them-out/articleshow/69960458.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/wealthy-americans-dont-have-e...

gizmo686 7y ago

Don't they? School is one of the more difficult environments for time management: students have half a dozen (or more) different bosses, all of whom reguarly impose hard deadlines, and have a tendency of imposing major deadlines at a simmilar time to each other. The social environment is probably one of the most diverse that many people will see in their entire lifetimes (not nessasarily along racial lines), with some of the most difficult to deal with people (children) many will face in their lifetime. Granted, schools often take a trial by fire approach to these lessons (I should know, I burned out during highschool), but I don't see how you can get through school without learning them.

civicsquid 7y ago
I don't think school teaches time management. Sure, there are plenty of people who learn time management due to the constraints of school, but I don't think they are the majority. The people in my major usually either put all of their effort into something, or they put nothing into it. Only extremes. Personally, I burned out in high school then again in college. I went 100% in everything related to academics and did exceptionally well, and yet I never realized until the end of college that the only reason I was so successful is because I sacrificed everything to be good at one thing. I'm still figuring out how to get that balance down and having some sort of more formal education in that area would have been beneficial for me.
afarrell 7y ago
There is a difference between teaching some skill and imposing stress on people who lack that skill. To illustrate this, Think about the difference between giving an 8-year-old swimming lessons and tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Imposing a problem is one way of teaching a solution - it may not be the best way, or a way that you like, but it is a way.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    No, its one way of motivating a student to re-invent (and thereby learn) or to apply (and thereby learn) a solution. But if the student doesn’t ever get the solution, they don’t ever learn it. It is possible for someone to face a problem for decades, to care* deeply about it, for others to succeed at it, and for them to not know how to find a workable answer. For me, happens for “obvious” problems like “how do I learn to how to estimate how long software takes to write?” or “How do I write a first draft of a letter to a friend?” where the answer people have is “just do it” or “just do it and multiply by 2”. ——— * By “care” about it, I mean feel the emotion of wanting a solution. Some people define “care” such that if someone fails at something it means they didn’t care about it. I’m not using that definition.
rjf72 7y ago
A couple of big differences I can think of there. The first is the quality of your peers. I imagine like most people on this site, I excelled at school with literally 0 effort. In my opinion burnout is largely driven by excessive exertion for a task that seems ultimately pointless, often paired with minimal reward for such. In school people of the mindset who end up getting into STEM are generally going to have excelled with near 0 exertion while also reaping the various rewards for such. As the quality of your peers increases so too does the required exertion to rise above. To test this hypothesis I'd expect we'd see much higher rates of young burnout at elite/preparatory schools, which is certainly true. The second is that there aren't really any short term consequences for failure in school. Maybe you get a bad grade but it doesn't really have any immediate impact. In the absolute extreme case, you have to repeat a grade, which isn't a particularly big deal. Once you enter real life, if you don't come up with $x,xxx per month - you're homeless. This shift in consequences radically reshapes people's approach to the game. Imagine playing a video game; now imagine playing that same video game where if you score below average - your home and entire livelihood is put in jeopardy. And you're only playing against other people who are also, at worst, decent at the game. To test that latter hypothesis we could try to determine rates of burnout compared to the independent wealth of individuals. And on that front, I've no idea.
fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
Can you tell a teacher that the demands they have of you do not match up to what they are providing in return? Obviously not and that is the very skill that needs to be learned.

dahfizz 7y ago

> Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy management, people management. I would argue that's about the only thing that schools do teach. After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. What middle school and high school does is force you to learn how to get your work done on time, be social, have hobbies, work with "bosses", and interact regularly with people you don't like. That's the real value in high school IMO. 99.9% of the people who took calculus in highschool would fail an exam 10 years later. The brain just doesn't hold onto info it doesn't use. I think it would be the same if there was an explicit class on e.g. time management. Nothing you say to the kids will have any impact. OTOH, giving them homework and deadlines let's them actually figure out and practice these skills in a safer environment.

saagarjha 7y ago
> After around 5th grade, almost none of the facts you teach a kid stay with them into adulthood. Uh, I think you’re going to have to cite that.
- solveit 7y ago
  I mean, you're right. But I'm inclined to believe this because most people cannot in fact articulate the difference between metals and nonmetals, complete the square, name the three branches of government, etc.
- flukus 7y ago
  What's the formula to calculate the volume of a conical pyramid, off the top of your head? I learned that in grade 5, was drilled on it, haven't had to know since and no longer remember. A small example but one I think is fairly representative of at least 50% of what I learned in school. We waste a tonne of time teaching very specific things of limited use, formulas, dates of historic events and busy work like plotting exponentials on graph paper and long division, there's a lot of room to be teaching higher level concepts instead.
  - saagarjha 7y ago

rsj_hn 7y ago

There used to be a time, and in many places still is, when parents, relatives, and the community you grew up in would teach you these things. When kids used to play outside together unsupervised, lots of lessons were learned, even from simple things like playing a game. You had to take losing. If you threw a tantrum, then quickly you weren't invited to play again. I remember growing up, the "coolest" kids were, in retrospect, the most emotionally mature ones, and they were the ones everyone else emulated. This business of emotional development and learning self-control is too important to leave to classrooms. Parents would teach their kids about money by giving them an allowance, sometimes you would work for the allowance. I mowed lawns. I can't believe that kind of stuff doesn't happen, but I notice a lot of lost, lonely souls out there who are really struggling with basic concepts, like maintaining friendships with people they get into arguments with, or disagree with. We do a lot of self-isolating behavior and then struggle with impulse control; I think because being part of a community forces you to engage in some impulse control.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> This business of emotional development and learning self-control is too important to leave to classrooms. It’s also not really any of the schools business. You can’t fix delinquent parenting in the classroom. The idea of an emotional development curriculum sounds terrifyingly dystopian to me.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  terms like "delinquent parenting" are a bit incendiary, and of course part of the job of a school is socialization. But I think a lot of changes have happened in how kids are raised that don't promote good childhood development. Specifically, unsupervised play with other kids. It just disappeared. Now parents have to supervise everything, which puts incredible pressure on parents, especially if they are working. In previous generations of our own society and other more traditional societies today, parents had kids younger and there were grandparents and relatives around to help raise them. At the same time, you can open your door and let the kids run out and play in the street. Then ring a bell when it's time for lunch and they come home. That takes huge pressure off parents and lets kids learn some tough lessons that helps them mature. In every species, play is how the young prepare for adulthood. Play and spending time with older peers. When you take that away and allow only supervised play time -- well, that's too much pressure on parents; they'd have to be superhuman to give their children the same richness of experience in childhood that kids used to have. I think the consequences of this are huge. For example, I've noticed how even people in their late 20s and early 30s, when they run into some kind of difficulty, immediately call for an authority figure to complain to. You'd learn not to do that if you were engaging in a lot of unsupervised play. But if everything is supervised, then you always have that authority figure to call. Even universities now are acting 'in loco parentis' -- in a very paternalistic manner, and it seems the students demand it. To me, it's as if a part of growing up and taking care of your own problems is missing. Then they go out into the working world and expect 'in loco parentis' from their employer. Well, the employer is happy to help, but now you are in an unhealthy relationship with your job. Then you have people in their 30s saying "God, I wished someone had told me about emotional maturity" -- well, that's really sad.

kulu2002 7y ago

I think this [1] article (Not only applicable to US as it says) is in a way related to discussion. Schools can teach finance/ time/ emotion management may be theoretically to certain extent...but when it comes to it's application for day to day activities which are often linked to our priorities, many people still not able to manage things in right fashion. [1] https://www.businessinsider.in/wealthy-americans-dont-have-enough-time-in-the-day-to-spend-their-money-and-its-stressing-them-out/articleshow/69960458.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/wealthy-americans-dont-have-e...