Why don’t we teach the most important thing in school?

Meadowfoam, jay, field maple, rowan. Dormouse, viper’s bugloss, hollyhock, cuckoo flower. I can do them all. Why? Because I had to learn them at school. Why did I have to learn it? Yes, no one has been able to give me a conclusive answer to this question. And as a boy who was latently disenchanted with school, I asked the question again and again.

From today’s perspective, I learned things during the many years I was in training that are not really relevant today. Some of them were not even then.

Yesterday’s school for tomorrow

As the father of 3 children of primary school age, I get more insight into everyday school life than I would sometimes like. The teachers do a good job, everything is organized, everything is thought of. The contrast to my lessons at the time could not be greater.

The biggest difference is probably that there is actually less memorization. That’s good in a world where I can access an enormous amount of knowledge at any time from my pocket, so to speak. Surprisingly, however, the basics are not taught systematically, even though there is now a great deal of research and good findings in this area. In my opinion, the following 2 areas deserve their own school subject:

Subject 1: Learning

I was a bad student for a long time – learning was especially easy for me when I was very interested in the subject or when my back was so far against the wall in terms of grades that it was simply the only way to avoid having to spend another year on it. Things only got a little better during my studies.

Firstly, I was fundamentally interested in the subject matter and I was able to apply what I had learned directly in the company as an entrepreneur on the side, so to speak. Nevertheless, my way of studying before exams was to “rush around”; a confused examination of the material that I had to be able to do on day X. I spent a lot of time on tedious activities and it was always somehow enough in terms of grades. This resulted in a poor self-image: “I just can’t learn properly and I’ll probably be too stupid for it somehow.”

However, I quickly realized that I could learn very quickly in “real-world situations”. So how could it be that I could learn badly in a targeted and organized way, but very well in important ad hoc situations? This sensitized me to the topic and I learned bit by bit how to get to grips with a specific area, i.e. how to learn it.

“There is nothing more important than learning to learn.”

The difficult thing about learning methods is that not everyone learns equally quickly and well in the same way. This makes it all the more important to actually get to grips with it.

It is a mystery to me why “learning” is not a separate subject in today’s schools. Once you are good at learning, everything that needs to be learned is relatively easy.

Subject 2: Failure & resilience

Another important subject that I think is missing is “failure”. Failure, i.e. not being successful in a task, is enormously important. The perfidious thing about failure is that, on the one hand, it can be very demotivating, but at the same time it is also the best basis for fast and efficient learning. The “right” mindset determines whether you can use failure as a basis for learning. Those who have learned to fail, draw conclusions and move on are successful. Those who are unable to do this often fall into a spiral of declining self-confidence.

In general, children today are far too often deprived of the opportunity to fail. They often don’t understand that there is the possibility of failure later in life and they often don’t learn to deal with their own failure at an early age.

This fundamental understanding of one’s own performance (or non-performance) is decisive in determining whether one can learn efficiently later in life and deal with challenges in a healthy way.

I believe that if we could give our children these two subjects at school from the first grade onwards, it would help them enormously. The topics and curricula may change with the times, but dealing with personal learning methods and failure remains relevant for the time being. Today and tomorrow.