THE LOSS OF HEART TO THE HEAD

I began this series yesterday and that same day a disturbing video surface and went viral of physical assault by a group of young people on a peer. The incidence has been alleged to occur at FUTA. The truth is that my conscience was too fragile and my heart too soft to watch that video to the end.

I guess what this tells me again that this is a conversation, whose time has come.

What we deal with today is the loss of the heart to the head by the training and the example we show to our precious youngsters.

There are two sets of skills that distinguish us in life. The first is the soft/life skills and the second is the hard skills.

According to Wikipedia, soft skills, include ‘people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients…that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals.’ Hard skills are technical and subject matter skills.

The main skill for human difference is soft skills and hard skill is only complimentary. The soft skills train and softens the heart and the hard skill trains and empower the head.

Wikipedia validates what has been my thoughts for years as we work with children across classes and cultures thus: ‘study conducted by Harvard University noted that 80% of achievements in career are determined by soft skills and only 20% by hard skills.’

It is further submitted that ‘experts say soft skills training should begin for a person when they are students, to perform efficiently in their academic environment…’

While the experts may be right, it is my thinking that soft skills training must begin well before the child becomes a student as it is down in some developed climes.

But, if we have to go by the law of priority, which says first thing first, it means soft skills training, first by example must be introduced to our precious children before hard skill.

Close to the law of priority is what is known as first mover advantage. It means, the person, who makes a move first in area has an advantage, all things being equal. If soft skills become the foundation of the education of our precious youngsters, it becomes the first contact with learning and enjoys the first mover advantage.

Also, if we also agree with Maria Montessori that 80% of the personality of the child is formed between age 0 and 6, it means soft skills training need to start from the date of birth.

The question I seek to ask today is very simply: what is our dominant investment in the training of our precious children both at home and in school? It seems as parents, we invest 80% of our resources in helping our precious children to acquire hard skills which is worth only 20% in determining their opportunities in life. We seem to invest only 20% in the soft skills, which is worth 80% of the difference they make in life.

Our dominant investment in inculcating hard skills in our precious children is yielding rapid fruits of narcissistic tendencies and yet we are surprised. What kind of investors are we, who cry foul upon receiving in abundance the Returns on our Investment?

We do not shout or cane a child into learning the principles and learning maths, English and other subjects as a dominant strategic effort. We believe that if they must excel, they must be well taught. We often even get extra support, home lesson teachers as external academic support system apart from the schools we send them to and the fees we pay no matter how much.

Yet when it comes to inculcating character in them we believe we can shout through it in the name of what we tag discipline. In actual fact child discipline should be a meticulously designed, graciously and skillfully disseminated curriculum in soft skills. The dissemination must be through consistent examplary living, and recognising the recipients as reasoning beings, who are wired by nature to reject any force-feeding in an attempt to inculcate the POSITIVE VALUE SYSTEM.

We hardly have a plan or budget to invest wisely in inculcating in our precious children POSITIVE VALUE-BASED APPROACH to life.

The is the critical and historical role of the S.A.F.E™VILLE Project in all its ramifications. The induction into the S.A.F.E™VILLE culture begins with placing an order or subscribing to our monthly comic, S.A.F.E™VILLE. The taste of the pudding is in the eating.

I will bring this conversation to an end tomorrow, Monday, November 18, 2019 and share our unique proposal for reversing the error and helping our precious youngsters to BE before they BECOME.

Kindly share and comment on this piece in promoting THE BEST INTEREST OF THE PRECIOUS AFRICAN CHILD.

Do have an INSPIRED weekend.

Yours IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE PRECIOUS AFRICAN CHILD,
Taiwo AKINLAMI
234-8033620843
http://www.taiwoakinlamiblog.com