It is my firm belief that it is absolutely necessary that schools,
along with mathematics and writing, should teach communication.
The prevalent idea on the subject is that such tasks should be
relegated to families. The problem with that is of course that the vast
majority of families do not know how to communicate. They may
understand one or another aspect, or they may understand nothing about
the subject whatsoever and communicate with threats, insults and fists.
To leave this task to the families is to allow perpetuation, through
generations, of all the errors and falsehoods and ignorance that lives
in families worldwide - and entrapping the world under these vices.
Another idea on the subject is that such tasks people should pick up
naturally by dealing with "peers." Given the sheer cruelty, pettiness
and hideousness of the student culture of most high schools, the skills
learned in this manner essentially teach kids to be bastards. This is
hardly the mechanism for making constructive, happy, good-hearted, wise
citizenry, and indeed the growing number of people who home-school
their children instead of exposing them to such hideous nastiness do
America (and their kids) a great favor.
Nor is it enough to teach communication in colleges. Most people around
the world (and in America) do not go to college, and all of them have
to face life, college education or not. For most people to be ignorant
of communication, is to consign them to misery in all aspects of
human existence, from work to relation****ps to family life. And that is
by far the worst fate that a person can have.
Communication allows people to solve problems; to understand where each
other is coming from; to relate in a way that is informed, constructive
and intelligent and ultimately satisfying and productive. It allows
people to come to a mutual understanding and come up with solutions
that work for everyone involved. It allows people to have compassion
and understanding of those in their life. And that, is the secret to
happy existence.
The families with bad communication live miserable existence -
existence that turns oppressive, controlling, destructive and hideous;
existence in which people see each other as evil rather than simply
misinformed and use cruelty and oppression to feed racket anger and
evil attitudes; existence for whose misery the people involved blame
good things (like love and beauty and romance and even human condition)
instead of standing up to the plate and admitting honestly that they
don't know how to make such things work for them - the admission which
can be followed by correction and learning the skills they need to be
effective and happy in work and in love.
A fair number of psychologists understand this and make an effort to
teach the appropriate skills to their clients. However, an ounce of
prevention is a pound of cure; and teaching the appropriate skills in
primary education will take far less money and effort than it takes to
teach such things in $100-per-hour therapy sessions - sessions that
teach one person what someone could teach 20 persons in school with the
same resource expenditure. The money that lines the pockets of
psychiatrists could go to far greater use in preventing the kinds of
problems that psychiatrists deal with in clients.
Ilya Shambat.
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