The Intangibles

High school hockey practice starts at 4pm.  At 1pm, the coach gets a phone call from one of his players.  He's not going to make it to practice today because he has a paper due tomorrow.

Tomorrow?  Really?  What has this young man been doing for the last few days?

Schools are great at teaching reading, writing, and math,  but time management, arguably the most important life skill, is severely neglected in schools today.  Administrators and, subsequently, teachers are driven to spend all of their class time on the tangibles, knowledge that can be measured on a scantron sheet.  This era of testing and accountability for teachers sounds like a good plan at the surface but when we look a little deeper we can see that important life skills such as time management, organization, communication, and critical thinking are often overlooked in favor of the curriculum.  What does this prepare our students to do?  Obviously it prepares them to pass the test.  But what about the life that comes after all this testing?  Let us know your thoughts!