The Trick To Life...

...“is not to get too attached to it…”, so the song goes.  (For those who don’t know, it’s the title track from The Hoosiers’ first album).  But that’s not exactly what this post is about (I like to think my style is a little less morbid than that!).  Sadly, I don’t think there is really a ‘trick to life’; I’m pretty sure if there was one, we'd all be using it by now!  Please let me know if you have any bright ideas though…!

So, why have I called this post The Trick To Life?  Well, I think one way to do pretty well in life is to be a well-rounded person.  This may sound a bit clichéd and obvious, but bear with me!  I think one of the tricks society needs to learn to better use to help people do this is good, well-rounded education.  If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll already know about my views on how mental health should be incorporated into education.  If you haven’t, then I refer you to my post titled Staring at the Sun.  Although mental health is extremely important, it’s not the only thing that I feel strongly about in terms of education.

What made me decide to write about this today was something I read in my local Youth Parliament manifesto.  One of their notions is that “all young people ages 11-18 should be taught basic politics at school”.  I completely agree:  I for one was barely taught a single thing about politics at school, and the outcome is not good.  It’s embarrassing when it comes to election time or some such event and one simply doesn’t know anything about politics!  And how can a young person be expected to make a reasoned judgement when voting  if they don’t know what the key differences are between the parties?  It seems kind of irresponsible to give people the right to vote without giving them the tools they need to vote wisely (tihs seems an appropriate time to mention a dear friend of mine who votes Labour because their colour is red and he adores Arsenal FC!  He was half joking, I hope!).

It’s not just politics that I believe is severely neglected by the education system.  In my discussions about mental health I’ve already expressed my passion for psychological wellbeing, and another hugely important element of that is body image.  I could go on about this all day and will no doubt be writing about it in more detail in later posts.  But in short I think schools have the potential to do massive amounts to help diminish what experts in the field have called a ‘culture of body dissatisfaction’.  Fortunately awareness of this problem is on the up and there are things being done, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

 

 This weaves back in nicely with my post about mental health awareness.  One of the key things I think could be done to improve emotional wellbeing in general is encouragement of exercise (and not just traditional team sports like netball, football and hockey, but more varied activities to really get lots of young people involved). Not only could this help to prevent illnesses such as depression, but it could also help to alleviate negative body image.  Exercising can help you to feel healthy and maintain a healthy body weight without the need for strict dieting.  I have a lot more to say about this, but I think I’ll save it for another day, so please look out for further posts if this interests you!

All in all, I feel that schools should be doing more to encourage wellbeing and life skills as well as academic success.  I understand that there is already a struggle to fit everything into the National Curriculum, and I agree that the academic side is very important, but I can’t help but think that the value of being academically brilliant is hugely decreased if the person has difficulties in other aspect of their life.  I’d like to hear about other people’s thoughts on this, and will leave you with the question of what sorts of things you believe are really important in education.  Debate, discussion and views contrary to my own are welcome!  As always, thanks for reading :)