People have forgotten how to be human in many ways. And when I say human, I mean kind. And wrapped into kindness are things like trust, empathy, compassion, attention (listening) and generally giving a crap about others.
So, when I preach to parents why I think we are all (yes me too) way too focused on our children’s academics and not enough on social emotional development, what I’m saying is that I think we are teaching the humanity out of children. Their focus is, while coming from a good place, more brain-y than human-y. More about individual success than collective success. If we care about community, we would try to help our children WHILE helping other children achieve, too. Instead, we are singularly focused on the smart schools with the smart kids and we forget that these very children, when adults, are lacking a basic human understanding of how we are reliant on one another for success. Hence that thing called “networking” seems foreign. And let me tell you, nothing is more irritating to me than young adults who want me to make introductions and pass along resumes without even meeting me. I’m not about to hand over my influence without a meeting. And it’s not because I need to see your face. It’s because I need to know you are genuinely appreciative and not just using my influence to gain your influence without sincere humility or consideration of paying it forward.
So, here’s what I have to say to the parents and uncles and aunts and grandparents and guardians out there. First of all, thank you for keeping me employed by teaching the social emotional skills out of your children.
Secondly, let’s try to reverse engineer our thinking for future generations since these brainiac skills will be replaced by robots anyway, so being human will become the competitive edge.
Agent M
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