Aoife Henry

The original version of this article was a letter sent to a friend in November 2022.

This came up as a prompt in my planner this week and it caught my imagination. In no particular order of importance:

Sex Education

    – What clear, enthusiastic consent is in a sexual context and why it is so important

    – How to learn via good communication and perceptivity to physically interact with another person for both of your pleasure

    – How most porn does not reflect reality, references to ethical porn sites

    – All of the forms of contraception that are not chastity

    – Come As You Are by Dr. Emily Nagoski as a textbooks

Financial Skills

    – Loans, savings

    – Bank accounts vs. credit unions vs. post office

    – The basics of the trade market and long-term investing

    – How to budget

Non-Violent Communication

    – how to express your feelings, link them to your needs and calmly make requests of others to help you to fill those needs

    – how to empathise with others without giving unsolicited advice, trying to cheer them up, reassuring them, dismissing their concerns, educating them, chastising them etc.

    – conflict resolution and deescalation

    – being an upstander (as opposed to bystander): practising in role play scenarios standing up to bullies of various forms and deescalating conflict and harm

    – Non-Violent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg as a textbook

Awareness Training & Self-Regulating Strategies

The first and last “training” most of receive in building awareness of our bodies signals is potty training. In general, we are not taught to recognize our thoughts, feelings, cravings, and bodily signals as they arise, but rather to ignore them, to suppress them (with any one or more of the plethora of numbing behaviors and substances available to us today), to spiral into them, or to ?

• How to find a therapist, group therapy, treatment centers for your needs
• Recognize, Acknowledge, Investigate, Nonidentification (RAIN): how to Recognize difficult thoughts and feelings as they come up, Acknowledge them rather than bury them or chastise yourself for feeling/thinking them, Investigate them with a curious and compassionate mindset and Non-Identify with them rather than getting sucked into them. I believe that this would save us a lot of numbing behaviour patterns
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) to identify “parts” or voices in your mind that tell you unhelpful things in an attempt to take care of you
• Regulation strategies for every level of disregulation e.g. cold water/movement/tapping/sensory deprivation for very elevated states; unhooking from, giving space to, and making friends with difficult thoughts and feelings
• self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness
• Unwinding Anxiety and The Craving Mind by Dr. Judson Brewer, and related Ted Talks, as textbooks (ask Abby)

Cognitive Biases

    – The traps we fall for, how to recognize when its happening and build protections against bad decision making.

    – How propaganda and censure happens and what the consequences are, 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell; The Giver Quartet series by Lois Lowry

    – With the books Factfulness by Dr. Hans Rosling, and related Ted Talks; and The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli; Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman  How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss as the textbooks. 

Diversity of Perspective

    familiarization, understanding and general ‘non-othering’ of different sexualities, different (non-western) cultures, different relationship styles, different religions, different political idealogies, bodies of different abilities (e.g. basic sign language, how to facilitate blind/deaf people), different species

Generalize in useful fundamentals across the board but specialize in topics that interests the individual

    Do you remember learning things as a child, just because you were interested in them? One of my younger cousins knew the Latin names of all of the dinosaurs and could tell you everything about each. Nobody told him to memorise this for a test. It is fun and motivating to learn things that interest you, it is draining to learn things that don’t interest you because you have to. I’m very glad that school taught me how to read and write. In primary school I read a lot. I lost interest when I felt as though I had to read clever books for grown-ups. Similarly, it is useful for everyone to learn basic maths, but not everyone needs complex numbers. My logical inclinations would have thrived on more opportunities for coding (which I did get out of sheer luck) and building things at school in place of French and English. For others it would have been different.

Discovering movement that each individual enjoys rather than resents

It kills me to see people running who are clearly hating every second of it, or people lifting weights who have to use all of their willpower reserves just to talk themselves into going. It is generally the case that exercise makes us humans happier. That does not mean that you should do it, despite what messages are communicated to us from a young age. I wish that school would facilitate young people to find a form of movement that they think is fun and can get excited about, rather than forcing them to move in a way that doesn’t suit their bodies or their interests. Not everyone wants to run around or kick a ball.

– Discovering a creative outlet that each individual enjoys rather than resents

    When most of us grow up, creative pursuits are cast aside in favour of more ‘productive’ work. Perhaps if everyone was given time in school to work on some creative pursuit: music, writing, arts and crafts, graphic design, photography, making clothes, dance, drama etc, then the habit would stick when we ‘grow up’.

What do you think we should have been taught in school?