14 DAY TRIAL // A new long-term study, conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois, shows that teenagers who exhibit greater social skills during their sophomore, and who are also engaged in extra-curricular activities, are far more likely than their peers with similar results in school to do well in their life. In other words, after 10 years of survey, the researchers noticed that those who were rated by their teachers as being more sociable than their similarly educated peers were very likely to have found a good job and to have attended more classes, on average, than the latter.
“That's not to say that academic achievement in high school doesn't matter – it does. But if we only look at standardized test scores, we're only considering part of the equation for success as an adult in a global marketplace. Academic achievement is part of the story, but it's not the whole story. You've got to have the social skills and work habits to back those achievements up,” US professor of human and community development Christy Lleras explains.
She emphasizes that characteristics such as sociability, punctuality, conscientiousness and the ability to get along well with others are more likely to predict a former student's chances of making the most of themselves, and to win more money in the marketplace than their former colleagues.
“I think we've known this intuitively for a long time that employers are looking for something beyond cognitive skills. Leadership now is not an individual thing, it's how well you get along in a team and get people organized,” Lleras goes on to say.
“There's this pervasive idea that if we just teach and test the basic skills, students are going to do much better in school and in life. It would be great if we could just snap our fingers and tomorrow everyone could read, write and do math at grade-level. But an obsession with testing and routinized thinking doesn't foster the non-cognitive soft skills that pay off as an adult,” she adds.
“In addition to testing, what high-performing schools do really well is provide the kinds of opportunities through extracurricular activities, rigorous course work and high-quality teachers that help create good citizens and good workers and foster the kinds of work habits, behaviors and attitudes that we know employers value,” she continues.
“Most of our students don't go on to college, and our young adults today are entering a workforce that's very different from what it was 30 years ago. It's a very tenuous, volatile market, especially for workers with a high school education or less, and our schools are failing students by not providing enough opportunities to develop the skills, habits and knowledge we know employers are going to reward,” Lleras concludes.