Have you wondered how to introduce topics about social and emotional intelligence with your kids? Do you wish you had a textbook that would cover things such as the pleasures and sorrows of work, the virtues of character, emotional identity, and the development of things like appreciation and detachment? Basically, do you wish you had a resource that could help you teach all the non-academic things about life in a systematic and thoughtful way?
The School of Life is a difficult resource to summarize in just a few words, but from their web site, here is a description that might help: The School of Life is a global organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence. We apply psychology, philosophy, and culture to everyday life. We address such issues as how to find fulfilling work, how to master the art of relationships, how to understand one's past, how to achieve calm, and how better to understand the world.
What does that all mean?
There is a heck of a lot more to learn than reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, and how we view the world and hope to help our children maneuver through relationships and experiences is probably more important than anything else we will do as parents. Mostly, we do so with a "hit and miss" approach, speaking to circumstances as they arise in our lives, pointing to films and tv shows for examples of how NOT to be, using situations from our own work and play lives to explain our responses and the actions of others.
What I am saying is, sometimes we need a framework or a model to explain the world, human interaction, and situations they will encounter as adults...we need to help them figure out how they should walk through the world, what to expect when they deal with others who act in unexpected ways, and how to be emotionally healthy.
That is where the School of Life web site comes in. Linked there is an online "book" to read called "The Book of Life" that covers numerous topics and is extremely well written. One section of the Book of Life features an actual curriculum you could use. There are numerous videos covering a wide variety of topics as well that could be used as jumping off points for conversation. These resources are not for shallow work, but for deep discovery. They are rich with content presented in a mature fashion, with little pandering to the "unthinking" mind...but they actually are quite accessible to high schoolers if one wants to work at thinking about life and not give in to intellectual laziness.
Now, I want to point out here that this is a fully secular site, and some have even said it is "atheistic" due to its complete diversion from religion and reliance on philosophy. The actual school is a real business that also holds secular style "sermons" on Sundays and has featured speakers such as Brene' Brown and Sir Ken Robinson. If this disturbs you, then you might want to stay away from this resource altogether.
However, I am a Christian myself and I have still used these resources myself from time to time, along with many secular sources. My personal feeling is that we parent educators need tools to lead us toward the conversations we wish to have with our kids, to remind us of the topics we really want to talk about...and perhaps to serve as a foil so we can present our own perspective and world view. There often is nothing better than a counterpoint to get our brains moving in high gear in support of our own beliefs. I personally found many topics of great value presented here that really did assist me in teaching emotional health, work dynamics, and much more. There are topics of a more adult nature, and you would need to screen as your own values dictate, but there are hundreds of useful topics available to work with and I feel the value outweighs the need to screen.
Another point I would like to make is that for our wholly secular families, the Book of Life might be able to be used in lieu of the kind of training around issues that a church offers religious families. Many times secular folks are searching for tools to use to teach values, emotional skills, and character, and they want to do so without a religious text or doctrine. This might be exactly what you are looking for!
This resource is an unusual one, which is why I wanted to highlight it in a blog post. I hope that it might help some families fill a gap in their social/emotional teachings.
The School of Life is a difficult resource to summarize in just a few words, but from their web site, here is a description that might help: The School of Life is a global organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence. We apply psychology, philosophy, and culture to everyday life. We address such issues as how to find fulfilling work, how to master the art of relationships, how to understand one's past, how to achieve calm, and how better to understand the world.
What does that all mean?
There is a heck of a lot more to learn than reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, and how we view the world and hope to help our children maneuver through relationships and experiences is probably more important than anything else we will do as parents. Mostly, we do so with a "hit and miss" approach, speaking to circumstances as they arise in our lives, pointing to films and tv shows for examples of how NOT to be, using situations from our own work and play lives to explain our responses and the actions of others.
What I am saying is, sometimes we need a framework or a model to explain the world, human interaction, and situations they will encounter as adults...we need to help them figure out how they should walk through the world, what to expect when they deal with others who act in unexpected ways, and how to be emotionally healthy.
That is where the School of Life web site comes in. Linked there is an online "book" to read called "The Book of Life" that covers numerous topics and is extremely well written. One section of the Book of Life features an actual curriculum you could use. There are numerous videos covering a wide variety of topics as well that could be used as jumping off points for conversation. These resources are not for shallow work, but for deep discovery. They are rich with content presented in a mature fashion, with little pandering to the "unthinking" mind...but they actually are quite accessible to high schoolers if one wants to work at thinking about life and not give in to intellectual laziness.
Now, I want to point out here that this is a fully secular site, and some have even said it is "atheistic" due to its complete diversion from religion and reliance on philosophy. The actual school is a real business that also holds secular style "sermons" on Sundays and has featured speakers such as Brene' Brown and Sir Ken Robinson. If this disturbs you, then you might want to stay away from this resource altogether.
However, I am a Christian myself and I have still used these resources myself from time to time, along with many secular sources. My personal feeling is that we parent educators need tools to lead us toward the conversations we wish to have with our kids, to remind us of the topics we really want to talk about...and perhaps to serve as a foil so we can present our own perspective and world view. There often is nothing better than a counterpoint to get our brains moving in high gear in support of our own beliefs. I personally found many topics of great value presented here that really did assist me in teaching emotional health, work dynamics, and much more. There are topics of a more adult nature, and you would need to screen as your own values dictate, but there are hundreds of useful topics available to work with and I feel the value outweighs the need to screen.
Another point I would like to make is that for our wholly secular families, the Book of Life might be able to be used in lieu of the kind of training around issues that a church offers religious families. Many times secular folks are searching for tools to use to teach values, emotional skills, and character, and they want to do so without a religious text or doctrine. This might be exactly what you are looking for!
This resource is an unusual one, which is why I wanted to highlight it in a blog post. I hope that it might help some families fill a gap in their social/emotional teachings.
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