My elementary school used a frog puppet to teach classes about self regulation and how to deal with conflict. If the frog felt offended or threatened, what should he do? Walk away and tell an adult, or also offend and threaten the other individual? Back then, the answer was clear to students — or at least it was after going over it a couple of times — but now that we’ve grown up, students have forgotten the lessons we received all those years ago. As a generation and society, it is imperative that those skills of civil and articulate communication which some of us have lost are re-learned and preserved throughout our adult lives.
High school students operate with a buffer for failure that isn’t present in independent life. If a student is failing a class, they generally have a large support system in the school’s staff that will try to understand the student’s underlying issues and help them build their grade back up to success. Counselors check and make sure that students have a plan for their future, but what will students do when that future arrives? How will they make plans for themselves when they graduate out of an environment in which people beg for communication and to understand what an individual needs. If we can’t communicate, we are going to get fired or fail. Teaching standard communication cannot be a one and done part of the curriculum; communication is a skill that changes as we grow, and we must understand and adapt to these changes to communicate in our day to day lives.
Many students have difficulty advocating for themselves to others. When a student can’t voice their opinion or is not heard, oftentimes they resort to physical altercations to get their point across. In high school, security is always around the corner to come running when a fight breaks out. In life outside of school, though, police can take much longer to get to the scene, and that could be the difference between life and death. The current solution proposed by the school system is avoidance or intervention. Following the dismissal of Lion Lunch — which occurred due to excessive student altercations — an announcement was made over the intercom by our principal stating, “If you or another student is having a disagreement that may develop into a physical altercation, please seek the guidance of an adult. If you see something, say something.” As a result of this, much of the nuanced communication from student-student is heavily facilitated, or completely avoided. Students need to learn calm communication skills in order to understand how to articulate themselves and be able to practice deescalation and safe communication in their adult life, where fights are more life threatening.
In addition to being a life saving skill, civil communication is also a life building skill. Many other opportunity screenings, like job interviews, occur through phone calls, where the only determining factor is one’s voice and what they say. According to the Journal of Harbin Engineering University, the importance of English language proficiency has become undeniably central, not only for personal growth but also for professional advancements. Civil and articulate communication is absolutely imperative to gaining ground in the race of life and being able to make opportunities available, even in a position where they are scarce.
