There are Key Skills, then there are QI Skills

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Laura Jana, the mother of one of my classmates. Dr. Jana was in town to give a Ted Talk, and was kind enough to repeat the presentation for me and some of my fellow students. Dr. Jana has fulfilled many roles in her lifetime, from founder and principal of a school, to an internationally published author advocating for hygiene in schools. With her wide-ranging skill set and experience working with children, she has quite a few ideas about how to educate young children to help them fulfill their potential.

During the talk, Dr. Jana spoke about what she has termed QI skills, those intangible soft skills that are the complement to hard skills. QI, pronounced “key,” is a deliberate choice on Jana’s part. First, QI is the reverse of IQ; most hard skills in schools are measured by IQ tests and other such standards, but what Jana has in mind are the complementary set of skills. She calls them: Me skills, We skills, Why skills, Will skills, Wiggle skills, Wobble skills, and What If skills. These skills, Jana argues, should be fostered in children from an early age, in order to develop them more as people and while children’s minds are still malleable enough to absorb these skills to become second nature. Each set of skills deals with an area of soft skills that are not normally taught in early schooling:

1. Me skills: those skills pertaining to the self, such as self-control, introspection, and self-awareness.
2. We skills: these focus on working with others, like communication, teamwork, and empathy.
3. Why skills: this set focuses on fostering curiosity in young children, teaching them questioning and looking for understanding.
4. Will skills: a can-do attitude is the goal of these skills, aiming to to encourage initiative and determination.
5. Wiggle skills: not usually considered a skill, wiggling is thought to power the Will and Why, by giving children the free reign to explore and channel energy into passions.
6. Wobble skills: this is all about recovery; skills that teach children to come back from failure and learn from it.
7. What If skills: passion and hypotheticals are two things that are more necessary in this world, asking what if fuels these.

When learning about these QI skills, I was struck by the implications of teaching children these sorts of skills. As a current undergraduate student undergoing the internship application process and thinking about my chances of landing a job out of college, I can see how these skills would be extremely useful. Skills like communication and dedication are highly sought by employers, almost more so than technical skills. Many of the jobs I have been looking at only care about having a college degree, without asking for any specifics. They do not care that I studied cognitive science or that I minored in ethics. What they care about is that I can learn on the job and maintain a level of professionalism that does not interfere with the efficiency of the office. Thankfully, my school, with its seminar style, has prepared me well for professional communication and interpersonal skills and personalized my professional development experience. Not all students are so lucky.

If such skills are taught at a young age, they could be internalized and practiced over the years to the point that college graduates entering the job force can feel far more prepared than I currently do, agonizing over every word of an email to prospective employers. What is more, these skills are already present in toddlers. We should be helping them hone these skills that could be invaluable to them later in life. What toddler is not known for wandering off on their own or asking incessant questions? If children embrace these values, not only would it be better for them; they would bolster the workforce, increase efficiency and innovation in all industries, because these skills are universal.

All while during this talk, I was beginning to realize a larger problem. Having these QI skills as a framework is a wonderful thing, but how can these actually be implemented? Is this the responsibility of schools, who still have to focus on hard skills like math and English? Or should it be left to parents ensuring their children have the room and opportunity to practice these skills? I asked Dr. Jana as much after the talk, her opinion was that this was simply a framework to be adopted by any level that would be willing, whether it is parents or educators or even policy makers. To me, the development of these critical QI skills is the responsibility of everyone in a child’s life, but systemic change at the policy level is what is needed.

I, for one, hope policy makers take such considerations seriously. Incorporating these skills into a curriculum might take a lot of reworking, and finding ways to test them will be difficult (if even possible, but that’s another conversation), but the effort would be incredibly valuable. For example, instead of every child being assigned the same book to read for an English class, they should have the freedom to choose (perhaps from an approved list), and relate the book to common themes. This would promote Wiggle skills, along with Wobble and What If. Another example: more group projects should be used at the elementary school level to strengthen We and Me skills early on in a child’s development. I hope that kindergarten and elementary schools and teachers around the world integrate QI skills into classrooms wherever they can. Some, like the Montessori schools, have formal programs that encourage this type of learning. Others pull in the skills wherever they can that fits with the syllabus. These are great initiatives, but until we start teaching all of our children to embrace the wobbles and wiggles, to understand me and we, to ask ‘will I?’ and ‘what if?’ and ‘why,?’ we may never see the improvement in personal development we want to, in the numbers we hope.