Imagine I don't have parents, they abandoned me or passed away at a very early age. I don't have money to afford a computer to learn on my own and the one thing I can rely on to acquire knowledge is schools.
Well, of course schools can teach us basic math or geometry and stuff, but what about other social skills? How do I deal if a girl and a boy reject my idea? How to be influential? What do I do when someone passes away? I have no idea...
We learn social stuff from interacting with friends and other people too, not only family, so you could learn social skill in school, at an orphanage, or, if you were adopted, with your foster family.
As a matter of fact, children in the primary school of some countries indeed have been taught how to deal with daily ordeals through interaction with the communities, teachers and students, however I can understand why many children were not taught to learn such soft skills in some other countries simply due to the conception that their parents hope they can learn more practical skills like maths, language or science to help children develop their possible career in the future.
Think about if you were the teacher who is working in a primary school, how would you be evaluated? and what scale would you be weighed? by marks or by invisible kindness? I consider most of the principles in the school would prefer to see staff's "performance" with visible, explicit marks instead, especially by the standard that parents highly regard of. Certainly intervention on pupils in mentality, life, career development or emotion is very hard to be scored on a mark basis. Perhaps that is the reason why many and more teachers prefer not to focus on these elemental soft skills that is often left out and ignored by parents as well.
That is also a question that deserves us to consider what on earth a good school ought to be.
If you were an orphan or your parents passed away, you would probably get adopted. It means that you will never be alone. It happens that one of my classmates in my university is an adopted child. I can see she handles things pretty well. She is popular and everyone likes her.
The traditional school is only responsible for students' knowledge, such as Mathematics, Physics. I don't know if that is true but that is what I always think. Now the times changes. The duty and responsibility for teachers are not only the conveying of knowledge but also the development of individual's personality, emtions and other skills.
Human has a great learning ability. We grow through the difficulties we faced. We improve ourselves through reading books. We learn how to handle our emotions by socializing and making friends.
These are just my personal opionions. Not 100% correct.
