Good for Business, Bad for Schools?

I understand the Stephen Covey Organisation has put together a schools version of the 7 Habits. Amazingly this has been attacked by the education establishment as being wishy washy, mumbo jumbo, management speak and not appropriate for an academic environment.

It seems amazing to me that something like the Seven Habits can be dismissed by educationalists in this way. You would think the fact that commercial organisations are willing to pay substantial sums of money to have people trained in these tools would make anyone in education stop and think.

Everyone leaving our schools is going to have to find work somewhere. Wouldn’t any intelligent person wonder why these fundamental life skills are valued so much by business and yet not covered anywhere in the curriculum?

The same thing applies with creativity and thinking skills such as those developed by Edward de Bono. Again recently there was a scathing attack by a senior educationalist on the teaching of thinking skills in school. Something which is fundamental to everything we do is acceptable if it happens to come as a side benefit from other academic subjects. The level of ignorance in some of these areas of the people entrusted with developing our future generations is really frightening.