Georgia Teacher Says Soft Skills Less Teachable In Current Education Climate

In the "Get Schooled" blog in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (8/24), Maureen Downey writes that her column last week about Georgia's "push to teach soft skills in high school" elicited reader responses, including one from recently retired high school teacher Pat Pepper, who said, "I saw a great need to not only teach the hard skills of good communication but the soft (or 'life' as I called them) skills as well." However, that was the 70s, before "high-stakes testing, merit pay, and the scramble for both state and federal funds," all of which mean teachers today "are losing the battle" because soft skills "don't show up on CRCT's, EOCT's, SAT's, ACT's, AP's, ad nauseum."