Societal Happiness Begins with Teaching Intrapersonal Skills to Children

You need interpersonal skills to manage others.  You use these life skills to communicate and interact with others. These skills are taught to children in schools and colleges as part of their curriculum.  Many organisations devote a huge proportion of their annual training budget to sharpen their employees’ interpersonal skills.

On the other hand, you need intrapersonal skills to manage yourself.  If you cannot manage yourself, you cannot manage others.  You use these skills to build up your character traits, to develop your personality, to deepen your understanding of your purpose in life and to be driven to things that lead you toward self-fulfilment. These skills make you become the best or the worst of human being.   

As important as intrapersonal skills are to human performance and happiness, I am not yet aware of any curriculum available in schools or colleges that teaches children how to be happy with themselves, how to be kind to others, how to forgive others, how to be compassionate to fellow human beings, etc. I am also not sure if any employer will be prepared to devote a dime teaching their employees how to develop any of these great human virtues.

In the past, the responsibility for helping children to cultivate these virtues laid first, with parents or guardians and then, with religious leaders. At a time when the roles of family and religion are being systematically undermined by society, what is the future for our children?