Bullying writing 2 pages

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/17/459873281/learning-soft-skills-in-

childhood-can-prevent-harder-problems-later

Learning Soft Skills In Childhood Can

Prevent Harder Problems Later

December 17, 2015

Lynne Shallcross

Academic learning is usually in the spotlight at school, but teaching elementary-age

students "soft" skills like self-control and social skills might help in keeping at-risk kids

out of criminal trouble in the future, a study finds.

Duke University researchers looked at a program called Fast Track, which was started in

the early 1990s for children who were identified by their teachers and parents to be at

high risk for developing aggressive behavioral problems.

The students were randomized into two groups; half took part in the intervention, which

included a teacher-led curriculum, parent training groups, academic tutoring and lessons

in self-control and social skills. The program, which lasted from first grade through 10th

grade, reduced delinquency, arrests and use of health and mental health services as the

students aged through adolescence and young adulthood, as researchers explained in a

separate study published earlier this year.

In the latest study, researchers looked at the "why" behind those earlier findings. In

looking at the data from nearly 900 students, researchers found that about a third of the

impact on future crime outcomes was due to the social and self-regulation skills the

students learned from ages 6 to 11.

The academic skills that were taught as part of Fast Track turned out to have less of an

impact on crime and delinquency rates than soft skills, which are associated with

emotional intelligence. Soft skills might include teaching kids to work cooperatively in a

group or teaching them how to think about the long-term consequences when they make a

decision, whereas teaching physics is an example of a hard skill.

"The conclusion that we would make is that these [soft] skills should be emphasized even

more in our education system and in our system of socializing children," says Kenneth

Dodge, a professor of public policy and of psychology and neuroscience at Duke who

was a principal investigator in this study as well as in the original Fast Track project.

Parents should do all they can to promote these skills with their children, Dodge says, as

should education policymakers.

"To the extent we can improve those skills, we can improve outcomes in delinquency and

juvenile crime," says Dodge, who is also director of Duke's Center for Child and Family

Policy. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Child Development.

To Neil Bernstein, a psychologist in Washington, D.C., who specializes in child and

adolescent behavior disorders, the researchers' findings seem consistent with what he's

seen on the ground in working with children for more than 30 years. And while he says

he agrees with the importance of teaching self-control and social skills, he would add

empathy to the list, too.

"Empathy is what makes us aware of the feelings of others and when you're empathic,

you're much less likely to hurt someone else's feelings," says Bernstein, who serves on

the advisory board for the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and is the author of multiple

books, including How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do If You

Can't.

Being in tune with how someone else feels might also make adolescents steer clear of

bullying and other "behaviors of concern," Bernstein says.

Empathy was not one of the skills that were directly measured in this study, according to

Lucy Sorensen, a Ph.D. student at Duke and lead author of the study. But there were

several measures of "prosocial behavior," Sorensen says, defined as voluntary behavior

intended to benefit others.

While Bernstein thinks the study's findings are meaningful and could potentially serve as

a model for schools, he says that collectively getting a school system, teachers, parents

and students all motivated enough to take part in an intervention like Fast Track is

challenging.

Several parts of the Fast Track study have been picked up successfully in other school

settings, Sorensen says, such as a social-emotional learning curriculum called Promoting

Alternative Thinking Strategies, or PATHS. Programs like Fast Track need buy-in from

school systems, teachers and parents, she says, and that can be a tough sell. But she adds

that it's a strength of Fast Track that the students get support both at school and at home.

"There's a growing and new understanding of what it takes to be successful as an

adolescent and an adult," Dodge says. "It used to be that what we thought all it took was

academic skills. Reading and math are very important for tasks that require reading and

math. Self-control is important for life tasks that require self-control — that's what

avoiding arrest and violent crime is all about."