BENEFITS

We’ve called this section Benefits. Benefit is a word we love. It was acquired by Late Middle English from the old French Bienfet and originally from Latin bene facere denoting to do good or a kind deed or to do something well, and the fruit of this action – in our case – is support that harnesses instruction to learn and acquire new skills and a different perspective on error and failure.

On this page, we will explain, in terms of soft skills and abilities, the benefits our courses offer.

A frequent question is: what are soft skills? There is no univocal and shared taxonomy for soft skills. We have chosen to divide soft skills into 6 macro-categories and then provide a definition and examples for each of them. It is not a definitive and rigid taxonomy, but one that is functional with respect to the purpose of the Scuola and to our mission.

A second frequently asked question is the following: can soft skills be taught?
If professional skills can be taught and history or art, double entry bookkeeping or a foreign language can be learned, similarly, it is possible to teach and learn imagination and creativity, critical thinking and active listening or how to capture weak signals and how to navigate uncertainty.

Little is invested in this type of instruction, believing that such skills are innate abilities. But have you ever seen a child show off his diplomatic skills, his ability to manage stress, his ability to give constructive feedback or manage emotions?
We learn them in our process of discovering the world and ourselves, experiencing, entering into conflict, living, and forming our personalities.

We should call them cross skills rather than soft skills because the concept of soft refers to the idea of something light, superficial, non-essential, as, by contrast, the word hard evokes the concept of tough, committed and non-optional.

Instead, both skill-sets are necessary because knowing, knowing how do to do and knowing how to be something are all necessary. They are the terrain on which our potential and our possibilities flourish.

In this section, we have provided a few insights. In fact, we asked some of the participants in the Scuola’s activities to leave feedback on their experience.
How they found our teaching methods, and since negative feedback is also valuable, you will also find some negative comments.