What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?
If I could add one subject to the school curriculum, it would be recognizing manipulation.
I know this is not the obvious subject most people would choose. But the funny thing about manipulation is that it happens around us every single day, often without us recognizing it. Most of us believe we can spot the obvious signs – a scam email, a suspicious phone call, or a stranger asking for money but what about the subtle kind of manipulation? The kind that creeps into conversations, relationships, workplaces, family dynamics, and even in the content we consume online every day? How do we recognize that?
Recently, I found myself following a public dispute about a family that had everyone sharing opinions. What fascinated me wasn’t the disagreement itself, but the reactions to it. Some people focused on facts and evidence. Others ignored them completely and chose the version of the story that felt better emotionally. It was a reminder that peope don’t always believe what is true; sometimes, we believe what is comforting, familiar, or aligns with our loyalties.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized how powerful manipulation can be. It doesn’t always look like lies or deception. Sometimes it looks like selective storytelling. Sometimes it looks like emotional appeals that distract from important questions. Sometimes it simply takes advantage of our desire to support people we already like. Before we know it, we stop evaluating information critically and start defending positions we’ve never properly examined.
School taught us how to solve equations, reading and writing, resilience, following rules, team work and time management. All these are useful skills but what of learning how to think critically, question narratives, identify bias, and recognize manipulation… these also would have been just as valuable. It might have saved many of us from unnecessary mistakes, misunderstandings, and misplaced trust.
Perhaps that’s why this lesson often arrives much later in life. Not in a classroom, but through experience.
With Stories Always,
Yhem💕
Leave a Reply