Even allowing for the creative and often hysterical reporting of the news media it is hard to avoid the conclusion that those making and executing laws and regulations in many parts of the world have taken leave of their senses. A previous culture of personal responsibility seems to have changed into a culture of dependence and blame.

Not, of course, entirely, but significantly.

This is wholly understandable. Those societies that reward the feckless and punish the responsible must expect the message to be understood and acted upon. Perhaps some rulers have forgotten that true compassion – indeed, true love – involves helping people to achieve and maintain their independence. Taking away independence is theft of the most precious possession we have.

So far this reads more like a political address on behalf of a Fascist Party than a basis for discussing what people need to learn. I make these points, however, because unless our training system starts with the right premise, everything else that it does will at best be ineffective and at worst be damaging.

I don’t need to explain the difference between education and training, between knowledge and reflection, between information and thought. So I’ll skip the bit about facts, passing exams, exam marking and the roulette wheel of teachers who can (and those who cannot) forecast the likely questions with reasonable accuracy. I’ll omit the scathing references I would have made about people who decry the Arts subjects. I’ll nod only briefly towards the words of George Santayana (1863-1952) ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.

I’ll concentrate on to why ‘what we need to learn’ has changed so much and so recently.

First, in the past few years we have come to understand better the relationship between body and brain. If there is a work / life balance to be struck there is also a body / brain balance in need of attention. Today we are at the threshold of understanding the mind. We have not got there yet but we will, and probably reasonably soon. We now appreciate that the mental prisons we feel trapped in are largely of our own making. We are all capable of much more than we thought.

Such potential brings with it the responsibility to use well the resources we manipulate and to learn a new view of the time over which we manipulate them. Strangely, our forebears had a better sense of this aspect of time than we do. They invested for what they saw as the future; we invest for the next annual – or half-yearly, or quarterly – sometimes even monthly – profit results.

Proper planning has never been so important and never so neglected.

Second, we need to learn the basic skills of interpersonal communication – or social intercourse, if you like. Whether you were in favour of invading Iraq or against it I think we can all agree that in the 21st Century settling disagreements by thuggery is an admission of failure on a breathtaking scale. But that failure doesn’t originate in the White House or Downing Street, it originates in your local town, the nearby neighbourhood, in the way we speak to a traffic officer, in the way officials deal with us.

Have you noticed how people seldom ask questions of each other these days?

Maybe they think it’s intrusive or not very polite. At a time when many of us are going to spend more time in front of our computers we need to improve our social intercourse and change it from the coffee party to intelligent, informed discussion laced with that unique ability human beings have to be amusing about serious matters. Some races have always been rather inhibited about asking questions. We cannot afford such inhibitions any more. It leads to a collection of floating islands, not to a society.

Third, we need to re-learn the joy of work. We’ve separated work and leisure to the point where work is seen as bad and leisure is seen as good. But everyone knows that too much of either is wrong. To do this we must make work joyful, not always easy when rough conditions, noisy machinery, inconsiderate bosses, rapacious shareholders demand effort and forbearance that is above and beyond normal duty. For all that, work must become a time and place of joy.

We seem to have failed to learn that the true satisfaction of a job well done is not in dollars but in the heart of the person doing it. In my mentoring the simple and true story of Alf Tuck, the man who came to thatch the cottage roof, has transformed the attitudes of hundreds of people towards their work. If you want to read it, please ask me by email, and I will send it to you.

Fourth, we need to reconsider the facts we must know. Five years ago it was important to know quite a lot of facts. Today we need to know different facts:

• how to access and store information on the Internet
• how to discriminate between right and wrong information and good and bad sources
• how to reflect on the facts we learn; facts by themselves are like random numbers; they only
• become useful when we interpret them and make decisions based on them.

Fifth, our civilisation is based on trust. That trust is based on truth, a commodity in very short supply at present. No truth, no trust. No trust, no society. There will never be perfect truth and we have to learn to distinguish between truth, lies and hyperbole. But if we do not understand and accept the relevance of truth for our very existence, our society will increasingly fail.

There are many other things we have to learn, of course. These are, to my way of thinking, the five essentials. At present they are being neglected in favour of doubtful academic awards. If you agree with my very brief summary of what people need to learn today there is one remaining question: where do we get the teachers to do it?

That’s my question to you.

John Bittleston is a Business Mentor and Career Coach

Through mentoring and coaching he helps people:

• Find the right career
• Get the correct job in that career
• Start a business
• Re-finance and re-structure a business
• Handle themselves and others better
• Present themselves more effectively

He is:

• Founder & Chairman of TerrificMentors.com
• Executive Chairman of Integrative Learning Corporation
• Executive Advisor to Intense Animation Studio
• Board Member of Mentoring Partnership International
• Member of Advisory Board of the Centre for Social Development (Asia)
• CEO of Singleton Pte Ltd
• CEO of Doubleton Limited
• CEO of W&W Entertainments Pte Ltd
• CEO of Colemore Management Pte Ltd

Business Mentor and Career Coach to almost 4,000 Mentees – mainly by email

• Chief Executive of Singleton Pte Ltd,
• Chairman of Wiglington and Wenks Worldwide Pte Ltd

Author of “BONES – Business Organisation Notes – Executive Section” and “The Book of Business Communications Checklists” as well as four children’s books “The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks”.

In the 1980s and 1990s, John:

• incorporated Cerebos Pacific Ltd (CPL), an International Food and Chinese Remedies company based in Singapore with production units and branches throughout Asia Pacific and sales worldwide.
• floated Cerebos Pacific Ltd (CPL) on the Singapore Stock Exchange in 1983 at a market capitalisation of the company of S$135 million
• acquired businesses in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia
• established companies and built factories in Asia Pacific, Europe and USA
• developed successful new products in packaged water, spices, Chinese foods and remedies
• sold CPL in 1990 for a market capitalisation of S$825 million to Suntory of Japan

In the 1970s, John:

• joined Ranks Hovis McDougall (RHM) as Marketing Advisor to the Board
• became Marketing and Sales Director of RHM’s Foods Division

In the 1960s, John:

• was Managing Director of Benson Public Relations Limited
• became Assistant Managing Director of S H Benson Ltd, the British Advertising Agency
• negotiated links with United States agencies and acquired eight major new clients