Dharmesh Shah argues that storytelling should be taught to 6th graders before programming or writing, because the ability to craft a narrative matters in every job and business. Kids tell stories naturally until self-consciousness kills it. Learning to tell stories on camera, on stage, or on TikTok is a skill most people never develop but desperately need.
Chapters
If I could teach a class of 6th graders, I would teach storytelling. Not software programming, which I love. Not even writing, which I think is important, but storytelling. And the reason it's important is that whatever walk of life you go into, if you're applying for a job, you're going to be telling the story of you. If you start a company, you're going to be telling the story of your company. And the odd thing is that I think as humans, we have this natural capacity for storytelling. I think kids are particularly good with their friends of telling a story, but I think they sort of lose that natural ability over time as they become more self-conscious. And what they need to learn how to storytell, but how to tell it across multiple channels, how to be able to tell it on YouTube, how to tell it on TikTok, how to tell it on stage. Doing it in front of a camera or doing it up on stage is very much unnatural for most people. So if you can kind of get that skill developed kind of earlier in your life, I wish I had learned this early in my life. If you're looking for skills to kind of add to your repertoire, I would put that way up on the list, even if you're not a 6th grader.
