New basics of education: Freedom, love, and joy

Everybody has heard that the three basics of education are the 3 R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic, but are these really what we should call the basics of education?  Sure, you need to read, to write, and to do arithmetic as basic cognitive skills needed to pursue many academic subjects.  But these skills only address a very limited set of skills necessary for people to successfully function throughout their lives.  Life skills require people to be as self-sufficient as possible so people can live a good life.  People need to know more than just basic knowledge of subject matter.  They need to be able to make decisions, solve problems, investigate questions, create new ideas, get along with others, and cope with life situations.  There are many higher-order thinking skills that people need to function as responsible adults in our society.  The 3 R's just provide the minimal skills a child needs to become a successful adult.  But there are so many other skills and abilities people need but are not thought of as important in school.  Humans are conscious beings who need to not only development their cognitive domain skills but they also need to work on their affective domain skills.  In other words, children need to learn to handle and control their emotional and psychological well-being. 

So what I am getting at is that I want to propose that we take another long look at what the basics of our education should be because the 3 R's just don't make it.  To ask what the basics of education should be, I would have to ask what are the basics of life.  The basics of life should become the basics for education.  That only makes sense to me.  We want to help children prepare themselves with all the growth and development needed to meet the basics of their lives, so it seems that the basics of education should align with the basics of life. 

I will jump straight to the point.  I have written extensively about the basics of life, and thus the basics of education, so I will not elaborate here.  I think that the new basics of education should be freedom, love, and joy.  I know it sounds crazy but you ought to give it a chance before laughing your head off.  My background and training has been in the field of Curriculum & Instruction.  I have experience in analyzing the needs of an organization to determine any training or education needed to meet the organization's or system"s needs.  Part of this process is doing an analysis of the target audience for the training.  When we examine the curriculum in our school system, we should use the instructional system design model so the goals written in the educational system's curriculum match up with the goals for our children in their growth and development for their whole lives.  These educational goals make up what gets taught in school and these goals shape who we are as a nation.  Our present curriculum is based on goals that are over a hundred years old and the goals are to train people to work in factories, take orders, respond to the bell, and keep quiet.  We need new goals focused on the basics of life: freedom, love, and joy.  Our entire educational system's curriculum should reflect the major goals of the life we want for our children and for ourselves. 

Any thoughts?