The life-skill learning not just develops children with multi-faceted personality, but also makes them all-rounders who excel in various fields, says Avinash Agarwal
In this day and age of ever evolving needs, the fastest growing and ever-changing needs are that of our children itself. While in the yesteryears, it was all about focusing on education and ensuring the children get into the best of schools and opportunities for their education, now it doesn’t stop just there. The needs of parents and children alike from the child’s lives go much beyond just education. It’s more about having a multi-faceted personality, being an all-rounder and excelling in various fields. It’s really about overall talent and personality of our children and how that would make them successful human beings.
One of the most important roles of a teacher is to prepare our children for life. But what they teach in school is mostly stuff that one needs to get a job and make a living, not the skills they will need to deal with social and emotional stresses a child will require to have in order to live a balanced, happy life. Examples of these include dealing with anger, peer pressure, bullying, sadness and disappointment, shyness, lack of self-confidence, understanding money and more.
Another dimension that needs to be discussed and debated here is life Skill coaching. life-skills Education as defined by the UNICEF is “a behaviour change or behaviour development approach designed to address a balance of three areas; knowledge attitude and skills”. The world bodies such as UNICEF, UNESCO and WHO list the ten core life-skills as empathy, self awareness building skills, creative thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, effective communication, interpersonal relationship skills, coping with stress and emotions.
So what needs to be seen is as part of the educational ecosystem of our country, how are we nurturing the life skills of our childrenIJ Are we giving them enough social/ emotional support, mentoring and encouragement that will give them the confidence to soarIJ Are we helping them become strong, capable leaders who can think “out of the box” and create great works of science, technology and art, and lead people and organisations successfullyIJ
The education sector is undergoing rapid transformation. Schools face the challenge of preparing students for job titles that currently do not exist. They are evolving as learning communities, focused on the development of the students’ 21st century skills— a requirement for success in the new, globally competitive economy.
It’s no longer sufficient to operate a school under an ‘Industrial Model’ that simply teaches the 3R’s —reading, writing and arithmetic. Students today need to develop multi-dimensional life skills like creative thinking, digital literacy, collaboration and teamwork skills, with the ability to evaluate and apply knowledge in the rapidly changing information-rich digital work and community environment.
In today’s world where human life has ceased to have any value; where murders, suicides, rapes, and molestations are so common. We’re waking up to the lack of life-skills among the adult population. Due to the emphasis on academics and marks we’ve somehow missed the all-important bus of life-skills. It is interesting to note that many brilliant students are admitted to the IITs every year. But the fact is that they are unable to cope up with the pressure of living in a aggressive competitive environment. The same goes for society as a whole. No matter how brilliant or talented we’re, we need to learn to cope up with the highs and lows in life. We need to develop the inner strength to fight our problems. life-skills teaches us just that.
The writer is CEO, AIETS