Are Indian schools focusing on life skills?
By: Priyanka Modi
Tags: Schools, Education, Indian Education System, Indian Education, Parents

Life skills are defined as “a group of psycho-social competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner.

How are schools changing to the ever changing demands of the world, are the skills taught once in the classrooms still relevant? The immediate needs of the kids are still not met in school instead the aspiration to become a doctor or engineer continues. Now learning material and the access to resources have become easy and the needed contribution from parents and teachers are mostly life skills to prepare kids to not only be prepared for future but to deal with their present as well.

Decision Making:

Are schools giving the opportunity to the students to decide what they would like to learn and how they would like to learn, instead when the child joins the school everything is decided for the students. The teacher takes over completely there is option given to the child to make any kind of decision even the decision to reflect on their learning is dictated by the teachers in the class.

Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child.- Charles Handy

Problem solving:

Recently I tried some local schools for his admission and in the demo saw how kids were told the answers in the beginning of the class and the only task the kids had was to write down the answers as homework. I knew this won’t work for us, I started looking for online classes desperately. How in this case the kids can develop the skill to look at things critically when the basics are not clear.

“You can increase your problem-solving skills by honing your question-asking ability.” — Michael J. Gelb

Thinking Critically:

Parents are mostly torn apart in this situation and knowing that the kids are struggling in a certain area don’t wait for the kids to be ready. Instead help their prepare for the class no matter they understand the concepts or not. I have seen kids learning the answers but not getting anything that it means.

Creative thinking:

Indian kids are often burdened with project work, whether its science or other subjects. But in the class the opportunity to be creative is not appreciated much as there is hardly any time left after the assignments. The instructions are given clearly and the students are expected to follow.

“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.” — Bruce Garrabrandt

Helping kids to deal with social/ emotional struggles

Parents struggle to talk about various subjects whether it is sex education, or helping kids to face failures or handling broken relationships. Kids struggle to deal with these emotions and they only burden or they look for solutions outside the house. In schools these matters are hardly taken care of.

According to UNICEF, the Basic Life skills provides readily available tools to deal with challenges/demands of daily lives the youth face, from managing their emotions to make an informed decision.

References:

Narayana Manjunatha , Sahoo Saddichha. Universal mental health program: An extension of life skills education to promote child mental health