In India’s exams centred K-12 education system, life and soft skills education has been continuously neglected. Except for a handful of top-ranked progressive private schools, the great majority of India’s 1.5 million private and government schools have neglected to simultaneously teach children valuable inter-personal communication, team-working, time management, conflict resolution skills and plain old-fashioned good manners. Examination success obsessed parents are also to blame for being too academics focused and not paying sufficient attention to developing the socio-emotional intelligences of their children.
Therefore it’s unsurprising that Indians, unschooled in good manners, deportment and good conduct, have a bad reputation around the world for poor social graces. This has cost the country dearly by way of losses in international trade and business.
The unprecedented 18 month lockdown of education institutions for fear of the Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the neglect of life skills education. During this prolonged period, children have been forced into isolation and cut off from teachers and peers. Now there’s a clear and present danger that academic competencies apart, they may have lost the few life and soft skills they had learned.
As schools reopen and children return to on-campus in-person classes, even as educators and parents focus on remedial education, it’s also important for them to stress the importance of life and soft skills such as adaptability, empathy, decision-making, conversation, friendliness and good manners. In the broadest sense, life skills education is about good manners, cultural sensitivity and learning to get along with people of all colours, ethnicities and cultures — skills indispensable for success in the post-pandemic world.
Also check out the Early Childhood essay on introducing infants to home-cooked foods; Activity Zone on the rising popularity of paintballing as a recreational sport and Ask Your Counselor column wherein Dr. Pallavi Rao Chaturvedi, parenting coach and Instagram star, answers parents’ queries.
