Schools are meant for developing a child’s background, shaping their personality and broadening their horizon on the aspects of the world to ensure future growth. It is the mysterious, adventurel and that nurtures children to aid them in developing skills to be utilized in their day to day activities as well as on the professional front.
As much as this sounds true, in reality, formal education rarely achieves anything beyond textbook knowledge that is dragged down to achieving higher grades and not one of being in a learned state of mind. Some exceptions barred! You might gain a rudimentary understanding of basic principles of mathematics, science, history and other primary things but is it enough to tackle competitiveness and complex human situations? Not quite, right? Which is why we’re here to do the needful for you.
Here is a list of skills that would truly determine a child’s holistic growth that formal education fails to provide.
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Smelling the coffee Before Tasting It!
Humans are almost always faced with situations where others tend to take advantage of their naive nature or unpreparedness in that particular situation rendering them weak targets. With the increase in poverty and overpopulation, we may even succumb to getting conned easily. You can always adapt and learn from incidents of malevolence and thuggery but prevention of a mistake is much better than curing it. Teaching students in developing some level of foresight in dealing with people can go miles.
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Basic negotiation skill
School-taught negotiation limited to when they try to trade other students for a more scrumptious diet. At this level, it may not count as a sign of achievement as the other students are equally underprepared. However, this may not be the case in the outside world. Unless the child is observant enough to take cues from their parent in getting a better bargain from a vegetable vendor or a store owner, the child will mostly lack negotiation skills. It is a prerequisite not only on the professional front but also in other walks of life. Children must learn to negotiate. Schools can inculcate this trait by introducing a basic set of courses towards the end of their schooling lives.
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Mental Health
It is a rarity to find schools that conduct workshops and seminars from door to door informing young children about the dangers of deteriorating mental health. People undergo traumatic experiences in childhood. Bullying, violent attacks, group-ism may seem like a normal part of school life but they can go on to create permanent issues that affect their concentration, their ability to communicate and their personality. If such problems are left unresolved at an early age it can have permanent repercussions on a person that will hinder their personal growth as well as cause a block in their professional growth. Spotting signs of depression and mental health is difficult even for an adult, let alone children spot such issues and take proactive steps to resolve them. Schools must hire a set of mental health counsellor and bring in mental health education systems into formal education to ensure that every student is informed about the perils of mental health conditions at an early age to seek help.
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Physical defence
Children, especially girls are faced with incidents of sexual assault and sexual intimidation in and outside of their houses. Such incidents are rampant and the need to address them cannot be stressed more. Students must be taught how to build a sense of defence mechanisms both in the form of speech as well as in the physical form.
Conclusion
Schooling is about holistic development of a child and should not be limited only to knowledge and learning. Schools must adapt to new conformities of real-life issues to make them great human beings. Till that happens, we must take the responsibility of shaping our future into our own hands!
