Author: Savneet Chawla, Director, Millennium World School, Ludhiana.
Children need to learn self-defence techniques and it should be a mandatory
The emphasis of the current education system is on how to be more efficient in teaching,accompanied by a clearer understanding of concepts to students. But there is hardly any importance in teaching ‘basic life skills’. We talk about women empowerment, but do we start empowering young girls’ right from school? The reluctance to send girls to other cities for studies indicates the fault in the system. Children need to learn self-defence techniques, and it should be a mandatory subject in schools so that there is no insecurity when children come forward to take the lead.
There is a need to teach students how to be financially independent. There is a need to teach students about financial literacy or investments right from the early years. Our system emphasizes the details of a particular subject or stream, but where do we learn life skills? For example, medical students are never taught accounts or banking in school or college, but when they join a job or business, they would need this knowledge daily.
Everyone has a unique purpose in life. We should shape children in such a way that they start thinking about it from a young age so that they have enough time to explore and choose what they want to do in this lifetime.
Conventionally, children need to study hard and get good grades, but is there a guarantee that they will be successful? Creativity or knowledge about a subject is not enough; you also need to know how to sell your ideas. Unfortunately, our education system doesn’t teach marketing or business skills to all students; it is limited only to commerce or management streams.
It is time to ponder on teaching children necessary life skills right from the early years. Only then a nation with successful leaders, entrepreneurs, a workforce, and most importantly, better humans could truly be built.
