Why is it Important to Teach Life Skills?
Written by Anjum Shaikh, June 20, 2019
What are life skills?
Life skills based education is a form of education that helps children apply the knowledge and skills they learn in school to real-world issues and problems. This training helps children reach their full potential and deal with the challenges that occur in their daily lives.
Why are these skills the building blocks of life?
Life skills training equips children with different skills such as creative thinking, problem solving, critical thinking, decision making, emotional quotient, stress management, teamwork and communication. These skills are necessary for career readiness. With our fast paced environment, there has been an increase of pressure and stress in our daily lives. It is essential that we learn to be flexible and have a balanced approach to be able to deal with the stress and frustrations that occur in our personal and professional lives.
Let us learn some advantages of these skills:
- Self Awareness: One of the most important benefits that life skill training gives is the ability to know yourself better. There are many skills that are hidden inside us which we learn about as we grow with time. These factors are the driving force to help us live our lives. Self awareness helps us to unleash our potentials and transform our weaknesses into strengths.
- Creative Thinking and Problem Solving: Life skill training gives children a platform to develop practical solutions to various problems.
- Decision Making: Through activity-based learning, children are able to develop their decision-making abilities which helps them make wiser choices in life. This is very important since there will be situations where students won’t have access to their teachers or parents and would need to make decisions by themselves.
- Communication and Interpersonal Skills: Life skill training also helps boost confidence levels by enhancing communication and interpersonal skills. Children learn how to socialise and make new friends. Most importantly, children learn how to deal with personal insecurities which improves their self-esteem and develops their ability to deal with peer pressure.
- Stress Management: With the increasing competition, we are bound to be stressed in our personal and professional life due to various factors. It is necessary to build ways to cope up with your stress and emotions.
- Collaboration and Teamwork: Children learn how to collaborate and work in teams, skills that are necessary to be employable in the professional world.
- Empathy: Life skill training also makes children more empathetic and teaches them to be socially responsible citizens. The children learn different ways on how to contribute and give back to the community.
It is clear that life skills are important for a child’s holistic development. These skills need to be learnt in a practical environment where they can implement it while learning. Hence, it is encouraged that life skills training be given to school children along with the standard curriculum for their overall development. Teaching these skills at the school-level helps students understand how to act in the real world which makes their transition from school to college to adulthood easier. Many nonprofits have ventured into providing this training to students as they are able to make a positive difference to the students’ lives and building the capacity to serve communities at large.
