How many students who are good at grammar are equally good communicators? Students learn dates and events of History but are they aware of how that has shaped the society? Biology is the main subject but do they understand their own body? So, you see where the problem is? We teach our young generation theory but they have minimal practical knowledge.
Is the purpose of school and education not to prepare you for life? Let alone life, the present education system barely equips you for a livelihood. It is a redundant system that limits children to small box-thinking, called subjects.
Great in theory, a failure in practice!
Even after investing years in school and college, graduates barely have an idea about the dynamics of business, how to begin a start-up, or how to handle money and how to refine their knowledge into skills. Most of the time students have to opt for separate courses to gain that practical knowledge or rather say Skills.
Where society is lacking?
Source: Medium 
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Source- Dreams Time
Lack of Self Awareness: The inner self is unknown territory and is a scary territory to venture into, maybe a helping hand from school can make it easy for them. But students are unaware of their capabilities, plus points and weaknesses. They are often expected to walk a certain path, and parental pressure along with peer pressure seems to make that happen feasibly. They are not just unaware of how they feel, they fear their own feeling.
Lack of Awareness of Others: Life doesn’t happen in isolation, man is a social animal. If a person doesn’t understand her/himself, the possibility of understanding others is not only dim but impossible. Inability to negotiate, ineffective and violent communication, lack of empathy, struggle to build teams, weak or no leadership is thus natural outcomes.
Lack of Skills: The entire education system focuses on words than actions. You may have often heard booming voices of parents and teachers asking children to ‘focus’ but no one actually shows them how to concentrate. So, either they figure it out themselves or keep struggling. Sounds unfair to me!
What we can do ?
Redefining the Goal of Education
The purpose of education should be:
• Self-awareness – Ability to reflect and introspect. • Practical approach – Maybe education can be more about how to live life than who wrote Macbeth.
• Communication – How to communicate clearly and effectively.
• Business – How to start up, run a company, how to be an asset in an organization as an employee
Restructuring Education System
Source: TonyBates.
It is time to reconstruct the entire system, like the concept of back to back classes of 45 minutes. Frontal teaching should be replaced with problem-oriented learning, group activities should become a necessity, and many such small changes to bring a big difference.
Re-modelling Parenting
Source: Kid Helpline
As parents, talk to your child. It is an important step towards their self-growth and self-discovery. It is also important that you, as a parent, walk your talk. Parents should practice mindfulness, express their feelings, and ask their child how she/he feels, appreciate every little effort, and respect her/his struggles. Since we have not been brought up in this manner, these things don’t come naturally to us. A life coach can help you initiate on this path of connecting with your inner self. By seeking support from a coach, you are also setting an example in front of your kids that it is alright to seek help.
So, seek all the help you need, but make sure you take the first step towards educating your children in the right way for their bright future.
Take-Away:
- Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection.
- If you don’t understand yourself, you can’t understand your impact on others.
- Reconstruction of the education system i.e need for practical skills rather than making students mugging up the theory.
- Need for parents to understand their child and be the first one to initiate conversation.
- The need for teachers and parents to help the child figure out their difficulties.
- Students should help themselves too figuring out where they are lacking, sometimes it’s not society but they themselves are holding them back.
