Teaching Soft Skills in Schools – Need of the Moment

The traditional teaching context is situated outside the mainstream of life, outside the hustle and bustle of the local community. Some of the underlying premises of ‘institutional’ teaching are that it is best carried out in a specifically designed place, at specific times, with specialized teaching experts, using carefully selected material and according to a predetermined path. The result of this perspective on learning is that the context created for teaching bears little resemblance to life in the rest of the world. In the real world, ignoring soft skills is the equivalent of sending kids into the woods with no camping gear, or at least nothing more than a sleeping bag. There is a clear lack of soft skills among a large part of the students; that the problem is rooted in our existing education system, which is primarily focused on imparting/acquiring ‘hard skills’, and that it needs to be addressed at both student and teacher levels.

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the need to develop soft skills between academia and business. In fact, many institutes have also introduced a soft skills component in the curricula. But these initiatives are the proverbial drop in the ocean. Most have not had the desired impact. It is necessary to review the situation and develop strategies to overcome these problems without undermining the importance of technical skills. The plight of today’s children can be seen on subtle levels, in everyday problems that have not yet become major crises. Based on parent and teacher evaluations, children on average performed poorly in these specific ways: withdrawal or social problems, anxiety and depression, attention or thinking problems, delinquency or aggression. This is a new kind of toxicity that sees and poisons the very experience of childhood. This discomfort seems to be a universal price of modern life for children. No child, rich or poor, is exempt from these risks. These problems are universal and occur in all ethnic, racial, and income groups. Learning soft skills is not just about learning manners, etiquette, and English as is commonly perceived. Therefore, the indignant refrain from rich and middle class parents/educators that their children did not need such learning is totally misplaced.

In the absence of good support systems, external stresses have become so great that even strong families are falling apart. The busyness, instability, and inconsistency of daily family life are rampant in all segments of our society, including the well-educated and well-off. If families no longer function effectively to put our children on a firm footing for life, what should we do? With family life no longer offering an increasing number of children a secure footing in life, schools remain the only place communities can turn to correct children’s deficiencies in soft skills, emotional and social. That is not to say that schools alone can replace all social institutions that are too often collapsing or on the verge of collapsing. But since virtually all children go to school (at least initially), it offers a place to reach children with basic life lessons that they might never otherwise learn. Soft skills literacy implies an extended mandate for schools, taking over from families failing to socialize children. This daunting task requires teachers to go beyond their traditional mission.

As children change and grow, the concern for time changes accordingly. To be most effective, soft skills and emotional literacy need to be linked to the child’s development and repeated at different ages in ways that adjust to the child’s changing understanding and challenges. The timeline is intertwined with related lines of development, particularly for cognition, on the one hand, and brain and biological maturation, on the other. The 5-year-old, entering the larger social world of school, enters the world of social comparisons: being able to compare oneself with others on particular qualities, be it popularity, attractiveness, or talent for skateboarding. From ages six to eleven, school is a melting pot and a defining experience that will strongly influence children’s indolence and beyond. A child’s sense of self-esteem depends substantially on her ability to succeed in school. A child who fails in school sets in motion self-defeating attitudes that can cloud prospects for life.

Puberty, because it is the time of extraordinary changes in a child’s biology, thinking abilities, and brain function, is also a crucial time for emotional literacy and soft skills lessons. Adolescence: Most adolescents are between the ages of ten and fifteen when they are exposed to sexuality, alcohol and drugs, smoking, and other temptations. The transition to middle or high school marks the end of childhood and is in itself a tremendous emotional challenge. It is this conjuncture that helps reinforce boys and girls’ abilities to build close relationships and overcome crises in friendship, and to nurture their self-confidence. Those who have attended their literacy classes find the new pressures of peer politics, increased academic demands, and temptations to smoke and use drugs less of a concern than their peers.

Soft skills and emotional literacy expand our vision of the task of schools themselves, making them more explicitly the agent of society for children to learn these essential lessons for life: a return to the classic role of education. It also works best when the lessons at school are coordinated with what happens at the children’s homes. That way, kids get consistent messages about soft skills and emotional competencies in all parts of their lives. In short, the optimal design for such programs is to start early, be age-appropriate, run throughout the school years, and intertwine efforts at school, home, and community. It increases the likelihood that what children have learned will not be left behind in school, but will be tested, practiced and perfected in the real challenges of life. Another way this approach reshapes schools is in building a campus culture that makes it a “caring community,” a place where students feel respected, cared for, and connected to their classmates, teachers, and the school. same.

It would be naive not to anticipate the obstacles to bringing such programs into schools. Many parents may feel that the subject itself is too personal a domain for schools that such things are best left to parents. Teachers may be reluctant to give up another part of the school day for topics that seemed unrelated to academic fundamentals, some teachers may be too uncomfortable with the topics to teach, and all will need special training to do so. Some children will also resist, especially to the extent that these classes are out of sync with their real concerns, or feel like an intrusive imposition on their privacy. And then there is the dilemma of maintaining high quality and making sure education marketers don’t sell ineptly designed, emotionally competent programs that repeat the disasters of, say, ill-conceived courses on drugs or teen pregnancy.

Soft skills and emotional literacy improve academic performance. This is not an isolated finding; is repeated over and over again in such studies. In an age when too many children lack the ability to manage upsets, listen or concentrate, control impulses, feel responsible for their work, or care about learning, anything that reinforces these skills will help their education. Soft skills and emotional literacy courses seem to help children better fulfill their roles in life, becoming best friends, students, sons and daughters, and in the future more likely to be better husbands and wives, workers and bosses , parents and citizens. A rising tide lifts all boats. It is not just children with problems, but all children who can benefit from these skills; these are an inoculation for life.

Children today have poor soft skills and emotional literacy because we as a society have not bothered to make sure that all children are taught the essentials of managing anger or resolving conflict positively. Nor have we bothered to teach empathy, impulse control, or any of the other fundamentals of soft skills and emotional competence. By leaving these topics that children learn to chance, we risk greatly wasting the window of opportunity that the slowly maturing brain presents for helping children cultivate a healthy emotional repertoire. Despite the great interest in emotional literacy among some educators, these courses are still rare; most teachers, principals, and parents simply don’t know they exist. The best role models are largely outside the educational mainstream, in a handful of private schools and a few hundred public schools. Shouldn’t we be teaching these most essential life skills to all children, now more than ever?
And if not now, when?

Considering the fact that during the last decades in society the perceived importance of soft skills has increased significantly, it is of great importance that everyone acquire adequate skills beyond academic or technical knowledge. This is not particularly difficult. Once a deficiency in a given area of ​​soft skills has been identified in oneself, there are numerous ways to rectify that deficiency. Educators have a special responsibility regarding soft skills, as during the students’ school time they have a great impact on the development of the soft skills of their students. In addition to raising awareness of the importance of soft skills and encouraging students to improve their skills, readers should actively practice soft skills with their students. As a positive side effect, the lessons will become more engaging, which in turn will increase the success rate of the learners. Soft skills play an important role in shaping an individual’s personality by complementing her hard skills. However, emphasizing it too much should not cloud the importance of soft skills, that hard skills, that is, expert knowledge in certain fields, be demoted to secondary importance.