Daily Times

Pan American Health Organization stressed in 2001 that life skill approach to the child is necessary for adolescents’ healthy human development. If we wish to make our future generations successful, we need to teach life skills to our children. The current digital information and innovations with artificial intelligence call for a multitalented and multiliterate citizen in future. From the dashboard of a vehicle (electric especially) to complex medical operations, machines and procedures are making life easier but it also demands life skills for ultimate benefit from these digital machines. The innovative, digitally globalised, post 9/11 world has further necessitated the teaching of life skills to deal with modern issues of modern life because it has created even bigger challenges for humanity, for example, cyberbullying, internet frauds and the spread of unlimited knowledge.

Life skills are the set of skills that not only keep the learners happy and confident but are also necessary to achieve a meaningful life by harnessing our potentials. These skills include mental well-being, self-awareness, self-management, presence of mind, integrity, making right decisions, appreciation of humanity, empathy and acceptance for others, keeping commitments, effective communication, conflict resolution, hopefulness, purposeful, and solution-oriented approach. There can be many other life skills that can be developed through the teaching of social sciences in skill-based modules but in a humanities classroom, at least these life skills are an absolute necessity to deal with the confusion, hurry and haste of the digital information age and its challenges.

There are two-pronged advantages of teaching life skills: firstly, that critical thinking and positively-oriented minds are developed with a capacity of making value-based decisions to run their businesses of life with positive psychologies. Secondly, a conducive socio-political environment is created in which not only people are psychologically positive but also help reduce crimes. The individual trained in life skills not only helps establish positive and healthy norms in the society but also helps prevent the crimes taking place around him. This world of ours has changed rapidly because of computer skills, easy access to information and technology and so has the nature of the crime. Now, crimes are committed through the negative use of the same technology. Learning and teaching life skills teach citizens, in general, and young children, especially, to save themselves from the negative use of information and technology.

Cyber harassment and bullying of young men and women is a crime in vogue these days.

For example, cyber harassment and bullying of young men and women is a crime in vogue these days. It can be prevented if our young people are trained in life skills related to the use of internet information and technology through control and monitoring of digital crime.

So, it is need of the hour that our school should make changes in their pedagogy and teaching techniques to give a specific place to the teaching of life skills. Not only a change in national curricula is necessary but also our teachers and instructors must be trained in teaching life skills effectively. Even in the absence of a revolutionary change in national curricula, schools, universities and colleges can initiate a special class every day to teach life skills. Our universities and research institutions may hold seminars, conferences and colloquia to involve students and engage high and topnotch scholars of the field for making it effective and easier to prorogue and establish a comprehensive dialogue and debate in our society to increase the level of life skills among young men and women of Pakistan.

Out of these life skills, traffic sense and communication are the core skills that every system of education must teach to young people. Commuting daily for work or for social responsibility forces all to spend some time on roads or any other mode of mobility. If this time is spent haphazardly and chaotically, it results in the loss of money and time. Instead of forcing it through police and law enforcement agencies, it is far better to inculcate positive life skills in the minds of future leaders to save us from further deterioration of the commuting system. The same is the case with communication skills which teach us not only to remain effective in conveying our ideas to others but also effective in receiving others’. Effective communication results in achieving targets and speedy completion of the tasks assigned. Our young learners, therefore, must be taught communication skills not only in speech but also in writings.

Civilized, cultured and highly advanced societies of the world have long shifted their emphasis on teaching life skills to make their future citizens effective social beings but we are still running a race of bagging as many marks as possible. Ironically speaking, many of our learners are getting degrees with FOUR CGPA or 100 per cent marks but at the socio-political level, no improvement is visible. Intolerance and violence are on the increase. This rapidly worsening situation can be dealt with through the teaching of life skills, especially in the age of digital technology.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson College, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee