Skilled youth - empowered youth

The Indian government has been debating on the new education policy to be placed in place by making required changes in the existing pattern. The prime minister has been advocating and motivating the citizens and custodians to focus on skill development. The whole purpose of education should be to enable and make people realize their potential and create something new for their own good and the good of the society. The children of the day are exposed to abundance of knowledge and they at times find themselves in difficult situation to decide what to acquire and what to leave. Most of the times the conflicting views are shared by many people with them directly or indirectly. This is healthy to have such views but our children should be skilled enough to understand the difference and what would be good for them. I am of the opinion that the children be exposed to age appropriate challenges of the life and given an opportunity to find the solution themselves with the indirect support of the adults wherever needed. This can be achieved with some efforts on the part of the teachers and the parents. The government and the educational bodies will have to play more active and considerably significant role in this. Skill development would not mean by marks or the grades obtained by the students in the examination but to develop all faculties of one’s personality. In this the schools should take the responsibility of making children intelligent not only academically but emotionally as well. Emotional intelligence has been an important subject in the last four- five decades but now seems to be left behind in the race of artificial intelligence. Indian history has been full of the stories of the music, dance and art work. All the kings and rulers were the enthusiast promoter of such performing arts and skills required for that. They promoted this not only for their interest in such things but also because they found themselves relaxed by getting exposed to such arts and better prepared to perform their duty of ruling the states more effectively than what they could have done otherwise. The most cruel or hated kings were also fond of such art and most of them promoted such skills in their own way.

I have written all this to construct my point that skill development should not be linked directly with the idea that it would enable a person to earn but also make him happy and better prepared to perform the acts which will enable him to earn more for self and the family. When a person is relaxed and happy, then the possibility of achieving something new is more. These performing art skills definitely help people relax and that is why such things should be given same importance and preference in the schools as academic subjects are given. The parents must also realize that they do not force children with books and notebooks only but allow and motivate them to pursue the skills and the art of their choice. The performing art skills will help the children learn the habit of creating new things and new ideas. When I say that these skills are very important that does not mean that other skills are not so but my intention is that these skills will lead to learning and performing other skills more effectively and in a better way. The children should be taught that these subjects are not forced upon them to obtain some grade in the progress report of the schools or the colleges but enable to become more confident and creative person who will be skilled to do something new in future. We learn multiple skills in the schools which is fondly termed as multiple intelligence and that should be explored as much as possible by the parents and the teachers.

The schools should ensure to develop these faculties and the teachers teaching music, arts, theater, health and physical education should be given the same type of treatment and respect as the teachers teaching physics, history or any other such subject. In India many people consider such teachers as activity teachers which place them some way in a different category than the subject teachers. Though in the last few decades the things have changed for the good but still a lot is to be done if we have to realize the vision of the prime minister to have skilled youth, enabled to exploit his potential to the maximum. The skilled youth will be equipped with all the knowledge required to face the challenges of the future. We should try to understand the overlapping in the meaning of the two words ‘skill’ and ‘vocational’. Skill will definitely enable a person to be vocationally trained but vocational training alone may not lead to skill meaning thereby skill definitely leads to vocational competences but vice versa may not be necessarily true. This also shows the importance of skills and a very thin line of difference between the two words, skill and vocation. Unfortunately, we still find many teachers and parents telling children that they were wasting their time which is heart breaking to the children and in the process the adults have deprived the world of the wonderful things which such children would have enjoyed in their life. The children who spend some time on doing things of their choice tend to perform better in those areas also in which they might not have been good or comfortable. The performing arts, games and sports must be given due importance and place in the school curriculum so that the children do not need specialized skill training programs and they come out of the schools and college with their skills thoroughly developed. The teachers who teach such subjects should also be given the same kind of respect and opportunities as other teachers in the institution (this is happening in many institutions now). The physical education teachers should not limit themselves to have been playing only the ‘discipline In charge’ role. They can teach the skills of surviving in difficult situations and take victory or defeat in the same manner. The children do not get depressed very soon and their participation and involvement in games and sports would make them stronger not only physically but also mentally and emotionally, which is very important particularly in today`s world of tough competition.