Teaching about the culture of the place or society and social responsibility to children helps build strong societies and influences every individual's lifestyle and attitude towards life. This approach fosters tolerance, understanding, and respect for different communities, paving the way for harmonious social living and thereby building strong societies
A Blended Approach to Learning
Schools should blend academics with culture education to provide an open-minded outlook towards life and society. This would emphasize empathy and promote positive values. By involving kids in hands-on activities, we ensure that every school-going child develops holistically to excel in life. This involves physical development, intellectual growth, emotional intelligence, social skills, and resilience.
Understanding Different Types of Intelligence
Psychologists have identified four types of intelligence crucial for overall development:
Intelligence Quotient (IQ): Measures comprehension abilities, essential for solving math problems, memorizing information, and recalling lessons.
Emotional Quotient (EQ): Measures the ability to maintain peace with others, manage time, be responsible, honest, respect boundaries, and show humility, genuineness, and consideration.
Social Quotient (SQ): Measures the ability to build and maintain a network of friends over a long period.
Adversity Quotient (AQ): Measures the ability to endure difficult times and emerge mentally balanced. AQ determines resilience in the face of challenges.
The Importance of EQ and SQ
People with higher EQ and SQ tend to achieve more in life than those with just a high IQ. Most educational systems focus on improving IQ levels while often overlooking EQ and SQ. A person with a high IQ might end up working for someone with high EQ and SQ, even if the latter has an average IQ. Your EQ reflects your character, while your SQ reflects your charisma. Cultivating habits that improve these three Qs, especially EQ and SQ, is essential for success.
Educating millions of young people every year, we are not able to provide an assurance that an educated person can live a life rising above the evils of violence, animosity, greed, malice. We have made some efforts in this direction but the success we have achieved in academic subjects has not been achieved in this domain. What is missing is a sense of responsibility and accountability not only in adults but in young kids and this can be addressed if punctuality and homework completion is seriously taken in schools and some parameters need to be taken so these are not overlooked or missed while assessing the child class wise. The level of responsibility for class 1 kids can be basic but as they grow up this also needs to be taken care of. Keeping the place clean is every kid's responsibility. This practice has already been done by many Indian schools overseas e.g. Fiji Islands.
Today, the greatest challenges facing humankind are to deal with conditions that are arising due to societal evils. Arrangements like the government machinery, judicial system, defence machinery, police administration which have been put in place to deal with such conditions and maintain decorum have their own limitations. Children enter the education system in kindergarten at around two and a half years of age and continue to spend nearly twenty years within the education system until they graduate. During this time, we are successful in making them good engineers, doctors, scientists, managers or other professionals, but do not ensure that they become honest and responsible human beings. Introduction of Happiness curriculum by State Council of Educational Research and Training, New Delhi in schools needs to be seriously taken by all schools across India.
A Comprehensive Educational Philosophy
Parents and Schools should focus on children on happiness, punctuality, resilience, responsibility etc more than just academics. We need to encourage them to value relationships, engage in sports, and explore the arts. Develop their IQ, EQ, SQ, and AQ to help them become multifaceted individuals capable of independent thinking and action and thereby we as society would be successful in educating kids academically and handle life with much more understanding and successfully achieve work life balance and a stronger society
Remember: Do not prepare the road for your children. Prepare your children for the road.
This philosophy resonates deeply with me and underscores the importance of a well-rounded education that prepares children for all aspects of life.
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