Importance of Life Skills and How Life Skills Education Can be Taught in Schools

Why Life Skills Education Should Be Promoted: 

The approaches used in life skills education are focused on what is learned about how young people learn from their own interactions and from the people around them, how others act and what are the consequences of that behavior. Life skills education promotes health because the training in life skills is focused on teaching basic life skills, which involves skill practice in relation to major health and social issues.

Life skills lessons should be paired with health information and can also be combined with other strategies, such as initiatives designed to bring improvements in environmental and social factors that affect young people's health and development.

Life skills education is distinguished from other approaches in two ways, firstly because it focuses on behavior change in an individual and secondly because the approach of life skills education consists of a balance of three components i.e. (a) the knowledge or information which focuses mainly on the knowledge component, (b) the attitudes and values and (c) the skills which acts as the most effective method of changing or developing behaviors because it consists of interpersonal and psycho-social skills like assertion, negotiation, building empathy, values clarification, stress and coping skills. The theoretical knowledge or the strategies taught to gather information only focus on the knowledge component, whereas, the life skills approach balances all the three components: knowledge, attitudes and skills.

How Life Skills Education Can be Taught in Schools: 

A school is considered as the right place for introducing the life skills education mainly because schools play a role in the socialization of young people, schools have access to children and adolescents on a large scale, no need to create a new infrastructure as schools already have the infrastructure which can be used to deliver life skills lessons, presence of experienced faculties and trainers, good relation and connections with the children’s parents and families, easy evaluation. Training children in life skills education actively involves children in a dynamic teaching and learning process which includes working in small groups and pairs, brainstorming, role plays, games and debates. 

A teacher can start a life skills session by working on realizing the potential of children and know their thoughts or knowledge regarding a specific situation in which a life skill can be used. By making a small group, children may be asked to debate on the issues raised in more detail by dividing them into smaller groups, teams or with a partner. Since the actual practice of any life skills is an important component of life skills education, hence children can be involved in some kind of role-playing scenarios (of short or long duration) or in activities which will allow them to practice the skills according to different situations. Finally, a homework can be assigned by the teacher to the children by asking them to further discuss and practice the skills learned with their families and friends.