Imparting life skills should be at the heart of our curricula

Efforts by Rwanda Education Board to revamp the national curricula is highly commendable. Our current curricula, like most curricula in post colonial African countries, is borrowed heavily from colonial periods that focused on imparting clerical and theoretical skills to the African elites who worked for the interests of colonial administrators at the time. Since then, no deliberate efforts have been made by subsequent African education administrators to develop curriculum cum education system that suites Africa or individual country development needs for that matter. We are educated to pass exams, get certificates and go out on the streets to look for jobs. Period! We are hardly taught to navigate through the challenges of life. So, anything astray of this mindset and conventional wisdom becomes a stumbling block towards achieving what we are destined for in life!To illustrate my point, I will use recent encounters with my former two students. I will call them A and B to protect their identity. Student A graduated two years ago, he has his certificate but has no job because wherever he drops his CV he is never called for interviews and on a few occasions where he has been called, he doesn’t go through because, according to him, he “is not connected to the right people!” When I met this young man and he told me his challenges I was so concerned and asked him to give me his CV not because I had a job for him, rather because I felt there was something wrong somewhere. Indeed something was wrong – his CV set up was a disaster. I had a long chat with him and in the end we agreed on two action points; to ‘polish’ his CV and look for a place where he would work as a volunteer to gain some experience. After improving on the format and set up of his CV, his duty was to look for a placement for voluntary work. Three months later, when we met again (of recent) he told me he never made efforts to volunteer because he found it hard to work for “nothing”. So he has opted to remain on the street until he gets a job.For student B, it’s through the same encounter and almost same setting. Only that for student B, his situation is worse- he missed his graduation because he failed one examination paper. When I met him, he was in tears and depression, to him, it was a big shame all his friends had graduated and he did not. He had become a disgrace to himself and his family, he said. In short, he had become a failure in life and life was losing meaning. I assured him that failing one exam in the fourth year when he had passed the rest of the years and covered 99.9% course can’t be qualified as failing! I also encouraged him to volunteer after we had set his CV. He became so daring and aggressive. Recently I received a phone call from him telling me that after working as a volunteer for a short time, he had been hired by the same institution.How are these two scenarios connected to life skills education?The simple definition of Life Skills Education would be the ability to adapt, impart positive behavior and enable the individual deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life. As such, values like self esteem, confidence, critical thinking, conflict resolution, communication, interpersonal relationships, negation and decision making skills need to be taught in schools. Imparting life skills to the young people should be at the core of our education system if we are to have productive education. Teachers as implementers should be trained and supported if they are to deliver and handle life skills education curricula, especially on sensitive issues like sex education which would help young people handle HIV and AIDS. Equally important is involving parents and communities in the development of life skills curricula which would help to ensure acceptance of sensitive issues.Finally, life skills-leaning education curricula should be planned and sequenced across primary and secondary school and tertiary levels, incrementally adjusted to age, stage, context and situation of the learners.The writer is an educationist, author and publisher.

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Imparting life skills should be at the heart of our curricula