A new report “Healthy Young Minds – transforming the mental health of children” by the World Innovation Summit for Health and Wellbeing in Children Forum 2015, just published, recommends life skills can and should be taught as professionally as mathematics or literature.
It goes on to say “Schools need an ethos that promotes children’s wellbeing and identifies children who are languishing; but they should also devote at least an hour a week to education in life skills. Children and young people need to learn how to understand and manage their own emotions, understand others and care for them, manage their sexual relationships responsibly, eat and drink sensibly and avoid drugs, understand mental disorders and what can be done about them, understand parenting, manage their responses to modern media and choose positive life goals.”
With the number and variety of different programs “This leads to two important conclusions. First, if children are to develop good life skills, they need more than one or two 20-hour programs: they need a whole curriculum of life skills, at least once a week throughout the school life. As Aristotle observed, good habits are learned through interesting repetition in varying contexts. Second, this curriculum should be evidence-based and depend as little as possible on inspired improvisation by the teacher. It is universally found that the best results follow from using detailed materials accompanied by a good manual on how to use them and some explicit training of the teachers (this is not so different from what is needed for a good surgical operation.) And the best results always come from offering a positive vision rather than warnings about what not to do.”
Lets get to work together!!!
