Life skills’ is a phrase we hear more and more in educational circles today alongside ‘critical thinking’ and ‘global citizenship’.
Life skills are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable humans to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life.” So the definition is fairly easy to understand, though Thomas Best commented later that it has distinct psychosocial limitations due to the very different global societal norms.
Even the influential United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has identified what it calls these “psychosocial and interpersonal skills” as so well-being oriented that they, life skills, are as essential to today’s youth as literacy and numeracy skills.
It’s perhaps fair to say that life skills are essential for an effective contribution to your society and community, and your ability to utilise your life skills to make the most of the few opportunities that life offers you are very much determined by your cultural and societal environment, and your stage in life. We want you all to be happy, not perfect, and knowing what you need to know will certainly bring you closer to a happy/perfect confluence.
That being so, among the life skills essential in the life of a young Omani would be based around their education, household tasks, religious obligations, and play. As Bob Talbert wrote, “Teaching children to count is great, but teaching them what counts, is best.”
Teenagers’ lives are changing in a hurry and those changes will be upon them before they know it. That doesn’t mean more baby-sitting, cooking or car washing, but actually being given an area of responsibility within the family circle as a precursor to the responsibilities of higher education, and the workplace, that are just around the corner.
This is probably the most difficult phase for parents to get right, as all children evolve towards the need for their parents’ trust at different times and in different ways, but it is essential that trust and responsibility are delivered at the same time, and that accountability is discussed and implemented on the basis, not only of saying what you, as parents, want, but why. Again, Unicef says, “Life skills have transformative potential.”
The young Omani higher education scholar is already an adult, yet, in the Omani environment, still living at home, and still intensively guided by their parents, and that’s a good thing. A student’s life skill needs evolve to include the ability to communicate effectively with others, to manage their finances, to plan and implement nutritional requirements and to balance the demands of study and leisure.
In higher education the student is rarely taught, or told, everything they need to know. Rather, they have to reinvent their learning wheel. They will be guided towards learning, and given resources to read and understand, and discuss with their peers. They cannot take every question to a teacher or lecturer, and must find answers themselves, or with their peers.
They should never be afraid to ask questions, but not in such a way as to disadvantage the learning experience of others. This is why university and college teachers and lecturers have office hours, and being able to manage your educational experience through judicious use of the office hours available to you is probably the single, most important life skill of all to be learned at this juncture. As Nourma Fauziyah wrote, “Learning how to learn is one of the most important skills in life.”
As an educator, I’m always ready to help my students, along with thousands of others, however I would encourage parents and students alike to understand that the learning experience at 20 years of age is nothing like that of a 7 or 15-year-old, and the onus is now, at college or university, on the student to drive the experience.
Communication, teamwork, discussion, interaction, acceptance, consideration and determination are all learning skills that become life skills, for the workplace, and cannot be learned without practice. So, I’ll see you in class then.
ray petersen
petersen_ray@hotmail.com
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