Indian lockdown has paved a new baffling experiential narrative pathway from all developmental age groups last year. It looks now like a historical past as we survived the mystical turbulences 2020. As an educator and a psychologist, I view this year through the learner’s perspectives, community professional’s initiatives, and as an outsider witnessing newer challenges in both the educational and interpersonal arenas.
It has been an experimental phase inculcating the digital dimensions into our realistic lifestyles. Initially, there were paranoid actions that demonstrated a sense of fearfulness to adapt to a scarce economy, normalize our patterns while staying with unavailable amenities, observe indifferent individuals, cater to unorganized institutions, and then socially adapt to the pandemic’s situational changes.
Challenges of the new normal
Our lives now have become somewhat mechanical with the increased amount of time spent on social media platforms, disregard for real-life relationships, the emergence of newer psychological concerns, reduction of sensory-based motor capacities coupled with social isolation. All these crippling challenges have created a massive impact in the educational systems and also in the minds of our children and youth.
Though few institutions are keeping the life skills and social skills education for the young of utmost relevance keeping in mind the current situation, others are still unaware and have already delved into the depths of self-centeredness in focusing on institutional growth.
The need for personal development skills
Indian educational system has always given grading as a mark of professional development among students. But what about their personal developmental skills? Tomorrow after we battled the pandemic and start life with fresh aspirations, our youth need to bounce back personally and not only as professionals in life’s new journey.
They need to emotionally balance their individual and professional skills. So, are we giving them the same holistic education by blending their strengths and weaknesses into the curriculum areas?
Every educational organization now has a social responsibility to guide their children and youth so that they can emerge as leaders who not only lead their personal lives but also their communities, at large. Moral science classes are mostly taken with so much disinterest by facilitators that now every educator needs to redefine their pedagogical innovations in making teaching and learning to be a student-centric phenomenon. Every moral construct should be merged in all subject contents to create inspirational learning.
The ‘Positive Education Movement’
Indian students both belonging to the rural and urban sections have faced enormous stressors with the digital embeddedness and also with the economic and mental conflicts within the family systems that have increased drop-out rates exorbitantly last year. Amidst all these emotional hassles there has been an indifferent attitude from the part of policymakers, institutional heads, higher managerial systems and other stakeholders from the field of education.
Thus, there is a major need to think about absorbing the ‘Positive Education Movement’ in India now at 2021. Every act from the educationists should be towards empowering leadership skills through positive dispositions of self-acceptance, compassion, subjective wellbeing, and social skills.
Indian educational structures need to nurture the capacities of positive goal orientation through school experiences. Curriculum programs should be more workshop-based that highlights the skills of story-telling aspects from those who have relived real experiences and combatted them bravely.
Happiness modules should not only cater to the transcendental concepts but also to well-being constructs and contextual cultural experiences transforming the personal capacities of learners. Academic guidelines need to observe every pupil as an individual leader and ignite favorable character dispositions.
Experiential opportunities need to be proposed by authorities in guiding learners to witness favorable and unfavorable affective states and provide situations that enhance their verbal expressions and interpersonal development. Each learner is assured about accepting their positive and negative traits and transform the same into productive actions, it also facilitates pupils to view the world differently.
Collaborative efforts by educators and management in shifting from the teacher role to that of a facilitator would divert the goal-orientation methodologies of students and thereby flourishing youth leadership.
The world at the moment needs innovative leaders to come up with more diverse solutions for the community. We have to work stringently in transferring our individual models towards a dynamic community model. Leadership traits through positive education if grounded from the scholastic level it would expand its roots to adulthood and bring about a positive social change.
This year’s challenges in the educational sectors also have made the youth take up the leadership roles individually and have opened up their mindsets towards development and sustainability. Social media was applied productively in bringing nations together to build developmental goals for all age groups across nations.
One such example of a youth-led forum that stood as a mark of leadership in 2020 was the United Youth for Sustainable Globe that came up to motivate and empower young minds. The group began on 20th April 2020, which will be celebrated as their foundational day from now on. In such a short span the group now expanded to 15000 individuals from more than 45 countries. This forum worked tirelessly at the community level in promoting entrepreneurship, democracy development, created a platform for communication and opportunities, led forming global networking, and aimed for a sustainable peaceful world. They conducted online workshops, held competitions, summits, projects, and campaigns to create awareness on peace and harmony in preventing the outcomes of the pandemic. Youth voices were heard through live streaming and actions were driven towards each societal setting.
This is what is the outcome of Positive Education where we function as instructors in collaborating with children and youth in discussing problems and in cohesion come up with realistic solutions. In the process, their inner capacities get strengthened and once they accept themselves with all their successes and shortcoming they would be able to accept others in society. Indian systems need to restructure modules and get out of their conventional model towards inventing social co-participation techniques in reconstructing engagement from our children and youth.
Tomorrow our young members from the world may face greater challenges bigger than the pandemic we cannot predict. Thus, when they are faced with turmoil their life and social skills should be so strong that need not turn back for our instructions. Autonomously they can move fearlessly self-guided by inner leadership, personal capacities, and transfer the positive educational movement of life to others by narrating real concerns and solutions for the same.
Let’s give our children and youth opportunities to spread out their wings and make education a medium to initiate more service-based projects that involve everyone from all levels without any discrimination. As educationists, it’s our social responsibility to see the world through their lens and not only our own self-centered motives.
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