Prevention Is Better Than Cure: Relevance And Criticality Of Social-Emotional Learning In Schools

Karan (name changed), 15, knew that if his parents attended the parent-teacher meeting at school, the situation at the home front would deteriorate. Images of his father blaming his mother for his bad grades and how the fallout of this inevitable issue would ruin his peace of mind for the rest of the week came to his mind. So, he devised a plan. He told his mother that the parent-teacher meeting had been cancelled because the principal’s son passed away – a seemingly harmless lie to avoid a personal crisis. Fortunately for Karan, he never got caught and he graduated from his school in 2007.

There is nothing new in adolescents cooking up stories to save their skin. Almost every teenager, like this former student, has gone through a phase in life when they will be tempted to tell a lie to save themselves from punishment or humiliation. True, peer pressure can be overwhelming. But killing someone to avoid an exam? Ten years after Karan graduated, in 2017, a troubled 16-year-old student had brutally killed a seven-year-old child in the same school’s washroom. The child was found with his throat slit and when rushed to a hospital, was declared brought dead leaving the whole school and community traumatized. According to the police, the motive behind murder of the child was to postpone the parent-teacher meeting and school examination. Reportedly, the accused was not good at studies and was afraid of appearing for the exam.

Tragic and dramatic events such as these tend to create a push–pull dynamic that marks the need for ongoing (rather than reactive) social-emotional learning (SEL) and mental health promotion efforts in schools. In their aftermath, major attention is shifted from other priorities to preventing and responding to high-profile events. And when the concern has lessened and we no longer see reports of dramatic and disturbing incidents in schools, policymakers and administrators often tend to assume that all is well, and that the problem is at least temporarily solved.

 As many see it, it’s now time to move on.

This view is short-sighted and unfortunate. All is not well with respect to the mental health status of children and youth in India. Although most children are able to successfully cope with the social, emotional, and academic challenges they face, many do not do so well. And of those who seem to have satisfactory personal adjustment, many children are in a surprisingly fragile state, and a single stressful event or situation could push them over the edge and into a crisis mode. Researchers have emphasized the urgency with which prevention programs are needed if we are to change the negative trajectory of mental health problems among children and adolescents. The cost of providing treatment for existing and chronic mental health problems far exceeds the cost of providing prevention programs that may deter such problems from occurring in the first place. We also face a future shortage of mental health professionals available to provide treatment to those in need.

Many individuals who need help simply may not get it. If you work in a typical school setting, you know exactly what we are talking about here – there are typically not enough psychologists, counsellors, and social workers available to meet all of the needs that students have. As professionals and members of a society that should strive for social justice, we have a moral and ethical obligation to provide effective evidence-based prevention services to all who face life’s challenges.

One advantage we have in meeting these challenges is that schools are excellent venues for providing prevention and intervention services. Schools have opportunities to promote competence across academic, personal, and social domains and must prioritize these opportunities because they value skills that are necessary for success in life such as good problem solving, adaptability, social responsibility and emotional competence.

Increasing demands on students’ academic performance as well as increasing recognition that social and emotional competence in youth is vital to adjustment into adulthood calls for action. SEL can have a very positive effect on academic performance and thus should not be viewed as something that detracts from academics. Through developmentally appropriate classroom instruction and application of learning to everyday situations, SEL programming builds children’s skills to recognize and manage their emotions, appreciate the perspectives of others, establish positive goals, make responsible decisions, and handle interpersonal situations. There is a need for all our schools to offer more than academic instruction if one is to foster success in school and life for all children.

Learning Curve Life Skills Foundation is a not-for-profit organization based in Hyderabad, India, which is rooted in the belief that social-emotional learning is a core component of a child’s growth, and particularly in under resourced environments, this can greatly enable equitable adulthood and eventually life outcomes.

Our goal is to enable children from under resourced backgrounds to be emotionally balanced, socially responsible and make informed choices.

The approach is to bring this to children through a structured effort involving teachers, school administration and parents – empowering all these stakeholders through self-development and mentoring and enabling them to translate this in the classroom through structured and age-relevant social-emotional curriculum and toolkits.

 Progress of teachers, children and schools is carefully documented and evaluated using a set of established tools and frameworks – through a structured evaluation process. The program demonstrated that over 50% of teachers in the first year showed improvements in their social-emotional competencies, classroom delivery and classroom engagement, and close to 70% of all children enrolled showed improvements in social-emotional parameters over the baseline.

To learn more about Learning Curve Life Skills Foundation’s work, visit the website www.learning-curve-foundation.org or e-mail us at lclsfmedia@gmail.com.