May 24, 2015

Why Schools Need to Teach and Practice Humanity

By Mithula Guganeshan / filmsforaction.org

Schools need to play a major role in developing and creating better humans than merely producing students. We need to question the norm of “Getting excellent results Vs. Being an Excellent human being”. There needs to be a balance in terms of both gaining knowledge and being an excellent human being. As adults, we should help and direct the children, the future generation towards developing themselves as humans with humanity. If Mathematics, Science, and History are important as a subject, why don’t we emphasize the importance to include subjects on teaching and practicing empathy, kindness, compassion, values of life, helping each other, saving yourself and others from harm and abusive behaviour. What makes these topics any less important than Physics and History?

We spend enormous amount of our significant budding years at school just learning theories and histories, and not giving much or any importance to practicing humanity and appreciating the simple gifts of life. Humans should learn about the importance of practicing humanity and living life with compassion from an early age and this must be made as a compulsory subject at schools.

Quite a number of issues prevailing in the world today could only be happening due to lack of empathy and compassion. Rapes, high usage of drugs, alcoholism, elders abandoned, racism, gender disparity, physical and emotional abuses are portraying lack of humanity. There are many organization and groups who are fighting against all these, with the hope to end this. But while we deal with these issues with adults, we need to set the right path for the youngsters, the future generation.

There is hype about introducing sex education in schools, yet most importantly we need to question if sex education is the only important additional subject needed today. Children from a young age need to learn to live a life with purpose and compassion. Schools need to be responsible for producing excellent humans and the syllabus and the activities should be re-arranged in such a manner to educate appropriately. In my opinion, schools have failed humankind and the current school model could be improved further to a greater extent. Schools need to adapt and provide lessons and coaching for students to excel in both life and career.

Most importantly, the humanity subjects should only be allowed to be taught by eligible, specially trained and accredited teachers while it’s extremely important for the teacher to instill confidence and trust to solve the student’s problems. Currently, some public school teachers are allowed to beat the students for talking/shouting in class, forgetting to do homework or not bringing their note book. First of all, to teach humanity, we need to live and demonstrate humanity. This could be one of the reasons causing domestic violence, as we grow we begin to practice what we learned.

There has been less limelight focusing on providing the best for students due to many reasons. Primarily because children are vulnerable, they don’t know to demand or know what are the essential lessons and skills for a successful and happy life. As we have walked that path and clearly understood that the current model could be improved further to benefit through humanity. Therefore, we need to take the necessary steps immediately to correct the mistakes and improve the quality of education delivered to the hopeful lives.

Some may argue that religion as a subject teaches the importance of these skills mentioned. However, we need to question whether it has worked? And how we can approach this topic in a practical way to suit the modern context.

Different types of abuse and rapes are some of the common issues faced by the society today. For example, cat calling, derogatory remarks at woman have been accepted as normality within the society. There needs to be a system in place, to educate the younger generation regarding the right and wrong doings. Life changing differences could have been made to millions of girls lives by teaching the difference between right and wrong touch and that they have a right to complain to their teachers at school. Instead, today we have accepted this as normality in life and women are expected to accept this is exactly how men are made.

Alcoholism and drugs are also one of the ways to hide away from reality and yourself, we need to learn coping mechanisms for life’s difficulty at an early age.
Schools need to take responsibility to deliver the best for the time invested by the student’s to bring a change. As parents we need to enroll the children in schools which would provide the essential training to train the children to be humans with humanity, and then only excellent results follow.

Schooling is an essential part of every individual’s life and we need to emphasize and only include lessons to benefit the students and society. Moreover, if a baby could learn swimming, then humanity can be instilled into children’s hearts at an early age, easily. The key to make this change lies with the educators and schools as they play a significant role in shaping our lives to be better and in turn contributing to a happier society.

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