The idea that education should be about more than just grades never goes away, and the advent of mental health awareness might see that idea gain more traction, Will Brodie writes.
In his 2010 campaign launch for the Victorian state election, then Premier John Brumby proposed that every Year 9 student in a Victorian state school “spend at least two weeks away from home to ready them for adult life”.
City children would experience life in the country; country children would spend time in the city. The program would equip students with “real world knowledge” and teach them essential skills including bushfire awareness, advanced water safety, first aid, self-discipline, self-defence, and drug and alcohol awareness.
Such capabilities are usually labelled ‘life skills’, practical assets that help you live a healthy and fulfilling life. They also help make students productive, efficient, and successful and enable them to operate independently of their parents after leaving school.
The 2010 life skills proposal, central to a $288 million education plan, was soon dubbed ‘Brumby’s Boot Camps’ and criticised as a populist election stunt wasting money better spent on more urgent needs, including funding for educational psychologists, student welfare co-ordinators, integration aides and remedial teachers.
Brumby’s Labor Party lost that election. No boot camps. But the idea of incorporating more life skills into education is never far away, because people continue to ask: ‘What skills do we want our kids to possess by the time they leave high school’?
Boot camp time
In July this year, journalist Julie Szego, addressing the anxieties of “listless and withdrawn” children following pandemic lockdowns, said “if ever the (boot camp) plan’s time has come it is now”.
Szego envisaged every kid undertaking “landscape painting, skiing, taking science classes by a river, and going cold turkey on digital communication”. They would write letters home – on paper.
“I imagine such a program would be transformative for some, for others a bucolic hell. Either way it would amount to life, vividly experienced, and that’s usually fertile ground for personal growth.
“Beyond emergency relief, our children are crying out for opportunities to foster resilience and emotional strength.”
Szego anticipated the “eye-rolling” of overburdened teachers at the suggestion and acknowledged that staff shortages meant schools were barely coping with normal programming let alone “exotic extras”.
“But staffing in a range of sectors is a problem policymakers will be forced to seriously tackle, regardless. Meanwhile, the ‘exotic extra’ must be redefined as essential.”
Szego’s proposal is primarily meant as a boost for kids traumatised by being isolated for too long. And she acknowledges that many independent schools already offer enriching experiences outside the classroom.
However, life skills advocates feel there is a huge shift in emphasis necessary in all schools to properly prepare students for life beyond the school gates.
Life skills evolve
Traditional expectations of life skills advocates have been that school leavers should be able to cook, change a tyre, apply first aid, do their taxes, and pay bills on time, run a household, and grasp fundamental physical survival skills.
Some life skills advocates demand computer science and video game design are modern must-have skills.
However, these days, life skills are more sophisticated.
Everyone from academics to bloggers highlights the importance of mental health and/or mindfulness tuition.
“Mindfulness can develop skills for concentration and impulse control,” writes international think tank Big Think. “It can help young people to better manage their worrying thoughts and discover how the brain and mind really works.
“Simple mediation, breathing skills and finding how to ‘be in the moment’ will stay with you for life.”
According to Big Think, mental health classes should foster“practical mental wellbeing skills”. “Students would be introduced to methods of self-reflection and emotional assessment. They would practice techniques for effectively dealing with intense emotions such as stress, anger, and sadness.”
