Enhancing Student Success: Schools' Role in Imparting Life Skills

This essay explores the crucial role of schools in imparting life skills to students, moving beyond traditional academic education to foster well-rounded individuals. It argues that schools should prioritize developing skills such as resilience, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence through extracurricular activities and happiness programs. The essay highlights the growing concerns of crime and obesity among students, attributing these issues to the schools' focus on grades over overall well-being. While acknowledging the influence of parents and peers, the essay emphasizes that schools have a significant responsibility in shaping students' personalities and preparing them for the challenges of life. The essay concludes that schools should shift their focus from solely achieving good grades to the overall development of students by conducting various life-skills activities to bring positive change.

RUNNING HEAD: ENGLISH 0
LIfe-skills addition in STUDENTS: Schools

ENGLISH 1
Schools are the best places where a child learns is first lessons of lifetime. For a long
time, Schools have been associated with the goals of imparting the academic education. It
was considered the first step towards the bright academic career where an individual can
attain a successful job with great future prospective. During the 17th and 18th century,
Schools were considered the place where the all-round development of child was initiated. It
was the place where the children used to learn basic lessons of lifetime thus initiating the
basic developments of the students (Anderson, 2018). It could be said that purpose of
attending a school was not to achieve the good grades but to take home great lessons to sail
through life smoothly. But as the time passed, the mere purpose of attending the school
reduced to obtaining the good grades to secure a great placement in the renowned company.
Many schools have forgotten the real essence of their establishment. The following essay will
be discussing about the importance of the schools in adding the life skills in students to be
more successful.
A 15-year-old teenager fails to secure a goal in football game for three times and after
that the teenager gives up on the dream to becomes a footballer. In the above situation, the
teenager was taught every concept and techniques of becoming the best footballer in school
but he was never taught with the lessons of becoming resilient towards a goal. The school
never taught the importance of not giving up and becoming adamant towards the goal. The
above situation reflects the responsibility of the schools in teaching the students about various
life skills so that they do not give up in the face of adversity or the big challenges. According
to Hamilton, schools are the importance place for the all-round development of a child as it
teaches them the techniques of sailing through life smoothly (Hamilton, 2018).
In the 19the century, the importance of schools has been reduced to helping the
students to secure the high grades for the lucrative placements. In the midst of competition,
schools have lost their essence of initiating the productive development of the students. The
time has come for the schools to understand the importance of imparting the great moral
lessons and life skills to students for them to be successful in all areas of life. The growing
rate of crime and obesity among the school students points out to the very fact that the
schools no longer care about the overall health and ethics of the students.
They no longer care about the development of the resilience attitude among the
students, their only concern is to help them secure the profitable jobs so that they can live a
luxurious life style (Howieson, 2017). According to the Ogunfowora, 1 in 5 students in USA

ENGLISH 2
schools are suffering from obesity and 1 in 10 have committed a petty crime. Such situation
is prevailing because the schools have forgotten their responsibility towards the students
(Ogunfowora, 2014).
It is important for the schools to get back towards their mission of adding life skills
and extracurricular activities to initiative greater success for the target students. If the schools
start taking their responsibility of developing the students positively, it will result in more
positivity in the targeted age-group. According to Santoro, there is high level of mental stress
in the school students due the high pressure of securing the best job or a luxurious lifestyle
(Santoro, 2017). The schools can help the students adding the very important lifestyles by
organizing happiness programs where they can be taught the importance of keeping oneself
happy in all the life situations.
Conducting such happiness programs will be helpful in development of life wisdoms
in them so that they understand the very essence of life, helping them to navigate all the
situations successfully. The other important aspect is conducting extraocular activities that
include sports, competitions, and entrepreneurship cells. These extracurricular activities are
highly helpful in developing various skills of patience, getting rid of stage fear, and other
irrelevant fears that affect the mankind. Conducting sports activities promotes flexibility of
mind and body among students thus leading to high level of understanding among them
(Wilson, 2017).
(Anderson, 2018)
The above picture is quite depictive of the fact that sports promotes the well-being of
mental and physical health in an individual. It initiates the clarity of mind and purification of

ENGLISH 3
the physical body. besides, its various visible benefits, it also develops the positive attitude of
an individual towards life where an individual is able to sail effectively through all the
challenges of life by deriving positive lessons from it.
Besides these activities, the extracurricular activities that include presentations of
different topics, and speech delivery will be helpful in eradicating stage fear from them. Such
activities will be highly helpful in making them fearless in various areas of life. It will also
make them decisive and will lead in the development of iron-will in them to secure the best
places in future. According to Hamilton, the activities will result in high degree of
understanding between them thus making them a great fighter for life. Such activities are
highly helpful in making the target audience prudent for life so that high degree of
understanding can be achieved in the best possible manner (Hamilton, 2018).
Although schools are considered responsible for imparting life skills but they are not
completely responsible for that. According to Wilson ,schools cannot be made completely
responsible for adding life skills to students as there are other components that are
responsible that include parents, friend circle, and core attitudes (Wilson, 2017). Besides
schools, parents are highly responsible for fostering the values and lessons in children, the
way they are fostered affects their attitudes towards life in a manner it leads to positive or
negative attitudes. Schools reflect just the one part of the life of a student, the other part that
affects their developments is their personal life. In their personal life includes their parents
and friend circle who deal with the students thus affecting their psychology and attitude
towards life.
Schools can be responsible for making students add to their life skills to some extent
but it cannot transform their personalities in a manner that causes them to be successful in all
the areas. The components that affect them are their experiences, personalities that they
meet, parents, and friend circle. These components affect them to the highest extent thus
transforming their life in a positive manner (Anderson, 2018). The experiences also transform
them completely in a manner that leads to the complete transformation in a positive or
negative manner. The other important aspect that affects them are wisdom and the life lessons
imparted to them by their parents from the childhood. The friend circle also redirects their life
positively or negatively as the advice of the friends directs them either positively or
negatively towards the situation.

ENGLISH 4
Apart from these situations, there are various extraordinary situations that directs
them either to the positive track or a negative track. These extraordinary situation makes
them sometimes re-evaluate their life thus making them draw various inspiration to chose a
particular life path for themselves.
It can be concluded that schools also contribute to the life skills in students but it has
only half of the contribution as other components also affects their psychic towards the
particular things. A particular experience, situation, and an important person could change
the life track of an individual. Schools can only act as a framework to get big things done in a
highly effective manner but the rest lies on how an individual act towards a particular thing.
This does not mean that schools have no responsibility towards adding a life skill in an
individual but it has to consider its actions to bring about a positive change in it. Schools
should shift their focus from simply helping them achieving the good grades to overall well-
being. They should conduct various life-skills activities so that the some of the psychic
development could be done at schools.

ENGLISH 5
Bibliography
Anderson, R. (2018). The Efficient Organisation of Public Intellect: Lyon Playfair and
Scottish Education. Scottish Historical Review, 98(2), 266-290.
Hamilton, G. (2018). Management in Education,. Developing a coherent strategy to build
leadership capacity in Scottish education, 32(2), 72-78.
Howieson, C. (2017). To know ourselves? Research, data and policy-making in the Scottish
education system. . Journal of Education and Work,, 30(7), .700-711.
Ogunfowora, B. (2014). It’s all a matter of consensus: Leader role modeling strength as a
moderator of the links between ethical leadership and employee outcomes. Sage
journal, 55. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726714521646
Santoro, N. (2017). Teaching Culturally Diverse Pupils: How Ready Are Scottish Student-
Teachers?. In Teacher Education for the Changing Demographics of Schooling.
springer cham, 30(2), 55-8830. Retrieved from
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-54389-5_9
Wilson, M. (2017). Understanding the attainment gap through social closure: implications for
Scottish education policy. Scottish Educational Research Association Annual
Conference: Educational Futures in a Changing Landscape: Bridging Boundaries
or" Mind the Gap, 78(2), 55-77. Retrieved from
https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/publications/understanding-the-attainment-gap-
through-social-closure-implicati