Studying and skilling for the job market is no longer enough to secure your child’s future. In addition to academic excellence, kids also need essential life skills. I know this because Kattabomman’s school organised a workshop for parents on life skills coaching.
They invited two agencies, Agency X and Agency Y (names changed to deny them free publicity), to give online presentations. Parents, after listening to them, had to pick one of them. Whichever agency got more votes would get the contract to conduct life skills classes for students of the school, from Nursery to Class XII.
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So I sat down to listen to both. Agency X had a solid but rather traditional approach to life skills. They wanted to focus on things like empathy, kindness, gender equity, and so on. Their whole value system struck me as fundamentally flawed. In fact, their very first module was on equality and how all human beings are equal before the law. Seriously? I had half a mind to fine them ₹1 for contempt of reality.
Some of their ‘learning outcomes’ were outright dangerous. For instance, they wanted to instil a ‘questioning habit’. In other words, rather than teach your child to swallow government propaganda and forward fake news on WhatsApp, they’ll train them not to accept anything at face value. Can you beat that? Even the dumbest Indian parent knows how risky it is to have a questioning habit: not only will it get you fired from your job, in today’s day and age it could land you in jail.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only parent who found the presentation off-putting. A few others shouted down the two executives who were going on and on about useless things like compassion and fairness and asked them to peddle their “anti-national life skills” elsewhere. Then it was the turn of Agency Y to make their presentation, and I could immediately tell they were on the right track.
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Outdated moral biases
Agency Y began by listing out five life skills that they believed were essential for every Indian child to survive and flourish in the India of the future. The first and most important skill, said the smartly dressed young executive taking us through the PPT, is the capacity to hate. “The days of empathy and harmony are gone,” he said. “Today, the best opportunities demand the ability to mobilise one’s hidden reserves of hatred. In a polarised nation, if you want your child to rise to the top, you must teach her to hate, or at least be comfortable operating in an ecosystem of hate. If you can’t do that, your child will languish,” he said.
Second, every child must learn to lie. “Six out of every five sentences you will read today is a lie,” he said. “The global market for falsehood has been growing at a rate of 28% per annum. In India, it’s been growing at a rate of 56% — the fastest in the world. At the same time, the market for truth has disappeared. So think about it. Which is the more important life skill: respecting the truth or mastering the art of lying?”
All the parents yelled in unison, “Lying, lying, lying!”
Third, every child must learn to cheat. “Fraud, especially financial and educational fraud, is a recession-proof industry in India,” the executive said. “But due to outdated moral biases, cheating is still not taught in the Indian classroom. Surprisingly, it is not acknowledged as a core life skill even by the current regime in its latest National Education Policy. But we will plug this gap by training your child to become a world class cheat.” All of us parents cheered when we heard that.
“The fourth life skill is a bit controversial, since kids tend to learn this on their own, especially on the playground. Yes, I’m referring to bullying,” he said. “By the time your kids grow up, the bullying of the weak and the marginalised will be India’s top recreation activity. You don’t want your kid to miss out on that. Our research-based curriculum on the best bullying practices will ensure that your child grows up into a big bully, be it at the workplace or on the road or in the media.”
The fifth and last life skill, “without which the other four won’t take you far, is the art of sucking up to power,” he said. “No matter how great a bully your child is, there will always be a bigger bully. So he must have the skill to deal with the bigger bully — and this is where the art of sycophancy comes in.”
Agency Y concluded by saying that for a reasonable fee, payable annually, they will groom every child into an ideal citizen of New India who will make a positive contribution to society through his/ her ability to hate, lie, cheat, bully the weak, and toady up to the powerful. You can imagine my relief when Agency Y won the contract.
G. Sampath is Social Affairs Editor , The Hindu.