Striking the right balance between academics and co –curricular activities, is the key to be a flourishing individual in life.
The kindergarten children of today will be joining the professional workforce in 2040. We have no idea what the world will look like by that time. Yet we are all charged up to prepare our children to face the world during that time. Our children might need a wider range of competencies to navigate through challenges in a future globalised economy. Many will work in jobs that do not exist now. Many will need advanced linguistic, cross cultural and entrepreneurial skills. Technology will continue to change the world in ways we cannot imagine.  Therefore, the question would be , will excelling in academics alone will  help them or  should they also take up co-curricular activities seriously to make them – an all rounder, to participate fully in the future world.

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Benefits of Academic Excellence – Enables Healthy Mind
•    Helps you to gain good and in depth knowledge
•    Teaches you to work hard
•    Teaches  you to be committed and sincere to achieve your goal
•    Fetches you admission in the right and best colleges
•    Aids you to receive academic scholarships
Benefits of Co-curricular activities – Enables Healthy Body & Behaviour
•    Teaches Team work
•    Helps you learn Time management
•    Gets you involved in diverse interests
•    Teaches you to prioritize
•    Teaches you the importance of commitment
•    Aids you to make a contribution
•    Helps you to build relationship skills
•    Exercise leadership
•    Raises your self esteem
•    Helps you to take initiative
•    Assists you in university admission particularly overseas

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Therefore academics and co- curricular activities should go hand in hand to make our children, better professionals who will be competent enough to face the challenges of the future. Care should be taken to get the right balance. While co –curricular activities has many benefits, one has to consider how much is too much. When children get involved in too many activities, they will have academic problems or they may not get enough rest that they may need. Getting involved in few activities of choice and aptitude can be a great.  It is vital to talk to our children, understand their interest and aptitude, set some limits and make them pick out a couple of co-curricular activities and make sure that they handle them diligently & routinely.
 In short, children who take up co-curricular activities will reap improvement in their academic and life skills because co-curricular activities teach them team work , discipline, responsibility, goal setting and make them more accountable. In fact what children learn outside the classroom in the cricket field or in football or in dramatics will help them cope up with the challenges in their workplace and in life.
Therefore, let us stop debating “Specialist Vs All rounder” and accept that our children should have a right combination of both, to be a better human and successful professional.

 

– By Jayanti Ramanath

 

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