Image from the internet for illustration purposes only
Reams of research
findings are put out every day that emphasize and overemphasize the
need for Soft Skills. Morphed into Life Skills these days, these set
of intangible skills apparently provides the passport to a better job and
brighter future.
Professional Colleges
are urged to integrate soft skills training to all their students.
Recently, when I visited a professional (technical) college in
Tamil Nadu to talk about the Life Skills training that we offer, I was
stumped when the College Training and Placement officer reached
inside his desk and pulled out hard bound tomes: Soft skills Vol. I,
Soft skills Vol. II and Soft skills Vol III.
A quick glimpse into
the manuals had these classic gems of questions that we have all
grown up with right from our school days :
What is Soft Skills?
How many Soft skills are
there?
What are the top ten soft skills?
When was Soft skills
introduced in India?????
As I silently mourned
the death of soft skills at the altar of rote learning, the beaming
Placement
Officer said, All our
students have cleared all the volumes and have scored 100%. We are
now going to print Vol IV !?
If this is the kind of
response by some Professional Colleges to “Teach” soft skills to
their students,
when will they ever
learn that soft skills is a “Skill” and need to be applied in real
world settings. Soon these colleges will be proudly declaring: 100%
placement and 100% pass in Soft skills.
I walked away
wondering, after all the massive efforts to bring out bulky Volumes
and reducing Soft skills to just another subject, whatever I wanted to
passionately convey to the students is “Out of Syllabus”
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