What do we want for our child?” Parents have many answers to this question – ranging from material success, to health & happiness. But underneath each answer, there is a desire that child learns to face the uncertainties of the ever-changing world and is able to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life and is happy through the life.
The key to achieving happiness is Life skills such as critical thinking creative thinking, collaborative skills, self-expression that give humans a full-filling life.
The news ‘No-Limit’ curriculum is a new experiment where subjects are used as a medium to develop the Life Skills. So, when main focus is on developing life skills, the learning happens along the way.
Traditionally schools have been focused on learning and these learning methodologies have kept evolving over a period of time including Smart Boards, Project Based Learning, Experiential learning, adaptive/personalized learning. The ‘No-Limit’ curriculum goes to the next level and instead of focusing on learning, would change the goal post and make developing skills of children as the main focus.
Today, children are not interested in merely cramming the facts, but in discovering, creating and establishing by themselves. A cycle of learning things by experience rather than just feeding it to them is a more effective approach. This cycle begins with an experience that the student has had, followed by an opportunity to reflect on that experience. Then students may conceptualize and draw conclusions about what they experienced and observed, leading to future actions in which the students experiment with different behaviours.
This process of gaining experience with every experiment will lead to different conclusions and behaviours and gradually a student develops life skills. In particular, life skills are a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people think critically, creatively, make informed decisions, solve problems and communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others and cope with stress & emotions and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner.
With ‘No-limit’ curriculum, the learning would become more simple and experiential with the use of fun activities and practical methodology. It includes various interventions like meditation, joyful exercises, indoor games, storytelling, group discussions, skits, individual and group presentations, activities for rapport building and team-work.
The curriculum design does not only concentrates on practical subjects like mathematics and science but also, subjects like civics would be taught with experience-based learning. The school system is set-up with keeping common civics in mind, which a student will learn on daily basis. Notions like Fundamental Rights could be taught by integrating common ground rules which a student has to follow, besides organizing school elections that help them learn the common electoral process and develop their decision-making skills.
The assessment of children would be based on something radically different from the current parameters. For this purpose, Parwarish, the creator of the curriculum has designed the ‘No Limit Scale’, which works on 9 parameters each child is born with.
These parameters are – happiness; self-confidence, high self-esteem, sedulous, emotional health, responsibility, ingenuity, humane and self-expression.
Other measures like personalised education, open communication, project based learning, living skills and athlete based programs will also be inculcated in the curriculum by the school to empower students. These initiatives will adopt adaptive learning, a transparent educational environment, a practical learning approach, multiple self-enrichment programs to ensure a unique learning curve, inspire dynamic learning, encourage active exploration and ensure holistic growth and development.
The Curriculum aims to deliver students an environment of learning and exploration, develop key life-skills and competencies and live a life they are happy with. One of the goals of the approach is to support children enhance their ability to take responsibility for making healthier choices, build their self-confidence and self-esteem and enhance problem-solving and decision-making ability by utilizing their observation and thinking ability, leading to a “happier” lives. The curriculum focuses on meditation, moral teachings, and mental exercises to achieve its goal of turning students into confident and responsible individuals.
The curriculum would be well integrated and run on CBSE board.
For teachers to deliver such curriculum, extensive trainings of the is needed. The teachers need to be trained on creating activities for students in both inside and outside the students’ classrooms. That’s where students’ observation, creative and critical thinking skills are nurtured. This would give students everyday opportunities to unleash their unlimited potential.
