Neither Parents Nor Schools are Teaching Lifeskills to Children
- Madhukar Dama
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
And how both parents and schools blame each other while the child is left unprepared for real life.
INTRODUCTION: THE GENERATION OF UNTOUCHED HUMANS
Today’s child may know how to code, swipe, or recite facts.
But they don’t know how to:
Fix a torn shirt
Calm a racing mind
Make a roti
Comfort a friend
Trust nature
Sit in silence
They’re trained to perform, not live.
They’re filled with data, but deprived of wisdom.
Why?
Because life itself is no longer being taught.
And the two who were supposed to teach it — parents and schools —
have become mutual blameshifters.
---
THE BLAMESHIFTING GAME
Parents say:
> “We’re too busy — what are teachers doing all day?”
Schools say:
> “We teach subjects — values and skills must come from home!”
And in between?
A child who grows up:
Overstimulated but underdeveloped
Informed but incapable
Schooled but unskilled
---
THE TRUE LIFE SKILLS THAT SHOULD BE UNIVERSAL
50 skills every child across history once knew… now forgotten
Each item below includes:
What the skill is
Why it matters
How both home and school avoid it
What the child loses
---
I. CARE FOR THE BODY
1. Drinking water mindfully – Ancient humans drank only when thirsty. Today’s child sips sodas. No one teaches them to feel their body.
2. Recognising real hunger – Food is emotional now. We feed when bored, sad, or rushed.
3. Respecting bowel movements – Children are trained to hold in, suppress, ignore natural urges. Illness follows.
4. Simple illness care – Earlier, fever meant rest. Now, it means panic, pills, or shame.
5. Sleep with the sun – No more circadian awareness. Nights become screen-time. Mornings are war zones.
---
II. SURVIVAL & SELF-SUFFICIENCY
6. Making a fire – Once a rite of passage. Now forgotten. Even lighting a stove is forbidden.
7. Cooking a full basic meal – Rice, dal, roti. Life’s foundation. Ignored at school. Avoided at home.
8. Fetching water or using it wisely – Children have no concept of scarcity or gratitude toward water.
9. Stitching and mending clothes – Clothes are disposable now. But the skill teaches patience, precision, respect.
10. Cleaning one’s space – From sweeping to dishwashing, cleaning is dumped on maids or punished as a chore.
---
III. INTERACTION WITH NATURE
11. Identifying trees, fruits, birds – Nature once raised children. Now it's an “activity.”
12. Planting, watering, and harvesting – Not just food. This teaches rhythm, effort, gratitude.
13. Recognising seasons and sky signs – Earlier, every human watched the moon. Today, children know weather via apps.
14. Walking barefoot – Builds foot strength, grounding, and confidence. Modern culture calls it dirty.
15. Playing with mud and rain – Sensory development is replaced by sanitized, artificial play.
---
IV. PHYSICAL & MANUAL DEXTERITY
16. Chopping vegetables with control – A lost art. Sharp tools are now fear objects.
17. Hammering a nail or tightening a screw – No repair confidence. “Call the man” culture dominates.
18. Unclogging a drain, fixing a tap – Teaches problem-solving, mechanics, and independence.
19. Tying knots, folding clothes properly – Ancient household survival skills. Ignored as unimportant.
20. Balancing loads, carrying with care – From firewood to schoolbags — carrying taught strength and caution.
---
V. SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL STRENGTH
21. Naming emotions – Schools give marks, not emotional maps. Parents say “control yourself.”
22. Resolving conflict peacefully – Fights are punished or avoided. Children aren’t taught how to make peace.
23. Handling loss or heartbreak – Death, failure, breakups — children face them without preparation.
24. Saying 'No' with grace – Obedience is rewarded, assertiveness punished.
25. Crying safely – Tears are hidden or shamed. Emotional literacy is crushed early.
---
VI. THINKING & DECISION-MAKING
26. Asking questions fearlessly – Teachers shut down curiosity. Parents say “don’t argue.”
27. Making simple decisions – From clothes to snacks, children are told what to do, not taught how to choose.
28. Reflecting on mistakes without guilt – Everyone makes them. But reflection is never modeled or taught.
29. Accepting failure with dignity – Everything is win-lose. So failure becomes trauma.
30. Problem-solving through trial and error – Natural learning is blocked. Only right answers are rewarded.
---
VII. RELATIONSHIPS & RESPONSIBILITY
31. Caring for younger or older people – Sibling bonding and elder care build empathy. Now replaced by devices and nurses.
32. Helping without being told – Voluntary contribution has been replaced with “reward systems.”
33. Hosting guests and offering water – Hospitality is now a hotel word.
34. Cleaning up after oneself – From lunchboxes to toilets, children are rarely held accountable.
35. Sharing space, food, time – All of life is individualised now. Sharing is a speech, not a practice.
---
VIII. MONEY & SUSTAINABILITY
36. Using cash, understanding value – Everything is digital. Children have no sense of rupee-worth.
37. Saving from pocket money – Saving used to be a culture. Now it's a lecture.
38. Understanding need vs want – Parents blur this line. Schools never question consumerism.
39. Barter and negotiation – Ancient markets were negotiation schools. Kids now just click ‘Buy Now.’
40. Living with little – Minimalism was tradition. Now it’s a luxury retreat concept.
---
IX. PERSONAL IDENTITY & COURAGE
41. Trusting intuition – Schools teach logic, but not instinct. Parents dismiss gut-feelings.
42. Handling fear (of dark, animals, people) – Fear is avoided, not understood.
43. Speaking the truth despite pressure – Children learn to lie by watching adults justify.
44. Being alone without devices – Solitude is seen as a defect. Every second is filled.
45. Celebrating uniqueness without shame – Conformity is praised. Difference is bullied.
---
X. CULTURE, MEANING & STILLNESS
46. Sitting quietly without needing activity – Constant motion is seen as health. Stillness is not taught.
47. Knowing folk stories, songs, and family history – Schools teach foreign fairy tales. Parents forget their roots.
48. Understanding body rhythms (periods, digestion, fatigue) – The body is medicalised. Not known, not loved.
49. Helping during births, deaths, and rituals – Once the child was involved. Now they’re hidden away.
50. Appreciating the sacred in ordinary – Fire, water, elders, cows — once respected, now either deified or mocked.
---
THE FINAL COST OF THESE MISSING SKILLS
A child who can top exams but can't boil water
A child who can give presentations but can't process grief
A child who knows how to win, but not how to lose
A child who believes life is an app, love is a filter, and struggle is avoidable
This child becomes:
A helpless adult
A hollow parent
An anxious citizen
A perfect customer
---
HEALING DIALOGUE (Full-Length)
Title: “WE DIDN’T KNOW”
Characters:
Smita (mother, 41) – IT professional, believes her child is too soft and too slow.
Rajesh (school principal, 48) – Runs a popular private school, proud of his school’s ranks and discipline.
Madhukar (70s, hermit) – Lives in a small village, barefoot, teacher of forgotten wisdom.
---
[Scene: Under a banyan tree. Madhukar sits on a flat stone. A small fire crackles. Two urban visitors arrive, exhausted and impatient.]
SMITA:
We heard you can help children who are “lost.”
My son is 14. He’s angry, disinterested.
Won’t help in the house. Can’t chop vegetables. Can’t climb stairs without panting.
Yet scrolls through memes on inequality.
RAJESH:
We get many like that.
Parents bring broken kids after spoiling them.
And then blame the school.
MADHUKAR (quietly):
The child you both describe —
Is not broken.
He is exactly what you raised him to be.
SMITA (defensive):
We gave him the best! Cambridge board, music class, robotics kit, nutritionist, counsellor…
MADHUKAR:
Yes.
Everything except a chance to live.
Tell me —
Does he know the texture of dough?
The sound of boiling dal?
The smell of a rusted tap?
RAJESH (snapping):
We’re educators, not farmers.
MADHUKAR (smiling):
That is the root of the rot.
You turned education into exclusion.
You excluded:
Soil
Silence
Seasons
Sweat
Stillness
Suffering
All of which are teachers older than your syllabus.
SMITA:
But these aren’t essential in today’s world!
MADHUKAR:
Really?
Let me ask you:
1. Can he sit alone without a phone for 30 minutes?
2. Can he boil water, and wait for the whistle?
3. Can he comfort a crying friend?
4. Can he climb a tree? Repair a shirt? Bind a wound?
5. Does he know where his food comes from?
6. Can he name his emotions, face rejection, fall without breaking, or stand without applause?
RAJESH:
Those are life things.
Not part of school.
MADHUKAR:
Then what is school?
A training center to become incapable?
SMITA:
We assumed these things happen at school…
RAJESH:
And we assume they happen at home.
[A long silence. Crows call. A gust of wind shakes dried tamarind pods off the branches.]
MADHUKAR:
While you both assumed…
Your child was taught by TikTok.
And comforted by junk food.
And nurtured by a glowing screen.
He learnt more from ads than from ancestors.
You both fought over the duty.
But neither touched the child.
SMITA (softening):
He watches “how-to” videos to light a match.
He cried when the gas stove didn’t turn on.
He called me from college because he didn’t know how to wash his underwear.
I was proud he got into IIT.
Now I’m scared he can’t live alone.
MADHUKAR:
He can’t.
He was never raised for life.
He was raised for performance.
RAJESH:
You talk like school is useless.
MADHUKAR:
No.
I say school is sacred.
But you turned it into a syllabus mill.
A place where a child becomes:
Fluent in English
Fluent in fear
Fluent in formulas
But blind to breath.
Blind to effort.
Blind to simplicity.
SMITA (tears welling):
So what do we do now?
MADHUKAR:
First, you stop asking what the child should become.
And ask instead:
What have you become?
Have you learned to sweep a floor with joy?
To make rotis with love?
To eat with your hands and rest when tired?
If you don’t live these skills…
You can’t pass them on.
He doesn’t need your degrees.
He needs your presence, your hands, your being.
---
[Scene fades with the fire glowing. Madhukar teaches Smita to roll a chapati with uneven edges. She laughs. Rajesh watches the sunset for the first time without checking his watch.]
---
CHARLES BUKOWSKI-STYLE POEM
“FIFTY THINGS THEY NEVER TAUGHT ME”
they taught me
the square root of 36
before teaching me
how to plant a spinach.
they taught me
to fear mistakes,
but never how to fix
a button or a broken heart.
they taught me
to write an essay on water scarcity,
but not how to
fetch a bucket,
or how to share.
they taught me
capital cities,
but not where my food comes from.
they punished me
for daydreaming,
but never showed me
how to sit in silence
without going mad.
they taught me
to draw maps,
but never how to return home
when lost inside myself.
they celebrated me
for winning a debate,
but not
for comforting a crying friend.
they clapped
when I scored,
but they never clapped
when I cleaned my plate
and washed it.
they called it success.
I call it
abandonment.
I am
the perfectly manufactured
helpless adult.
topper in theory.
failure in life.
—
