Education for Balanced Personality Development
Mr. Selwyn Bhajan
Former Human Resource Executive
There is a significant challenge in our Caribbean education system with respect to personality development pedagogy. Careful analysis of the tenets of modern education in the Caribbean region revealed that educational processes (from CESC to MBA) evolve around academic certification systems that fulfil the goal of obtaining employment with basic insights and foundational literacy for business and industry needs and for satisfying employability requirements and profiles articulated by business corporations and organisations. This restrictive educational approach places little or limited emphasis on personality and mature self-development. This results in “academically qualified” but varying degrees of physically, emotionally, psychologically, and socially immature persons, even if and when they climb the supervisory, managerial and executive ladders.
Part of this research is centred around a registered NGO in Trinidad and Tobago, involved in family counselling outreach, community leadership development, training of community life skills coaches, charitable outreach to needy and socially marginalised families, education of refugee children and in Employability Skills training. Many of the individuals and families interacted with are from economically challenged homes and communities and the young adults seeking employment have little or no self-esteem and hope for sustainable employment. Personality development is often overshadowed by basic survival instincts and daily family sustenance activities. Underdeveloped personality maturation often leads to low self-respect and self-esteem, a “daily survival hustle” mindset, sometimes a “petty crime” mentality and low-level corporate jobs (e.g. security guards and maintenance workers). This phenomenon is seen across the developing Caribbean region. This exploratory research paper seeks to address the delicate human challenge of personality maturity of students by incorporating a new set of learning parameters and paradigms for counteracting this critical issue.
The approach includes incorporating into educational institutes an integrated blended learning process that covers the following critical areas of human growth and development: Emotional Intelligence for emotional maturity, Mindfulness Formations for psychological maturity, Key Principles of Human Longevity Living for general physical ‘maturity’ or physical well-being, and Life Skills Competencies and Employability Skills for social maturity. Personality Maturation and Coaching is the crucial element that assesses each student in their specific areas for growth and guides a personalised pathway required for their unique Personality Blossoming. The participants of this conference would benefit greatly from analysing and appreciating this personality maturation approach as a valid and needed educational strategy for improving the quality of graduates from their institutes, as well as the general society. The target group from this intervention are all higher learning institutions that offer qualifications from CSEC to Post Graduate degrees. This Education for Balanced Personality Development approach enhances the quality of students graduating from any of these institutions as both being quality experts in their field and as well as quality human beings, an asset to any employer and industry but also as a refined and positively productive member of the society.
Moderator:
Dr. Linda Steele,
Former Senior Assistant Registrar,
The UWI St. Augustine Campus