Answer:
It is already 1.30 p.m. The most awaited bell has rung. You already started to pack your bag and get ready to go back home for a nap. Suddenly, you thought of having to stay back at school until 4.00 p.m. for your co-curricular activity. The plan of getting a nice comfortable nap on your lovely bedroom has been ruined by the co-curricular activity. Are students and teachers glad to stay back after school for co-curricular activities, almost daily?
Co-curricular activities are programmes organized by schools for students. They are being carried out after school hours. Co-curricular activities consist of uniform bodies, clubs or societies, sports or games, and service or charity work. They are said to be the essential element in shaping a person’s worth of belief in life. I partially agree that co-curricular activities play the major role in moulding one’s credibility in life for three reasons, namely, co-curricular activities can help students to have better leadership qualities and improve communication skills or soft skills but academics aspect is vital as well.
Firstly, co-curricular activities can build leadership qualities during one’s involvement in those activities. Each society that has been established for students in school will need a list of committee members to govern the club or society. Thus, most students will be given an opportunity to handle and administer the itineraries or activities in the particular club. These elected committee members or board of directors will have to lead a team, group, squad or platoon in order to assure that everything will be implemented as planned. For example, there will be posts like captains, presidents, head prefects, secretaries and treasurers to maintain the well-being of their own groups. Being a secretary or treasurer will also train the students to write minutes of meetings or reports and prepare accounts or financial statements which will be very useful for their future working life or even foe self records at home. Therefore, co-curricular activities can build great leadership qualities in a person.
Besides that, co-curricular activities are also important to enhance one’s communication skills or soft skills. Many employers have been lamenting that fresh graduates are lacked of soft skills needed in the working place. Those students should involve themselves in co-curricular activities to sharpen their communication skills from younger age. This is because they can mix and mingle around during meetings and activities held by their clubs that they join. They will learn to communicate with each other as a group to fulfil a task or complete an activity. In this way, they can get more acquaintances or friends too. In addition, this can improve social integration as well since they are mixing around with people from different races and ages. Not only that, they can learn to cooperate with their senior or junior members during a task or to build rapport with each other. The invention of social networks like Facebook, Skype, or Friendster have been a barrier to people to communicate face-to-face and meet up in person for a chat as everything is done online already. Ergo, co-curricular activities are crucial to improvise one’s communication and soft skills, instead of letting the students to sit in front of their modern square screens during their free time.
However, academics or paper qualifications are vital too. This is why only 10% are allocated for co-curricular activities and 90% are allocated on major exam results when selecting scholars for admission into public universities in Malaysia. Besides, most scholarship criteria are based on excellent exam results instead of their co-curricular achievements. That is why most parents want their children to pass exams with flying colours and keep them busy with tuitions and skip their co-curricular activities in school. Moreover, a Masters holder will be given a better position than a degree holder during job recruitments, as we can see in newspaper classifieds too. Those that are less educated will just work as blue collar workers while those that have better qualifications will be the white collar workers or sit in an air-conditioned office, on the top level of the building. After all, your maid will not be labouring in your house anymore if she or he has gained a better qualification. Hence, curriculum is also crucial in one’s life too.
In conclusion, I partially agree that co-curricular activities play the major role in moulding one’s credibility in life based on the point that co-curricular activities can help to gain leadership qualities and improve communication skills, but academics is conclusive too. Hopefully, the young generations will have a balance between their studies and co-curricular involvements.
