CO-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES PLAY THE MAJOR ROLE IN MOULDING ONE’S CREDIBILITY IN LIFE

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, 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. Thus, 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.

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