
Is it time for schools to try to boost kids' emotional intelligence? - robg
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/04/05/the_other_kind_of_smart/?page=full
======
tokenadult
"In recent years, the results have started to come in, and they suggest that
emotional knowledge can indeed be learned in the classroom. Emory University
psychologist Stephen Nowicki has found that interventions can teach kids to
read faces better. Mark Greenberg of Penn State has found that emotional
learning classes can make kids better at controlling themselves when upset.
Researchers looking at a curriculum called the Resolving Conflict Creatively
Program found that such classes also made children less likely to falsely
misread intent - in particular less likely to assume hostility in ambiguous
social situations."

I Googled for some scholarly citations before posting this extract of the
submitted article. It's interesting to hear that there are possibly some
interventions in this area with a research base. The term "emotional
intelligence" is almost certainly overbroad in designating a variety of
modular abilities not closely related one to another, but some of those
abilities appear to be subject to training effects, and most have plenty of
real-world usefulness, so this will be an interesting area of research.

To answer the question posed by the article title, I would like to see schools
do much better at teaching reading and math, supposedly their current job,
before investing too much time in trying to teach emotional intelligence,
which I think is more a family's job.

~~~
stcredzero
Why are some parts of the country considered more "laid back" than others or
considered to have more "nice people?" I suspect that environmental factors
are very important in terms of teaching people emotional and social coping
skills. The Lord of the Flies environment we've created in many schools, where
the only adults that kids can model after are in the same unpopular,
beleaguered position as umpires at a baseball game, and the only other
available models are kids who have just been there a couple of years longer.

It's not that schools teaching emotional intelligence is a great idea. It's
more that the status quo at most schools is just plain bad.

------
taishi
I'm fairly certain this is the worst idea I have ever read. The "programming"
done by public schools is bad enough already, trying to get kids to think the
same. Now they want them to feel the same.

------
gruseom
That would require teachers who possess emotional intelligence themselves.

------
xenophanes
> Is it time for schools to try to boost kids' emotional intelligence?

Please no. They will only do harm.

------
lsc
heh. Emotional intelligence: something liberal arts people made up so they
don't feel quite so bad about being kindof dumb.

------
hth
Yes! Just my 2c!

