The importance of teaching Emotional Intelligence in our schools
The suicide rate in Sri Lanka is reducing. From a high of 47 per 100,000 persons in 1995, the second highest rate in the world, it is now 14.2 per 100,000, almost equal to the US rate of 13.5. Should we be happy about it?
Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and science writer popularised the emotional intelligence or EQ concept in his 1990 book Emotional Intelligence
Certainly, but there is another worrying trend. The number of people attempting deliberate self-harm (we don’t call it attempted suicide anymore as the intention is not always to die) is rising. The exact numbers are difficult to measure as many such incidents are not officially reported but normally around 20 times more than the suicide rate. Studies show that most such attempts are not due to a mental illness or severe depression but impulsive acts brought on by stressful life events.
Self-harm is commoner among the young and Sri Lankan youth seem particularly vulnerable to the emotional upheavals brought on by life changes which should normally have been taken in their stride. Can we teach our young persons to manage their emotions better? What role should schools and parents play in teaching this important skill necessary for healthy living?
In 1990 two psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer published a landmark paper and defined emotional intelligence as ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.’ In other words, it is the ability to know what you and others are feeling at any given moment and use this understanding to help you to think and act. Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and science writer popularised the emotional intelligence or EQ concept in his 1990 book Emotional Intelligence,a New York Times bestseller.
In an elementary school, a group of six-year-olds is sitting around their teacher. She asks, “Does anyone have a problem they would like to share?” A boy raises his hand and tells how a bully in the playground threatened him. Another boy agrees to roleplay the situation and the teacher and her students discuss ways to handle the situation and the emotions that follow in a safe way.
In another fifth-grade class, an older student group is discussing the scenario where one of them borrowed his parent’s phone and accidentally dropped it breaking the screen. What should he do? Should he confess, hide the phone or pretend it was an accident? This exemplifies an emotional reasoning exercise, a Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum component, derived from emotional intelligence research.
Unlike IQ the Intelligence Quotient which is relatively stable, education and training can enhance a person’s EQ. What better time to teach this important skill than in the early school years? In over 30,000 schools across the United States, a programme for SEL is now a required part of the curriculum.
A school curriculum traditionally teaches material which uses and trains our cognitive skills. These are the skills our brain uses to pay attention, read, learn, remember and reason. They work together to take in information from the outside world move it into our memory bank and use it in our day to day life. There is another skill set a person has to master to be successful in life which are non-cognitive or soft skills. Learning to manage our emotional and social life is an important soft skills element. Only recently have we understood how important soft skills are to a student’s success in academic and non-academic life.
The Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) was formed in the US in 1994 to establish high-quality, evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) as an essential school curriculum component. CASEL defines SEL as “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” CASEL identifies SEL as the process for developing skills across five social and emotional competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness relationship building and responsible decision making.
Why is SEL important? SEL programmes improve students ‘social and emotional skills, relationships with peers and teachers, attitudes towards self, school and others and academic performance. Research shows that students who follow SEL programmes gain 11 to 17 percentile points on achievement tests, have 11% higher grade point averages compared to their peers, less high-risk behaviours like violence and drug and alcohol use and improved school attendance.
There have been some objections to SEL programmes. Some argue that SEL should not take valuable curriculum time and is best learned from parents, friends and life events and that we should not artificially teach about emotions in school. This is not a fair argument and would be similar to saying that we should not teach language in school as it is anyway spoken at home. There is always a place for a standard structured curriculum based skills set. SEL is too important a skill to leave to ad hoc learning.
Others may contend that since we have compulsory religious education in schools, we do not need secular programmes on managing emotions and social behaviour. I am afraid there is no good evidence that such compulsory religious teaching has positive effects on our soft skills. One might even say that separating students in the same school into different religious teaching programmes reduces harmony and increases bigoted thinking. Don’t we feel rather superior that we believe in the only true religion and others who believe differently are destined for a rather difficult afterlife whatever form it might take?
It is time we seriously consider starting SEL programmes in all our schools and leave religious education to religious institutions. If that is too controversial even to contemplate, we could start with SEL programmes woven into the traditional curriculum. Such a programme would contribute to reducing rising deliberate self-harm rates and more importantly help us get along with each other in harmony and fruitful collaboration.