Aristotle said, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” Fifty years ago, the idea was that abstract rationality was the epitome of human intelligence, but now Emotional Intelligence (the ability to use emotions effectively and productively) counts for greater success in life than intelligence quotient (IQ). Emotional Intelligence (EI) is emerging as a critical factor for sustaining high achievement, retention, and positive behavior as well as improving life’s success. Researchers once said emotions impede thinking, but in the last few decades they’ve found that emotions actually are critical to thinking.
There is no doubt that the most successful people are not necessarily those with high IQ’s but rather those with highly developed interpersonal and social skills. While the focus of teaching learning in schools is too academic, exam oriented and theoretical that the teachers hardly get to tap the emotions of students, as a result we are producing literates, not educated young people. The need of the hour is that schools understand the concept of emotional intelligence, as it leads to positive school outcomes, and helps the child stay connected, learn better and feel safe. Both teacher and student proficiency in EI is expected to influence effective communication, management of stress and conflict, maintenance of a positive school environment, and academic or workplace success.
Attention, which is basic to learning, memory and behavior is driven by emotions, and it is these varied emotions which the child reflects in the classrooms and playgrounds of schools. Daniel Goleman’s most famous claim is that while IQ predicts success in exams, Emotional Intelligence predicts success in life – and particularly at school. It is commonly assumed that to learn, students have to ‘feel good about themselves’ or have to ‘have good self-esteem’. Children’s ‘emotional apprenticeship’ takes place by watching how other people deal with their emotions. Studies of children revealed that it was not the events that they witnessed affected their development; it was the way the adults around them reacted to those events. Being around a teacher who continually ‘loses it’ is bad for the emotional development of students. Mothers who respond calmly to their child’s anger or distress help them grow into emotionally robust youngsters, however mothers who either do not respond – who deal with an emotion by ignoring it – or who respond emotionally back – perhaps reacting to their child’s inconsolable distress with panic or irritation – tend to breed children who are more aggressive, less tolerant of stress, and less sociable. Children’s emotional apprenticeship continues when they arrive at play-group and school. In schools, teachers take over the modelling and reinforcing functions. Emotional Intelligence education probably depends on the way teachers publicly respond to their own shifting moods and stresses, and the way they deal with the children, as it does on set-piece discussions or activities. Children who have a high EI tend to behave in more socially appropriate, non-aggressive ways at school and tend to be relatively popular, prosocial, and secure; students who have deficits in EI skills have been linked to alcohol and tobacco use, anxiety and depression, poor physical and psychological health and violence.
To be emotionally intelligent, schools should listen to those whom they serve, provide many opportunities for face-to-face contact; share ideas and vision; take emotional literacy into account when making appointments; and ensure that there is a range of different personal skills and qualities in staff which the students can model. Inclination to be ‘persistent’ or ‘resilient’ in the face of difficult learning is often quoted in the Emotional Intelligence literature as a virtue to be cultivated, and up to a point it is. Automatically breaking off as soon as you can’t do something (because you think that means you’re stupid) is not going to get you very far. Emotional Intelligence is an honourable ambition for any teacher or school, but a hard one to fulfil and being emotionally literate – able to talk fluently about emotions – is very different from being emotionally sensitive. As far as possible, respond to students’ emotions in a way that acknowledges them without being emotionally reactive as everyone has limits of tolerance, even you.
REFERENCE:
9th march 2016.Emotionally intelligent schools.Greater Kashmir.retrieved from
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/story/211478.html
