Sunday, September 15, 2013
Francesca Bartos 2nd, Current Event 09-15-2013 "Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?
According to this article there is a new educational movement known as Social-Emotional Learning. This program, S.E.L. for short, is focused on trying to strengthen social and emotional skills. The main purpose of these programs is to get kids to understand and control their emotions through social exercises. They want children to be able to first understand and deal with their own emotional problems so that they can learn to empathize with others and sort out social issues as well. Research has shown that this kind of development not only helps emotional and self awareness, but academic achievement as well. These kinds of behaviors have also been known to be better predictors of career paths and children with in this program have proven to be less prone to depression and anxiety. However the article does also talk about how these kinds of programs can also just turn into lessons on social obligation instead of discussing complicated social situations. I think this is a healthy approach to teaching because I feel like emotions are more influential than people care to admit, so learning how to control or at least understand one's emotions is a good skill. However I feel like if it gets too structured and regulated it could turn into a strange behavior lecture program. Any input?
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My concern is that it seems like this program is combing school with therapy. Both school and therapy are vital in my opinion to keeping kids healthy mentally, but not so sure combing them would be beneficial. As fantastic as it would be to know at a young age how to perfectly handle every situation, part of the learning process is messing up a bit or failing. Makes people different by their own reactions to society.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really good point.
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