Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman demonstrates
the value of right brain skills in business, medicine, education and many other
fields. He adopts the definition of
emotional intelligence by the Yale psychologist, Peter Salovey:
[1] knowing one's emotions, [2] managing emotions, [3] motivating
oneself, [4] recognizing emotions in others, [5] handling
relationships. Salovey subsumes in these categories Howard
Gardner's earlier theory of multiple intelligences. including
interpersonal, intrapsychic, spatial, kinesthetic, and musical,
as well as Gardner's emphasis on motivating by students by
getting them into the "flow" rather than by threat or reward.
One of
our goals will be expressiveness or emotional literacy: the ability to communicate
emotion in writing, the key to a lot of great literature and creative writing.
For most students all or almost all of the forty or more courses taken in college
focus on thought rather than emotion, the left brain rather than the right,
the mind rather than the heart. This is one attempt to redress the imbalance.
We are seeking "real" assent rather than
merely "notional" assent to the ideas of the authors of the Texas
Constitution who demanded a "university of the first class ... for the
promotion of literature." John Henry Newman, the Victorian Englishman
who wrote The Idea of a University a few years before the Texas Constitution
was framed, distinguished between "notional" assent, an intellectual
assent to a proposition, and what he called "real" assent, assent
of the whole person, assent of the heart as well as the head or, as we would
say now, of both sides of the brain. If our goal is the education of the whole
person we need to recall that, as Newman put it in his Grammar of Assent, "the
heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination,
by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history,
by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds
inflame us." Hence we will explore the logic of the humanities: "the
real and necessary method is...the cumulation of probabilities, independent
of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular
case which is under review; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too
subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and various
for such conversion, even were they convertible."
CONTEXT:
from "Teaching Emotional Literacy" by Jerome Bump, pp.
Roots of the Movement for Emotional Literacy in Schools.
The movement began with teacher
education experts in the 30's. They
were “convinced that education and mental hygiene were one and the same
thing, supported by humanistic psychologists who believed that “therapy
could take place not only behind closed doors but ... in school and community
settings as well” (Brand Therapy 31-2). In the 50’s, Jersild, who
anticipated the criticism that teachers 'playing amateur psychologist' in the
classroom could be harmful. . . . asserted that teachers were in no way assuming
the role of professionally trained psychologists nor taking on psychiatric
functions.... 'whether they will it nor not, whether they know it or not, teachers
are already practicing psychology in their dealings with children. All the
teacher's relationships with his pupils are changed with psychological meaning'
(1952, 125; Brand Therapy 34). In the next decade Moustakas was but one of
many who emphasized that “‘Intellectual accomplishments represent
only one small aspect of human experience. To emphasize facts and information
[exclusively is] to contribute excessively to alienation, desensitization,
and personal fragmentation’” (Personal Growth, 1969; Therapy 35).
Brand documents the growth of this movement into the 1970’s (Therapy
41-43). A key tenet of this movement is emotional literacy, a requirement of
personal growth, healthy relationships, and effective teaching so basic that
it cannot be relegated to psychotherapy. Redl and Wattenberg pointed out in
1951 “'that the teacher can and must assume some share of responsibility
for the emotional as well as the intellectual development of his students is
today a truism'“ (Mental Health in Teaching , 1951/1959; Brand Therapy
36). Carl Rogers was particularly persuasive on the need for teachers’ emotional
literacy: "in the school context, the first essential was that teachers
reveal themselves in honest ways and exhibit the range of feelings that differentiate
living persons from 'automatons'" (1961; Brand Therapy 33). Hence "At
the joint frontier of psychology and education in the 1960's, a movement that
assigned to the emotional factor in education a role as important as -- or
perhaps, more important than -- traditional academics emerged with profound
implications for teachers. The idea of affective education, otherwise called
'psychological' or 'confluent' education, mobilized teacher interest in the
realm of emotion and feelings .... The Ford Foundation sponsored several efforts
to renew education for the 'whole' person'“ (Brand Therapy 39-40).
Goleman does not spell out what responsibilities colleges
have in this movement, but the goals are obviously relevant to college courses: “an
emerging strategy in emotional education is not to create a new class, but
to blend lessons on feelings and relationships with other topics already taught.
Emotional lessons can merge naturally into reading and writing,” for
example, and most classes can include “basic study skills such as how
to put aside distractions, motivate yourself to study, and manage your impulses
so you can attend to learning” (271-2). Goleman in fact focuses on the
usual subjects of English courses: “the emotional mind’s special
symbolic modes: metaphor and simile, along with poetry, song, and fable, are
all cast in the language of the heart. So too are dreams and myths, in which
loose associations determine the flow of narrative, abiding by the logic of
the emotional mind” (54). Others in the 90’s introduced the movement
to the college campus. In 1994, for example, in his pioneering Diaries to
an English Professor, Jeffrey Berman concluded that though “few literary
critics, apart from feminists, reader-response critics, and composition theorists,
have recognized the affective components of knowledge ...effective teaching
is ... affective teaching .... Classroom discussions of literature awaken intense
emotions within teachers and students alike -- love, hate, passion, jealousy,
fear -- and these emotions cannot be relegated to ‘guidance counseling’” (226).
As we see in the chapter on his teaching in this anthology, “for many,
the diaries turned out to be the most important part of the course, allowing
them to explore feelings about which they had never previously written.”
Expression and denial of feelings became one of the subjects
of my courses in the 1980’s,especially in the context of family and gender
interactions. In my honors freshman Composition and Reading in World Literature
course (E603), for 1987-8, for example, I focused on developing “writing
skills to communicate our emotions as well as our thoughts to others and to
ourselves.” In the description for the 1990-1991 course I stated that
The primary goal of the course will be to identify and articulate our emotions,
especially those which drive our habits, in our responses to family dynamics,
including sex roles, as represented in literature. We will try to develop a
sense of literary works as potential calisthenics of emotions which we can
enjoy and profit from for the rest of our lives.... Students will keep journals
of their emotional and other responses to the works we read and at times bring
these to class to help initiate discussion. Partly as a result of this change
in my teaching, I was selected by the administration for a Teaching Fellowship
and by students as a Mortor Board Preferred Professor. I began to focus on
literary works as storehouses of emotion that could serve as models of how
to communicate emotions to self and others. To that end, I changed the texts
in my Victorian novels course (Bump “Innovative” 357). To help
students identify and articulate what they felt as they read the novels, I
asked them to record their emotions in a journal divided with quotes on one
side of the page and reactions on the other. Our first goal was to identify
a range of feelings, but I asked for other responses to be recorded as well:
self-esteem issues in the text and in themselves; personal associations, especially
family memories; awareness of family dynamics in the text and of functional
and dysfunctional interactions as defined by family systems theory (the primary
approach in alcoholism treatment; see Bradshaw 1988; Bump "Family");
and the characters’ emotions and their ability to express them. The students
coded their journals for each of the features, counted the number of entries
in each category when a novel was completed, and charted their progress. While
the family systems theory entries called for cognitive responses, I gave the
following journal instructions for emotional literacy : I will be looking,
first of all, for your awareness of and ability to articulate your emotional
reactions to the book. This is not to be confused with your awareness of emotions
in the characters in the book, and is not quite the same as speculation about
how you would feel if you were one of the characters.... Use the following
format: ‘I felt’ followed by an emotion, like those listed in the “Vocabulary
of Feelings” which follows [in the Xeroxed anthology]. Focus on how you
felt when you read the passage or feel now rereading it, not what you think
about it. "I felt that ..." or "I felt like" can lead you
away from feelings and into thoughts. Try to get into deep emotions, such as
fear, sadness, and love, rather than merely intellectual surprise, confusion,
amusement, curiosity, etc. Be as specific as possible. It is good to note, "I
felt moved," or "I felt touched," but better to specify exactly
... what emotion was touched or moved within you. Try to give some sense of
why" you have these reactions (some personal relevance) at least once
in a while.
The students in one of my E603 courses suggested substituting
words and characters while reading. For example, while reading Medea's speech
to Jason, one student saw the possibility of working out some of my own anger.
Reading along, I substituted some of my own words so that I could say, `How
dare you abandon me!' to my father, or `How dare you beat my mother and steal
my childhood!' to my stepfather, or 'How dare you use me and treat me like
an object!' to various boyfriends. Through Medea I was able to confront people
I may never see again; she let me vent my anger through her. When I read Medea
I felt anger that I have suppressed for years come up and make itself known;
even if it is not dissolved, at least I am more aware of its presence and its
impact on my life. The student allowed me to include these instructions in
my anthology to help other students.
As a result of my teaching along these
lines, I was awarded another Teaching Fellowship; was asked by the campus Counseling
Center to make presentations on literature as therapy in its outreach programs;
and was invited by the campus Center for Teaching Effectiveness to speak on “Teaching
and Psychotherapy” at their annual Conference for Experienced Faculty
and on “Exploring Alternative Teaching Methods: Left Brain, Right Brain” at
their New Faculty Teaching Orientation. The course continued to evolve. When
I wrote the description for my Victorian novel class for the summer of 1990
I set emotional literacy in the context of brain hemisphericity research: "Unless
one is familiar with psychological, reader-centered literary theory and criticism,
this course will probably be very different from any English course you have
had in the past. For most students all or almost all of the forty or more courses
taken in college focus on the left brain rather than the right, on thought
rather than emotion, the mind rather than the heart. This is one attempt to
redress the imbalance.... We will focus on learning to feel, identify, and
articulate our emotions ..... Designed for students interested
in self-exploration, this course may be especially valuable for students who
have experience with or interest in counseling, psychotherapy, experiential
learning, or twelve-step groups.... "
It was primarily on
the basis of this course that I received one of the most prestigious teaching
awards on campus, the Holloway Award, the only major award chosen by students
rather than administrators. More importantly, I knew from my own experiences
that students were being affected. For example, at one point I had Dr. Cindy
Carlson, a professional counselor and professor of family systems theory at
the university, answer questions at a session of the Victorian novel course.
After the class a student handed her a note revealing that she had tried to
kill herself. As there was no name on it, Cindy passed the note on to me. At
the time I was grading student journals and was able to match the handwriting.
I contacted the campus counseling center and they kindly provided me with a
packet of information on how to deal with such situations. Following their
advice I put some of their information and a note from me in her journal. My
heart dropped when she did not appear at the following class meeting. However,
she did come to the next one and spent the whole time during class reading
the material I had put in her journal. After class she came up to me and thanked
me, saying that she had not been able to talk about this with anyone at the
university. I took her immediately to the counseling center where she made
an appointment. I wondered how many students had been sitting in my classes
throughout the years with similar problems, and how many like that there were
at that moment attending classes throughout the university. I felt like my
eyes had been opened and that I had made a breakthrough in my teaching and
in my capacity for being fully human. I recalled what Leo Buscaglia, a professor
of education at U.S.C., had written: "In the winter of 1969, an intelligent,
sensitive female student of mine committed suicide. She was from a seemingly
fine upper middle class family. Her grades were excellent. She was popular
and sought after.... I have never been able to forget her eyes; alert, alive,
responsive, full of promise. I can even recall her papers and examinations
which I always read with interest....I often wonder what I would read in her
eyes or her papers if I could see them now.... I was not blaming myself for
her death. I simply wondered what I might have done; if I could have, even
momentarily, helped." (9-10).
Eventually I shifted the student journal more
and more in the direction of autobiography. Although I did not know it at the
time, again I was participating in a movement in teacher education: "Inspired
to some extent by the ideas advanced by Rogers, psychologists Arthur Jersild
and Clark Moustakas elevated the study of self above any subject matter or
external skill that could be studied in school'“ (Brand, Therapy 34).
I was also becoming part of an old tradition in the teaching of writing. I
remembered that the best course I had ever taken in college, freshman English
at Amherst College, was devoted solely to self-exploration -- there were no
books at all. My sense of the value of that approach was confirmed twenty years
later: when forty-eight nationally famous writing teachers were asked to contribute
an example of the best student writing and an explanation of its excellence “at
least thirty of the examples in the collection are personal experience essays
-- twenty of them autobiographical narratives -- and several of the remaining
eighteen include writing about the writer” (Coles; Faigley 120). In my
courses, journals, brief writing exercises, and computer-assisted writing began
to culminate in essay-length writing and finally in embryonic autobiographies.
I also added to the xeroxed anthology selections from Writing the Natural Way;
Using Right-Brain Techniques To Release Your Expressive Powers; “Support
Urged for Gay Teens”; Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain; Using the
Right Brain in the Language Arts; Wild Mind; “Where Emotions Come From” and
our counseling center pamphlets on perfectionism and depression.
For more information about Emotional Intelligence on the
Internet check out links to Articles:
Emotional
Intelligence
Emotional
Intelligence in Schools
Emotional
skills on the Internet
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