As parents, sons and daughters, friends, siblings, or any roles we may occupy, we realise that relating to another person does not involve anything we have learned at school. At school, we tend to learn about facts and figures, and other practical knowledge for our academic path or careers. But the success of our relationships does not rely on the knowledge we learned at school. It relies on something else. Something less tangible. This is what we have started to call Emotional Intelligence, or EQ.
We owe EQ some respect
The common assumption that IQ is the best indicator of overall life success has been, in recent years, seriously debated. “Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack”. An article in Inc. discusses how the connection between high EQ and success is so strong that 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence. These findings are fascinating, and could potentially be revolutionary, if we started to give EQ the respect it deserves. But we have not reached this point yet. It is easy to see that we are not there if we look at our education system. We teach in our schools what we value. And what we value today is still facts and figures.
Our system currently does not value EQ
Subjects we consider of importance is what we end up adding to our education system. For instance, in the past few years we have seen schools decrease funding from arts and music classes, and begin to add coding and computer science classes at a younger age. An example of this trend was discussed in an article by the Guardian written back in 2014. As we can see, there is still a widely-held assumption that IQ is the sole source of success.
We currently value technical intelligence
For the past decades, we have highly valued technical intelligence. This explains why our society has progressed so rapidly since the industrial revolution. We have seen in the past century an exponential growth in living standards, in great part due to our technological advancements. We have been able to tame nature and conquer this planet. However, if we continue to push off the value of teaching and learning EQ, the fate of our planet will be precarious. We can notice potentially devastating outcomes due to a lack of EQ if we look at the news, and watch political discourse, such as the war of words between North Korea and the US. This demonstrates a profound lack of EQ, as the aggression is escalated, the emotions are ill-interpreted, and the full grasp of reality apparently undetected on both sides.
Teaching EQ at school
So, if EQ is so important to a person and society’s success, then why have our schools not begun to teach it? As The School of Life video plainly states: “Emotional Intelligence isn’t an inborn talent, it’s always the result of education. Specifically, education in how to interpret ourselves, where our emotions arise from, how our childhoods influence us, how we might best navigate our fears and wishes. In the ideal society, it would be routine to be taught Emotional Intelligence from the youngest age, before we had the opportunity to make too many mistakes”. As we can see, at school is where EQ should be taught. It would not be easy to implement, and could take some time to work out the kinks. But in the end, it would be well worth it.
What now?
Although there has not been concrete implementation of EQ classes, there have been more open discussion about its importance and how to teach it in schools, to students and teachers. Last month, the Guardian published an article entitled “Emotional intelligence: why it matters and how to teach it” which clearly shows that measures are beginning to be taken. Increasing teaching of EQ will not only benefit the individual, but our society, and world, as a whole. Proactive incorporation of EQ into our lives has begun, but we still have some ways to go. The School of Life ominously argues that, by not taking emotion education seriously enough over the years, “our specie’s has grown ever more technically adept, while retaining the level of wisdom of our earliest days, with catastrophic results. We are now evolved monkey with nuclear weapons”. This statement does give us reason to be concerned, however, as this is out of our control, the best we can do is to teach ourselves, and our children, to be more emotionally intelligent, by reading up about it and implementing our newly found vital skills.
Über tutors knows the importance of all forms of intelligence. That is why we incorporate both technical and emotional intelligence into our lessons to assure that the next generation has all the fundamental skills needed to lead a successful life.
Contact us today at info@ubertutors.co.uk or 02030867311 to set up your free consultation and find out how your child can benefit and develop on all fundamental levels.
