Readings

Lessons in Love

Is emotional intelligence the way forward? asks Nadia Raafat

Eleven-year-old Helen Wickham says the best thing about school is Circle Time, a weekly half-hour session when she and her classmates talk about their feelings. She thinks it's important because it allows her to express her emotions and find out what others are feeling, too. 'At the end of Circle Time everybody feels good about themselves.'

Helen's head mistress, Penny Bentley, agrees. That's why Columbia Primary School, in east London, is committed to teaching its children to be as emotionally intelligent as they are intellectually capable. Alongside the basic curriculum, children learn how to recognise and manage their feelings, empathise with their classmates, and motivate themselves.

The school's results are encouraging. Attendance and standards are up. 'Climate is a hard thing to measure,' says Bentley, 'but Columbia is a very nice place to be.' Many other schools across the UK have followed suit, impressed by mounting evidence that suggests this touchy-feely approach actually works. And now the government has finally taken notice. This autumn, the DfES is putting its stamp of approval on emotional intelligence with a strategy to be piloted across 25° schools in the country for teaching it to our children.

Since author Daniel Goleman popularised the concept in 1996 in his bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, it has gathered a cult following. Psychotherapists swear by it, corporations beg for it and now the government is developing ways to foster it in our children.

But what exactly is it? In its broadest sense, it is the ability to understand and talk about your feelings. John Mayer and Peter Salovey, the first to identify emotional intelligence (EI) in 1995, define it as the ability to perceive, access, generate and reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote ~ emotional and intellectual growth.

Goleman went on to observe that just because someone was deemed intellectually intelligent, it didn't necessarily follow that they would be emotionally intelligent, too.

Among his fans was Southampton's chief educational psychologist Peter Sharp, the UK pioneer of the emotional literacy initiative in schools. He already believed education overemphasised cognitive abilities when he picked up Goleman's book. By the time he'd finished it he was convinced emotional literacy (EL, as he calls it) should be an equal priority with literacy and numeracy for all children.

In 1998 he launched the first educational initiative to promote EL in school through a range of activities. This included anger-management groups, anti-bullying training and seminars in emotional intelligence for everyone from the governor to the playground attendant.

Today, every primary school in Southampton has incorporated EL into its curriculum.
The DfES strategy, like the Southampton one, is based on teaching children five emotional skills: self-awareness, managing emotions, empathy, motivation and communication. These skills are taught through a cross-curricular approach. Children can learn about empathy through history, explore feelings as part of a literature class, work on self-esteem issues in Circle Time and discuss the school environment during assembly.

At Cavendish First School in Bradford, Yorkshire, a custom designed 'quiet room' is being built where pupils can shake off anger, recharge their batteries or just take a few minutes for themselves.

At Lister Community School in Plaistow, east London, a group of II- to 16-year-olds explore how they experience school through a series of drama workshops.

At Columbia Primary, children spend five minutes each day after playtime discussing how that playtime went. They also address teachers by first name, undergo conflict-resolution training and run special friendship programmes for those finding it difficult to settle in.

Abdul Kahar is in the same class as Helena. He used to get into fights in the school playground, but since he joined the Friendship Squad he no longer loses his temper in the playground. He likes the way teachers at Columbia take an interest in what he does. He thinks if children are made to feel good they want to live up to the teachers' expectations of them.

Racial conflict was rife and exam results poor at Westborough High School in Yorkshire, but after the school made emotional literacy its priority, the percentage of children achieving five grade A-Cs rose from eight per cent to 39 per cent. As Peter Sharp plainly puts it: 'When we feel good, we work good.' Not everyone agrees with this.Chris Woodhead, former Ofsted director, sees all this navel-gazing as a phenomenal waste of money.
'Children sit around discussing their feelings. Teachers disappear off on training days to be initiated into the quasi-therapeutic mysteries of this latest fad... Millions [of pounds] are wasted.'

Fortunately, outdated opinions like his are being superseded by overwhelming evidence from the classroom, the school corridor and playground which suggests that by developing our children's EL we can unlock their potential.

Whether this turns out to be a fad, as the traditionalists believe, or a meaningful advancement in education, it is clear that many believe it is more important to learn how to cope with anxiety than to know how to spell it. OM

Observer magazine 2nd November 2003