When many educators within the province hear the first two letters "EQ", they might automatically think of EQAO - the Educational Quality and Accountability Office whose mandate is to ensure greater accountability and quality within Ontario's publicly funded education system. At core, educators are accountable for fostering an environment and creating the conditions for the development of literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, and skills development in a wide variety of areas.
But what about the importance of EQ - emotional intelligence? We have yet to create systems of accountability within education where we are accountable for fostering humane, caring and empathetic human beings who will, by virture of their interpersonal skills, cultivate a healthier, more productive, and more dynamic and inclusive society.
What if EQAO stood for Emotional Intelligence Accountability Office? Of course, we might bristle at the thought of an intrusive, external gaze of how we conduct our emotional lives and how this might be measured. Fair enough! Yet I can't help playing with the possibility of what kind of society we would create if what mattered in our schools equally to what we were learning and teaching was who we were when we were teaching and learning.
In so many ways, because our modern culture has embraced success, efficiency and productivity at any cost, we all carry the lack of balance this has produced within our psyches. To embrace emotional intelligence as a core educational value would mean that our understandings and measures of success, efficiency and productivity would be transformed. Due to the long history of not valuing emotional literacy and intelligence and the wounds or incompleteness in our humanity that has been created as result, elements of education would have to be broadened and understood as a pathway of healing (being made whole), and not only as the transmission of knowledge. The way in which the work of education is understood expands and deepens with this shift, and institutional responses must arise organically to support this process.
It would also mean that educators would not only have the responsiblity of having a firm grasp of the curriculum, and the various strategies, approaches and techniques that help cultivate success for students, but would also be deeply committed to their emotional and psychic growth. Of course, many educators already are - I happen to be lucky enough to have known and worked with some of them (and do now).
Can you imagine what kind of society we can create when the heart of a child really, truly matters? When what they feel is listened to, understood and given space to be expressed in healthy ways?
When I realize what could be achieved and created by a society of deeply secure, healthy, caring and inclusive human beings, I then truly understand that the cultivation of emotional intelligence is not an "extra", or an "add-on" - it's essential.
But what about the importance of EQ - emotional intelligence? We have yet to create systems of accountability within education where we are accountable for fostering humane, caring and empathetic human beings who will, by virture of their interpersonal skills, cultivate a healthier, more productive, and more dynamic and inclusive society.
What if EQAO stood for Emotional Intelligence Accountability Office? Of course, we might bristle at the thought of an intrusive, external gaze of how we conduct our emotional lives and how this might be measured. Fair enough! Yet I can't help playing with the possibility of what kind of society we would create if what mattered in our schools equally to what we were learning and teaching was who we were when we were teaching and learning.
In so many ways, because our modern culture has embraced success, efficiency and productivity at any cost, we all carry the lack of balance this has produced within our psyches. To embrace emotional intelligence as a core educational value would mean that our understandings and measures of success, efficiency and productivity would be transformed. Due to the long history of not valuing emotional literacy and intelligence and the wounds or incompleteness in our humanity that has been created as result, elements of education would have to be broadened and understood as a pathway of healing (being made whole), and not only as the transmission of knowledge. The way in which the work of education is understood expands and deepens with this shift, and institutional responses must arise organically to support this process.
It would also mean that educators would not only have the responsiblity of having a firm grasp of the curriculum, and the various strategies, approaches and techniques that help cultivate success for students, but would also be deeply committed to their emotional and psychic growth. Of course, many educators already are - I happen to be lucky enough to have known and worked with some of them (and do now).
Can you imagine what kind of society we can create when the heart of a child really, truly matters? When what they feel is listened to, understood and given space to be expressed in healthy ways?
When I realize what could be achieved and created by a society of deeply secure, healthy, caring and inclusive human beings, I then truly understand that the cultivation of emotional intelligence is not an "extra", or an "add-on" - it's essential.
Maria, how true. How can we make the heart matter too in a culture in which emotional intelligence is undervalued? Is it best taught through experience? I always felt that my daughter's Montessori school led the way by committing the students to one afternoon every month, for the full academic year, to precious hours spent in a neighbourhood nursing home. Relationships were built, conversations shared, drawings offered, fears dismantled. This was more than the token concert. It was an attempt to give meaning to the experience of shared experiences between the generations.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing, Carine. Your comments remind me of one of my heroes, Jean Vanier, and his work to inspire this kind of emotional intelligence through an emphasis on belonging. What a wonderful experience for the students.
ReplyDeleteI know of one principal in the Washington DC metropolitan area who believes "...an educator who does not teach the mind, spirit, emotions, and the body of a child is not serious about the education of a child."
ReplyDeleteI would like to send this (your essay) to the Drug Czar of Washington DC, someone on the board of Education in DC, and some educators of simliar philosophy in the DC metropolitan area over the next few weeks. There is a really crisis down here around the education of children. Let me know please. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories