divorce. The majority of the children murdered in this country are killed by parents and stepparents, many of whom use the excuse that they were just trying to “discipline” the child. All of these situations clearly point to an extreme need for emotional education. Goleman argues that while children are still young, there is a “neurological window of opportunity.” He believes that the part of the brain, which regulates how we act on what we feel, probably does not mature until mid-adolescence. This is why he advocates emotional learning in school as well as academic learning.In the corporate world, according to personnel executives, IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted. Goleman likes to tell the story of a manager at AT&T’s Bell Labs, known for its brilliant engineers, who was asked to rank his top performers. They weren’t the ones with the highest IQs; they were the ones whose E-mail got answered. Goleman states, “Those workers who were good collaborators and networkers and popular with colleagues were more likely to get the cooperation they needed to reach their goals than the socially awkward, lone-wolf geniuses.” Perhaps one’s IQ is not all she’s cracked up to be. Goleman believes that nowhere is the discussion of emotional intelligence more urgent than in schools. Here, both the investments and the opportunities seem greatest. Instead of constant crisis intervention, or declarations of war on drug abuse or teen pregnancy or violence, Goleman advocates preventative medicine. Educators can point to all sorts of data to support this new direction. Students who are depressed or angry literally cannot learn. Children who have trouble being accepted by their classmates are two to eight times more likely to drop out. Many school administrators are completely rethinking the weight they have been giving to traditional lessons and standardized tests. They ar...
