Thoughts and Feelings Do Matter

Schools must provide less data-driven classroom activities and more emotion-filled community building experiences if we are to properly prepare our children to be self-directed lifetime learners and independent thinkers.

Many K-12 education programs are now focused primarily on preparing students for standardardized tests rather than cultivating student agency and preparing our children for the social and emotional “tests” of adulthood and employment.

“The children coming into their second grade classroom that morning arranged their chairs in a circle for a daily ritual: Their teacher asked every child to tell the class how they felt (unless they didn’t want to share this), and why they felt that way.

This simple exercise in a New Haven, CT elementary school was the first time I saw a lesson in emotional literacy. Naming emotions accurately helps children be clearer about what is going on inside – essential both to making clearheaded decisions and to managing emotions throughout life. Self-awareness – turning our attention to our inner world of thoughts and feelings – allows us to manage ourselves well.

An inner focus lets us understand and handle our inner world, even when rocked by disturbing feelings. This is a life skill that keeps us on track throughout the years, and helps children become better learners. For instance, when children tune in to what engages them, they connect with the intrinsic motivation that drives them…

In our life and career this can blossom into “good work” – a potent combination of what engages us, what matters to us, and what we can accomplish successfully. In the school years, the equivalent is “good learning” – being engaged with what enthuses us and what feels important…”

Daniel Goleman, “The Case for Teaching Emotional Literacy in Schools” 8/10/14

“A 30-year longitudinal study of more than a thousand kids – the gold standard for uncovering relationships between behavioral variables – found that those children with the best cognitive control had the greatest financial success in their 30s. Cognitive control predicted success better than a child’s IQ, and better than the wealth of the family they grew up in…

To further understand what attributes actually predict success, a more satisfying answer lies in another kind of data altogether: competence models. These are studies done by companies themselves to identify the abilities of their star performers…

It’s the distinguishing competencies that are the crucial factor in workplace success: the variables that you find only in the star performers – and those are largely due to emotional intelligence.

These human skills include, for instance, confidence, striving for goals despite setbacks, staying cool under pressure, harmony and collaboration, persuasion and influence.

Those are the competencies companies use to identify their star performers about twice as often as do purely cognitive skills (IQ or technical abilities) for jobs of all kinds.

The higher you go up the ladder, the more emotional intelligence matters: for top leadership positions they are about 80 to 90 percent of distinguishing competences…”

Daniel Goleman, “What Predicts Success? It’s Not Your IQ” 7/17/14

Daniel Goleman provides evidence and cites research to support his claim that thoughts and feelings do matter in life and they have a significant impact on the performance of students and employees.

I can’t help but wonder how much more diverse the Common Core State Standards would be if the cognitively privileged and powerful A-Team assembled to develop the Common Core State Standards had consulted with Daniel Goleman?

Guess that’s what happens when an unqualified “expert” and inexperienced person such as David Coleman is chosen to be the lead designer and architect of the passion-less Common Core State Standards despite his offensive belief and evidence-less claim that…

“As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a sh#@ about what you feel or what you think.”