Teaching Emotional Intelligence Can Benefit School Students

by Samiksha S. Author

In the seminal marshmallow test, researchers subjected a group of high-IQ young students to a cruel but insightful experiment. The test group was put into a room where a bowl full of marshmallows was kept on the front desk and the students were asked to wait for about half an hour before they could get one each. The room had no supervisor. Neither did the students have anything else to do but stare at the marshmallows. The goal was to see who all could wait. After the experiment, the researchers tracked the students’ lives into their adulthood. The results were astonishing.

Students of the control group, children who were not subjected to the experiment, and students who could not wait in the test group showed a greater desire to excel and crafted a notable career as expected from high-IQ students. But the group who could wait grew up to exercise greater self-control, school grades and job satisfaction owing to their patience against instant gratification. The latter showed the effect of high emotional intelligence on education and life after. And this is why the top schools in Greater Noida West are currently focusing on teaching emotional intelligence rather than sharpening analytical intellect only.

Emotional intelligence and its attributes

The capability of managing ones’ own emotions and the people around them is simply known as emotional intelligence. As per Goleman, emotional intelligence is responsible for 67% of all adulthood success stories and is more important than IQ to lead a rich life. The emotionally intelligent is in touch with their emotions, knows how to interpret and regulate them and can connect with and manage other people’s similar emotions. The essential attributes of emotional intelligence include:

Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Motivation
Empathy
Social skills

How these attributes benefit education?

The best schools in Noida Extension 2020 try to inculcate the above attributes among their students when they say that they are teaching emotional intelligence. Each feature help students’ education in the following ways.

Self-awareness creates an emotional classification

Assume a student failed to secure the expected marks in an exam or ended up in the losing side in a team game. This student is likely to either be upset, sad or disappointed. Self-awareness will help the student to exactly identify the emotion and react accordingly. Being confused leads to mixed reactions and motivational talk from a teacher or coach do not reach the student as he/she is unaware of his/her feeling. Hence, recovery from the emotion is delayed.

Self-regulation leads to better control

With self-awareness, say the student identified the emotion after the failure as plain sadness. He/she expected a certain outcome and it did not happen. Sadness needs space. It passes with time once the student has felt it enough. With emotional intelligence, this child now knows that that is what he/she has to do instead of suppressing the feeling and acting out. Equipped with the skill, self-regulation becomes better among students and recovery also speeds up.

Motivation makes the student try harder

Once recovered, this student will persevere and have a go with greater zeal in the next exam or match. He/she will not be afraid of failure as the emotions surrounding it has been dealt with healthily. Self-awareness and self-regulation almost always lead to motivation. Belief and confidence sprout in the mind to develop internal motivation as the student now knows that he/she can tackle everything that comes in his/her way and failure is not a problem.

Empathy helps to connect with others

Experiencing the harder sides of life and connecting with the associated emotions lead to empathy. A student who has felt and dealt with failure will have greater empathy towards a peer who has just seen a similar situation. In groups especially, empathy changes the dynamics with which individual students interact with the whole group. Instead of listening to reply, students listen to understand and learn.

Social skills complement interactive learning

One of the primary goals of any top CBSE school in Greater Noida. Interactive learning benefits education like no other. When students interact, discuss and share knowledge, they learn better as compared to direct lectures. Emotional intelligence makes a student socially acceptable. He/she can bond with peers and help the entire group along with attending to his/her personal development. High EQ improves social skills. And this improves the quality of adult life as well.

The importance of teaching emotional intelligence to school students is thus clear. BGS Vijnatham had always focussed on building emotional intelligence along with working with intelligence quotient as together they can take education to heights never reached before. By teaching emotional intelligence, BGS has always turned acquiring education effective. Students simply learn better when they are connected with their emotions.