Reason guides but a small part of man, and that the least interesting.
The rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.
—Joseph Roux
As the summer winds down, I find myself looking back on the past couple of months and the extra research and writing that this time of year allows, and I am considering what I want to take from my own learning from this process into both the classroom this fall as well as what will be the start of my 60th rotation around the sun. With age comes at least the potential for some wisdom, and with the usual anticipation of the start of another school year, I am thinking about what new insights I might employ to guide my life as an educator.
One that comes from a recent conversation has to do with “magical thinking.” This is a concept used in anthropology to refer to ritualistic behaviors (words and/or deeds) that are done with the intent to either avert an unavoidable event or to cause a desirable one over which one has no actual control. Some examples include “if I pray hard enough, my loved-one suffering terminal cancer won’t die” as well as “if we dance correctly, the rains will come,” and my kindred-spirit of so many of this summer’s blogs, Oliver Burkeman, would contend that all time-management plans are “magical thinking” at its finest: “if I just manage my time in such-and-such a fashion, I will get everything done.”
Of course, all of us engage in moments of “magical thinking” at some point in our lives; it’s simply a very human way of coping with the powerful emotions involved in times of intense personal struggle or challenge. As the Peanuts character, Peppermint Patty once observed right before taking a test (and as tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Supreme Court’s famous ruling banning formal teacher-led prayer in public schools), “some prayer will always be with us.”
However, with us or not, “magical thinking” can be highly problematic if we’re trying to meet the demands of an actual challenge or persevere through an actual struggle. Patty’s prayer can’t help her take her test successfully, and the most efficient time management system in the world won’t enable any of us to get everything done. Dancing can’t make it rain, and “thoughts and prayers” won’t prevent mass shootings. At best, “magical thinking” is a coping mechanism for soothing our finitude—a placebo for an aching soul—but at worst, it is a substitute for making difficult choices and taking effective action.
And that’s what got me to thinking about it as an educator: where might we be unwittingly (or even wittingly) employing “magical thinking” in our schools?
One area where I think we might be is in the realm of emotional intelligence. For example, in spite of knowing full well that “emotions determine whether academic content will be processed deeply and remembered” (p. 30) and that “just one caring adult can make the difference between whether a child will thrive or not” (p. 36), we still have the bad habit of disciplining emotional outbursts, believing that punishing a cry for help will somehow improve or fix the situation, and we still hear the infamous “don’t let them see you smile until Christmas” offered as classroom management advice to new teachers, trusting that a rigid environment means learning must be happening. Both behaviors rely on a ritualistic response that almost never meets the actual demands of the challenge, and on the rare occasion they do, like all “magical thinking,” there is sometimes just luck (it will eventually rain at some point in time after people have danced).
But when I suggest that we may be employing “magical thinking” when it comes to emotional intelligence in our schools, I’m thinking more along the lines of that most primitive of rituals: active denial—if we just ignore a problem, it will magically go away. And the problem confronting schools is that EQ is a skill, a critical one for learning and one that like all intelligences requires training and practice, and we neither actively teach it nor do we give it formal workouts it in our educational systems. Basically, we just pretend that children will become emotionally intelligent on their own somehow, without any direct intervention, and while we know that the simple act of living will nurture any type of intelligence to a degree, we also know from research on IQ how much thoughtful, planned instruction increases cognitive intelligence beyond a child’s general environment. Similar research on EQ has shown similar results, and thus, as Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence points out, since “the three most important aspects of learning—attention, focus, and memory—are all controlled by our emotions, not by cognition” (p. 195), we might want to start deliberately teaching emotional intelligence in our schools.
And we might want to be doing so sooner rather than later. I have written before about the damage to education caused by the pandemic, and the emotional trauma from this natural disaster is a significant component of that damage. One in five children in this country are currently experiencing a significant mental health crisis such as depression or anxiety (I have relatives among them), and we know from the research that individuals with well-developed EQ cope more effectively with issues of mental health and respond better when professional treatment is required. Hence, without emotional intelligence curricula in our schools, we are essentially “failing to recognize trauma’s effects on learning [and] risk compounding the trauma and jeopardizing students’ prospects in school” (p. 192).
Yet even if without the pandemic, we would still have a serious predicament when it comes to learning and the absence of emotional intelligence curricula in our schools. Our children and youth are steadily losing their ability to read one another’s emotions due to the amount of time they spend on their screens, and the research about this is clear: “in one study, sixth graders who went five days without glancing at a smartphone or other digital screen were better at reading emotions than their peers from the same school who continued to spend hours each day looking at their phones, tablets, computers, and so on” (p. 85). Remembering that “the three most important aspects of learning—attention, focus, and memory—are all controlled by our emotions, not by cognition,” and this skill loss has significant and troubling implications for our future.
The solution, of course, is pretty straightforward: develop EQ curricula and integrate them into our schools. Indeed, Brackett and his team at Yale have an existing program called RULER that they have helped place into about a quarter of the New York City Schools and are now working with the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents and Connecticut Association of Boards of Education to make “Connecticut the First Emotionally Intelligent State!” (p. 217). It is why I read Brackett’s book; it was assigned reading for the team I will be joining this fall to generate an emotional intelligence program at my school, one that every child will participate in through our advisory program.
So the necessary work is underway, but it needs spreading. If you are reading this—whether as a parent, an educator, or simply a concerned citizen—consider sharing it with someone you know in the educational or political power structure. They may push back with arguments such as “we’re already facing a teacher shortage crisis” and “you’re asking to put yet one more thing on people’s plates.” But the data from the Aspen Institute and others is clear: emotional intelligence education “is not a distraction from the ‘real work’ of math and English instruction; it is how instruction can succeed” (p. 192; my emphasis). All it takes is a seed to get something started, and you are in a position to help sow. “Magical thinking” certainly isn’t going to solve this problem, and as Brackett wisely observes:
Until SEL [Social-Emotional Learning] permeates the entire school village and community leaders become a vocal, energized force for SEL, it won’t occupy its proper place…only when everyone demonstrates that SEL matters will politicians, school boards, and administrators pay attention and make the necessary effort. That commitment filters into the classroom, the cafeteria, the gymnasium, the playground, the school bus, to the principals and teachers and aids and guidance counselors, to parents, and, ultimately, to the benefit of all. [Because] when we unlock the wisdom of emotions, we can raise healthy kids who will both achieve their dreams and make the world a better place (p. 218).
That’s a future I think we all can live with.
References Brackett, M. (2019) Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success. New York: Celadon Books.
Light a Candle 