As far as I can tell, education, from Aesop on down, has always been concerned with instilling character, self control, and wisdom, only now these ancient goals have been rebranded as "emotional intelligence:"These are what I believe schools actually can teach, and should. These, and a culture which is both shared and inclusive, and represents what is most central and laudable in a field. Despite arguments about what that means, and abuses in imposing majority culture rather than Western Civ, of course a culture can be taught. It's just that the truth steps on people's toes, so they pressure it out. (Left and right both have blind spots, but the current trend of those in education hierarchy is to make so absolutely sure that the bad old right wing blind spots aren't taught that the new left-wing ones are swallowed whole.)
The actual comments of one of the researchers, Marc Brackett aren't quite like that, however. Leaning on the research that one does worse on tests while anxious, or hungry, or being secretly beaten - gee, that's shocking, eh? - he switches over to the idea that some other things called Emotional Intelligence, such as being able to empathise or intuit, are really the bee's knees in educating the next generation.
I suspect it's all one in their minds, allowing them to gradually drop all the character issues of self-control, conscientiousness, hard work, and self-denial in favor of vague notions of identifying with the unfortunate or how to report bullies. That is what the offered article suggests, at any rate. It is rather like offering a traffic-safety course and spending only 10% time on chemical impairment and speeding and 90% on lobbying government for safer cars.
If any of you know differently, that Emotional Intelligence instruction is actually a clever way to smuggle in the old virtues we can no longer stress quite so strongly, I'd be glad to hear it.
