“As much as 80% of adult “success” comes from EQ.” — Daniel Goleman
While success means different outcomes to different people, it is clear that EQ plays a very crucial role in enabling one to achieve his/her goals.
This applies to young minds also. Academic learning can happen only when the child has emotional awareness and self-regulation. Integrating these emotional skills into the curriculum is the need of the hour. Is this a need that has arisen just now? Not really; but this need was not realised and understood earlier; Over the last few decades, educational institutes “managed” academic learning without emphasis on emotional awareness, and there were no visible undesirable consequences at the community level.
So, what is different now?
Globalisation and Social Media have condensed the world, and children have access to a variety of information. One needs emotional balance to sort and process this sea of information.
Children of this generation are part of nuclear families; some do not have siblings; hence are the centre of focus of both parents and have access to all privileges without having to “earn” them. Children find it difficult to cope with disappointments and failures.
Post-COVID, children find socialisation difficult, resulting in increased interpersonal conflicts in the classroom.
Thus, the need to develop emotional intelligence should be a high priority of educational institutes across the world. More today than before. At Ekya, we empower children with self-awareness and social awareness through our “Life Skills” program. Our life skills programme is based on the Social Emotional and Ethical Learning curriculum developed by Emory University, Atlanta, USA. It is a module-based curriculum that takes children through various aspects of self-awareness and social awareness.
If we want a better world to inhabit, we need to start today, right now, by empowering our future citizens with emotional intelligence.
Mathangi R
Head of School
Ekya NICE Road