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Summary Much of what we learn about social life...we learn in school...School is set up for one kind of learning, but when it comes to emotional matters, the assumption has always been that these are instincts we have to develop for ourselves.

Today, however, a number of educators and psychologists are arguing that, actually, we don't. What they call "social and emotional knowledge" - the ability to read other people, manage our own emotions, and thereby master social situations - ...can be taught...Psychologists are designing curricula that aim, step by step, to build up students' emotional knowledge...

Author Drake Bennett

Citation Boston Globe, April 5, 2009

Link http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/04/05/the_other_kind_of_smart/

For most of us, what we were taught in school and what we remember from our school years are two different things. We sat through uncountable hours of lessons about denominators and organelles, about precipitates and dangling participles, about Boo Radley and Shays’ Rebellion, and yet the memories that sneak up on us today are more likely to be the humiliations suffered on the school bus or the awkward moments from a pubertal romance, the triumph of a deftly parried insult or the sheltering solidarity we felt in a now long-dispersed clique.

Much of what we learn about social life, in other words, we learn in school. The learning process is a fumbling and painful one, administered not by teachers but through schoolyard intrigues and emotional outbursts. And in this part of our education, we are largely on our own. While some people - Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one, Ronald Reagan another - seem born with a gift for emotional perception, the rest of us muddle through as we can. School is set up for one kind of learning, but when it comes to emotional matters, the assumption has always been that these are instincts we have to develop for ourselves.

Today, however, a number of educators and psychologists are arguing that, actually, we don’t. What they call “social and emotional knowledge” - the ability to read other people, manage our own emotions, and thereby master social situations - doesn’t have to be imparted solely through the cut and thrust of lived life. It can be taught, they say, just like trigonometry or French grammar. Psychologists are designing curricula that aim, step by step, to build up students’ emotional knowledge: a typical teaching unit might include a role-playing exercise, or a set of diagrams breaking down the components of different facial expressions, or, in older children, a discussion of the subtle differences between disgust and contempt.

And while the basic idea that school should help refine social skills is not a new one, the proponents of social and emotional literacy programs are armed and emboldened by promising new findings that suggest just how teachable these skills are. With a little training, studies show, grade-schoolers can dramatically improve how accurately they read emotions in others’ faces, how well they head off impending tantrums - even how empathetic they are toward classmates.