Emotional Education – Should It Be A School Subject?

Emotional education is a response to social needs that are not adequately addressed in regular academic school curricula. There is a presence of anxiety, stress, depression, violence, substance abuse, suicide and risky behavior. All of this is largely a consequence of emotional illiteracy.

In addition, emotional education can develop emotional skills. Emotional competence is a set of knowledge, capacity, abilities and attitudes that are necessary to become aware, understand and express oneself in the right way to regulate emotional sensory impressions. Some emotional competencies are awareness and regulation, autonomy, social competence, life skills and well-being.

The school does not learn what children need most

The development of emotional competence needs continuous practice. This is because emotional education begins in the first moments of your life and must continue throughout life.

Thus, it should be part of the infant, primary, secondary, family and adult education systems, as well as taught via the social media and organizations dedicated to, among others, the elderly (Bisquerra, 2011).

Is it necessary to include emotional education in schools?

Daniel Goleman, psychologist, author of the book Emotional Intelligence (1995), and co-founder of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) is one of the most authoritarian voices on this topic. He says people need to learn to control their emotions. Especially the really stressful and difficult feelings.

This is because most people constantly end up in the emotional world, even though they are often unable to identify the terrain they are walking in. Thus , everything you learn depends on your emotional state.

You live with emotions from the moment you are born. In fact, they play a relevant role in the construction of your personality and social interaction. In addition, you experience emotions in any room and time, with family and friends and with your environment. Also with peers and school, teachers, among others.

In addition, school is another area of ​​knowledge and experience in which emotions develop. In fact, education means thinking about the integrated development of people in terms of their cognitive, physical, linguistic, moral, affective and emotional abilities (Cassà, 2005).

The content of emotional education can be added to the curricula

• First, emotional awareness. It involves becoming aware of one’s emotional state and manifesting it through verbal and / or non-verbal language, as well as recognizing the feelings of others.
• Second, emotional regulation. This is the ability to regulate unpleasant impulses and emotions, tolerate frustration and know how to expect satisfaction.

Emotional education to flourish

Flowering has a personal and social dimension. Thus, it is a reality, and working with it will allow you to transcend the myopic perspective of individual well-being. Everything to orient you towards integrated development of people in their respective organizations. The goal is social well-being in interaction with personal well-being (Bisquerra, 2011).

Recent research has provided ample evidence for the positive effects of emotional education. The general conclusion is that the systematic development of such programs that meet the minimum conditions for quality and time for dedication, has an important impact on human integrated development.

Remember that emotional skills are among the most difficult to acquire. An ordinary student can learn to solve solving quadratic equation problems. However , many years of training are required to automate the regulation of impulsivity in angry situations (and to prevent violence). This is one of the challenges of emotional education. Then dedicate the necessary space to it.

In the current state of knowledge in school, weekly sessions of 45-60 minutes over several years should be released (Bisquerra, 2011).