Teaching students how to deal with their feelings enhances their cognitive efficiency

Students who learned how to deal with different emotions and acquired the right emotional skills became superior in multiple subjects, such as science and mathematics.

Emotional expression skills give children confidence in their abilities and talents

Some private schools in several Arab countries have announced the adoption of the American "Roller" program, which is the most famous school program to teach young people how to deal with feelings.

Schools' use of this program comes after education experts spotted a large gap between what the education sector offers and what pupils and students need. This gap differs from one country to another, a difference that is not primarily related to the progress and backwardness of countries as much as it is related to their view of the education sector as a long-term investment.

This gap can be clearly observed in the Arab countries, most of which still deal with educational curricula with the mentality of the years of independence without being developed and supplemented with new materials that keep pace with the revolution that this generation is experiencing and that affects it at various levels. One of these courses is a course for students to teach them to deal with “emotions”.

It may seem strange at first glance, as some argue that this is the task of the psychiatrist, but the American "Roller" program confirms the opposite. Although this program was launched in 2005, its name began to emerge on the Arab arena, after some private schools in Arab countries announced the adoption of this program.

The Roller program for emotional intelligence first appeared in 2005 in the United States, and quickly expanded to include tens of thousands of schools around the world. The program has some basic objectives, most notably: getting to know a person’s feelings and the feelings of others, understanding the causes and consequences of emotions, classifying emotions using accurate and varied vocabulary, and expressing and managing feelings in ways that help development.

Researchers believe that learning feelings has many benefits. Previous experiences in adding emotional expression skills and emotional intelligence to students changed the minds of children effectively and distinctly, compared to ordinary students.

A New Jersey University of the Arts and Sciences study indicates that students who learn how to deal with different emotions and acquire the right emotional skills become superior in multiple subjects, such as science and mathematics.

Acquisition of emotional intelligence skills does not depend on academic excellence, and a child can deal with the six basic emotions, namely: sadness, fear, anger, pride, shame and exhaustion, to contribute to more psychological and educational stability, reducing the severity of differences, as well as the impact of harassment and cases of bullying among students in general.

Supporters of emotional learning in schools and universities claim that students who have acquired emotional skills have gained new ways of expressing themselves, and adopting more logical and coherent ways of thinking.

Despite the general agreement about the importance of learning ways to express and deal with feelings, the issue of developing a clear and specific educational curriculum for feelings reflects a great debate, because feelings are innate, and of course not materially tangible, and their inclusion as a curriculum becomes a complex issue that requires extensive scientific knowledge, and training that takes into account The general atmosphere in the environment.

Experts in the sciences of education are of the view that adding methods to control and direct feelings may lead to the abolition of the child's natural personality, which grows with the accumulation of human experiences and contacts.

New ways of expressing 

Feelings appear as acquired life skills that are difficult to understand, analyze, and correct the inconsistency in, a vision reflected in schools of behavioral psychotherapy, such as the humanistic school of the American psychologist Carl Rogers, who believes that each person alone is capable of directing and reforming himself without outside interference.

Rogers stresses that many people need insight in order to change, and that requires someone to light the way from the outside without penetrating emotions and trying to change them by force. It is the rule adopted by the theories of teaching feelings, because the curricula on the skills of assessing and managing emotions direct the student and do not create feelings within him.

Experts warn that some people use the idea of ​​teaching and directing feelings in favor of certain political, economic or cultural ideas. It is a recurring situation in the Arab world, because emotion arises from the formation of ideas, which stems from the prevailing societal belief.

Wafaa Saeed, a professor of psychology, explained that the idea of ​​teaching a child how to express his feelings is an important and vital issue in education and care in general, and scholars differ about the means of applying it to young children.

She told Al-Arab, explaining, "With the first beginnings of a child's upbringing and the formation of his feelings, he hides his feelings and sometimes ignores them, if the father and mother do not encourage him to express emotions freely, as they consider this a transgression or a waste of time, but in fact, teaching feelings gives valuable information about the scientist".

Saeed believes that the good use of educational means and tools is “the key to success, and poor training gives counterproductive results.” She gave an example of previous materials that appeared during the era of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, when he imposed study materials on Arab nationalism and patriotic education, and he generalized them, then those curricula moved to Iraq, Syria and Algeria, although the goal of these subjects is to instill and teach patriotic feelings and belonging in the hearts of students, but they did not achieve the goal due to the absence of the right means and the clash of feelings with political goals, so that the educational curricula turned into mere ink on paper.

Other visions intersect with the perspective of overcoming the idea of ​​emotional bias by introducing emotional intelligence curricula within traditional school subjects, such as literature, poetry, philosophy and history.

Some curricula in the United States, Malaysia, Germany and Finland are based on presenting lessons in which part of poetry, prose passages, a short story, or a famous historical fact is derived, and linked to emotional intelligence by asking students about their feelings about what they saw, heard or read, then These feelings are discussed within a general context.

By linking the learning of emotions to a consistent curriculum, it is possible to protect the teaching methods from biasing towards certain emotions, whether positive or negative.

In the end, the general picture remains associated with the fact that the curriculum in general is biased and cannot be separated from the real life or the political administration that outlines the philosophy of the state.

Some experts in the field of education rely on parents to provide a balance of feelings and enable emotional intelligence in the right way, as parents work to stimulate emotional awareness, by encouraging and using emotional language based on the conviction that children have feelings that need to be taken into account, and not to prevent the feelings of young people. From growing by the practice of transgression in favor of a particular intellectual perspective.

Parental awareness and school care ensure the creation of a new generation with psychological and scientific awareness, and contribute to the consolidation of positive concepts that go beyond the limits of traditional academic achievement to the formation of a healthy and capable social personality.(Mahmoud Zaki)