Here is the second set of excerpts from Daniel Goleman's book entitled
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE. The following is about teenagers. It has bearing
on our courses, for sure.
Cheers,
Jane Jackson
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Emotional illiteracy (chapter 15 in Daniel Goleman's book entitled
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE)
Goleman cites long term studies by researchers into behavior of teenagers.
Some highlights:
"Educators, long disturbed by schoolchildren's lagging scores in math and
reading, are realizing there is a different and more alarming deficiency:
emotional illiteracy. And while laudable efforts are being made to raise
academic standards, this new and troubling deficiency is not being
addressed in the standard school curriculum."
"In 1990, compared to the previous two decades, the United States
saw the highest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes ever; teen arrests
for forcible rape had doubled; teen murder rates quadrupled, mostly due to
an increase in shootings. During those same two decades, the suicide rate
for teenagers tripled, as did the number of children under fourteen who are
murder victims.
More, and younger, teenage girls are getting pregnant. As of 1993
the birthrate among girls 10 to 14 has risen steadily for 5 years in a row
- some call it "babies having babies" - as has the proportion of unwanted
teen pregnancies and peer pressure to have sex. Rates of venereal disease
among teenagers have tripled over the last 3 decades."
"The most common cause of disability among teenagers is mental
illness. Symptoms of depression, whether major or minor, affect up to 1/3
of teenagers; for girls, the incidence of depression doubles at puberty.
The frequency of eating disorders in teenage girls has skyrocketed."
Goleman cites several specific studies. He puts the statistics in
perspective by statements such as these:
"This emotional malaise seems to be a universal price of modern
life for children. While Americans often decry their problems as
particularly bad compared to other cultures', studies around the world have
found rates on a par with or worse than in the United States.... " But he
warns that "The larger forces that propel the downward spiral in emotional
competence seem to be picking up speed in the United States relative to
many other developed nations."
Goleman says, "No children, rich or poor, are exempt from risk;
these problems are universal, occurring in all ethnic, racial and income
groups."
"Urie Bronfenbremmer, the eminent Cornell University developmental
psychologist who did an international comparison study of children's
well-being, says: 'In the absence of good support systems, external
stresses have become so great that even strong families are falling apart.
The hecticness, instability, and inconsistency of daily family life are
rampant in all segments of our society, including the well-educated and
well-to-do. What is at stake is nothing less than the next generation,
particularly males, who in growing up are especially vulnerable to such
disruptive forces as the devastating effects of divorce, poverty, and
unemployment. The status of American children and families is as desperate
as ever... We are depriving millions of children of their COMPETENCE and
MORAL CHARACTER.'"
Goleman discusses several of the major problems, including
aggression, depression, eating disorders (bulemia and anorexia), school
dropouts, drinking and drugs. He refers to studies which found out why
these problems occur, from the standpoint of deficits in emotional
competence; and he cites specific examples of experimental studies in which
school children were helped significantly by as few as 8 weekly group
sessions where they were taught successful strategies for emotional
intelligence.
For example, take depression, the most common emotional disability
in teenagers, characterized by "a paralyzing listlessness, dejection, and
self-pity, and an overwhelming hopelessness" in the worst cases, and
expressed outwardly by "sullen irritability, impatience, crankiness, and
anger" in less severe cases. Goleman says, "A new look at the causes of
depression in the young pinpoints deficits in 2 areas of emotional
competence: relationship skills, on the one hand, and a
depression-promoting way of interpreting setbacks, on the other...." He
cites an example of the latter: a study found that "Those who see a bad
grade as due to some personal flaw (I'm stupid") feel more depressed than
those who explain it away in terms of something they could change ("If I
work harder on my math homework I'll get a better grade").
[My comment: I read in the newspaper recently about a recent study
showing that American parents are likely to make excuses for their
children, saying that they were born without the ability to do math, that
the inability is in their genes. The study found that Japanese parents
instilled in their kids that idea that if they work hard they'll succeed in
math. Japanese kids do much better in math, and this study was attempting
to find out why. So it looks to me as though our American attitudes are
promoting depression, as well as bad scholarship.]
Jane Jackson, Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm.College (on leave)
Box 871504, Dept. of Physics, Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ 85287-1504.
phone:(602) 965-8438 fax: 965-7331 e-mail: jane.jackson@asu.edu
Modeling Workshop Project: http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html