WORLD OF LEARNING: MY REVIEW OF "EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE"

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: WHY IT CAN MATTER MORE THAN IQ (THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION). By Daniel Goleman. Bantam Books, 2005. 358 pages.

After several years of looking at this seminal work on my to-read list, I am happy to have finally read it. It should be on the to-read list of educators and parents.

To learn and to grow, children first need to be ready to learn and to grow. However, how and what we need to learn today can differ significantly from the requirements of our ancestors. Evolution equipped us with an early warning system, the limbic system of our brains and its marvelous filter, the amygdala.

This system connects sensory perception to emotional reactions based on experiences encountered in environments where survival depended on immediate and intense responses--fight or flight. When you are hunting a woolly mammoth or being hunted by a saber-toothed tiger, careful analysis can be less helpful than a rush of adrenaline-filled momentum.

Fortunately, evolution has also met more modern-day needs. The limbic core of our brains is surrounded by the neo-cortex. The front part of this add-on to human brains, which continues to grow after birth, is larger than in other animals, and highly malleable. The way this area develops is the key to emotional intelligence.

The proficiency with which we identify and deal with the emotions engendered in the limbic system is the measure of how well we can avoid becoming victims of what Goleman terms "emotional hijacking." It would be futile to try to suppress these emotions entirely, he tells us, but success or failure in monitoring and controlling them is the yardstick of emotional intelligence.

Genetics, Goleman believes, do play a part here. The very outlooks with which we are born, optimistic or pessimistic, indicate obvious propensities for high or low emotional intelligence. The incredible plasticity of our brains, though, means we are not prisoners of nature.

If we consciously develop those neural pathways to the parts of our brains associated with attending to emotions, we can strengthen a "self-aware" style of managing them that Goleman notes is so much more effective than what he calls "engulfed" and "accepting" styles.

While recent studies have indicated the remarkable adaptability of the brain into old age, it is during childhood and adolescence, Goleman notes, where we have the largest "windows of opportunity." Since Emotional Intelligence first came out fifteen years ago, "emotional literacy" has earned a place in the curriculum of many schools. Reading the book strengthened my desire for a continuation of this trend.

Without emotional intelligence, we are susceptible to "flooding" where an emotional response such as anger generates more anger. Goleman's description of the biology here is fascinating. Anger is amplified as our brains release catecholamines, neurotransmitters that keep the nervous system ramped up and raring to go.

When children are "flooded," they can not be good students. "A child's readiness for school," Goleman writes, "depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn." He goes on to list important attributes of that readiness from a report by the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs: confidence, curiosity, intentionality, self-control, relatedness, capacity to communicate, and cooperativeness.

Emotional Intelligence is not only a manual for childhood education. Reading it really made me think about my own style of managing my own emotions. In particular, two observations by Goleman really resonated with me.

One is that men, it appears, generally have a lower threshold for "flooding" than women. If that seems counter-intuitive, it's because men often use withdrawal--stonewalling--as a way of dealing with flooding, rather than the self-expression we stereotypically associate with femininity.

The second is Goleman's consideration of substance abuse as self-medication. People who are prone to addiction may actually be searching for control of depression, anxiety or rage.

The importance of Emotional Intelligence is apparent in the many references made to it in popular culture. It is also an accessible and entertaining book that deserves a place on the shelves of those concerned with learning and the brain.