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Boys will be boys, but they don't have to be little devils
For the past few days, I have been re-reading a remarkable book by Daniel Goleman called Emotional Intelligence. It looks like the kind of book that sensible people normally avoid, the sort of popular, American, self-improvement bestseller you find on the "How To" shelves, with a seductive hint of a promise in the subtitle; in this case, Emotional Intelligence - Why it can matter more than IQ. However, I ignored my prejudices and bought it.
This is a book I would like to give to every teacher, and above all to those who arrange school curricula - for a start, to those responsible for the current misery of the new A-level system. It has made me think, what I had long since suspected, that most schools are pursuing the wrong things in the wrong way. Most schools are unsuitable for many children, particularly for boys, and that is why so many schoolchildren are doing badly, and growing up to behave badly. I think it was my hero, J S Mill, who said that a school ought to be very good indeed, to justify depriving a child of his liberty.
When I first read the book, in 1996 when it came out here, I was interested in why boys underperform academically at school. This time, I found myself reading it in a week when newspapers were full of boys who had gone badly wrong - Timothy McVeigh, the killers of James Bulger, young Yardie assassins in south London, a suspect in the murder of Damilola Taylor, and the unhappy Prince Dipendra, to mention only the most startling.
Of course I can't pretend to understand much of these particular cases. But they do stand as representatives of a world of increasingly enraged, impulsive and un-self-controlled boys and men, who are increasingly alienated, unable to form relationships, miserable, resentful and violent - and most of them are not psychopaths, but began life as perfectly ordinary boys. There are all kinds of explanation on offer for this nasty new world: I am particularly struck by the suggestion in this book that the problem is, in part, a lack of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a neologism, obviously, but not all neologisms are irritating and empty. This one has a faintly self-explanatory air. It is obvious enough that all kinds of highly intelligent people seem to fall by the wayside, and fail to use their gifts, while, contrariwise, many people of only modest intelligence make more than the most of theirs.
Cognitive intelligence (of the sort supposedly measured in IQ tests) may be genetically given, but it cannot be effectively used without qualities of character, such as self-control, persistence, the ability to recover from setbacks, to deal with powerful emotions and to recognise other people's feelings. These qualities of character make up emotional intelligence. And without these qualities, a person will, as they used to say in Dorset, be all brains and no intelligence.
So, obviously, a clever girl who is unable to handle minor failure and criticism, and who is overwhelmed by her own anxieties, will underperform intellectually. Exams are a test of character quite as much as of intelligence. Similarly, a boy of average intelligence who has never learnt how to resist passing impulses and distractions, who cannot discipline his efforts, who has little understanding or sympathy for others, will also underperform, but with much more disastrous results for himself and others: failing entirely at school, he will turn into one of those feral thugs and bullies we read about in the press. Without emotional intelligence, these children cannot make the best of themselves and their lives; rather they are destined to make the least even of what they have.
However I am convinced, like the author of this book, that emotional intelligence, unlike general IQ, can be developed. That is what was meant in the past by a moral or a sentimental education, although it has always been rather rare in practice. A painful mixture of bullying and neglect used to be the norm in education and, despite everyone's best intentions, is probably very often the norm today. A child needs a great deal of careful, personal attention, and constant good example, to learn self-control, proper self-respect and respect for others.
Children today cannot possibly get the attention they need, flung as they are into enormous classes, with children of all abilities, including the intellectually disabled and the emotionally disturbed, in one single Bedlam, subject constantly to ceaseless measurements, tests, assessments and exams of ever-decreasing value. What are none-too-bright, impulsive boys to make of this noisy, boring, impersonal muddle? What is the point of subjecting them to it? They will just opt out, like James Bulger's schoolboy murderers.
It is daft to aim at sending half the country's children to university, in the quixotic pursuit of equality. It is daft to expect so many to get some A-levels, and dumb the exam down to that end. Actually, it is daft to keep all children at school until 16. Intellectual attainments, especially bogus ones, are irrelevant for many children. What is needed much more urgently is a careful, discriminating attempt to show struggling children how to deal with their own powerful emotions, how to stay calm under pressure, how to avoid conflict with each other and how to try.
All children need this. Only then can they use their abilities, such as they are. Those who need it most - the least intelligent and most deprived - get it least. I am sending a copy of this book to Estelle Morris, in a spirit of public service, empathy and conflict avoidance.
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, June 16, 2001
