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About Books

By Mary Ann Manos

Daniel Goleman’s 1995 bestseller Emotional Intelli-gence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ remains afoundation for theories about social cognition. His ar-

gument that affective competence fuels lifelong achievementstill holds relevance. After all, face-to-face communicationhelps make a society healthy. But in the 17 years since Gole-man’s seminal book, digital innovations such as social media, blogs, text messages, webcams, Facebook, Twitter, and Skypehave come to the fore as modes of expression, and the newestgeneration prefers them to sharing in person. One result is alack of accountability, an especial danger for children andyoung people. In the waning of responsibility via the freedomof the keyboard, how should the emotional intelligence quo-tient (EQ) apply to this impressionable demographic?

Goleman considers empathy as the headwaters for in-terpersonal success. The sensitivity, mindfulness andresponsiveness inherent in empathy build rapport, and thegoodwill gained through EQ assists in the development ofa network of trusted peers. The facility to forge these con-

structive relationships, thus, may be more important thanindividual IQ, he posits. “The single most important ele-ment in group intelligence, it turns out, is not the averageIQ in the academic sense, but rather interms of emotional intelligence,” Gole-man writes. “The key to a high groupIQ is social harmony.” Since being partof a team is based on complex abilitiesof organizing, negotiating and makingconnections, the learning of EQ beginsat home and school.

He urges parents to raise children whoknow how to attend to others. “The im- pact on children of such parenting isextraordinarily sweeping,” Goleman con-

tends. Parental willingness to show andteach empathy helps ensure that children become socially adept by being able tounderstand verbal and nonverbal cues; the critical window forlearning to mesh language with body language spans ages 2-10, heexplains — the time frame when children typically begin acclima-tion to digital technology. Children who do not possess therudiments of EQ are often considered strange by peers who, madeuncomfortable, may criticize, ignore or shun them. These ill-equipped children, starving for positive reinforcement or anyattention at all, can spiral into aggression and become bullies,cyber or actual, since they “read” people incorrectly, Golemansuggests. Given that texting and tweeting, not to mention surngthe Web or posting a blog, are by denition at a remove from liter -al encounters, the importance of establishing EQ at an early age

cannot be overstated.Because educators guide students in social interaction up to

eight hours a day (or more), schools also play a key role in foster-ing EQ. Goleman draws on troubling statistics about childrenfrom the early 1990s that necessitated such pedagogy and thathave only amplied since then: school shootings, early mother -hood, risky sex, mental disturbance. He also references lesson plans, afterschool programs and weekly classes that counteract bullying, promote inclusion, and address depression, for instance,and describes the advantageous inuence of “friendship coaches”in and out of the classroom. These instructional strategies, allabout EQ and accountability, surely become even more imperativetoday since children age 8-18 spend in excess of seven-and-a-halfhours “using entertainment media across a typical day,” like smart phones and computers, according to the news release about “Gen-

eration M2: Media inthe Lives of 8- to18-Year-Olds,” aJanuary 2010 study by the Kaiser FamilyFoundation. And“because they spendso much of that time‘media multitasking’(using more thanone medium at atime),” the news re-lease continues,“they actually man-age to pack a total of10 hours and 45minutes worth ofmedia content intothose seven-and-a-half hours.”

Indeed, since publication of Emo-tional Intelligence in1995, personal tech-nology and socialmedia have redirect-ed the ow ofcommunication inmany disturbing di-rections. Forinstance, one-thirdof high school teens

send more than 100 texts a day and half send at least 50, withthree-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds owning cell phones, reportsStephanie Goldberg for CNN.com in an April 2010 article sum-

marizing a study by Pew Research Center’s Internet & AmericanLife Project. (Adolescents deem email too slow, too formal.)They like to communicate with invisible friends even if visibleones sit a few feet away. And text messages, plus instant messag-es and tweets, undercut the quality of communication ipso facto because of their very brevity. Also, relationships, real or virtual,are often begun, lived out and broken online. And “friends” are pictures in tiny squares on a digital wall. Teens age 13-16, thefastest-growing social media demographic, average 450 “friends”in social networks; that number more than doubles by the timethey’re 22, and then decreases exponentially over the decades, ac-cording to The Daily (U.K.) Mail in a May 2011 article on thiscyber “friend” trend. Accountability and EQ can suffer in such anamassment. As they can when a blogger adopts a persona andwhen cyber communication is conveyed anonymously.

What do we lose by not dealing with each other in person? Ac-countability and EQ. Isolation may set in, and emoticons are poorsubstitutes for empathy. Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence, didnot foresee cyber bullying and stalking, Internet predators and ad-diction. Or did he? ■

Mary Ann Manos (Bradley University) is the

superintendent of the Hartsburg-Emden (Ill.) School

District and a 30-year veteran of elementary through

university classrooms. A former ethics columnist for this

magazine, she earned degrees from Malone University

(B.S., education), University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (M.Ed.),

and University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D., curriculum and

instruction) and did postdoctoral work in superintendency

at Illinois State University. Email her at mmanos@hartem.org.

Emoticon Intelligence or Emotional Intelligence?

Daniel Goleman

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