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I feel you are inaccurate, in that schools all focus more on emotional intelligence over any single academic subject matter. Add up all the required group proj

I feel you are inaccurate, in that schools all focus more on emotional intelligence over any single academic subject matter. Add up all the required group projects, team stuff, etc and there you have it.

pgeorgi 3y ago
They focus more on it, but in a lord-of-the-flies kind of way. You either get the cues, or you don't in which case, tough luck. It's the same in other fields, e.g. sports/physical ed often works that way, language and maths as well depending on the teacher. But with none of them, the failure to impart that knowledge increases the risk of murder (as seen here, even though that's an extreme case.) Edit to add: and in cases like Hans Reiser it's doubly sad because he surely was a smart kid. Sending him off into special "emotional intelligence classes" probably wouldn't have affected his intellectual skills in the slightest (or maybe even in a positive way). But while it's an aspect that most schools try to impart through osmosis, they don't detect when they fail, or even when they notice, there's little they can do about it.
- Jare 3y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. "git gud" as they say in online games, is not teaching, it's just pushing for competitiveness and survival of the fittest.
Sakos 3y ago
I don't know how you can look at the current discourse about anything and say that it's working. People are growing up not learning how to handle their emotions and we're seeing the consequences of that every day. The other comment hits the nail on the head perfectly with referencing lord of the flies.
- michaelt 3y ago
  For people of a certain age, all the education about these things that worked was delivered almost unintentionally, and all the attempts to impart it deliberately were ridiculous. Your parents read to you, and you developed a love of books? Probably you know pretty well how to imagine another person's emotions in a hypothetical situation. And that different characters could feel very differently about otherwise-similar situations. You can probably name three to five different ways a person might feel about, say, having their work usurped. On the other hand, a decade or two ago attempts to teach this sort of thing used exercises like dividing people into four quadrants, named things like 'plants' and 'stars' as if the very idea that different people are different was a shocking revelation they needed to spend several weeks introducing. Perhaps our techniques for teaching this stuff have improved in the past few years? The way it used to be taught was something of a waste of time.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > I don't know how you can look at the current discourse about anything and say that it's working. I didn't say it's working, I said that they focus on it more than you think.
hackerlight 3y ago
Group projects made me resentful because I had to do all the work. The justification was something like "tough luck that's how the real world works". No lessons learned there aside from this feeling that I'm going to get screwed by colleagues. Instead we should teach kids cognitive empathy and explore applied theory of mind. Do it in an intellectual way. Why do people think differently, what motivates people, how does this motivation lead to events and outcomes in society? It's sort of an intersection of psychology and sociology. If people get skillful at this it helps to reduce how judgemental people can be, which is one of the things the author talked about. You could tie it in with teaching kids about CBT. Teach kids to analyze their own thoughts and assumptions about themselves, others, and the world they're in.
GTP 3y ago
I think there are national differences here, schools around the world can be quite different from each other.

pgeorgi 3y ago

They focus more on it, but in a lord-of-the-flies kind of way. You either get the cues, or you don't in which case, tough luck. It's the same in other fields, e.g. sports/physical ed often works that way, language and maths as well depending on the teacher. But with none of them, the failure to impart that knowledge increases the risk of murder (as seen here, even though that's an extreme case.) Edit to add: and in cases like Hans Reiser it's doubly sad because he surely was a smart kid. Sending him off into special "emotional intelligence classes" probably wouldn't have affected his intellectual skills in the slightest (or maybe even in a positive way). But while it's an aspect that most schools try to impart through osmosis, they don't detect when they fail, or even when they notice, there's little they can do about it.

Jare 3y ago
You hit the nail on the head. "git gud" as they say in online games, is not teaching, it's just pushing for competitiveness and survival of the fittest.

Sakos 3y ago

I don't know how you can look at the current discourse about anything and say that it's working. People are growing up not learning how to handle their emotions and we're seeing the consequences of that every day. The other comment hits the nail on the head perfectly with referencing lord of the flies.

michaelt 3y ago
For people of a certain age, all the education about these things that worked was delivered almost unintentionally, and all the attempts to impart it deliberately were ridiculous. Your parents read to you, and you developed a love of books? Probably you know pretty well how to imagine another person's emotions in a hypothetical situation. And that different characters could feel very differently about otherwise-similar situations. You can probably name three to five different ways a person might feel about, say, having their work usurped. On the other hand, a decade or two ago attempts to teach this sort of thing used exercises like dividing people into four quadrants, named things like 'plants' and 'stars' as if the very idea that different people are different was a shocking revelation they needed to spend several weeks introducing. Perhaps our techniques for teaching this stuff have improved in the past few years? The way it used to be taught was something of a waste of time.
lelanthran 3y ago
> I don't know how you can look at the current discourse about anything and say that it's working. I didn't say it's working, I said that they focus on it more than you think.

hackerlight 3y ago

Group projects made me resentful because I had to do all the work. The justification was something like "tough luck that's how the real world works". No lessons learned there aside from this feeling that I'm going to get screwed by colleagues. Instead we should teach kids cognitive empathy and explore applied theory of mind. Do it in an intellectual way. Why do people think differently, what motivates people, how does this motivation lead to events and outcomes in society? It's sort of an intersection of psychology and sociology. If people get skillful at this it helps to reduce how judgemental people can be, which is one of the things the author talked about. You could tie it in with teaching kids about CBT. Teach kids to analyze their own thoughts and assumptions about themselves, others, and the world they're in.

GTP 3y ago

I think there are national differences here, schools around the world can be quite different from each other.