EQ or IQ?
What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
What do you do when you feel unhappy?
What do you do when someone criticises you?
What do you do when you fail at something?
YELLIS and MIDYIS and ALIS all claim to give us a measure of intelligence so that we can see if our students are fulfilling their potential. But they are all based on the traditional notions of IQ linked to linguistic/numeric intelligence that date back to Alfred Binet in 1905 when he was commissioned to identify children who may be in need of special help due to inadequate intellect. This may explain why this data is just part of the picture of our students’ potential. Since Binet there have been many other theories of intelligence and most recently Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence model, which suggests a variety of ways to be clever, including acknowledging that David Beckham is extremely intelligent on the football field and Michael Jackson is a musical genius.
The debate about whether we can nurture an expanding intelligence has been supported by recent research using MRI scans looking at the way specific brain activity grows our brains. London taxi drivers doing the ‘knowledge’ had clearly defined areas of brain growth around their visual/spatial awareness and violinists have expanded that little part of their brains that focus on finger movement. For me this case is proven but what about emotional intelligence? Without this, success at school or in life is impossible. The questions around this article test out the way we all handle ourselves and our emotions on a daily basis. It is this form of intelligence that creates the ability to pass or fail – self-awareness, optimism, goal setting, empathy, mood control, deferred gratification etc………… The more we can model this for our students and our own children, the more successful they will be.
How do you react when faced with disaster?
When was the last time you did something that scares you?
How do you make yourself stick to your promises?
What makes you get up in the morning?
How do you feel when someone else is successful?
Do you treat others the way you like to be treated?
How often do you compliment someone else?
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