SANTIAGO – Emotional education has become an important topic in Chilean education. Now pending with Congress is a proposed law to add it to the national curriculum. According to professionals, this addition will improve not only Chilean education, but society as a whole.
When talking about education, what usually comes to mind are things like math, language, science, and history. But for some time now, a new concept has become part of the educational debate in Chile: emotional education, an unknown topic to many that every day becomes more relevant.
The “Fundación Liderazgo Chile” (Chile Leadership Foundation), is one of the boosters of a proposed law, which seeks to integrate emotional education into formal national education, by means of a modification to the current education law.
According to Liderazgo Chile’s website, emotional education is “the ongoing and permanent educational process, with which the development of emotional competencies is promoted as an essential element of human development.”
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Changes “for a better society”
Arnaldo Canales, president of Liderazgo Chile, spoke with Chile Today and said that this proposal “seeks to change the education law, to begin to establish emotional competencies in Chilean children and youth.” Canales said the reason is that “a child who develops emotionally, will be an adult with emotional awareness, and will contribute better to society.”
Canales also added that the change sought is not to create a specific subject to develop emotional skills (also known as “soft skills”), but rather to seek a “broader” change, which allows teachers to train with knowledge in the matter, so that they, in turn, deliver it to students, “in order to obtain a better quality of life.”
The proposal was delivered to the Congressional Education Commission on January 14. The Minister of Education, Marcela Cubillos, also participated in the proposal. Canales said that the proposal “had a very good reception by the ministry.”
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Another point of view
“Relaciones Inteligentes” (Smart Relationships) is another organization that works with emotional education. Its slogan is “Revolutionize education from the heart.” Its executive director, Constanza del Rosario, also spoke with Chile Today.
Del Rosario said, “While [Liderazgo Chile] has this proposal, which seeks to extend the current law, to include certain premises, which oblige to provide emotional education, [Relaciones Inteligentes] instead has proposed a change which is aimed more at the curricular bases, which means that we are concerned with both school education and teacher training.”
According to del Rosario, the current problem with emotional education is curriculum-based: classes are not designed to foster the development of emotional skills. The goal of including emotional education in formal education is to “reduce a lot of problems we have as a society.”
As an initial matter, “the children will learn more and better,” because the learning process will change 180°; in addition, “the consumption of alcohol and drugs, childhood disorders, and, above all, suicides,” will be reduced. The last point is especially provocative, because Chile ranks second in the growth of suicide rates, after South Korea.
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“An opportunity to match educational gaps”
Consuelo Manosalba, Head of Education at Chile Today, and currently pursuing a doctorate in education, said that the term emotional education has its birth in education, and she emphasized the importance of the matter: “There is no doubt that an individual with low emotional development will not be able to read, solve math problems and/or [participate effectively in] recreational activities, given that emotions provide us with the necessary imprint to develop a compulsory or desired activity.”
Manosalba also explained how emotional education contributes to a better educational process: it provides tools for “how to act in the face of disruptive situations,” including situations that compromise “the teaching-learning process of students”; and it provides “an opportunity to match the educational gaps between municipal schools and subsidized private schools.”
So easy, but so difficult
This would inspire a new educational focus, because the application of emotional education would change the perception of the delivery of knowledge. As Chile Today´s Manosalba noted, new questions are posed, such as “What is the use of math? Why should I learn it? What good is reading?”
The answers, in turn, generate better attention from students, because, as Manosalba pointed out, “When I explain why, it will generate motivation, that motivation becomes curiosity, which, with the passage of time, generates new motivation for the new and unknown.”
Manosalba cautioned that, although this is something that is “easy to understand,” at the same time it is “hard to to apply in a too-rigid Chilean school curriculum, accompanied by educational laws that do not prioritize more than statistics in general.”
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Nelson Quiroz is Chile Today´s photographer. He also writes about youth culture and fashion, and often contributes with photo series during marches and protests.