The year is 2020. Most writing is done via dictation, computers automatically correct spelling and grammar, and math is easily performed via voice-activated calculators. Fortunately, however, the adults living in this era are well prepared, because they were taught emotional literacy at school every year during childhood along with reading, writing, and arithmetic. But educators are slowly becoming aware of the crucial need to teach children emotional and social competency to meet childhood challenges as well as to move into healthy adulthood. Applied psychoanalysis, which Freud always knew had much to offer to education, has been in the forefront of this endeavor.
Emotional literacy is needed to adequately prepare children for their adult lives.
Children who are denied this crucial area of knowledge will be handicapped with regard to achieving success and happiness. The complexity of today's culture leaves even many well-meaning parents unable to teach their children what they themselves do not understand and were never taught. Children living in the inner city and other environments where there are high levels of poverty, violence, deprivation, crowded living conditions, character pathology, family fragmentation, and other types of distress are especially in need of emotional literacy. In general, these children not only are subjected to greater trauma from the external world but also tend to have less internal strength with which to cope. As a result, these children are at especially high risk for emotional difficulties now and in the future.