In this middle school class students are asked what to do if a stranger offers them a cigarette. I ll make a list. I might tell em that they shouldn t smoke, and that s bad. The concept was popularized in a book that has become a bestseller all over the world. The author is Daniel Goleman.
Emotional intelligence is a phrase for a different way of being smart.
We ve been over-sold on academics as a predictor of how well you re going to do in life. You know, at best, IQ predicts maybe 20 percent of life success, and a harder look suggests maybe it s closer to 10. If you look at studies of top performers, you find that it s their emotional intelligence abilities that set them apart from people who are at the average. But some school reformers like Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform say social development classes take too much time away from academic training. But Goleman says emotional intelligence programs do improve academic performance.