Challenges and Opportunities of Emotional Literacy in Primary Essay

Challenges and Opportunities of Emotional Literacy in Primary Education - Essay Example I agree that it is all about helping children get in touch with their emotions, identify them and understand what a significant role they play in their personal growth and development, and teaching them steps to handle those emotions positively.   A major underlying factor to numerous of the problems in contemporary society is ignorance of the crucial role emotions play. Emotional literacy is a constructive preventive mechanism, which accurately understood, can help society in eliminating loads of its problems (Saarni, 1999). Once gained, it provides individuals with an alternative to illness, aggression, substance abuse, unhealthy relationships, and societal conflicts (Elias, Zins, Weissberg and Frey 1997); hence the need for emotional literacy education in early childhood. Understanding the notion of emotional literacy necessitates examining its two component constructs, ‘intelligence’ and ‘emotion’. The cognitive domain comprises such functions as reasoning, human memory, abstract thought, and judgment (Matthews, 2006). Emotions belong to the commonly named affective domain of mental performance, which comprises the emotions themselves, assessments, mood, and other feeling conditions, including energy or exhaustion (Matthews, 2006). Descriptions of emotional literacy should somehow link emotions with intelligence if the definitions of the two concepts are to be sustained (Sharp, 2001). For instance, motivation is personality’s third domain. It denotes ‘learned goal-seeking behavior’ (Matthew, 2006: 13) and biological drives. To the point that it is engaged in emotional literacy, it should be visualized as secondary (Matthew, 2006).  Ã‚