“Teaching emotions”, I’m sure you guys are thinking if we have reached a point where we should be ‘taught’ about emotions and feelings? The answer is sadly yes. The reason why this is happening is because cross culture has become one of the main things in our lives. Whether it was with me, you, your family, your kids, or anyone else in this world. Globalization is in process, therefore cross-cultural issues and the factors that come with it are essential.
Cultures differ and based on that people of each culture decide or categorize certain feelings as being “normal” or “abnormal”. An example on that is when we see a man crying… very few cultures out there accept this action while by many other cultures it is frowned upon and considered weird. Forgetting that men are also humans. On the other hand, we normally find it “normal” if a girl or a woman cries almost every day on the stupidest things… whether it was a nail breaking, a ring scratched, or even a lost phone.
I will move now to the topic that I’ve wanted to concentrate on in specific, which is teaching emotions to children. Children are usually found very confused about their feelings; they don’t know if they should feel hurt, if they should feel embarrassed… what is even worse is that they don’t know if it’s OKAY for them to feel those feelings or not. This is where “Teaching Emotions” introduces itself.
I’ve learned about this topic in a one of the most interesting courses I’ve studied which is “Education Systems In The World”. In this course, I have conducted a research about different educations systems in the world… and luckily I’ve stumbled on a very interesting topic, which is the education system in Singapore.
Singapore has started recently teaching emotions to kids in school, in Key Stage 1 and 2… schools are obliged to offer the subject “Emotions” just like any other subject in their curriculum. The reason why this decision has been taken is because they have conducted a study themselves, and found out that most kids go through psychological issues when growing up because of bottling up their feelings or denying certain feelings. Why? Because they are also caught up in the myth of “normal”. If a girl fell down, hurt herself, and cried… parents might say “It’s okay, it will be fine... Don’t worry” and would most probably spend the rest of the day spoiling her. On the other hand, a reaction a boy would get in that case would most probably be “why are you crying? You’re a man! Men don’t cry.” Sadly, this is true… and sadly, this is being witness everyday in front of us; not knowing how negatively this will be affecting those children in the future and ruin their childhood.
Emotions are taught to kids because we tell them that they shouldn’t be feeling what they’re feeling… we are telling kids that because that’s what we were told. In a way or another, it’s a pattern that we are falling into, where feelings and thoughts shouldn’t be shared unless they’re normal… but then again, what is normal?