Every day millions of parents return home from work and turn on the television, only to find themselves inundated with bad news: wars in foreign countries, soaring crime rates at home, violence in their children's schools, and a host of other maladies that make them wonder what kind of world their children will inherit. That world is not necessarily fated to be so painful, according to some experts.
"In a society that demands more of children, we believe that if we can start teaching children social-emotional skills across political boundaries, we really do have an opportunity to change the world we live in," said Joan Duffell of the Committee for the Children in Seattle, Wash. "We need to start looking at the need for children to learn global strategies because, more and more, we're becoming a global society."
Joan Duffell
Together with Lone Gregersen of the Danish Royal School of Education, Duffell outlined a program called Second Step, which was created to teach children emotional management skills. "Why do we hurt other people?" Duffell asked. "There is an amazing amount of consistency in the records of violent offenders—both juvenile and adult—that shows that these people lack basic social skills. They lack empathy, self-control, problem solving, and the anger-management skills that make it possible to function normally in society." Rather than waiting until people are middle-aged to begin teaching them such skills, Duffell and Gregersen said, it makes more sense to teach the skills when people are at a younger and more impressionable age. "It's very difficult to change people when they're 40," Duffell said.
To teach children social-emotional skills, Second Step focuses on showing children how they can determine the emotional state of others, how it might feel to walk in that person's shoes and see his or her view of situations, and how to measure their own emotional responses when dealing with conflict. "If children rehearse these skills enough, when they get out into the real world they're more likely to try them on their own," said Duffell.
Although Second Step has been successful in reducing behavioral problems where it has been tested—children in one study who underwent the training program showed a 29 percent decrease in incidents of physical aggression, for example—it has not yet enjoyed widespread application in U.S. schools.
"American schools are so focused on assessment and academics that they see social-emotional learning as an add-on rather than something that they should have to teach," said Duffell. "That is what's been so refreshing about working with schools in Denmark. Northern European schools see social-emotional learning as part of the teacher's task, not something just for counselors."
Too often, Duffell said, the main motivator for U.S. schools to undertake social-emotional instruction has been outbreaks of violence. "If we can integrate social-emotional learning into U.S. educational practices, schools will see this as one job that we do for the whole child," she said.
That reluctance to engage in social-emotional instruction, Duffell and Gregersen said, must change if schools are to foster positive environments in their classrooms. "In Denmark, we say that the chain is never stronger than its weakest link," said Gregersen. "When it comes to psychological facts, people are so much alike, whether it is in the United States or Europe. We want to work together, and we want to solve our problems."
And, Gregersen pointed out, there are reasons for optimism. "When it comes to problem solving, we always need to stay optimistic," she said. "In the global world of the information age, we need to find ways to work together. If our society is going to change, our schools are going to have to change as well to help meet our students' needs."