Aristotle once said, educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. I actually know nothing about him except for a fact that he was a very famous philosopher. The reason why I know this quote is that my teacher when I studied in Canada for five months inserted the quote at the end of every e-mail she sent me.
This is exactly my topic for today, to educate hearts of students.

Hello, everyone. My name is Akari Uejo.
Today, I would like to propose a new type of education which is introducing emotional intelligence to school curriculum in Japan.

But what is emotional intelligence anyway? Emotional intelligence, also known as EQ refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. And It has five categories. One is self-awareness, which is the ability to recognize, and understand one’s emotions, as well as their effects on others. Next one is self-regulation, which is the ability to control impulses and moods. Third is motivation which is a passion to pursue goals with energy and persistence. Forth is empathy which is an ability to understand feelings of other people. Last one is social skills which is a proficiency in relationships and building networks.
Through my studies of sociology, and daily observation on the Japanese society, I came to believe that introducing emotional intelligence to curriculum is essential in our country for the next two reasons.

First one is EQ could help solve issue such as bullying in schools. According to MEXT (Ministry of education), the highest number of bullying in history was reported in 2019, and the number was 612,000 cases.
According to a book named “Science of bullying” published, when analyzing how bullying occurs, there are three aspects to consider from such as (1) Victim, (2) Perpetrator, (3) Bystander. The reason why I will explain those three aspects is the book says that not only victims themselves, but perpetrator and bystander are affected by psychologically the bullying, such as high risks of having mental health issues in the future. So the bullying affects the whole students, and needs to be prevented.

But if students increase their self-awareness of EQ, students can identify their emotions and express them properly when bullying occurs. And self-regulation helps to manage their emotions, and find different ways of coping with stress and if they have empathy, they understand other students’ perspectives and not cause bullying or might step in to stop the bullying.

The next one is EQ can help improve relationships with others and ourselves.
First, let’s look at relationships with others. The Legarum Prosperity Index 2020 reported that Japan was ranked 140th out of 169 countries in total on social capital, which includes personal and family relationships, social networks, interpersonal trust, institutional trust, and civic and social partnerships. Categories such as education and safety was in top10, but social capital was significantly low in Japan. Next one is relationships with ourselves. According to a survey conducted by the Japan cabinet office in 2018, only 62% of the Japanese youth answered they believe they have strengths in themselves whereas the U.S was 87%.

For relationships with others, if one has social skills of EQ, they can get even better at making friends and build connections. And if one has empathy, one can have long-lasting relationships with others. For relationships with ourselves, if you have skills such as self-awareness, you are more likely to find out your strengths, which could help you find a school or career that fits your ability.

Now that I talked about why we need to focus on EQ, the important part is HOW we can make this happen. I will talk about SEL (Social-emotional learning) as an example. Basically, it is a process of learning that enables students to increase emotional intelligence.
But what activities are they conducting in class? Let me give you an example. This is one of SEL programs called PATH introduced in the U.S, and this activity allows students to recognize their emotions and express properly by writing down sentences.
For this one, there are Sally and Rebecca, because Rebecca took Sally’s toy, she is upset. So the content of the letter is how student can act as Sally and calmly express the emotions. A survey conducted by educational non-profit for SEL called CASEL showed that after conducting SEL, not only did it show improvement on social behaviors, distress, and surprisingly, 27% of students improved their academic performance.
But how are we going to make this curriculum?

And to make this happen, I came up with a collaborative framework that involves many sectors from NPOs, schools and university volunteer center, government, businesses.
The reason why I feel the need for this to be introduced to school-wide curriculum is that only myself or some other organizations implementing the curriculum will not have an impact on a societal-level and I strongly feel the need to make this as an education system and school-wide approach to make more broader, societal-level impact in Japan.

And by applying the framework, these are the five steps to introducing EQ to school curriculum. Step1 is interviewing schools.

I think first we need to start by listening. By schools, the plan is to interview teachers, parents and students. The reason why I will interview students is that they might have needs that adults or researchers do not notice about school, and students are the ones who know the most about their learning environment, so we should consider from students perspectives too.

Step2 is to create curriculum and teacher training programs based on resources collected from step1. I am currently interning at educational non-profit organization, and there is an employee who was a former elementary school teacher and he taught me about the current guidelines of school and its contents were great. But, the issue is that how to foster those skills written on the guidelines in class is actually difficult. And I know that Japanese teachers are extremely busy, so creating resources and training to reduce the amount of work for teachers is necessary.

And after creating materials and training programs, we will conduct a pilot project in classrooms of grade5 and 6 at elementary schools. We have students who wish to become teachers and who are volunteering or interning in educational fields take training and use resources and they will apply what they have learned in the training in actual classrooms to see what the outcome and impact will look like.

After the pilot is done and its impacts are successfully measured, and as step4, investments need to be collected from businesses and the government.

Lastly, as a step5, creating resources and training programs are needed to finalize the project. I believe if there is a curriculum that fosters EQ, not only does it have positive effects on individual, but also it has long-term benefits to society too, so this is why I strongly believe EQ is needed in Japanese education system.

I truly hope that you understand the concept of EQ, its importance, and my idea.

This is the end of my presentation.
Thank you so much for listening.
This is reference I used.