Time Cover Story touts Emotional Intelligenc

More on TIME Cover Story touts Emotional Intelligence in the schools.

How to revamp our educational systems to make kids ready for their future.

Developing good people skills, EQ, or emotional intelligence, can be as important as IQ for success in today's workplace. All things being equal, it can be more important.

"Most innovations today involve large teams of people," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. "We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures."

One suggestion was that kids should not bother learning a second language, to allow time to take other things. Something about - we speak English in the U. S.

On "The Moderate Voice" blog by Joe Gandelman, he gives his opinion about learning another language:

"My view? A superpower that stops being interested in the world surrounding it, a superpower that has become so arrogant that it believes that everyone should speak the language spoken in before-mentioned superpower, is in the very real danger of alienating the entire world and it seems not, umh, very smart to me, close one's borders for information and knowledge from other countries. There is more to it than just 'money' (whether or not people will use it in their professional career). There is also the aspect of, as the original article points out, globalization and of personal development. To be able to read Goethe in German... Trust me, the original is always better than a translation."

MY VIEW: Yes, they are better in the original language. We get mis-translations all the time. And what they say goes better in their native tongue; that's why we don't translate operas. Not all the great literature in the world is written in English. But perhaps more importantly, and less-inflammatory ... when I sat in my Latin class room, freshman year in high school, my teacher said these words, which I have never forgotten: "You do not know your own language until you have learned another one." And furthermore, yes, everyone speaks English in the U.S., and so does nearly everyone else in the developed worl; they "bother" to learn our language.

Learning a second language was obligatory for pre-grad school preparation back in the 60s. At the fine college I went to, Carleton College, in Northfield, MN (which to this day produces an inordinate number of pre-med students who pass the MedCAT), a second language was required for graduation, along with required courses in areas outside your major. Truly a liberal arts education. German if you were pre-med, for instance; but you have to take English literature, or History, or Economics along with your science. (Many parents were aware at the time that this would be the last "exposure" their youngster, planning to go to medical school, would have to anything BUT science, and that this would make them more well-rounded, and enrich their lifes into the future. It could be any language if you were in liberal arts, but you had to get in there and take Physics, or Astronomy - 3 science courses. Why? To be "well-rounded." "For your own edificatoin." Old-fashioned, wasn't it?

In other words, to graduate you had to have a smattering of the knowledge that makes a person "educated" -- science, history, English literature, 3 years of a second language, psychology, math, biology, philosophy. There were "distribution" requirements. along with the requirements for your particular major. Why? The stated goal of education at that college was that students learn how to think, and broadly. This is what the TIME article is getting at.

This is about culture, because culture is learned, and different peoples and different countries and regions have their own culture. Culture happens to be a part of Emotional Intelligence. As far as I know, my EQ Course is the only one that intentionally incorporates culture into it (art, poetry, literature, opera, music) and why it is rated #1. The EQ Coach Certification program is rated the #1 EQ coach certification program.

More than that, there's a reason why operas are never translated into English. It doesn't work. The Italian libretto is as much a part of what makes Verdi's operas great, as his genius at music. The libretto for the incredible Otello was written by Arrigo Boito, and sets up the 'themes' Verdi set to music, that carry the plot. "Otello is a masterpiece," said Toscanini. "Go on your knees, Mother, and say 'Viva Verdi'." Now, do you know what "Viva Verdi" means??

I work globally, and I am constantly embarassed. EVERY PERSON I talk to -- from Malaysia, from India, from Germany, from the Phillipines, from Beijing, from Poland (and I have trained coaches from all these countries and many more), not only knows English, they know our time zones, they know our metric system, they know our literature, they know our music, our sports figures and movie stars, our religions, our holidays, and our cultural traditions. (I must use analogies to teach.) They know to wish me "Merry Christmas" and I don't know what their holidays are, much less what their names are. But I'm learning.

Travel also used to be part of the classical education, but not for everyone; nor was college. It was only for the wealthy. It used to be elitist to know another language, and to have traveled abroad. Maybe that's the way to get our schools to keep it. Make people think they're LUCKY to get to learn a second language. They are, you know.

Not only do you finally understand your own grammar, you learn fascinating things about other languages, and along with that comes "inside" knowledge about their culture.

For instance, in German, they hold the verb until the end of the sentence. What does that tell you about their the German mind, the German culture?

In Spanish, they have an "am now" to-be verb, and an "am always" to-be verb. In English we can only say "He's an idiot." Now? Always? Forever? The Spanish see such a difference, they have a special verb for it. They also do not assign "fault" for something. Their grammatical construction is "the glass broke". You cannot say, in Spanish, "Tom broke the glass." What does that tell you about their culture?

In Chinese, there is no way to say "no." How about that in negotiating? When does "yes" or "maybe" mean "no"? What do you now know about the Chinese?

When you study another language, you learn the "roots" of many of our words, because most of them came from German, Greek or Latin. That is also why we have synonyms, and why in the law everything comes in pairs -- aid and abet, will and testament -- early writers weren't sure the readers would understand the French or Latin, so, according to David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, they included their term, the Anglo-Saxon, along with the "foreign" term.

If you had studies another language , you would know, when you got to law school, what all those legal terms actually mean, like res ipse loquitur and duces tecum and subpoena.

When you got to medical school, you would have an edge on all those medical terms from Greek and Latin, like achondroplasia and adenocarcinoma and alimentary. There is a course at Indiana Univ. called Medical Terms from Greek and Latin.

And when you got to divinity school, you would have read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.

When you study Marie Antoinette, you know that the French word for "cake" is their word for "bread" (like many cultures - which you learn if you study their LANGUAGE - do not have sweets for dessert) and, the way translations go, and the way word-of-mouth goes, she may have said "Give them bread to eat" instead of "Let them eat cake." We had a classic example of such mistranslation in the 50s. Kruschev did not say "We will bury them," the translator blew it. What he said was more like, "We'll be here long after they're gone." The difference between assertive and aggressive.

Good grief!

I have to add here, since I study neuroscience, emotional intelligence and multiple intelligences, learning a language isn't really about IQ. At some level, it's a skill. That Pope that spoke 10 languages? He may or may not have had a high IQ. What he did have was a facility with languages, an opportunity to learn them, and an appreciation of the need to.

Some people have a really hard time with pronunciation and fluency. The "language center", what allows you to be truly fluent in another language, solidifies at puberty - so let's teach them when they're young. Kids learn it easily. After all, we forget that no one's born knowing English.

I admit to bias. I took 4 years of Latin in high school and 3 years of French. In college, I took 4 years of Greek. (Yes, Chettie, I hope there's no Greek in heaven.) After college I moved to San Antonio, TX and I heard people speaking Spanish and jumped at the chance to learn a language I would actually get to speak. I learned it as an adult and am fluent in Spanish. Lately I got interested in opera and am learning Italian. I'm -- as they say -- a polyglot.

It's been fun. I want to get fluent in Italian. A friend of mine learned German and Russian when she was in her late 50's. We traveled together in Russia, and was she getting more out of it? Yes. She had read Russian novels. She knew their history and much more about their culture than I did. To learn a language, you are always learning about the country/culture itself. When you get to the higher levels, you're reading their great literature in the original.

Dr. Gonzo replied to the blog with this:

"Students shouldn't learn a second language? What an asinine statement. I think that all students should be required to learn a language other than English, and it should start at an early age. Learning foreign languages not only taught me the language, it also greatly improved my English skills as well. Nothing helps you think about grammar in English than having to think about grammar in a foreign language. [emphasis mine] And nothing need "be taken off the list" to require students to learn a foreign language. It's about raising expectations. Lots of people can do it: you know, the rest of the world. If students in just about every other country than the U.S. can speak multiple languages, score higher in math and science, and so on, then students in the U.S. can too. We just need to demand that they do."

To which Michael van der Galien replies:

"Gonzo: I agree completely.
In the netherlands, on high school, higher levels (VWO and Gymnasium):

- Dutch
- English
- German
- French
Required."

(That's FOUR languages REQUIRED, folks.)

Want to get ahead? Take THE EQ COURSE. It's for sure Emotional Intelligence should be required, and is not yet a household word. EQ can matter more to your success than IQ, and it can be learned. Get it now! Then you can teach it to your kids at home, and the thing to remember is this - you are teaching emotional intelligence whether you now it or not, so make sure you're teaching GOOD emotional intelligence.

P.S. Charm and street-smart, yes that's Emotional Intelligence. Charm - or etiquette / manners. How else are you going to handle the multicultural environment where we're always stepping on each other's toes because we don't know better?

Learn it!

And learn another language. You'll be glad you did.