I have seen anxious mothers rushing to their child’s school ready for a faceoff with the school authorities because the child deserves a place in the school’s honor list. I have seen parents manipulate and influence their child’s future by deciding the course of study the child should take. The children are intelligent, no doubt and parents would only like to see the best for their children. It is not a fault for there is this widespread notion that IQ predicts success and schools continue to labor tirelessly under this impression making academic competition a more arduous task. Gone were those days when schooling was an enjoyable learning experience.
I have also seen some of the brightest sink in the fathomless sea of unbridled passions and unruly impulses. This is where most of us and our schools fail; preparing and equipping the children with emotional skills which will help them sail through in the face of life’s vicissitudes, skills which their paper diplomas can’t help. Academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. A high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige or happiness in life. Some people with high IQ can be stunningly poor pilots of their private lives.
Much evidence testifies that people who are emotionally adept-who know and manage their own feelings- are at an advantage in any domain of life; whether romance and intimate relationships or picking up the unspoken rules that govern success in social life. It is an observable phenomenon that people with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives.
Nursing schools do not only teach the physical, biological and other life sciences ,it also hones our emotions so that they remain masked and invisible ; so that we don’t buckle under the intensity of stress and emotional see-saw we deal in situations where we see patients very ill and passed on at times. It is phenomenal that the emotional maturity displayed by the nurse and all those responsible for patient care becomes a magical ingredient which to an extraordinary extent dictates the patient’s mental attitude and disposition toward his recovery.
