Universities, Emotional Intelligence and Society

I was thinking about what happens in universities as you get a group of some of the most intelligent young people together. I say some because not all the intelligent young people will go to universities. It might be that the most intelligent will go traveling instead of going a university, but in any case, what do you do with these young people when you have them all gathered together in universities?

Do you teach them to make the world a better place? Or do you teach them how to make more money for themselves? Do you teach them to be happy? Do you teach them how to be parents? Do you teach them to think beyond their country's borders? Do you teach them to think beyond their country’s dominant religious beliefs?

Looking back, as I went through the business courses I was taught, I can’t remember even one course which encouraged me to even give any thought into making the world a better place, or most of the other things I just listed.

Yet now my heart tells me to think about this. What do we call this if not emotional intelligence?

I was raised in a materialistic society. One of the most materialistic in the world, the USA. I developed the belief that studying business was the right thing for me. I liked the idea of making money. I was interested in money at a young age. It was one of my highest values. My bank account was always important to me. I always had money in my bank account, from about age 10 on. Always. In some ways I am proud of this. In some ways I am proud that I basically retired at around age 35.

But I have not had a life filled with happiness.

So now I am trying to figure out what to do with my life. Making money is not my highest priority anymore. Financial freedom was my highest priority when I was getting my masters degree at the University of Texas. And I have become financially free. So I achieved my goal. But achieving this goal was not enough to make me happy.

If you have read my journal over the past few years you know that I have been extremely depressed, not ecstatically happy.

So what tells me now to try to make the world a better place? What tells me to stop thinking about myself and think about suicidal teens and the world?

I believe it is emotional intelligence.

I believe my feelings are telling me now, belatedly, what is most important.

Now that I know how teenagers live around the world -- and how some of them, far, far too many of them, kill themselves to stop their emotional pain -- my feelings tell me to try to do something about this. To me, this is emotional intelligence.

It is intelligent to feel bad when another human being with tremendous potential is either a) not making a positive contribution to humanity, or b) wants to leave it.

Now my feelings tell me something is very wrong with the whole forced education system, and even the whole economic system. For me, something is wrong somewhere when I look at what is happening around the world from the homes and schools I have been in to the news I see in places I have not been.

It is not a pretty picture.

In Peru one of my main generalizations was that “no one does anything here unless they are afraid of not doing it.” Yesterday I talked to a fifteen year old and her parents. At one point I asked her which were here favorite subjects. She said, “None. I don’t like any of them.”

So why does she go to school everyday? Why does she study and worry about getting what society considers “good” grades?

One of the primary reasons is that her parents will punish her if she does not. They told me that one of her favorite things to do is spend time with her friends. So if she does not get satisfactory grades, they will punish her by not allowing her to spend as much time with her friends on the weekends.

Her father told me he believes when someone does something that is wrong, they should be punished.

I believe he really wants the best for his daughter. I won’t say he doesn’t care what happens to her. I believe he does. And I know the mother does, too. I can see it.

Yet what if it is what the parents believe, not what their daugher is doing, that is wrong? What if what they believe to be “wrong”, actually isn’t?

What if what they think that which is in her best interests, actually isn’t?

What if preparing her to become a university-educated employee is not really in her best interest? Then what?

What if she becomes a university-educated employee who is divorced with children? We have many of those around the world.

So my hypothesis is that a university education does not guarantee happiness. My hypothesis is that it also does not guarantee that you will learn what you need to in order to be a good parent. It seems to me that what it almost guarantees, if anything, is that you will make a good employee.So my question is: Is this what the world needs most now? Good employees? But we would have to define what a good employee is. Let’s try to quickly do that.

I would say a good employee helps the business owners increase their profits.

That is the simplest definition I can offer.

So we have an entire education system based on helping business owners increase their profits.

Of course there are some exceptions. For example, take medicine. If you work for a government hospital, the goal might not be to increase profits. Or if you work as a lawyer for the ACLU or Greenpeace. Or if you work for many NGO’s around the world. But it seems that the majority of young people are being trained to work in businesses where the goal is to increase the owners’ profits.

Now let’s take government jobs. A lot of people work in government jobs around the world. Yesterday the father told me that people here in Uruguay believe that if they work for the government they will have a job forever. And this is probably pretty close to the truth. Except I recently walked past the old train station. And a man working there told me the government-run train system used to employ around 9,000 people in Uruguay. Now it is around 1,000. I am not sure what is happening in other sectors of the government, but what I am suggesting is that not even working for the government is absolute job security.

But let’s continue with the argument that getting a government job is relatively secure. So I ask the question, is this what we most want in life? Security? … or happiness?

The other day I wrote about a school director who is near retirement age. (see article) She seems not to be a very happy person. And she has a lot of power. To me this is a dangerous combination. But my main point in mentioning her is that her job security has not given her happiness. She doesn’t seem to enjoy students – teenagers in particular.

She doesn’t seem to care much about them. From all reports I have gotten, she seems to be mostly concerned with her own financial security at this point. I have been told she could have retired by now but she will get more money if she continues working.

Is this what we want in society? Is this what the kind of government employee we want? One who thinks more about their own financial security than the welfare or more specifically the feelings and ideas of those they have power over?

She grew up through the forced education system. She is a product of it. She is a product of her environment. She stayed on what I call the education assembly line.

So did it “work” for her? Did it “work” for society?

I have talked to a lot of students and parents of students in her high school. The universal consensus is that the education there
leaves a lot to be desired, to put it somewhat mildly.

So who will change things? And how will they be changed? Another universal consensus here in Uruguay is that things are getting worse. There is more crime here, much more than there was say twenty years ago. Yet I would speculate there are more university graduates and there is almost surely more pressure for teenagers to go to the universities in Montevideo, the capital.

Another of my hypotheses is that the majority of the graduates from these universities don’t go back to their communities with the main goal of either improving the community or improving the world. My guess is that the majority of them are thinking about their own financial security in terms of working for someone else. The majority of them are not being prepared to start their own businesses which could a) give them financial independence or b) create jobs. And the majority of them are not being prepared to start their own community service projects.

The majority of them will become employees. I think that is safe to say. And I think it is safe to say the vast majority of them will. And what is the single most important quality of an employee? I suggest it is obedience. You do what your boss tells you to do most of the time. If you don’t you will get fired.

And I suggest this is also the highest value in most schools. Obedience. This is why the system works.

Or does it?

Does the system “work”?

Does it work here? Does it work in England? Does it work in Australia? Does it work in Israel? Does it work in Singapore? Does it work in Peru? Does it work in the USA? Does it work for the world?

Whether you are a teenager, teacher or a parent, your answer makes a big difference.

But I suggest that most people don’t stop and ask themselves the question: Does the system work?

And if so, does it work well? Does the system work as well as it could? Is there anything that can be changed? And if so, what and how?

Let’s consider the USA, without question the most powerful and perhaps most dangerous country in the world today.

Does the system work?

Does it work as well as it could? Is it working for the world?

If every country worked like the USA would the world be a better place? If every country worked like Uruguay, would the world be a better place? If every country worked like Peru, would the world be a better place?

I list these three countries now because I know each of them from the inside. I have seen what the real and stated values are. And the three are very similar. For example, the three all have forced education systems. The three all place a high value on university degrees. The three all place a high value on money, material things and appearances.

There are things I like about Uruguay. I like it enough that I will stay here a while longer. But after talking to people here and looking around, it is obvious things are not headed in a positive direction here.

Yesterday the fifteen year old told me someone grabbed her by the neck and tried to take her cell phone as she was walking near her house.

When I was sitting in an English institute someone through a rock through the window. When I was riding a bus, someone shot out a window. I have heard one story after another of people being robbed and mugged here.

I thought it was a relatively safe place but I keep hearing more reports of things like this. The fifteen year old also told me that as she walks on the street people younger than her will grab at her body in sexually harassing ways.

The public schools have no heat. Students are wearing coats, scarves and even gloves in the classrooms. The teachers must buy their own chalk. Students in some of the public schools come to school with no pens, no pencils. They have no books.

And this country was once called the Switzerland of South America.

So what happened? What went wrong?

And can we say the system is not working?

Now let’s jump back to the USA. Is the system working there? Teenagers are killing other teenagers with guns. The military is killing people in other countries. The people voted for George Bush two times. You can go to jail for not going to school. Schools have metal detectors. Students are told they may not touch each other. Teachers are told they cannot hug a crying child.

The movie industry creates one violent movie after another. And exports them to many parts of the world. Here in South America the TVs are filled with violent American movies and shows nightly.

So I ask again? Is the system working?

I say it isn’t.

So what would I change?

As I have said before, things seem to work pretty well in Europe. So what do they do in Europe that they don’t do in Peru, Uruguay and the USA?

Well, there are small but important differences. For one, there is less emphasis on obedience in schools. It is still a high value, but they are not as strict in Europe. Generally speaking, teenagers are free to wear whatever they want. I was told by both teachers and students in Holland and Switzerland that you can wear a T shirt that says “Fuck you”, for example. You can’t do this in the land of the free, nor in what are called the best schools here in South America. The “best” schools almost always have strict uniform rules. They are almost always the most expensive, and of course, they are the private schools.

Like in England, Uruguay and most of South America has a very obvious class division. You see it quickly in the schools. Those with money send their kids to the private schools. The private schools prepare them to go to the “best” universities. Competition is highly valued in these private schools. I have talked to parents here in Uruguay who tell me, proudly, that their son or daughter traveled to another city to compete in something. It might be a tennis match or a soccer game or some kind of academic competition. But it was all a competition.

The private schools supposedly are creating the leaders of society. They are the places where most of the “professionals” will come from. The doctors, the lawyers, the university professors, the school administrators.

All these people are products of their environment. They start being trained for their positions in society when they first put on their school uniform in their parents’ home when they are around five years old. At five, not many of them question what is going on. Nor at 15 or 25. Nor at 35 or 45 or 55 or ever.

Those that do question things are discouraged from questioning things in a million small ways. They are told and hear the same things over and over. They have had no chance of hearing anything else until now. Now they have the Internet.

I know that the parents in this little town won’t like my idea of a teen revolution, but I am more and more convinced that is exactly what is needed. The parents are too deep into the system.

Someone (Cara) was speculating last night as to what gives me hope, why I keep writing and don’t just give up and go along with the flow or leave permanently. I think it is because I have the hope, the dream, that teenagers around the world will read what I write. And they will start to see their own societies with new eyes. And they will re-prioritize their values. Then unite. And then make the world a better place than it is today.

S. Hein
July 9, 2007
Paysandu, Uruguay

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