Defining Emotional Intelligence in Music Education- Michele Kaschub

In Michele Kaschub’s article, “Defining Emotional Intelligence in Music Education,” she addresses the issues of emotional intelligence and how music education contributes to it. The whole article is a review of best-selling writings of a journalist, Daniel Goleman. He suggested, “Measures of emotional intelligence may provide a better understanding of human intellectual processes than the previously favored intelligence quotients derived largely from verbal and mathematics-based testing procedures.” Kaschub goes further to discuss “feelingful intelligence,” and it’s function in music education.

Feelingful intelligence is the ability to acknowledge one’s one feelings and relate to the world that is around oneself. The concepts of feeling and thinking usually are not separated. Kaschub suggest that the “ability to relate to the world requires a knowledge of feelings as they pertain to the internal realm of experiences of feeling.” The article discusses the importance of feeling in relation to cognition and more specifically how the arts give students opportunities to develop those feelings.

It is important for students to assess their feelings of the environment around them and then proceed from those feelings. Whether they are analyzing their own work or the others around them, how they are doing so shows how “intelligent” their feelings are. This presents an issue that testing and scoring cannot show us. There may be a student who can score highly on math and science, but not have the capability to feel and socialize with the environment around them. “Goleman’s theory posits that skills of social interaction can be further developed through a knowledge of one’s own feelings and an understanding of how those feelings relate to the emotive life of others in particular situations and contexts.”

This idea of feelings and social interactions comes into play with music education through the concept that developing musical skills requires students to analyze their own feelings and work with those around them in a constructive manner. Kaschub discusses the importance of peer-group activities and the roles they play in the music classroom. Breaking groups off into sectionals and having students collaborate on a piece of music not only furthers the student’s musical abilities and “feelingful intelligence,” but also furthers the development of the ensemble as a whole.

It is very important for all teachers to be aware of the “feelingful” intelligence of their students and know how to further develop it in the classroom. It is especially important for students and the learning community in general to recognize the significance that music can play in the role of a student’s cognitive process, and how it can further develop their intelligence and abilities to interact with the world around them.