Is Emotional Intelligence the Key to Success?

As I was browsing the New York Times web page today a very interesting article caught my eye because of all the stress students are under with school starting back up again. It was titled "Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?" and you can read the full article here. It is a very lengthy article but the basic point to it was informing people about the strategy of social-emotional learning and many professionals think that teaching kids emotional skills in schools such as coping with anxiety and stress will improve their academic performance. At first I was not sure that these two ideas correlated but after reading the evidence it started to make sense. The article said, "Though it’s not clear how significant this effect is, a 2011 meta-analysis found that K-12 students who received social-emotional instruction scored an average of 11 percentile points higher on standardized achievement tests. A similar study found a nearly 20 percent decrease in violent or delinquent behavior." I agree with what this article was saying because I think that most people would agree that no matter how much you study for a test, if you feel anxious or nervous a lot of the time your mind goes blank and everything you studied the night before does not even matter because your anxiety made you forget it all. Another reason I agree with this article is because if you feel uncomfortable in a class room because you were not taught social/emotional skills at a younger age it is much harder to learn and focus during class. Even if you have an amazing teacher its hard for the mind to stay focused on the material when you are uncomfortable with the setting or people around you. Overall, if schools made a bigger effort to teach social-emotional learning to kids at a younger age I think that this would benefit many kids in the future when it comes to standardized tests like the ACT.