emotional intelligence

[awein999]

http://www.danielgoleman.info/blog/t...-intelligence/

I've been reading this book, Emotional Intelligence, and I find it fascinating. It's everything I've been thinking about people, grades, other forms of intelligence besides the purely intellectual.

how it relates to me: The k-12 system (I'm currently a senior) tends to put you in a room and bash you on the head with purely intellectual concepts such as just about all the academic classes in high schools (exception being social science but it's not a required class). At least in my high school, Weston MA, most students eventually come to only care about grades and they become increasingly obedient as they move up the chains in the k-12 grade system. Less imagination is used and we are taught to conform and obey like little drones. We learn to take a huge range of concepts and simplify it as much as possible, almost never the other way around. This is what the big corporations want, little drones who obey without question, little factory workers and sorters who don't understand what he or she want in life. Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge".

of course the book touches upon a lot more aspects of life then this, the main point of the book is that emotional intelligence is more important than intellectual intelligence and that the two different life skills are indepedent of each other. There are people with lower IQ's that "succeed" in society while people with higher IQ's "don't succeed" (succeed as in ultimately do what they want in life, what makes them happy, not necessarily the most respected job or the biggest home) because emotional intelligence is not shown in the IQ, IQ really is a very small part of life. Emotional Intelligence, the book, states that Intellectual ability is 20% and emotional intelligence is 80% of influence in life's successes.

It sure made me feel happy that someone else in the world thinks about intelligence in a similar way that I do.

Anyone else ever heard or read this book? Any thoughts?