From artificial intelligence to emotional intelligence

Felipe Arancibia
Jun 4
4 min read

We need a new educational revolution

My confession

When I had been a teacher for a few years, I committed an arbitrary act: I silenced a 13-year-old boy in my class with great vehemence. I expelled him from the room, not without first telling him he was disrespectful for laughing loudly. I recorded the incident on his school record. Meanwhile, he tried to explain to me that something funny had happened, that it had nothing to do with me, and that’s why he laughed. Obviously, I didn’t listen.

For many readers, this might be a common situation; one of the many injustices we experience during our school life.

But once calm returned, I realized that sometimes things make us laugh and we just laugh. It’s the most normal thing in the world. And maybe this young boy was right—that what made him laugh had nothing to do with me, respect, rules, or anything like that. Simply laughter. Nothing wrong, just something natural.

After he left the room, I asked him to stay and talk. He wasn’t very willing and told me he was angry and didn’t want to talk. I respected that, so I approached him the next day in class. I asked him to come to my desk and explain what had made him laugh. It was something very simple and natural and did not justify my strong reaction at all. I realized my behavior was exaggerated.

What was appropriate at that moment? The most natural thing—and sometimes the hardest for a teacher: to apologize. But I also thought I had to make up for the bad moment I caused him. So, during the class, I stopped the activity and reminded everyone of what happened the previous day, acknowledging that I had behaved exaggeratedly and inappropriately, making all decisions without even listening to the student. I apologized to him privately, but since it happened publicly, I had to do it publicly as well, in front of the whole class. And, of course, I had to write a new note in his school record to “cancel out” or at least “balance” the previous day’s record.

At the end of class, it was the young boy who asked to speak to me privately. I agreed and we went to my small office. He thanked me for the gesture because it made him feel good and it was fair. But then he told me he had never seen an adult apologize or repair a harm like that. He said it was hard for him to learn to ask for forgiveness if no one had ever taught him. That moment sparked a light in me.

How can we learn socio-emotional skills if the adult world neither teaches them nor, worse, seems to have them? How important is it to learn them?

How Artificial Intelligence Will Help Teachers. Kai-Fu Lee, AI Expert

Click on the image to watch the video

Teaching Socio-Emotional Skills

These skills are conditions that allow us to interact effectively with people and regulate our own emotions. They include empathy, conflict resolution, interpersonal relationships, collaboration, leadership, etc. Without them, we could not relate well with others or understand what is happening to us. For example, if your boyfriend or girlfriend feels sad, our ability to empathize will help us speak to them properly, try to understand what is happening to them, and offer our greatest support. Clearly, this can also be seen in the world of work.

Is it necessary to educate these skills at the start of the revolution that artificial intelligences will mark? Obviously, yes. Now the problem is not to “fill” brains with content, because information is accessible without limits. If machines will do much of our work, the “problem” now will be to truly become human, to focus on what makes us people: being compassionate, empathetic, etc.

In that sense, the figure of the teacher will be relevant, since they will have to guide the learning of these skills, being themselves a model, a reference for how to solve problems, how to be sad but not aggress others, know how to apologize, recognize mistakes, etc. And here we must acknowledge that in the adult world we have a great deficiency, teachers included.

That is why a major reform in teacher training will be necessary. Perhaps greater than that of the late ’90s and early 2000s, when teachers had to be digitally literate and receive the internet as a new ally that could not be resisted.

If we want our young people to be more human, to differentiate themselves from a machine, we need more humane and emotionally secure teachers and educational systems, so that adults can be a model. We need teachers to be aware of what is happening to them, of their own emotions, to be able to listen before applying the strictness of the rules. Children need to learn to recognize what is happening to them. We need the wisdom to recognize that if a child is angry, it may be because they are sad and not because they want to oppose school rules.

To achieve this goal, more than the effort of some individual teachers is needed; a strong public educational policy is required to rethink the needs of future workers in the context of this new technological revolution.

In the face of the era of artificial intelligence, we must also propose the era of emotional intelligence.

"Let the learning revolution begin!"

Click on the image if you want to watch this excellent talk (full of humor and wisdom) by Sir Ken Robinson.

Just a small footnote: This young student, whom I treated so harshly and unfairly, continued to talk with me even after he transferred to another school. It was beautiful to see how a relationship can go from breaking down to becoming stronger. He told me he kept talking to me because he wanted to learn how to be “grown-up.” And on my part, he reminded me that I needed to learn to listen and be humble.

Felipe Arancibia Labraña

Teacher

Master’s in Educational Psychology