Who taught you how to identify and manage your emotions, how to recognize them when they arose, and how to navigate your way through them? For many adults, the answer is: No one. You hacked your way through those confusing thickets on your own. Although navigating our inner landscape was not something that was taught to us in school, it should be, contend a number of researchers. They believe emotional skills should rank as high in importance in children’s educations as math, reading, history and science.

Why do emotions matter? Research has found that people who are emotionally skilled perform better in school, have better relationships, and engage less frequently in unhealthy behaviors. Plus, as more and more jobs are becoming mechanized, so-called soft skills — which include persistence, stress management and communication — are seen as a way to make humans irreplaceable by machine. There has been a growing effort in American schools to teach social and emotional learning (SEL), but these tend to emphasize interpersonal skills like cooperation and communication.

Kids are often taught to ignore or cover over their emotions. Many Western societies view emotions as an indulgence or distraction, says University of California-Santa Barbara sociologist Thomas Scheff, a proponent of emotional education. Our emotions can give us valuable information about the world, but we’re often taught or socialized not to listen to them. Just as dangerous, Scheff says, is the practice of hiding one emotion behind another. He has found that men, in particular, tend to hide feelings of shame under anger, aggression and, far too often, violence.

How does one go about teaching emotions? One of the most prominent school programs for teaching about emotions is RULER, developed in 2005 by Marc Brackett, David Caruso and Robin Stern of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. The multiyear program is used in more than 1,000 schools, in the US and abroad, across grades K-8. The name, RULER, is an acronym for its five goals: recognizing emotions in oneself and others; understanding the causes and consequences of emotions; labeling emotional experiences with an accurate and diverse vocabulary; and expressing and regulating emotions in ways that promote growth.

As a strategy, children are taught to focus on the underlying theme of an emotion rather than getting lost in trying to define it. When an emotion grips you, explains Stern, understanding its thematic contours can help “name it to tame it.” Even though anger is experienced differently by different people, she explains, “the theme underlying anger is the same. It’s injustice or unfairness. The theme that underlies disappointment is an unmet expectation. The theme that underlies frustration is feeling blocked on your way to a goal. Pinning down the theme can “help a person be seen and understood and met where she is,” says Stern.

RULER’s lessons are woven into all classes and subjects. So, for example, if “elated’ is the emotional vocabulary word under discussion, a teacher would ask students in an American history class to link “elated” to the voyage of Lewis and Clark. Instruction reaches beyond the classroom, too; kids are prompted to talk with their parents or caregivers about when they last felt elated. Researchers at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence has found RULER schools tend to see less-frequent bullying, lower anxiety and depression, more student leadership and higher grades. So why isn’t emotional education the norm rather than the exception?

Surprising fact: While scientists and educators agree on the need to teach emotions, they don’t agree on how many there are and what they are. RULER’s curriculum consists of hundreds of “feeling words,” including curious, ecstatic, hopeless, frustrated, jealous, relieved and embarrassed. Other scholars’ lists of emotions have ranged in number from two to eleven. Scheff suggests starting students out with six: grief, fear, anger, pride, shame and excessive fatigue.

While psychology began to be studied as a science more than a century ago, up to now it has focused more on identifying and treating disorders. Scheff, who has spent years studying one taboo emotion — shame — and its destructive impact on human actions, admits, “We don’t know much about emotions, even though we think we do, and that goes for the public and for researchers.” Or, as Virginia Woolf so beautifully put it, “The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted.”

Parents can start to encourage their kids’ emotional awareness with a simple prompt “Tell me about some of your best moments,” a phrase Scheff has used to initiate discussions with his university students. But he and Stern agree that schools can’t wait until academics have sorted out the name and number of emotions before they act. “We know we have emotions all day long, whether we’re aware of them or not,” Stern points out. Let’s teach kids how to ride those moment-by-moment waves, instead of getting tossed around.

Art credit: TED-Ed. Author bio: Grace Rubenstein is a journalist, editor and multimedia producer in California. Note: The article above has been adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas.ted.com article. To read daily coverage of the world of ideas, check out Ideas.ted.com. To read more great articles about education, sign up for the free weekly TED-Ed newsletter here >>

What’s the future of education? How will students learn differently? What will the schools of the future look like? We asked TED-Ed Innovative Educators to share their ideas. Their answers are provocative, contradictory — and make for great conversation starters. Welcome to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” future of learning.

There will be more creativity in education.
“Because that’s what careers will require. Education will be not just taking in information and sharing it back, but also figuring out what to do with that information in the real world.” —Josefino Rivera, Jr., educator in Buenos Aires, Argentina

The classroom will be one big makerspace.
“Technology like Evernote, Google, and Siri will be standard and will change what teachers value and test for. Basically, if you can ask Siri to answer a question, then you will not be evaluated on that. Instead, learning will be project based. Students will be evaluated on critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Literature and math will still be taught, but they will be taught differently. Math will be taught as a way of learning how to solve problems and puzzles. In literature, students will be asked what a story means to them. Instead of taking tests, students will show learning through creative projects. The role of teachers will be to guide students in the areas where they need guidance as innovators. How do you get kids to be innovative? You let them. You get out of their way.” —Nicholas Provenzano, educator in Michigan, United States

“How do you get kids to be innovative? You let them. You get out of their way.”

There will be no physical campus.
“Instead, students will learn in traveling classrooms, and the real world will be their campus. Students will live together and use city libraries and city laboratories to complete a project. Learning won’t be limited to a physical school. There’s already a model for this: Minerva Schools, a venture university.” —Hyuk Jang, educator in Busan, South Korea

Students will learn that nothing is impossible.
“Education will instill the idea that anything that is not possible now will be possible in the future. Let’s make that part of education.” —Kristine Sargsyan, educator in Yerevan, Armenia

Education will look nothing like it does now.
“Schools will be multidisciplinary, with a focus on social justice. You have to change the world to change the classroom, and right now, the difference between the poor and rich districts is huge.” —Eduardo Godoy, educator in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Will schools even exist in 2050?
“Is teaching a dying profession? If not, then the classroom will change a lot. I don’t think schools will exist in the same format, with desks and chairs. Instead, learning will incorporate virtual reality and multiple perspectives. Students will learn how to negotiate issues and exchange ideas.” —Sharon Hadar, educator in Raanana, Israel

So long as there is a workplace… there will be schools.
“The K-12 experience for students also provides societal infrastructure that allows for a working class. By 2050, the ‘World of Work’ will have little resemblance to what it is today. We should hope this to be the case for schools as well. If we begin by helping children to identify their strengths, interests and values — and then dedicate time in school to cultivating them towards exploring where each child’s unique place in the world might be — I think we’ll be on the right path regardless of what new technologies or advances in learning become available.  — David Miyashiro, Superintendent, Cajon Valley Union School District, California, United States

School design will be very security oriented.
“Because of school shootings, there will be safe rooms. Climate change will lead to more extreme weather-related school closings, and as a result, schools will become a hub, a place where students go occasionally when they need it.” —Shannon Brake, educator in Kansas, United States

Alternately, school design won’t change much.
“The classroom hasn’t changed much in the past 50 years. Even the bell design is the same as it was 50 years ago.” —Vicki Albritton, educator in Georgia, United States

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