Chapter 12 - Teaching Emotional Literacy

In this chapter we hear from experienced professor Jerome Bump on his opinions of emotional literacy and its place in higher education. I really enjoyed this chapter because I think it addresses a lot of grey area concerns I've always had as a student of of the liberal arts and humanities. Bump begins by addressing his own emotional illiteracy when he found out his daughter had an addiction to drugs. From a high level academic, this makes sense, and Bump describes how the farther he got in academia the more separated his emotions and intellectual thoughts got. I connected with this instantly, as I think it's hard to be a humanities student who's always picking apart literature and art for it's intellectual and emotional value in a purely academic way. It's rare that we get to respond to literature completely viscerally and voice how we feel about it in a completely personal way.

But Bump argues that this is the issue with education today, that we do not teach students how to react and respond to things like literature that are inherently emotional and relevant to our lives, without shoving those feelings into a formal academic format. Bump goes on to detail all of the methods he took as a professor to introduce this idea of emotional literacy in the higher education environment. It all makes sense, we don't get a lot of practice in the classroom flexing our emotional muscles. We are expected to contain class activities and reactions to a non-personal unemotional venue, but in reality this is denial and we should be practicing how to speak and respond to strong emotions so we can have practice for real life.

Bump discusses that the teacher's emotional role in the classroom is often hotly debated and unclear for both professors and students. However, Bump insists that when teaching things like literature that naturally inspire emotional reactions in the professor and student alike, it's a colossal waste of opportunity to ignore these feelings and not take advantage of the learning moment this presents. Although it's clear that professors are not therapists, Bump ensures us that many educational theorists are insistent that emotional learning should be an integral part of the student relationship. This essay suggests that professors have a responsibility to be complete human beings that react and respond emotionally in a real-world manner, as this allows students to better connect and learn from emotional topics that are presented in literature.

I'd really like to discuss this very obligation that Bump suggests--especially in conversation with the discussion we had about doctors and emotional literacy. I had said that I don't expect doctors to be emotionally literate, although it is an advantage, but this essay is making me re-think that statement. Should we hold professors to the same standard, or is their job more inherently emotional and responsible than a doctor's? I think it would be really interesting to see what kind of emotional leaders professors should be. A large part of me thinks Bump is correct, but I think an argument could be made against him.