Literacy, Emotions, and the Brain
An invited contribution
Note: This posting is adapted from material in the author's Reading Lessons: The Debate over Literacy. New York: Hill & Wang, 1998. After reading these comments, please visit the discussion forum to view readers' responses.
A recent International Reading Association survey asked leaders in the profession, "What's hot?" and "What's not?" in literacy research and practice (Cassidy & Wenrich, 1998/1999). The majority of the 27 topics identified as receiving "current and positive attention" emphasized cognitive, instructional, and programmatic matters, including phonemic awareness, phonics, constructivism ("the active construction of knowledge when engaged in meaningful tasks"), spelling, balanced reading instruction, direct instruction, skills instruction, volunteer tutoring, Reading Recovery, and standards for language arts.
These are certainly important topics all, but imagine them combined as the chief characteristics of literacy education. The result would be tepid classrooms in which, through the use of varying mixtures of skills, strategies, and materials, students were taught to read using one mental process or another.
"Passion is an art form" sang the musical group The Horseflies, but judging from the survey, passion as part of the art of pedagogy is not a hot topic. That is, the topics named do not reflect sizable professional concern with whether literacy learning itself is flat or hot -- whether emotions are linked with cognition, whether there is a passion and excitement about learning, emotionally charged stories are read and discussed, writing is means for expressing deep feelings, and children passionately aspire to apply their literacy in the world around them. Nor does the "hot list" indicate a concern with the kind of emotional make-up literacy education helps create. What do students feel strongly about? What do they abhor, love, desire? Do they have passions? If so, what are they? Are they becoming literate but aliterate -- that is, are they becoming readers with no desire to read?
A single emotion-related entry among the hot topics was "motivation," which concerns emotional states such as stimulation, intrinsic motivation, enjoyment, and enthusiasm and how they interact with and affect cognitive strategies and learning outcomes. However, the appearance of motivation was tempered by the transfer of reader engagement, whole language, and process writing -- approaches concerned with children's emotional engagement in literacy education -- from the "What's hot" list of 1997 to the "What's not" column in 1998.
Despite the results of this survey, we know that many classrooms are "hot," and there are many educators and researchers whose formulations of learning and learning outcomes include attention to learners' emotions. Nevertheless, the survey indicates that the emotional side of literacy learning is not paramount in research and practice. This inattention is not simply neglect. Many educators believe that children's emotional states should remain at most a secondary issue and that more attention to emotions would yield to neo-romantic educational notions, a soft, touchy-feely pedagogy weak on academics but strong on feeling good. Instead, say these educators, solid, basic learning should come first; if children learn, they will feel good, enjoy learning, be enthusiastic, and desire to learn more.
This essay proposes that, contrary to the topics now receiving most attention and to the no-nonsense view that separates academics from feelings, reading educators, who want to craft an education that can successfully serve all children, must make the role of emotions a primary concern. Reaching a full understanding of thinking and learning requires attention to the "continuous and interwoven fugue" (Lewis, Sullivan, & Michalson, 1984) of cognition and emotions. Indeed, not making emotions a primary concern leads to a misunderstanding of children's thinking and neglects countless influences that contribute to literacy outcomes.
The essay is divided into the following sections:
The Study of Cognition and Emotions in Psychology and Education
In the early part of this century, Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky observed that the study of psychology had been damaged by the separation of the intellectual from the motivational and emotional (or "affective") aspects of thinking. The terms emotions and affect refer to states such as happiness, shame, fear, disgust, annoyance, sadness, anger, equanimity, anxiety, depression, surprise, and love. Thinking, said Vygotsky, was transformed into an "autonomous stream" separated "from the full vitality of life, from the motives, interests, and inclinations of the thinking individual." By not identifying how emotions contribute to thinking, our ability to provide causal explanations of thinking was impaired. Vygotsky (1987) also emphasized the need to take into account the contexts in which this unity is created: "Every idea contains some remnant of the individual's affective relationship to that aspect of reality which it represents" (p. 50).
Until recently, psychological research on emotions was sporadic. Behaviorism, which dominated psychology for many years, shunned "internal states"; cognitive psychology, its replacement, put new -- but insufficient -- emphasis on internal states (Davidson & Cacioppo, 1992, p. 21). As neurobiologist Joseph LeDoux (1996) remarked:
Differing from this orientation is clinical psychology, in which emotions -- including depression, anxiety, mania, panic, psychosis, anger, aggression -- are stock-in-trade. In this respect, clinical and research psychology have had opposite emphases: aberrant emotions for one, and behavior or cognition with little concern for emotions for the other.
The field of education has had a similar division. "Emotionally disturbed" is a long-standing description and classification in "special" education for millions of children said to have aberrant emotions that cause unruly, disruptive classroom behavior and impair learning. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has in recent years become a major special education category described as encompassing severe cognitive and emotional problems of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that interfere with learning (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, pp. 78-85). In contrast, in "regular" schooling, "nonaberrant" emotions receive little professional attention. What James Beane (1990) wrote in this regard about schooling in general has application to reading education:
Although there have been efforts among reading professionals to address the unity of cognition and emotions, the field as a whole has unfortunately tended to disregard it. Whole language attempted to reverse this neglect, but in recent years the narrow terms imposed by the dominant literacy debate have reinforced both a conceptual and practical division. Irene Athey's (1985) observation of more than a decade ago seems even truer today: While diagrams depicting models of the reading process include "boxes" identifying affective factors, beyond this kind of acknowledgment they "receive little additional elaboration or explication" (p. 527).
Rather than pursuing an understanding of literacy based on the assumption that cognition and learning are always intertwined with, and never independent of, emotions, conceptions have almost exclusively been formulated in terms of "cognition" -- that is, literacy as a process of images, concepts, and mental operations. Absent has been a distinction between models of "cognition" and the actual functioning of cognition: although models can isolate cognition as a means for understanding facets of thinking, in "real life," cognition is never an isolated mental process.
There is irony in the criticism that reading educators have given too little attention to children's emotions when one considers the inveterate efforts of many to control those emotions. The history of schooling reveals that indifference to promoting certain emotional states was not a matter of oversight but part of a conscious conviction that teaching children to forego happiness for achievement was best for their learning and character. Following his survey of contemporary schools, educator John Goodlad remarked, "Our impression is that classes generally tend not to be strongly positive or strongly negative places. Enthusiasm and joy and anger are kept under control" (1984, p. 124). In this formulation, classrooms are not emotionless; rather, a stolid emotional state becomes an indispensable part of classroom management.
The issue, then, is not whether emotions should be part of learning to read -- they are always part of it. Instead, reading educators need to give thorough and explicit attention to that fugue of cognition and emotions in the process of literacy development.
Studies on Emotions in Learning
Some connections between learning and emotions have been well documented: for example, poor learning can produce negative emotions; negative emotions can impair learning; and positive emotions can contribute to learning achievement and vice versa. Induced negative emotions have been shown to hamper performance on cognitive tasks, whereas positive emotions have an opposite effect (Izard, 1984). Similarly, one study found that inducing a sad mood in very young children increased the time it took them to learn to respond to a task, and also increased their number of errors; converse results were achieved by inducing happiness (Masters, Barden, & Ford, 1979).
Studies of the effect of emotions on language, memory, and story learning point to comparable effects. Fifth graders recalled more adjectives when they were in a positive rather than sad mood (Nasby & Yando, 1982). A positive mood enhanced children's memory of televised story narratives and information about story characters (Potts et al., 1986). Numerous studies have demonstrated a connection between anxiety and academic performance: the more anxious a person is, the poorer his or her academic performance (Seipp, 1991).
The influence of emotions is the same for nonverbal learning. Preschool children in a positive mood mastered a shape discrimination task more quickly and with fewer errors than did children in an induced negative mood. Youngsters identified as at risk for school failure were found to complete math problems significantly more accurately under induced positive-mood conditions (Tanis & Bryan, 1991).
Students' perceptions of a teacher's emotions are also important. Weiner and Graham (1984) asked children of varying ages to consider a scenario in which a student failed a test and the teacher either became angry, felt pity, was surprised, or felt guilty. For each teacher response, students were asked to reply to the question, "Why did the teacher think that the student failed?" Answers confirmed the researchers' expectations: "Each affect was associated with a particular causal attribution." According to most children, a teacher's expression of anger or surprise implied that the student had "not tried sufficiently hard." If the teacher felt guilt, the students inferred that this meant the teacher was to blame for the student's failure. Inferences interpreted as expressions of student deficiency were made by children as young as five years old. By nine, inferences of the student's lack of ability were even stronger.
Lack of confidence is often joined with feelings of being incapable of learning. These impulses are common in students who have not learned to read, so that, if left to draw solely upon their own motivation, they are unable to sustain a commitment to learning. For these students, a transformation of emotions and self-perception is necessary for literacy achievement. In Manchild in the Promised Land, Claude Brown (1965) tells of his own experience and feelings as an unsuccessful student:
Such insecurities and feelings of mental deficiency increase when literacy failure continues into adulthood. For example, a volunteer tutor in the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961, speaking with Jonathan Kozol (1978), recalled her instruction of a 35-year-old Nenno and his continued struggle with illiteracy and feelings of inferiority:
Vygotsky (1978, pp. 85-86) used the term zone of proximal development to differentiate between a person's "actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and his or her level of potential development as determined through problem solving [with guidance]." This difference is the "zone." In a student's transformations, the zone of proximal development has usually referred to changes made in cognitive and academic achievement, but the term has a potential additional meaning for emotional development in literacy learning attainable through guidance and support. Fear of failure may be changed to feelings of self-confidence; motivation may change from low to high; intellectual insecurity may become confidence in one's intelligence. These transformations can occur through a teacher's "scaffolding" and guidance in the formation of new emotional states a learner can achieve and sustain by him- or herself.
Critique of a Concern for Emotions
One attack on whole language and other "touchy-feely, privacy-invading mush" accompanied by a call for an emphasis on phonics -- "a method of reading instruction that had 70 years of experimental research behind it and which was successful in producing a literate population" -- concluded, "The bottom line is that today, education is not about literacy. It is not about proficiency at anything.... It's about mental health, stupid!" (Eakman, 1993, p. 40). In a chapter entitled "Bad Ideas Whose Time Has Come," Chester Finn (1991), who served in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, snickered at the National Education Association's statement that schools "must structure esteem-building into the curriculum." He complained that he could rarely "pick up an education journal without encountering several articles" on self-esteem. Professional meetings were no better: "Rooms full of people...[at] any of the zillion professional conferences each year" solemnly discuss "how best to foster self-esteem in children" (p. 215).
Finn maintains that empirical evidence indicates the correlation between self-esteem and academic achievement is low or negative. Moreover, even where a positive correlation exists, he says, one cannot identify a causal link: does heightened self-esteem come from academic achievement or vice versa? Possibly, he speculates, the two "vary together" or are derived from other influences, "such as innate ability, social class, and prior accomplishment" (1991, p. 216). Regardless, Finn believes that growth of emotions such as self-confidence and self-esteem will come through academic accomplishment. Teachers should concentrate on teaching academic content and abilities; students' good feelings will follow when they learn what they are supposed to learn.
This denunciation misses the mark because Finn misconstrues the connection between self-esteem, other emotional states, and learning. Certainly children's good feelings about themselves will not on their own cause successful learning. Moreover, the history of education shows that some children learn the prescribed curriculum even if they are passive, indifferent, withdrawn, hostile, angry, insecure, or blindly obedient. Some also do considerably learning in the face of low self-esteem and an array of other insecurities. But the connection and solution is not, as Finn proposes, a one-two step of cognitive accomplishment followed by emotional gain; nor do the two "vary together" because of "innate ability." Research reveals the matter is quite different, suggesting that cognition, emotions, and learning do not "co-vary" but interact.
Surely children and adults must learn to strike a balance between doing tasks that generate immediate good feelings and those that must be done even if they do not. Any undertaking, whether fixing a car or writing a book, involves amounts of arduous work not instantly fulfilling and festive. Recognizing this does not mean that learning should not be as emotionally positive as it can be, or, more to the point, that educators should concentrate on learning and be indifferent to children's emotional well-being. It is empirically incorrect and pedagogically callous to argue that children's feelings about themselves when they are engaged in learning to read and write should not be a primary concern of reading educators.
The Neural Connections between Emotions and Cognition
We have been looking at the learning a person does as a whole individual, or, as it often is called, at the "behavioral" level. And even here there is evidence of a connection between emotion and cognition. But a fuller understanding of the relationships between emotion and cognition, and the influence of these relationships on learning, requires a look at the neural level as well -- that is, at the neural networks that integrate emotions and cognition.
Based on neurological findings, strong arguments have been made against the conventional separation of cognition and emotions. Neurologist Antonio Damasio (1994) rejects this distinction by arguing that there are no "higher" and "lower" brain centers:
Damasio maintains that neural substrates for cognitive responses associated with those for emotions are acquired connections that emerge from the unique experience of an individual. With the repetition of subsequent experiences, the emotional responses -- often nonconscious, automatic, and involuntary -- are activated in various parts of the brain. However, it is actually a full-body activation of the endocrine systems, the heart, blood pressure, and other regulators that affect cognition and emotion. In other words, it is not the brain but the totality of the person that is the unified whole of thinking.
Damasio's arguments lend further support in favor of teachers seeing thinking and emotions as integrative and interactive processes, and of addressing multiple goals of cognition and emotion in every facet of learning. All learning activity must be pursued, modified, or eliminated according to the many influences that shape thinking. Damasio's interpretation helps explain some of the neural underpinnings of a student's transformations, progress, or failures.
Another leading investigator in this field is Joseph E. LeDoux, who has identified brain pathways that carry sensory signals to sites of emotion and of cognition. More specifically, he has found that the thalamus, an area that relays sensory information, conveys sensory stimuli to the amygdala (a site of basic emotional memory) and to the cortex, where cognition occurs. From the cortex the stimuli go on to the hippocampus, a site involved in memory and linked to the amygdala. This means there is more than one route to emotional learning, and an emotional response can precede a cognitive perception and response:
Because the neural "emotional system can act independently of the neocortex, some emotional reactions and emotional memories can be formed without any conscious, cognitive participation at all" (LeDoux, quoted in Goleman, 1995, p. 18).
As LeDoux (1994) explains, we form emotional memories from emotional events, and the emotional memory can be elicited through an event similar to the initial event. Emotional memory is not "declarative" memory -- that is memory of explicit, consciously accessible information. Rather, it most likely operates independently of our conscious awareness. Nonetheless, and most important, "emotional and declarative memories are stored and retrieved in parallel, and their activities are joined seamlessly in our conscious experience." Thus, emotions "exert a powerful influence on declarative memory and other thought processes." The amygdala "plays an essential part in modulating the storage and strength of memories" (p. 5).
The implications of these findings for "memory" problems and for education are clear -- that is, we begin to see how, at the neural level, an emotional response can enhance or impair cognition and learning. For example, input from the thalamus to the amygdala, based on prior positive or negative experiences, may impede or foster declarative memory, the kind of memory required for retrieving and consciously using information for decoding and comprehending.
Emotions also affect working memory, the active memory used for a current task (LeDoux, 1996). For example, negative emotions (conveyed from the amygdala and parts of the limbic system) can impair the activity of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in working memory. "That is why when we are emotionally upset we say we 'just can't think straight' -- and why continual emotional distress can create deficits in a child's intellectual abilities, crippling the capacity to learn" (Goleman, 1995, p. 27). Of course, it follows that positive emotion can facilitate working memory.
These neural relationships are important for understanding the contribution made by emotions in the formation of responses to situations. LeDoux's work suggests that neural pathways are set so that a situation may evoke an emotional response that may be helpful, or that a rapid negative emotional response can precede cortical cognition and impair learning, memory, and thinking.
Emotions as Outcomes of Literacy Learning
Emotions are not only intertwined in learning to read, they are also consequences of that learning. As students learn, that learning helps construct what they think and feel about themselves and the world. Therefore, educators need to address such questions as "What should students feel strongly about, what should they love and hate, with what should they empathize?" Beane (1990) remarked that "education must be affective and cannot be otherwise. Affect enters the curriculum in any experience that influences (or attempts to influence) how young people see themselves, the world around them, and their place in that world" (p. 19). A central way in which emotions enter the curriculum with potentially enduring consequences is through the stories that are read.
For a considerable portion of the history of reading education in the United States, educators were quite explicit about the thinking and feeling they wanted to engender. The New England Primer, a textbook from the colonial period, aimed at changing children from unregenerate "young vipers" into God-fearing Christians by teaching them to read with catechisms, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments (Smith, 1965, p. 20). Content in reading textbooks in the 19th century was more moral than strictly religious, but it continued to be directed toward character formation. Noah Webster's American Spelling Book, which sold over 24 million copies between 1790 and the mid-1800s, included the following story:
With the rise of industrialism and the accompanying economic and political turmoil, schools were used to instill proper socialization, morals, emotions, and habits in poor and working-class children. By teaching them respect for the law, the church, and the republic, children would become "more docile, more tractable" and, would grow to be adults "less given to social discord, disruption and disobedience" (Nasaw, 1979, p. 40). Indeed, in the words of one author of a reading text, "The great end of education, that of forming the younger and tender minds to virtue and usefulness, is promoted by no branch of science more effectually than by learning to read" (Smith, 1965, p. 40). For mid-19th-century school reformers, "the cultivation and the transmission of cognitive skills and intellectual abilities as ends in themselves had far less importance...than the problems [of moral development]" (Katz, 1987, pp. 22-23).
In the middle of this century, we experienced the delightful lives of George and Mary and Dick and Jane. In today's reading textbooks, "ethnic and socioeconomic diversity has appeared, and Mother is out of her aprons and Father has taken off his dress shirt and tie." Nonetheless, as a review of these textbooks concludes, despite efforts by publishers to make the stories more interesting and relevant, they remain, on the whole, lackluster (Goodman, Shannon, Freeman, & Murphy, 1988, p. 59). Many teachers have attempted to counter this blandness by adding children's books to instruction, with whole language teachers relying entirely on them. Children's books, however, are not themselves without problematic moral, emotional meanings.
Herbert Kohl's (1995) analysis of Babar provides an example. This "classic" has touched countless children, and Kohl himself writes that he "loved the book, identified with Babar, and found an abiding affectionate place for him in my heart." When Kohl revisited the book as an adult, however, he saw that woven into the fabric of this story about an elephant who is befriended by a "Rich Lady" after his mother is killed by a hunter, are strong portrayals of sexism, racism, classism, and colonialism.
Trying to recall his childhood response to the story, Kohl suggests that he "got the impression that people who served the rich weren't as good as the rich." He goes on to observe that Babar, made powerless by the Rich Lady's money, "does what he is told, is as passive as a paper doll and as uncomplaining." Eventually Babar returns to his jungle home with all the "accoutrements of civilization and access to the Rich Lady's purse." He finds that there has been "a crisis in the elephant patriarchy"--the old king has died. The other elephants soon choose Babar as their kind, noting admiringly that he has "learned so much living among men." Kohl observes that what he "learned" was how to buy things.
Kohl proposes that the content of Babar is sufficiently troublesome to prompt adults to consider whether children should read it:
Mem Fox, an Australian teacher and children's book writer, noted, "There's no such thing as a politically innocent picture book." An example she offers is her own Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partidge, which, she says, "reinforces the Dan Quayle/George Bush notion that real families have two parents, not one parent, three parents, or four parents, all of which are becoming increasingly common family configurations. The political message is a conservative one." Still, she wryly adds, the book does "hint that the world, as it is, need not be so": she allows a white "masculine, sports-loving cricketer" to cry (1993, p. 656).
The literacy debate must be expanded to include specific questions on what children need to think and feel about, what they emotionally need to acquire or reject as they learn to read and write. A first step in this process is to assess the ideas and feelings available and unavailable in literacy education. Second, the array of ideas that can, in theory, be included in the classroom should be studied. Third should be an assessment of the way in which these ideas and feelings organize thinking. Fourth should be an appraisal of how teachers and students who choose to include alternative ideas and feelings in literacy education might find themselves in conflict with those who serve as the guardians of acceptable ideas and feelings.
Conclusion
The survey that introduced this essay is undoubtedly an accurate depiction of what's hot in literacy research and education. The results are also, I believe, a measure of much of what's wrong. We are, unfortunately, moving farther away from a concern with emotions in literacy education. We are focusing on literacy learning as if children's minds were information-processing mechanisms. Minimizing concern for emotions helps literacy education and research evade the fuller issues of how children learn and what needs to be done to ensure that they all do so.
Also evaded is the issue of the meaning of "successful" learning. At the beginning of the decade, two U.S.-wide surveys painted a portrait of 18- to 29-year-olds as a generation that "knows less, cares less, votes less," a generation able to read but that reads less often to get news about public affairs than did previous generations (Oreskes, 1990). Although one should not identify the cause of this aliterate, youthful indifference as reading education, I believe reading education contributes to it by not making "hot" education an essential part of its concerns.
Author Information
Coles (e-mail gscoles@igc.org) writes on psychology and education and lives in Ithaca, New York, USA.References
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Transcript of the Discussion Forum Editors' Note: When this article was posted in Reading Online in March 1999, readers were invited to comment on it through a bulletin board feature that was discontinued when the journal was redesigned in July 2000. Following are the comments posted to that bulletin board. Readers who would like the opportunity to comment on this or other articles in the journal are invited to post messages through ROL Communities. Post 1 Author: Brennan Thomas
After reading this article, I came to the conclusion that theauthor intends to combat the inequality of
educational success. Emotion arise from learning (usually based on success or failure). Positive feelings result
from success. Negative feelings result from failure. Positive feelings produce an attentive nature toward
learning, and, therefore, further success. Negative feelings produce inattentive or listless behavior toward
learning, and further failure. What the author, then, is attempting to do is create an environment where students
all succeed because they all feel emotionally charged to learn. Well, I wonder if that's really possible. I'm
certain that we could create an environment where kids have a seemingly equal chance of reaching success
because of a LACK of emotions, and, thus, lack of stimulating or inhibiting factors. Hey, a kid gets a D should
be treated the same as a kid who gets an A, right? NO! This author should get off the whole issue of academic
performance and emotions. Perhaps this is a pessimistic view, but let's be honest. We can argue about
self-esteem and its effect on a youngster all day without accomplishing anything. A positively-charged
emotional environment is not the solution either. I'm afraid we're too hung up on Band-Aid solutions to really
get to the core of the issue, which is HOW DO WE TEACH OUR KIDS BETTER?
Reply 1a Author: Anita Philbrick
I agree with the author of the article. In my 22 years of teaching children with reading problems, most of the
difficulties did not arise from poor teaching (I said most), lack of attention to academics, or the native ability of the
student. Most of the problems students had in reading arose from poor home conditions, low self-esteem,
impossible family situations, lack of home support, and feeling of inadequacy of the student. It is beyond my
comprehension that anyone thinks that students can be academically motivated if their parents have spent the
night fighting, are in the middle of a nasty divorce, are worried about situations at home and school. Yes, we as
teachers deal with these kinds of situations every day. We do the best we can under the circumstances, but to
contend that emotions (and motivation) do not play a major role in whether a child is successful in reading is
kidding ourselves. The problem becomes even more pronounced as students move up in school. For example, I
have had eighth graders in remedial classes who could read but chose not to. Consequently, they were failing
every subject. If a student can read, but chooses not to, it is as if he really can't read. Additionally, children who
don't read continue to fall farther and farther behind, because the only way to become a good reader is to read. It
all begins in the home with parents making reading an exciting and wonderful passtime and continues with
teachers who immerse their students in the wonderful and exciting world of language. After all, isn't that what
reading a good book is all about--stirring our emotions and motivating us to do something different with our lives.
What about emotions? We, as educators, cannot afford to ignore them if we desire to assist students in becoming
lifelong readers and writers.
Reply 1b Author: Diahann_Tabor
To agree with the author and play devil's advocate, maybe Joseph LeDoux knows something most educators
don't. Too much attention to cognitive science without emotion is not producing rightful minds or rather well
rounded individuals. I have many interests, concerns, and goals as a teacher, but my biggest concern for
overall education is how and where did we go wrong with the many "lifeless creatures" we are helping
produce?
I realize that we are not miracle workers and cannot correct emotional scars or problems at home, however,
when was it announced that we should forget the emotional side of students, throw in the towl, and solely
concentrate on the part of curriculum that states we should only worry about how a person performs, not so
much about how their performance makes them feel?
I can't say that it is my job to put a large focus in this area, but it is certainly my job to always take into
consideration how a student is feeling today, or how a lesson will make them feel. What is wrong with guiding
students through understanding emotions as part of reading lessons anyway?
I am one of the students that the author discussed as 18-29, a generation that generally does less overall and I
do see more people my age than other generations before that do less. I do vote, I do care, and I do have
knowledge, but many people from my generation don't!
I recall from my own educational experience that I learned to read accordingly, cruised through advanced
reading classes, and always did my assignments to the best of my abilities as my teachers wanted me to.
However, something happened when I hit middle school age, I did care less! I knew how to read, but didn't
want to if I didn't have to, this still holds true today a lot of the time. I remember feeling that I was being forced
to read only because the teacher said to, not because there was any real meaning in it for me, or value that
would hold dear to my future.
I am basically stating that after I had learned to read, I wasn't encouraged to experience the emotional value
involving reading and, in general, learning. I thought this was yet another obsticle in the way of graduation, not
that I have thoughts, feelings, concerns, and reading will only help me to better understand my line of thinking,
feeling, and expression.
So, I go back to what is wrong with teaching emotions? Yes, once a student learns to read they will take pride
in theirself and have a positive feeling, increaing their performance. Yet, what about building on that so they
can then learn that through reading they can learn more about emotions, this will encourage them to continue
to read through their individual interests, instead of being like my generation where once we learned the basics
we lost interest because there simply seemed like there was no reason to continue our developments.
I am not content with producing graduates that know how to read well, I want a society that not only knows how
to read, but knows how to care! We cannot erase mistakes made at misfortunate homes, but we can attempt to
override these influencial circumstances through a better education system. I am sick to death of seeing media
headlines of one shooting or another, and although I personally did not raise these killers I feel a sense of
abandonment from educational services. I have no intention on blaming our education system, I only want
them to stand up for what's right and make a difference!
Graduates should know how to read and write, they should also have learned from such sources how to make
sense of their own emotions, and more importantly how to properly express them. If this isn't being
accomplished at home or within the community, then why shouldn't we be concerned about it in the schools?
After all, recently these extreme individuals have begun to target the schools, maybe this should serve as the
eye-opener that we should in fact worry more about emotions.
Reply 1c Author: David_Andrews
I was quite surprised by Brennan Thomas' response to this article, if I am reading his response correctly
anyways. He says that students' emotions come directly from success or failure in school and only in this way.
Thus Coles is fooling himself if he thinks that he can make all students feel good about themselves and
therefore do well in school. Therefore, we should 'get off' emotions and get on with learning how to teach our
students better.
But Coles, in a rather untouchy-feely way, concretely argued that viewing emotions as merely the results of
success or failure was really quite simplistic. He never argued anything like treating a D student and an A
student the same. Instead he powerfully argued for a balanced approach to education that took into account
emotion both as a factor in intellectual growth and as an integral part to the curriculum that we teach.
Whenever I here comments that urge us to forget the emotion and get on with teaching, I feel that they are an
arguement for the 'just the facts' approach. This reminds me of the major critisms directed at Economics, seen
as the standard bearer of value-neutral curriculum, that they graduate students who know all about price and
nothing about value. Perhaps the critisms are unfair, but the point is that there is no such thing as value-neutral
education, trying to do this just teaches value neutrality.
The same is true for emotions. Teaching without taking into account emotion doesn't just get to the facts at
hand, it teaches that things don't have emotion. Coles has shown in his article that things do have emotion, not
only in curricular content but in how we approach learning and what state we must be in to learn well.
Therefore, better teaching must incorporate emotions.
I do support Brennan Thomas' call to get on with the core issue at hand: how to teach our kids better. May I
suggest re-reading this article as a good place to start.
Reply 1d Author: Andrea_Bachman
After reading this article I was reflecting on what I do to try to create an emotionally stable, positive, and
overall happy classroom. I have always believed that students perform better when they feel good about
themselves. They try harder and have more confidence about their abilities. However, how does a person truely
come to appreciate success and happiness in oneself if they have never felt the reverse. True happiness is all
the sweeter when a person has felt sadness. True success can only be felt if a person knows what it is like to not
perform up to their potential. In my experience with children, those who struggle daily are the ones who feel
true success when they finally get something they are learning. The students who don't have to struggle do not
have the same feeling af achievement.
Post 2 Author: Sarah_Hudson
I agree with the Author, Gary Cole, and strongly feel that the emotional state of the child will greatly effect that
child's learning ability. In fact, Coles article includes studies that back up that point:
"Some connections between learning and emotions have been well documented: for example, poor learning
can produce negative emotions; negative emotions can impair learning; and positive emotions can contribute
to learning achievement and vice versa. Induced negative emotions have been shown to hamper performance
on cognitive tasks, whereas positive emotions have an opposite effect (Izard, 1984)."
I feel it is up to the teachers to change the focus on the way lessons are taught. Instead of focusing primarily on
a teacher directive approach, why not impliment a democratic classroom setting, where children can work in
groups to explore, and discuss the task at hand. By doing so, the focus has now changed so that the emphasis
of the lesson is not - "what is the correct answer?" but rather - " what are the possible answers and how did you
come about that answer?" To be able to work in such a setting, there has to be a strong element of trust and
respect, while the fear of having a wrong answer must be eliminated. Those two aspects alone, set the ground
work for creating a positive work environment.
As well, many children do not come from perfect homes. They maybe dealing with a full range of problems:
abuse, neglect, low self-esteem, poverty, just to name a few. It would be ridiculus to expect a child to drop all
those problems at the classroom door. So in that respect, the lessons have to be engaging so that the child will
be stimulated enough to temperarily forgot their problems and learn along side with other children.
Reply 2a Author: Myra Yen
I agree with Gerald Coles that emotions are an integral part of literacy education. Coles presents much
evidence supporting the idea that positive emotions are condusive to learning. Since teachers have very little
control over the kinds of emotions children experience at home, we should make it a priority for our students to
have as many positive experiences in the classroom as possible. This means a shift in focus from the emphasis
on the products of learning to the process of learning. Educators are responsible for creating an environment
where students feel safe taking risks and where a wrong answer won't conjure up negative emotions.
Because positive emotions promote a student's self-confidence and increase a child's enjoyment of learning,
teachers must identify what the student's passions are and target that in developing literature programs. As
Coles notes, educators need to be aware that current practices are producing "readers with no desire to read."
Catering to students' passions and interests will encourage a sense of pleasure in reading.
An interesting point that Coles makes is that emotions not only motivate students to learn to read, but are also
products of reading. Since reading stirs up a variety of emotions, what children read influences how they feel
about the society they live in. While this is true, educators need to also teach their students to think critically
about what they read. Exposure to many different kinds of reading material combined with critical thinking skills
will give students the tools they need to formulate their own views and emotions about themselves and their
environment.
Reply 2b Author: Rebecca Fung
I found this article very interesting and informative to read for a few reasons. Firstly, this is a "hot" topic for
educators and researchers and probably will remain so for the next decade. Secondly, the arguments from the
opposing sides(emotion side and cognitive side) were well-researched and engaging to read. And lastly, being
a learner/student myself, I was able to relate my personal experiences and struggles to this issue.
There are a number of arguments against the positive correlation between emotion and literacy however, from
Coles' research and my personal experiences, I agree with his point of view. It is unfortunate how many children
go through their elementary school years learning how to read yet not learning to love it. The need to have
emotions valued as much as cognition in literacy learning is emphasized and should always be emphasized in
the education system. Coles' extensive research include extracts from neurobiologist John LeDoux's studies and
child psychologist Lev Vygotsky's researches. Both studies show us that emotions and learning go hand in hand
thus, one cannot occur successfully without the presence of the other.
With my experiences as a learner, I can see how emotions affect learning and vice versa. I understand this
relatioship because I know my own performance level in school greatly depends on my attitude and mood. For
instance, when my Canadian History course was not delivered in the most enticing or enlightening way, I did
not seem to remember, nor care to remember, what was taught throughout the year. On the other hand, when I
took a similar course the next year with an enthusiastic teacher, it became my most memorable course in
university and to this very day, I still remember what I learned from day one.
I want to share this personal account of my experience with cognition and emotions because it illustrates the
importance of emotions on the outcomes of literacy education. I really believe that we, as educators, hold the
key to children's love for learning because our passion for teaching will shine through and affect how they
learn. Children are, after all, our future and our future will not only need to KNOW, but they will also need to
CARE.
Reply 2c Author: Mielle Grant
In his article titled "Literacy, Emotions, and the Brain", Gerald Coles addresses many important issues having to
do with how cognition and emotions work together to affect learning and literacy in both children and adults. I
agree with his opening arguments stating that although many of the "hot topics" in education today deal with
"important" issues such as phonemic awareness, phonics, balanced reading instruction, and Reading
Recovery, they do not make for an emotionally stimulating or engaging classroom, and in failing to do so, nor
do they involve the "whole child" in the learning process.
I firmly believe that emotional connection with learning facilitates critical thinking, personal growth, the
development of moral beliefs, and retention of what is being learned. It has been proven that the more senses
which are involved in a learning task, the better the subject will retain that information. For example if the
learning task involves both sight and touch, it will be more effective than if it used sight alone. It stands to
reason then, that if something as powerful as our emotions is involved in the learning process, we will have
many more cues to associate with the learned information, which means that we will be able not only to access
it better, but access it from a variety of perspectives. I know from personal experience, that the strongest
memories of lessons and topics that were taught to me are the ones which I found emotionally engaging.
That is not to say that lessons will be more effective if they illicit a mere happy or say response from a child, but
they should be provoking enough so that the child will be intellectually stimulated and be able to emotionally
tie in his or her own experiences to the topic. Emotional responses tend to be the most thought provoking, and
if we as teachers can harness this, we can lead our students on the road to introspection, reflection, and critical
thinking.
I think that what the article is saying can be summed up by the paraphrased statement of Damasio which says
that "[cognition and emotion] is actually a full body activation of the endocrine systems, the heart, the blood
pressure...in other words, it is not the brain, but the totality of the person that is the unified whole of thinking".
Reply 2d Author: Sande Raabe
Last night in my Advanced Reading Instruction Class we had 5 guests that were seniors from local high schools.
We had an open discussion about reading and school in gerneral. We asked the students what helped them
learn or what kept them interested in a class. All the students indicated interested in the subject(no matter what
subject) was dictated by the amount of interest and emotional investment the teacher had in the material
being covered. If the teacher was bored with the lecture the students were bored and learning did not take
place. The more emotional and personal interest the teacher show the better the relationship and learning was
between teacher and student. The best teachers were the teachers who were passionate about the material
they taught.
The emotional investment in literacy goes both directions and feeds or builds on the interest and emotional
envolvement of both teacher and student. That connection has to be there. As a teacher I love to read books
out loud to kids and I like to have books read out loud to me. I like to add passion and interest to the story I'm
reading after the story is read we talk about the characters and how they felt, these are emotions. I have found
that it takes the teachers emotional interest to light the students interest.
Reply 2e Author: Laura McLaughlin
Reading the article, "Critical Issues: Literacy Emotions and the Brain," and the online responses it has
generated caused me to reflect on my own experience with emotions and learning. Even my college classes
this past semester point to the importance of becoming emotionally involved in classroom material. In classes
where literature was presented as a task or a common chore, the learning amounted to little more than just that.
However, when my professors and teachers encouraged my to delve deep into meanings, to savor the
language, and to apply the reading to my everyday life, learning became a joy. I attended class for the
experience, rather than the attendance credit; I did more than just read....I LEARNED. It is vitally important that
teachers seek to involve more than their students minds, but their hearts as well.
Reply 2f Author: Dee_Karras
I couldn't agree more with Sarah. I have two students that suffer from depression. this depression was not known
to me until I saw that they both had a decline in grades.Home life is such a big issue these days in the
classroom. I am sometimes mortified by the things that I hear about students.
At the same time, students also take on negative attitudes about subjects that are negatively taught--for
instance--grammar.... Grammar has been taught for years with such a negative outlook. I read an article
somewhere that sometimes grammar is taught as it was learned. I think kids will enjoy school if the teacher is
positive and enjoys what he or she is teaching.
I also feel that a child's inner self confidence comes from the classroom he or she is subjected to. I know for a
fact that as a teacher, I cannot even function if I am physically ill. i know that my students cannot function
properly either. i encourage them to stay home if they are ill and to come in for questions...I think there is no
way to insure a student will get better if that student is not taking care of him or herself.
I no doubt agree that emotions play a major role in the cognition and learning of a student. Right on Coles.
Post 3 Author: Tony_Papillo
Prior to reading this article, I sort of knew where the Author was going to go. So once I finished, I thought to
myself and figured that emotions are always involved in an individuals learning strategies (I guess I can say this
through my own personal experiences), so to me, it's not just identifying whether or not emotions affect the
child's learning but more of what can we, as pre-service educators, do to help control or counteract this issue.
As a future instructor, dealing with and identifying each and every emotional state within my classroom setting
would be impossible. I'm not saying that this issue should be ignored but what I am trying to impose is that there
must be a more practical solution when dealing with these barriers.
What would be helpful for me is if someone could develop categories to divide all these possible learning or
emotional barriers and then come up with strategies or solutions on how to deal with and promote a positive
learning environment to ensure the child's focus is with the lesson or task at hand. I realise this may sound a
little far fetched or maybe something like this has already been looked at, but if a psychologist or whoever
could accomplish this with strategies to curb emotions, imagine what type of success we could have within our
classroom. I know there may be some areas in which we could probably do nothing about or in our best interest
leave alone, but to be able to recognise what occurs within a child's mind will allow us to not be so judgmental
towards them during certain days or periods of the day. This could definitely help us as educators to become
more empathetic, where maybe a review of previous materials and evaluations would serve some children the
best, ensuring the lesson was absorbed effectively. I know that if an educator builds a background in child
psychology they can learn about the processes that develop a child mentally, physically and attitudinally, but
to do so, we would probably need a well rounded back ground in this field of expertise (A lot more schooling).
So to save us time, maybe someone can develop a chart or hardcopy, stating the characteristics, patterns and
solutions to these emotional states.
Could or has someone already achieved something in this sense? Is it possible or would we need a more in
depth background in child psychology instead of a quick fix solution?
Post 4 Author: aleksandra_simon
In Gerold Coles' article entitled, "Literacy, Emotions, and the Brain", Coles strongly argued that the emotional
state of our children in the classroom is an integral part of their ability to acquire literacy; co-relating positive
emotional states with literacy. Coles remarked that many educators feel that if solid, basic learning precedes
enthusiasm, good feelings associated with text and desire to learn more, then these positive emotional states
will occur 'naturally' through the child's success in literacy. However, Coles asked the question, are these
children becoming literate with no desire to read?
As educators, I think that this is a very important question to be asking ourselves. Is our goal for everyone in the
classroom to become literate, or is it for them to become avid readers? If our goal is for our students to become
avid readers we need to be supplying them with solid literature that they will be interested in reading. I realize
that at times this can be a daunting task, as many children do not know where their interests lay; except perhaps
in the odd book on Pokemon.
I believe it is our duty to expose children to a wide variety of solid literature, because there is always the
chance that the odd book will tweak a child's interest/passion in a certain subject area. When I was in grade
seven our teacher did a unit on Peru. I remember reading about, and looking at the pictures of the Inca ruin,
Machu Picchu and thinking that it was the most wonderful place on earth. I did not become an anthropologist
but, I did fulfill my dream of seeing this wonderful place last summer when I hiked up to the ruin. On the other
hand, it is difficult to know when a certain piece of literature will trigger an emotional response from a student;
perhaps the unit on Peru was designed as a purely academic unit. Whatever maybe the case, it is essential that
we provide our students with a wide range of literature.
Also, as teachers, we should be moving more towards being concerned with the link between literacy and
emotions, instead of putting this issue on the back burner. I agree with Coles when he mentioned, that negative
emotions towards a subject in school can impair learning. Personally, when I was in elementary school, I found
it very difficult to concentrate on math, because I believed that I could not do well in that subject area. When
teachers reports were sent home, saying that I was doing poorly in math, my parents would punish me. I found
myself in a never ending cycle of wanting to achieve at math, (because that is what my parents expected of
me), and yet negative feelings associated with that subject made me very anxious. As a result, I did perform
poorly in math throughout my schooling. I can see how my example would easily apply to a child trying to
learn to read. On the other hand, when I perceived myself as a capable learner, in other subject areas, I tended
to excel in them.
Granted, these are my own personal experiences. However, in conversation with other adults, who also had
similar experiences, I discovered that there are many people who feel that there needs to be an awareness on
the teachers part of their students' emotional states and the learning process.
Post 5 Author: Kim_Swanson1
Gerald Coles article "Literacy, Emotions and the Brain" dives into the psychological aspects of learning in
relation to cognition and emotions. According to the International Reading Association survey, "the emotional
side of literacy learning is not paramount in research and practice" Cole believes that educators must make the
role of emotions a primary concern. I agree with him completely. I believe that self-esteem is a major factor in
a child's performance at school. The more confident I was in a subject, the more I would apply myself to it;
therefore my grades would reflect this. If you don't feel confident about a subject or your ability to do well in it,
you will not do well in that subject. That has been the case in my school experience. I struggled with Math for
most of my life and because my self-esteem was so low, I felt I could not ever understand it. For me, emotions
and cognition go hand in hand; how a person perceives his/her feelings influences their learning. If a child has
had poor learning experiences, they can feel negative emotions and negative emotions can impair their
learning. In contrast, positive emotions can contribute to learning achievement. Thinking and feeling are very
important aspects in a child's development. Some children do not have an easy time knowing how to show or
interpret their emotions. It is essential that educators realize this and help them to develop in these areas. "In
real life, cognition is never an isolated mental process." You cannot successfully separate thinking from
feeling. Emotions are almost always involved, even if it is at a subconscious level.
Coles uses Vygotsky's scaffolding as a way of showing this connection. Through the zone of proximal
development, a student's transformations are usually made in cognitive and academic achievement;
emotional development is attainable through guidance and support. Scaffolding can help the teacher guide
the students' formation of new emotional states. They can help the children through these confusing times by
helping them learn about their experiences and use their cognitive skills to understand and deal with them.
Some believe that if you teach students the academics, the emotions will follow automatically. I don't think this
is always the case. Some children do not know how to slot their feelings into these categories on their own. This
is why I think teachers need to be aware and to cultivate emotion along with cognition.
Post 6 Author: Tricia_Wautier
I agree with Gerald Coles that self-esteem and a passionate engagement with literature are important in
developing literacy. However, Coles assumes that the current emphasis on teaching skills and strategies is a
"no-nonsense" approach that precludes any concern with children's self-esteem.
I am an education student, and our literacy classes place a heavy emphasis on teaching skills and strategies.
However, I don't think there is the dichotomy between this and the whole language approach that Coles
believes. Like the latter, current methods place an emphasis on using real, quality literature, such as "The
Giver", that engages students in powerful emotional, moral, or philosophical issues. They are given an
opportunity to respond at a very visceral level through journals (without regard for spelling) and in small group
and whole class discussions. These activities allow them to respond to the literature for its own sake, in a safe
environment where the mechanics of expression don't count.
However, in addition to these emotional responses, children are also taught the skills and strategies of reading
through the literature. It's a fact that while some children will pick them up intuitively, some won't for
innumerable reasons, ranging from family to culture to language to learning style. Teaching them the skills and
strategies demystifies the process of reading and empowers them as they become more independent. Concern
about the children's self-esteem is also apparent in the way they are grouped for the lessons. They are taught in
small groups, based on interest and need, which change with each book, to try to erase the stigma of being in
the lowest reading group.
Our literacy education courses also emphasize that literature units don't end once the skills and strategies have
been taught. After you've taken the book apart, you put it back together again, and respond to it as a whole,
perhaps with new understanding. You reinvest the literature with magic. For instance, you may use a book on
owls to teach children how to use a table of contents and an index, but you can also take them on a night hike
to hear owls and then write poetry about them. In addition, you can find activities that allow even those who
have trouble reading and writing to respond to literature in a creative, emotional, and joyful way -- for instance,
at the end of a unit, children can draw pictures, make story quilts, or put on a puppet play about the book.
In conclusion, I believe the teaching of skills and strategies and an emotional engagement with literature can
and often do coexist in the classroom. I think we need both to foster passionate, confident readers.
Reply 6a Author: Adam_Gibbons
"I agree with Gerald Coles that self-esteem and a passionate engagement with literature are important in
developing
literacy. However, Coles assumes that the current emphasis on teaching skills and strategies is a "no-nonsense"
approach
that precludes any concern with children's self-esteem."
I wholeheartedly concur with this opening statement by Tricia. It may be that literacy is constructed as an
emotionless or a stolid emotional endeavour in the academic literature. I won't attempt to challenge this well
articulated assertion. However, in practice, I can't imagine a classroom that is emotionless. How can we
possibly ignore students' emotions. I can't conceive of constructing a stolid emotional state as the classroom
standard even if I tried. How is it possible to ignore emotions in the classroom, especially considering the
plethora of emotional and controversial topics covered in all areas including literature? I felt that Coles was
assuming that all teachers held a particularly functional approach to literacy rather than a cultural literacy or
critical literacy approach and that this was enacted in practice across the board. A functional literacy
approach is not one that I plan to take and emotions will be a fundamental aspect of my classroom
environment, at least in theory. I anxiously await the opportunity to practice this theory.
Post 7 Author: paula_king
When we are interested in a topic, we can't wait to learn more about it. We can walk into class after a sleepless
night, put our heads on our desk, and tune out the teacher, I know because I have done it. Why is that sometimes
we enter a class feeling this way? The answer is our emotional state. It seems to me, as Gary Cole has stated that
you can not separate emotion and learning. After reading this article I remembered something one of my
professors said to me during a classroom discussion on memory. He said that if I were told that I won a million
dollars I would never forget it. I don't have a million dollars but I do remember that conversation even though it
took place over 5 years ago. When we had this conversation I was not merely a passive listener. I was interested in
what he was saying. Emotionally, my professor drew me into this conversation. It is my firm belief that engaging
students by presenting material in a way that is interesting and in a way which may excite some emotion within the
student is an ideal way to teach.
Students do not come into the class as blank slates ready to absorb all that is thrown at them. Instead they come to
us from a variety of home environments, some loving and supportive, some not. They come from different
socioeconomic levels and have different expectations placed upon them by their parents. We can not ignore
these factors, nor can we change them but we can help to influence how the students in our class feel. We can
and should help children to foster positive self concepts of themselves. It seems obvious that a child who is
emotionally distraught will have a harder time participating within that classroom and most likely in meeting the
demands that are placed on him or her within that classroom. I don't disagree with those maintain that positive
feelings result from success however, what happens if a student is never successful. It is our job as teachers to set
our students up for success. To provide them with tasks that are within their zone of proximal development and to
provide them with scaffolding whenever they need it. If a student is consistently failing tests or not taking part in
classroom activities I think we would be making a grave mistake if we simply assumed that the student didn't wan to
learn that material. The child who continually fails when s/he attempts to do a task will eventually give up.
However, if children feel emotionally secure enough to attempt these tasks and know that they will receive support
if and when it is needed persistence will be more likely.
Reply 7a Author: Christina_Caron
If you ask me it is very obvious that emotions have a major impact on how well a student learns language or
any other subject. If the student is predisposed with the attitude "I'm too dumb, I'm going to fail." then of course
they are going to fail. The student will do what is expected of themselves. If they feel that all they can do is fail
then they will. Also, if I am emotionally drained by my students I don't do as well in class as I could or should. I
know this, I have been to classes where I can hardly keep my eyes open, and it's not because it is so late, it is
because of the emotionally draining day I have had. If it is like this for me, someone that has had a few years to
get used to the stresses of the world, then why would it be any different for my students getting ready to
graduate and go off to college? While reading this article several different assertions jumped off the screen at
me, one statement that I feel I have to whole heatedly agree with is, "it is not the brain but the totality of the
person that is the unified whole of thinking." This statement is so true. Not only do you have to take each person
into consideration, you also have to think about how they interact and feel around each other. What kind of
pressures are they exhurting upon each other. The emotional soundness of a person makes it easier to velcro all
of the necessary material to the brain.
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
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