“I’m Not Concerned About the Poor…”

That’s part of a statement that Mitt Romney “misspoke” last week.  The other candidates and the media had a field day with it.  I won’t elaborate on the multiple interpretations of Romney’s remarks; you can find them anywhere and everywhere. Conclusions about Romney’s ability to lead remain in the eye of the beholder.

One of the major projects of Changing Our Consciousness is Emotional Imprint, a K-12 curriculum in emotional literacy. The curriculum is an academic track that can be integrated with lesson plans in other subject areas and add a much-needed dimension to them.

I’ve been searching for a simple, blog-worthy way to illustrate the unique methodology and extraordinary potential of our program, so I was pleased when Romney’s remark brought to mind one of the thought experiments I envisioned for Emotional Imprint:

Thought Experiment #5: Class President
You’re running for class president, struggling hard to be true to yourself, the school, and all of your classmates who have different needs and desires.  One day someone asks you a question about changing the cafeteria menu.  Changing the cafeteria menu is not one of your priorities, but you find yourself responding, “I understand your feelings about the menu, but honestly, the people who think it’s unhealthy are free to bring their own lunch or go out, aren’t they?”  Your family lives comfortably, but a lot of students at your school are on the free breakfast and lunch program because they can’t afford even the regular cafeteria food, so the accusation of “Prejudice!” headlines the next day’s school paper.  Are you prejudiced?  How might you respond?  Write a response for the next edition of the paper, illustrating your ability to be true to yourself, true to your classmates, and win the election if possible.

If our children were given the opportunity to practice emotional problems like this one throughout their academic careers – adding information from literature and composition, psychology and philosophy, history and social sciences, religion and ethics, etc, as time goes on –they would be much better able to address statements like Romney’s appropriately and helpfully, leading to greater insight and forward movement for all.

Graduates of an EI program would be able to intuitively sense the threshold when a focus on content threatens to be lost as feelings rise to the surface and take over a discussion.  They would learn to put aside the “How dare he say that!” argument, gently pose the question for the speaker to think about and respond to at a later time, and move on, perhaps to a different thought experiment: What does it actually mean, “to be concerned about the poor? Is it possible to erect a social structure that will help people with low incomes bounce into the ranks of the employed middle class?  Is “the poor” a specific category of person, or does that phrase itself reflect a prejudice? Should we be speaking to “them” rather than at or about them?