A few months ago I went to see a movie called "Inside out" that I really recommend everyone to see it, because thanks to this film, we can understand in a funnier, more amusing and easier way, how basic emotions work inside our minds, how do they originate and what are their roles throughout our lives.
In the movie the main protagonists are 5 characters, which represent 5 basic emotions. They live in Riley's mind (the girl of the movie) in forms of little living creatures and their tasks are to help her socialize and adapt to the different contexts she's living. So the 5 basic emotions that are depicted in the movie are:
It's a very interesting movie that everyone (young kids, adolescents, adults and elder people) should watch it because it transmits us very important messages about the control and evolution of our emotions;
a. Emotions are natural and innate facts The movie starts when Riley is born and the first emotion she expereinces is joy at the moment of opening her eyes, seeing and recognizing her parents. After she starts to cry and other emotions appear; Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger. So as living beings (rational) we are already born with emotions and everyone of us can feel and go through them, is a fact that we all own as a natural thing.
Here's a clip where we can see the birth of Riley and the appearance of her first emotions:
b. How memories are formed in our mind The memories are represented in the movie as little light balls of a certain colour, which this will depend on the emotions that the charcater is feeling. Thanks to this movie I learnt that emotions actually play a very importnat part in the formation of memories, and the strongest the emotions are, the strongest and more meaningful will the memories be. Also, the movie remarks the role of essential memories (ex: the first time you sang in front of a crowd and your family and friends cheered and congratalated you, the first time you won a football match..) These kind of memories shape our personality. When these essential memories are so strong and meaningful, they create what is called "islands of personalities". When we have many of these islands, we start to create our identity and know what do we like, what we don't like, how we react in certain sitautions...etc.
However, when we grow up, we leave some things behind and start to be interested in others, because when we become older, our personality also changes, we become more mature and adult, and this is a fact we can see it clearly when some of these "island of personalities" fall down. c. The importance of ALL and EACH ONE of the emotions we expereince At first, Joy is the one who introduces the other emotions, and also it seems along the movie, as the dominant emotion, the one that always has to overpass the others, because the film makes us understand at first sight, that we must always feel happy and joyful. Nevertheless, during the movie we can see how all the emotions have thier own meaningful functions:
Joy: makes Riley feel positive, to celebrate the sucessful things that heppen, being iptimistic.
Disgust: Is the one which makes us feel beautiful, having good appreance and health, to take care of us,. It also prevents us from not eating or drinking something that can be harmful for us.
Fear: it's main fuction is to make us survive, to decide which are the limits between safety and danger. An impornt thing to know about fear is that it gives us fear either in front of real dangerous things but also in front of imaginary dangerous things like when we are watching a scary or action movie, or when we are alone at night and we start to feel scared from something happening.
Anger: Is reponsible for defending ourselves, our things and our beloved ones. We experience anger when we feel vulnerable and something that was ours is out of reach or they have taken them away from us. It also makes us act in unfair situations, therfore, it helps us to provide integritiy and cohesion in our lives.
Sadness: This emotion is very important in the movie, since at first, is the marginalised, is the one who feels that it's useful at all, and that nobody needs it. However, we will see that throughout the plot of the film, they will convince us that it's actually the most important one. It's fundamental in our life development since it's the one that makes us grow emotionally and step forward on the events that happen to us. Sadness is responsible for the inclusion, of self-awareness, it helps us to consider ourselves, to think and meditate on the changing events, in order to turn the page over. For example, when we suffer from a loss of somebody, sadness here plays a crucial part, because we need to grieve, to cry and let some time pass, in order to close and leave behind a hard time and start a new one.
At the beggining of the movie, we can see that all the memories Riley is storing inside her brain are only formed my one single emotion (one colour). This is because when we are young kids, our emotions are very basic and less complex. However, the character of Riley is reaching to the adolescence age, and this is a much more compelx age where we can expericne more than 1 or 2 feelings at a time. This is what the movie tries to reflect at the end of the story, where the colours of the memories are not monocoloured anymore, they are a mix of differnet colours (emotions).
Here below in this video we can see how Riley (the main character) has become a teenager and so we can see her new emotions and new memories.
There are so many other interesting things that this movie tells us, such as the imaginative section in our brain (either in the child and adults brain), the formation of dreams, the fact of growing up....etc.
But the most important message that I am taking with me, is that it encourages to express our emotions openly, even though they are sadness, or anger... We should not feel ashamed or embarrassed to feel in a certain way. We just have to take in mind to use our cognitive skills and multiple intelligence so that we can handle and control them better.
The problem with the Catalan education system After having seen this movie, having studied the topic of emotional regulation at class, and having analysed a muder that happened in a school, where a student killed a teacher, I was so shcoked and worried as a future educator, that I started to think about the education system in our country.
I thoght that maybe the problem was that there was not enogh financing in the education sector, that there was not enough involvement from the governemntal bodies.... But I have realised that the real problems is how do we teach kids. The real problem is that teachers are not well-formed, that students are not given enough academic and most importnatly, emotional suppport. I did not realize before how emotional education can change children's developement.
At primary school or at secondary school there isn't any kind of subject, moment in the schedule where teachers dedicate their time to the class cohesion, to the expression of their emotions, problems and obstacles that their students might be going throuhg. This is why, teachers are not able to understand the behaviour of some students who they simply call them " disruptive" because they hardly know anything about their family background or thier inner feelings and preocupations.
Education curriculums should not merely be about teaching content, topics and knowedge (that to be honest, after a year passed, students are not even able to remember the 80% of what they studied) but it should take into account things such as education in democratic values, social cohesion, and emotional education. We need to provide students with support, with trust and open ourselves as educators, so that when they need to cry, they can cry, when they need to scream and be angry, they are allowed and able to extract all their pain form their inner selves. There are not many schools or education system that work on this, it's a pity, since the most important thing in the first years of education ( primary) is to facilitate kids to interact with the others, socialize , express and experience with the real world, instead of just putting words and facts inside their brain. When I was at school, it was always said " Don't cry, don't be sad" or " Don't be angry, please don't scream". But maybe at those curcumstnatce,s that kid what mos needed was to cry, to grieve, to scream so that he/she could relieve all the pain and worries . So, schools, teachers and even families should try: - recognize and spot the emotions of kids -comprehend their emotions -provide attachment figures and proximity -potentiate their social relationships -be open and available to support and assist the kid whenever he/she needs a back to tell waht he/she is feeling -From education's part: provide more programmes and activities at school about emotional regualtion and potetiate their expression of emotions and thoughts.
A model to follow and get inspired: A japanese man called Mr. Kanamori, is a teacher of a 4th grade class. He uses a very modern teaching model where he considers a lot the emotional life of his students. He tries to potentiate his students the sense of life, how to help the others, to empathize with them, to do teamwork and defend and protect their classmates.
It's an inspiring model of teaching that we should all take into account as future teachers, and if we can apply some of the tecniques of this wonderful Japanese educator, we can make real changes in kid's life.
One technique that he uses evey day is to encourage pupils to write their true inner feelings and any obstacles they are facing with in a notebook, as if they were writing a diary. Then, he asks everyday to 3 different students to read it aloud in front of their companions. Children write and express stories of all types, and we can clearly see how students, start to cry, laugh or feel empahty for the students who's reading their letter. It's a way they can realize on the importance of caring for their classmates, for sticking together, listening to each other's opinions... And most importantly, it's a fantastic technique, because pupils can talk and express about "taboo" topics such as death or violence, themes that some people belive a kid should not know or hear talk about it until he/she is grown up. Here is a piece of this documentary called "Children Full of Life". Its quite long (40 minutes approximately) but every minute of it it's worthwhile watching, because It's not hard to get emotional on the words that these kids say. Furthermore, we can see the different situations that the teacher challenges them with different topics of life such as: friendship, death, inibition and shyness, sadness, grieving...