As a teacher of Social Action and director of Service Learning, I find myself often charged with “getting kids to care.” Isn’t this the constant predicament of most educators?
In truth, I have developed a whole career around crafting curriculum, activities, professional development seminars, and local and global service opportunities to answer this charge. Though I have failed with some frequency, I am proud of this work; creating a culture of compassion within a system of competition has been and continues to be a pseudo-subversive revolution.
My pride and personal and professional identity were rocked recently by an article by the always insightful David Brooks of the New York Times, The Limits of Empathy. In short order, he, as my Grandpoppy used to say, “took [my efforts] to the woodshed.” I am perpetually standing in front of audiences of either students or educators heralding the critical import of exhuming their empathy.
Brooks’ statements like, “Empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them,” consequently landed with concussive force. Furthering my malaise, he cites the research of City University of New York Professor, Jesse Prinz suggesting, “That empathy is not a major player when it comes to motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and non-existent when costs are significant.” Brooks’ final dagger came with the flick, “Empathy is a sideshow.” Ouch…that was a stinger.
Although I wanted to parry what felt like an attack, I had to acknowledge the truth of Brooks’ statements. Empathy, namely in education, is anemic in and of itself to affect lasting change. Caring alone is not enough.
This does not, however, make it any less critical. Teaching students basic arithmetic does not make them ready for college mathematics, but this elemental building block is crucial to their ultimate ability to engage in higher level calculations.
Similarly, empathy education does not always equate to a generation of students utilizing their learning to become social innovators, but we must begin with this most basic building block if we ever hope to cultivate young people who no longer perceive the injustices of our world through the comfortable distance of a digital screen just long enough to switch stations.
Empathy is not a sideshow, it is an hors d’oeuvre. Is simply feeling a bit of someone else’s plight enough to satiate the hunger of human injustice in our society? Certainly not, but without a taste of the tragic, we cannot expect students to take meaningful action.
The key then is not to either exalt or discredit empathy in education, but to place it rightly in a Social Action continuum. Empathy rests in the middle of a process we at Finding Heroes strive to navigate with students from Apathy -> Sympathy -> Empathy -> Solidarity.
Empathy is the critical step prior to our ultimate goal, solidarity. We want our students to achieve excellence, not for personal accolade, rather because they see their learning as a set of critical skills to empower the marginalized. Students then are not simply learning about the water cycle, but are using their learning to advocate for green space in industrial neighborhoods. The move from empathy to solidarity, caring to action, occurs when we connect students’ compassion to their moral absolutes, what Brooks terms sacred codes, and provide opportunities for them to respond.
New York Times columnist Nick Kristof champions one such individual in his recent Sunday column, The Man who Stayed Behind. He describes Ryan Boyette, a 30-year-old hero from Florida willing to “dodge bombs in his underwear” in Sudan while other foreigners were evacuated. The article is well worth the read, and suffice to say, Ryan’s actions epitomize the ideal set forth of combining empathy with moral absolutes.
If we hope that the worth of our education is to become more than the attainment of grade points…if we hope that the value of our students’ learning might inspire a generation willing to dodge bombs in their underwear, we must acknowledge that Caring is Not Enough, but it is the essential starting point.
This is probably why so many of us who jump into education with the belief that we can change things because we care, get burnt out so quickly. We know we care. We know the techniques to educate. We just haven’t figured out the next step. So we either start to fill hopeless or get so bogged down in the day to day giving it our all that we don’t have the strength to step back and figure out the next step needed- to take our care, worry, and hours of hard work and make a lasting difference to the system and not just the individual student.
This speaks accurately of our society when we say “I really am concerned about…” and it stops there. The old quote “Actions speak louder than words” is what works. I could fill this with more quotes about doing not just feeling or saying. Yet there is hope because it does start with people caring.
Kap, thank you for hyperlinking to David Brooks article, which, I think is critical to understand before digesting yours. Yes, Brooks makes excellent points, however, he misses the crucial step you have inserted, which is that empathy is a necessary step in the continuum. In addition, there is little emphasis on teaching empathy in most schools, so this critical step can easily be avoided, leading to a safe, insular uninvolved life. There are many areas that our students approach with apathy, and we need time and effort to turn them on whether it be to learning, to actually experimenting, or to putting their hand to doing good in the world. I must however, fundamentally start with Brooks premise that empathy does not do the job. Therefore, just teaching empathy is not enough, which means programs designed to do that really need an additional action step for those students willing to take it. You can learn basic math now, and then wait 5 years to learn calculus, but if you are learning empathy, there needs to be some action step immediately following that will allow you to experience social action.
Too often empathy is the very thing holding special educators back from pushing students forward. While I completely agree that empathy is the starting point, it inhibits decision making on the part of some special educators, especially when considering classroom behavior management or transition planning. Caring within special education needs to move beyond sympathy or empathy for students with special needs and needs to be transformed into focusing on developing viable future citizens that meaningfully contribute to society.
Thanks for sharing how you were able to take feedback as part of your continuous learning process. Such a valuable skill to have as we think about our work. I’d like to explore more about the empathy to action process that several readers have identified. I’ll take that as my feedback.
David Brooks’ article brought to the surface some nagging discomfort I have harbored over the past few years over the issue of of empathy. I have sensed that empathy has been a bit oversold in the media as a meme.
While I believe empathy should be cultivated in the young and continuously developed throughout one’s life, I agree with David Brooks that the role of a personal code has been de-emphasized. Perhaps my upbringing in an Eastern culture (Chinese) cultivated a different perspective on empathy vis-a-vis moral codes. As a young child in Taiwan and then Japan, I recall vividly learning through a variety of formal and informal environments the critical importance of acting with honor and avoiding shame.
And that honor and shame were not merely individual, but collective and enduring. So it was etched indelibly in my mind that my actions must not bring shame to my entire clan because such actions may profoundly impact the social, economic, political and spiritual of my clan for multiple generations.
So in this context, acting with humility and serving those in need was not driven so much out of a personal empathy-based appreciation for those suffering hardship as it was driven by a obligation to act in a way that brings honor and avoids dishonor to the clan. Serving those in need, being humble, being generous to the poor, showing forbearance toward debts owed by others, etc. were all “required” behavior for a cultivated adult person in the culture. So empathy in this context was not a essential building block though it would have made the obligatory behaviors seem less arbitrary.
Please don’t interpret my words to imply that the culture I described discounted empathy as a virtue. I am merely pointing out that in the culture, regardless of whether the person felt empathy for those less fortunate, he/she was obligated to serve them under the moral code and this feeling of obligation overwhelmed any feelings of empathy.
Since my immigration to the USA decades ago, I have seen a steady erosion of moral code as a topic for inclusion in the school experience for youth. Perhaps it is the aversion to touch anything that hints at commingling of Church and State? Perhaps it is reflective of the moral relativism movement? Perhaps it is indicative of the pragmatic priorities (e.g. raise test scores) of our schools today?
In summary, I welcome a better balance between cultivating empathy and strong moral codes (not tied to any particular religion) in our youth.
“Empathy, namely in education, is anemic in and of itself to affect lasting change. Caring alone is not enough.” I agree that it is the first step, and I love your Apathy -> Sympathy -> Empathy -> Solidarity continuum…but before we move students through this, we have engage ourselves…where are we in the continuum?