The Ways of Empathy

NOVEMBER 12, 2010, 8:06 PM

The Ways of Empathy

By DAVID BORNSTEIN

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.

Tags:

bullying

It seems that just about everybody has had experience with babies or bullies — or both. Which is why the commentary that followed this week’s Fixes column about Roots of Empathy — an organization that decreases bullying by bringing babies into school classrooms — was so rich, personal and detailed. At the end of the column, I asked readers if they had ideas for ways to reduce bullying. Many offered suggestions about organizations, techniques and books (some of which I list at the bottom of this column), but many more readers reflected on their own experiences having witnessed bullying or the surprising effect babies can have on children and teenagers.

Christine, from Montpelier, Vt., (35), recounted her experiences driving a school bus accompanied by her baby boy in a car seat behind her. When necessary, she would place “unruly students” ─ mostly in grades four through eight ─ near her, as well. “[T]hey started to ask to sit in the front … so that they could play and read and talk to him during the ride. I observed that they softened and gentled with my son and seemed to feel safe expressing that tender side of their natures.”

If parents are the source of the bullying, holding children accountable may have little effect.

NJ, (17)., who lives near a middle and high school, made a similar observation: “[A]dolescents are always walking in loud packs up and down the block during lunch breaks and after school. It is most heartwarming to see even the 13-year-old boys slow down, smile and say ‘Hey, buddy!’ to my little toddler as we pass by.”

Many readers also related their experiences with the Roots of Empathy program. Lorien, from Vancouver, BC, (49) who participated with her baby son in two classes, found that the program gave the children a good grounding what it means to be a parent. “The general consensus was that babies were awesome, hard, expensive, wonderful, cute and engaging, and that you would be much better off to have one when you were in a stable relationship and old enough to make the necessary sacrifices to make the baby your priority,” she wrote.

Quite a number of readers mused about the potential that babies might have if we could somehow find a way to insert them into the machinery of boardrooms, the halls of Congress or even the Supreme Court. But a handful of readers did object, some in strong terms, to the idea that anti-bullying efforts should be brought into schools. No One (68) from New York, wrote: “Bullying ought to be stopped by holding parents responsible for their kid’s behavior.” Patrick (36) from Texas wrote: “There is no time for this type of feel-good drivel. Teachers and principals should be encouraged to identify, remove and discipline bullies, while the non-miscreants go on learning the 3Rs.”

The problem is that if parents are the source of the bullying ─ holding them accountable may have little effect. And, unfortunately, many elementary schools do handle bullying as Patrick suggests, but the results, according to principals and researchers, are terrible: elementary school suspensions have been called a “conveyer belt” into the juvenile justice system. Many bullies lack the ability to empathize needed to engage more positively. As Maya (100) from Philadelphia commented: “It’s refreshing to read an approach to confronting bullying that places emphasis on the bully as the party in need.”

There were also several common themes that ran through the comments. One was that our society is too segregated by age ─ and that children should have more time to hang around with babies. And many readers suggested that animals, like hamsters or puppies, could be used in a similar fashion. Errol (85) from Colorado, who volunteers at a prison that involves inmates in dog training, commented: “[T]he presence of the dogs melts the demeanor and aggression of even the hardest cases.”

I asked Roots of Empathy’s founder, Mary Gordon, what she thought of this. “No question puppies are non-judgmental in returning affection,” she said. But the process by which children develop parenting skills and empathy grows through their ability to identify with the baby’s feelings and observe a loving parent-child relationship. “Dogs can’t do that,” she said.

How far could programs like this go? Without more structural changes in our educational infrastructure, readers felt the impact would be limited. Dc (39) commented: “As a public school teacher, I can’t help but observe that this creative program would be completely unvalued in our federal Race to the Top program. Time spent fostering empathy is time spent NOT learning how to do well on their standardized tests.” Ed Miller (19) from the Alliance for Childhood in New York added that make-believe play, which is vital to the development of empathy, “has been driven out of schools by misguided policymaking that emphasizes the didactic drilling of literacy and math skills.”

The major finding seems to be that environment determines how people learn to regulate their aggressive impulses.

In recent years, a few U.S. states ─ Illinois and New York, for example ─ have passed laws requiring schools to address social and emotional learning, but this is easier to legislate than to do. According to the educators I interviewed, no teaching college requires prospective teachers to take a course in this. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, the leading organization advancing research, understanding, and policy change on this front, has worked with Congress to introduce legislation that would authorize the Department of Education to support and evaluate such programs.

This is a critical area. The most troubling finding about bullying is that, when schools do nothing about it, it increases throughout the year, according to Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a researcher I cited in the column who has focused on child development for two decades.

Why would bullying get worse? One explanation is the way children form hierarchies. W. Thomas Boyce, a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia, has found that within the first two weeks of kindergarten a hierarchy is established ─ and, over the course of the year, the subordinate kids actually experience declines in their physical and mental health, as reported by teachers. It’s not clear why, but Boyce suspects that stress is a big factor. “Some classrooms are quite egalitarian,” he explained. “Others are tremendously despotic.” He added that the philosophy of the teacher makes a big difference. “Some go out of their way to convey the message that all the kids have value,” he said. “Others ignore it or almost cynically use it as a way to control behavior.”

These researchers believe that programs like Roots of Empathy disrupt the normal progression of classroom hierarchies.

Gordon believes the single best thing teachers or parents can do to build empathy among children is simply to share their own feelings. “Rather than asking kids at dinner, ‘What did you learn in school today?’ ─ which kids experience as interrogation ─ lead with your own experience,” she said. “Say, ‘At work today I had to make a presentation and I felt so nervous, I dropped all of my papers.’ Or: ‘I couldn’t find my keys, I was so frustrated.’ ”

This can be done when reading books or watching TV with children. “You can say, ‘I felt so sad for the character, that’s just how I felt when my car got stolen.’ Children are watching us all the time. When they see us as being human their vulnerability and humanity comes through and their emotional literacy grows.”

Finally, a number of readers took me to task for writing that we are “hardwired” to be aggressive and selfish. Hgl from Chicago (26) wrote: “The Hobbesian assertion you begin with is simply unwarranted.” And rsolange from San Francisco (114) added: “The line seems to be a reflexive nod to conventional wisdom.” On the other end of the spectrum, ACW from New Jersey (128) had a far less sanguine view. “Humans are absolutely hardwired to be mean,” he wrote. “I’ve got 55 years of observation.”

Twin studies indicate that some people are more wired for aggression than others ─ but the major finding seems to be that environment determines how people learn to regulate their aggressive impulses.

The noted psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg observed that in past centuries we used to think that insane people were violent by nature. “So long as the insane were chained, beaten, and locked in cells, madmen raged and fumed,” he wrote in a classic essay called “The Human Nature of Human Nature.” With the introduction of the “moral treatment” of the insane two centuries ago, asylums became less violent.

What we believe about people determines the context we create around them ─ and that context influences how they behave. It’s self fulfilling. “Teachers’ expectations govern pupils’ performance. The citizens’ confidence in the benevolence of the social order maintains its stability,” wrote Eisenberg. What we believe about ourselves and others will in fact influence what we become as a society. And he added: “[M]en and women must believe that mankind can become fully human in order for our species to attain its humanity.” [emphasis added]

So I retract my “hardwired” statement. Having considered this more deeply, it now seems to me that calling human beings naturally aggressive is like calling them naturally illiterate, or naturally unable to walk. It doesn’t say much. It just describes an initial condition that we know how to overcome. People learn to read and walk. If we see bullies as people who have failed to learn crucial emotional skills, then the solution becomes clear. It isn’t to shun them ─ or remove them from society ─ as we do ─ but to teach them.

Resources

Here are a few of the organizations that readers recommended:

Ann from San Mateo (44) a fan of Non-Violent Communications (NVC) embodied in Giraffe schools advocated by Marshall Rosenberg

Suzy from Florida (122) likes Prepare Tomorrow’s Parents. Kathleen Kelly from Bowen Island (125), wrote about her school’s Virtues Project.

Awhite from Ohio (134) liked The Generation Connection, which brings together old, young, and in between in a camp environment.

Md2205 from New York (140) suggested Bullies To Buddies, as a model that teaches kids the skills they need not to be victims of bullying.

JRM from Baltimore (147) liked Hounds of Prison Education and Pathways to Hope, which use dogs to help prisoners.

And Sarah Hoffman from San Francisco (150) offered a list of resources aimed at parents of “gender non-conforming children” here.

Finally, I’ll add two more myself: Nancy Eisenberg’s “Eight Tips to Developing Caring Kids” and Edutopia’s Social and Emotional Learning Homepage.

David Bornstein is the author of “How to Change the World,” which has been published in 20 languages, and “The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank,” and is co-author of “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is the founder ofdowser.org, a media site that reports on social innovation.

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