CAN WE HELP OUR STUDENTS TO DEVELOP EMPATHY ? -- PART l

When we consider current global issues in our classrooms, a question arises regarding our students' ability to feel and understand the pain and suffering of others around the globe. How can middle or upper-class students feel the pain of hunger, or the hopelessness of poverty? How can they relate to totally disempowered human beings around the world? The ability to personally feel the impact of these powerful situations, unknown to them "in the flesh," is critical to a thorough understanding of the global reality. So, how can we help our students develop empathy for their fellow humans? Let's start at the very beginning.

Psychologists tell us that when we as infants first develop our awareness of others as beings not directly linked to us and not part of "our group," we respond with concern, rejection or fear. (Aunt Sally can attest to this, as little Jimmy begins to cry when she first visits the family and picks him up.) This is an understandable evolutionary reaction to a possible threat to our well-being. To the infant, others are present only to meet his/her needs or as possible threats. An infant has no sense of empathy for the welfare of others.

As we gain confidence in ourselves and in our environment, we lower our guard and become less insular; we are more accepting of new faces. We begin to develop our social self and learn to interact productively with others. We begin to accept the existence of others in our world.

Although we remain self-centered as children, we normally begin to develop a rudimentary -- but very real -- concern for fairness and justice. We automatically reject obvious perceived injustices perpetrated against our siblings and our social group. As we reach what Jean Piaget called the "Concrete Operational Stage" of cognitive development, we reject specific examples of perceived wrongdoing against those close to us.

A little later, we reach Piaget's "Formal Operational Stage" and we are able to internalize abstract concepts that we can apply to specific situations; concepts such as "justice," "fairness," and "empathy." We now have the tools to develop empathy toward those who are personally unknown to us.

The specific attributes of human nature have been a matter of considerable philosophical and psychological debate over the years. I am going to be on the side of those who believe that in a normal, non-threatening environment, all humans begin to develop "basic human empathy." I am going to define "basic human empathy" as "the intellectual and emotional ability to feel the joy or pain of others who are not personally close to us."

Not everyone develops basic human empathy. In very threatening environments, some children/adolescents cannot get beyond the evolutionary dictates of self-preservation-at-any-cost and do not develop a sense of empathy; this is not normal human development. Fortunately, most humans do develop empathy as we develop cognitively and morally/ethically.

In those cases when our environment and our conditioning conspire to thwart normal development, the result is an adolescent or adult with an under-developed capacity for empathy. Several questions arise: What specific factors can interfere with the development of the human capacity for empathy? Can we as teachers help our students develop their normal potential to become empathetic human beings and care for both the pain and the well-being of those unknown to them? If so, how can we do it?

In our next post we will explore some possibilities....