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DiggWhat To Do If No One Has Ever Loved You
Mary Gordon began bringing babies into Toronto classrooms in 1996 to help students learn social and emotional literacy and promote empathy. In Roots of Empathy classrooms, the infant becomes the “teacher,” and the students’ efforts to understand their teacher’s feelings enables them to better understand their own. Research results demonstrate that the program reduces aggression, including bullying. Gordon takes up the story below.
Darren was the oldest child I ever saw in a Roots of Empathy class. He was in Grade 8 and had been held back twice. He was two years older than everyone else and already starting to grow a beard. His mother had been murdered in front of his eyes when he was four years old, and he had lived in a succession of foster homes ever since. Darren looked menacing because he wanted us to know he was tough: his head was shaved except for a ponytail at the top and he had a tattoo on the back of his head.
Joining in the discussion, the mother told the class how Evan liked to face outwards when he was in the Snugli and didn’t want to cuddle her, and how she would have preferred to have a more cuddly baby. As the class ended, the mother asked if anyone wanted to try on the Snugli, which was green and trimmed with pink brocade. To everyone’s surprise, Darren offered to try it, and as the other students scrambled to get ready for lunch, he strapped it on. Then he asked if he could put Evan in. The mother was a little apprehensive, but she handed him the baby, and he put Evan in, facing toward his chest. That wise little baby snuggled right in, and Darren took him into a quiet corner and rocked back and forth with the baby in his arms for several minutes. Finally, he came back to where the mother and the instructor were waiting and asked: “If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”
In his paper “The Truth and Ethics of School Reform,” the philosopher Thomas McCollough writes, “Moral imagination is the capacity to empathize with others, i.e., not just to feel for oneself, but to feel with and for others. This is something that education ought to cultivate and that citizens ought to bring to politics.”
Empathy is frequently defined as the ability to identify with the feelings and perspectives of others. I would add and to respond appropriately to the feelings and perspectives of others. Expressed this way, it sounds simple enough. Perhaps it is only when we reflect on what happens when empathy is absent that we begin to grasp the profound, complex and fundamental role it plays in the healthy functioning of human relations.
The visits with the baby are naturally greeted with high levels of enthusiasm by the students; however, the rich content of the pre- and post-family-visit classes engages students in discussions and activities related to themes such as emotions, safety and communicating. In the pre-family-visit class the instructor introduces the theme, links it to the stages of baby’s development and elicits from the children predictions about what their particular baby will be able to do when she comes to visit. After the visit, the students consolidate what they have learned. This includes group discussions, artwork, drama, journal writing or perhaps a math exercise. In a pre-visit session, for example, the students might practice ways to hold a baby, using a life-like doll. In a post-visit session, they might discuss their own experiences with childhood fears or their memories of favorite lullabies. The program draws out the generosity of children as the activities in the curriculum invite them to use art, music, drama and song as vehicles for presenting the baby and parent with classroom gifts.
The baby becomes a laboratory for human development — the development of a whole person — physical, social, emotional, intellectual, moral and spiritual. Students are coached in learning how to reflect. Every child is encouraged to speak out in the group, to find their voice, and to anchor the feeling of being a contributing member of a group in which there are no wrong answers or stupid questions, and respect is guaranteed.
By involving children in the unfolding story of the parent- child relationship, Roots of Empathy is engaging them in a world of social and emotional learning that examines the development of a human being on a green blanket on the classroom floor. This program addresses children’s affective side, their ability to care. Empathy is a key ingredient of competent parenting, and exploration of what it takes to be a responsive and responsible parent opens the door to emotional literacy for children, creating change from the inside out. The skills they learn in the program will not only help them with relationships today but will affect the quality of parenting we can expect in the next generation. These skills will help children develop the empathy, insights, and capacity for human connection that are critical for them to take their places in the world.
Excerpted from Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child, by
Mary Gordon, published by Thomas Allen Publishers. Not yet available in
American bookstores, the book may be purchased online through
Canadian booksellers, such as www.amazon.ca and www.indigo.ca.
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