Roots of Empathy. Mary Gordon
10 Social Inclusion: Setting a Place for Everyone
Section Three: Roots of Empathy and Society
11 What Babies Would Say to Bullies
12 What Babies Would Say about Infant Safety
13 What Babies Would Say to Teachers
14 What Babies Would Say to Parents
15 Changing the World Child by Child
Appendix A: The Story of Parenting and Family Literacy Centres
Appendix B : Roots of Empathy: The Research
Notes
References
Foreword
To all those who claim that only academic subjects can be measured and improved, you are about to get your comeuppance. Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy is a simple, brilliant, and powerful example of how developing children’s empathy can be a priority and can be accomplished with amazing results.
Using science and motherhood, Mary Gordon has created a wonderful, heart-rending, and inspiring program that tugs at the heartstrings as it shows what can be done in the most difficult cases. Who would have thought that you could build a curriculum around a mother and her baby, and that a baby-driven curriculum could meet neuroscience with such wonderful results?
Roots of Empathy is solidly based on scientific knowledge of the human condition. But more than that, it takes us into the pedagogy of how one can develop and foster attachment, emotional literacy, authentic communication, and social inclusion. It shows how one can take even the toughest kids and give them an experience that literally changes their lives by helping them get in touch with what it means to be human in a world of diversity—indeed, in a very tough world.
The strategies are clear and powerful. And do they get results! In carefully controlled evaluations by external academics, we see that bullying decreases over the period of a year, as do other forms of aggression. And empathy to other children increases. So does reaching out to include others, especially those who are least likely to fit into the group. And of course the close link between academic learning in literacy and math and self-esteem and general well-being flourish in a mutually reinforcing dance of development.
In my own work, we have been focusing on achieving literacy and numeracy for all students—raising the bar and closing the gap, as we say. We are getting promising results on a large scale across whole countries, such as England, and whole provinces, such as Ontario. But we can only get so far. The missing link is the third basic—the well-being of children, not as a standalone initiative but as integral to academic and overall success in life. We will be able to go the distance only if we make academic and personal and social development a mutually reinforcing centrepiece of our policies and strategies.
Every country in the world should take Roots of Empathy seriously. Learn from it, and introduce it into your classrooms. Make the whole child the centre of development, not in an abstract philosophical way, but in a decidedly direct and concrete manner. Mary Gordon has opened the door to finally treating the whole child in a practical, no-nonsense yet sensitive and compassionate way. The heart is the way to the mind, but they have to be explicitly linked. Roots of Empathy is a model of social and academic inclusion. If you are an educator, a parent, a politician, please read this book.
Michael Fullan
Professor Emeritus
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
at the University of Toronto
Preface
I grew up in Newfoundland, raised in a large loving family with three generations under one roof. My parents were passionate about social justice. One night when I was six and my sister Susan was eight, my father set an empty tin on the dinner table while we were eating and put some coins in it. He explained to us that we couldn’t have the black patent leather, Mary-Jane party shoes we wanted, because the money would go to buy shoes for little girls in India who didn’t have any.
It was well known by the local jail population that when you got released you could go up to Mrs. Dyer’s (my mother’s) for a hot meal. I remember being invited to make our guests welcome by sitting at the card table in the hall to share conversation as he ate his meal. From my mother, we learned about the dignity every person was entitled to, regardless of circumstances.
I offer these stories by way of explaining the power of family and the impact that incidents in everyday life can have in shaping the values we carry forever. I was picked up rather than put down when I faltered as a child, and that helped me to trust myself.
The journey that brought me to Roots of Empathy has been rich and winding, and recurring themes have appeared along the way:
The Importance of Family: I witnessed intergenerational cycles of violence first-hand when I worked with families caught in the cycles of child abuse, neglect, or domestic violence. The pervasiveness of these social ills can be addressed when we look at the common denominator of these ills—the absence of empathy. As children develop empathy, they become more adept at finding the humanity in one another. Without empathy, we can’t get to conflict resolution, altruism, or peace. There are two overarching understandings from working with families; first, children develop within the culture of their family and we need to work with that rather than against it. Second, it is the relationships rather than the structure of families that count.
The Privilege of Working with Children: My work with children who had been victims of abuse or neglect, who lived in hostels, who lived with the unpredictability of addict parents, taught me that they love, purely without judgment, and have an infinite capacity for forgiveness. All children can teach us lessons of loyalty and acceptance. Working with little children as a kindergarten teacher, I was overwhelmed by both their strength and their vulnerability. I was amazed by the honest way they wore their feelings and behaviour. All those who have the opportunity to work with young children touch the future. Unfortunately in North America, we live in a child-illiterate society in which all childcare workers are undervalued, and those who parent children at home are often dismissed as marking time until they get back into the workforce. My hope is that this book will support the vital importance of children and all those who are involved with their development.
The Universal Need for Love and Belonging: When I worked with parents who had abused their children, it was very clear they were not the monsters the public thought they were. These parents were all desperately seeking acceptance, recognition, and love, but their life experiences had left them devoid of empathy. All too often, when children or youth are made to feel that they don’t belong, the response is a desire to “get even.” The headlines capture the most dramatic examples of youth “getting even” in the statistics of suicide, aggression, and murder.
A realization of the devastating impact of neglect or abuse on the lives of children, and alarm over societal violence, which is often the result of marginalized childhoods and poor parenting, set me on a path to find ways to break this cycle. This was my initial motivation; however, the lessons that Roots of Empathy teaches reach out to all children and strengthen their capacity to engage with the world using empathy.
The Value of Public Education: My first career as a kindergarten teacher introduced me to the power of education as an equalizer. Public education is the basis of a healthy democracy. Working in schools, whether in school-based parenting centres or classrooms, I saw how crucial it is that we teach children to ask questions and help them find a voice. Voice is bound up in their confidence and feelings of self-worth and is key to their future as citizens who will take their place in a democratic society. We need to use the evidence about how children truly learn, not through telling and yelling, but through meaningful experiences that engage both the mind and the heart. Roots of Empathy addresses the affective side of learning,