TORONTO — In a Toronto classroom, a group of 10-year-olds sit in a circle around a green felt blanket cheering on a baby as he tries to roll over.
“You can do it, Bodie!”
“Just a bit more!”
“You’re almost there!”
After a few unsuccessful attempts, the 3-month-old’s smile gives way to a grimace and he starts to cry. The students’ shoulders slump and they let out a collective sigh.
“Why is Bodie crying? What did he experience?” a woman asks them while the baby is soothed by his mother. A quick confab determines that the baby is frustrated. “What about you?” the woman asks several students. “What makes you frustrated? How do you act when you’re frustrated?”
The baby’s classroom visit is part of a program designed in Canada to foster empathy among children and, in the process, reduce aggression and bullying. Founded in 1996 by Canadian educator Mary Gordon, the program, Roots of Empathy, has found receptive audiences at home and abroad. In an age of polarized politics in many democracies, where social media often is seen more as a tool of cyberbullying than a bridge to increased understanding, Roots of Empathy has expanded to the U.S. and in Western Europe by using a 20 th-century technique: face-to-face interactions.
“The students learn that each person has a particular disposition, that there are differences between individuals — but that we all share the same menu of feelings,” Gordon says. “The program helps children find the humanity in the baby, themselves and their classmates.”
As part of the program, a parent and baby visit a primary school classroom nine times over the course of a school year. During each visit, a specially trained instructor interacts with the baby, giving it toys and presenting challenges ranging from tummy time to crawling. The students look on and share their observations. The instructor asks them questions about the infant’s emotions and how they relate to their own. The students also ask the instructor and the parent questions. “The children are 100 percent engaged and are just amazing in their observations,” Gordon says.
A week before and after each visit, the students and the instructor discuss the baby’s physical, emotional and cognitive development and about lessons they have learned by observing their tiny teacher, who is between 2 and 4 months old on the first visit.
Gordon is a member of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest merit honors, thanks to her expansive work in education and children’s advocacy. She points to proof that her program increases empathy — the ability to understand others’ feelings. By extension, she says, participants will develop a better sense of social and emotional competence.
“When I started the program I knew some people would say it was foolish so I ensured there would be rigorous research and scientific evaluation,” she says. “We now have research from three continents that shows the program leads to a dramatic reduction of aggression and bullying in schools.”
Gordon notes that, in 2001, the government of Manitoba commissioned a three-year follow-up study of Roots of Empathy, measuring positive social behavior, physical aggression, and indirect aggression. The results showed an improvement in all three areas immediately after the program and three years later, with some areas continuing to improve at that point. Studies commissioned by the University of Missouri and the University of Toronto had similar findings.
Such results are encouraging signs for a growing number of countries that have experienced increasingly divisive public discourse. In one global survey of more than 21,000 people conducted in 2016, nearly three out of four respondents said the toxic tone of the U.S. presidential campaign had led them to lose respect for the U.S.
Still, assessing empathy can be subjective and vary by cultures. A 2016 study by researchers at Michigan State University attempted to rank nations by participants’ sense of compassion. The study of 104,000 people who responded to an online survey found empathy was tied directly to conscientiousness, self-esteem and dedication to a group over an individual. Separately a 2010 study by University of Michigan researchers asserted that university students of this decade — a group loosely called millennials — are not as empathetic as college students from the 1980s and ’90s.
Such findings reinforce the belief that the internet may be a factor in contributing to bullying and by extension, a loss of empathy. In a report from the London School of Economics, cyberbullying and exposure to websites with negative forms of content such as self harm and hate messages is an increasing problem for British children.
A growing number of educators are convinced of the program’s merit. Since it started in a Toronto classroom, the program has expanded from Canada, where it is delivered in English and French, to the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland and Costa Rica. In the U.S., Gordon says the program has also been introduced to classrooms in Washington, D.C. , and in states such as New York, California, New Mexico, Washington and Hawaii. It’s expanding to Oregon next year.
In the past two years, some of the Syrian children who came to Canada as refugees have taken part in the Roots of Empathy program. The program aims to help them talk about the trauma they’ve endured, which in turn has improved the ability of their classmates and teachers to connect with them, Gordon says.
Gordon is determined to persuade more educators and parents that emphasis should not be placed on academic achievement at the expense of everything else in the classroom. “School should be about more than just getting good grades and training to enter the workforce,” Gordon says. “Even some of those who support Roots of Empathy do so because they believe heightening social and emotional levels results in good grades. But I’m not looking at raising grades. I’m looking at raising humanity.”
To find proof of the importance of empathy and the connectedness it fosters, one need not look further than the recent spate of mass shootings in the U.S. “They were carried out by humiliated, discouraged young men,” Gordon says.
“I normally steer clear of politics but there is nothing more politically significant than education,” she adds. “It holds the roots of understanding and determines the level of civility and peace we will have as a society.”
More from U.S. News
Homeless Youth in the U.S. and Canada Face High Rates of Human Trafficking
Is Donald Trump a Threat to America’s Empathy?
How Host Countries Can Provide Education to Refugee Children
Canadian Classroom Program Aims to Teach Children Compassion originally appeared on usnews.com
