Empathy is the bedrock of our civilization. Without it, we might as well pack up our tent and leave the planet. We can’t have enough of it—in government, in schools, in families, in communities, and the world.
than we ever could have ever imagined, as Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology and philosophy at Berkeley, has been reminding us for years. Such a revelation. But they do so with other human beings—in a dance choreographed from birth. As the , Urie Bronfenbrenner, wrote:
In order to develop — intellectually emotionally, socially and morally — a child requires participation in progressively more complex reciprocal activity on a regular basis over an extended period in the child’s life, with one or more persons with whom the child develops a strong, mutual, irrational, emotional attachment and who is committed to the child’s well-being and development, preferably for life.
Or, in other words: “Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.”
Lately, Bronfenbrenner’s visionary theory—beloved in wonkish early childhood development circles—has found its way into the national conversation about education reform, parenting, and poverty. Paul Tough captured this trend in the zeitgeist with How Children Succeed, focusing on grit, and what social scientists call the “contextual factors” that drive kids’ achievement. “Empathy,” I noticed, is missing from his book’s index, but its fingerprints are all over the discussion about emotional intelligence, and the development of grit and curiosity, broadly referred to as “character education.”
Tough’s suggestion that we can teach all of the above—he cites KIPP’s middle schools as the laboratory—is hopeful, but misguided. When kids’ natural empathy is derailed in the earliest months (it’s hard to be crazy about your child when you’re barely surviving), they’re already behind the curve.
The empathy movement is great. I’m on board. But I’m worried that something’s getting lost in translation. An all-purpose inoculation, this is not. Nor is it a silver bullet for everything that ails us.
In Jessica Lahey’s recent article in The Atlantic, she cites a recent about the messages adults are sending to children. The findings are pretty terrifying: apparently the vast majority of teachers, administrators and school staff felt that parents were giving short shrift to caring in child-rearing, prioritizing achievement and happiness above all.
Lahey’s conclusion gets right to the heart of the matter. “We may pay lip service to character education and empathy, but our children report hearing a very different message,” she writes, adding that “simply talking about compassion is not enough”:
Children are perceptive creatures, fully capable of discerning the true meanings in the blank spaces between well-intentioned words. If parents really want to let their kids know that they value caring and empathy, the authors suggest, they must make a real effort to help their children learn to care about other people—even when it’s hard, even when it does not make them happy, and yes, even when it is at odds with their personal success.
We need to walk the walk—as a society, across the socio-economic divide. A staggering 25 percent of U.S. children under the age of six are . For them, this question is hardly academic. What’s the message they’re getting between well-intentioned words?
