Everyone (with some exceptions) is born with empathetic capabilities. When one baby in a nursery starts to cry, soon cries will emit from every crib even if every baby doesn't need attention. As kids grow up, they become aware of empathy from lessons such as the "Golden Rule". Empathy is developed as we mature so that we become responsible for the results of our actions.
By the time I entered middle school, I tuned out to "this is why substances are bad" lessons because I've heard the message so many times before. Even in elementary school, it seemed like there were assemblies at least once a month of cheesy actors or puppets telling us a stories about why drinking/smoking/drugs are bad. On the playground, we made fun of the assemblies because the situations were too far-fetched to even imagine ourselves in. Of course a seven-year old wouldn't think to drink and drive. Because teaching something too late (as in kids having already tried smoking) is something to avoid, little kids are exposed to scary dangers of the world through puppet shows. If empathy was taught like this, kids could grow tired of repetitive lessons like in any other school subject: it would stay in the classroom, only focused on for a grade.
Another way school has tried to teach me not to use substances was through real stories of people who had to deal with the horrible consequences. This was supposed to sober us up (literally) about what could happen to us if we made similar choices. These assemblies and videos replaced puppet shows and made-up stories. One video still haunts me to this day. My entire middle school listened to a female narrator tell events leading up to a drunk driver crashing into her car and catching it on fire. This included gruesome details like how firefighters said she screamed for a full minute while her legs were trapped under the burning dashboard. In the final scene, the narrator held up a picture of herself before the crash and the camera zooms out to reveal her face disfigured by burns fingers stubs of exposed bone. This was by far the scariest thing any of the students had seen in an assembly. I was only 11 and had nightmares for almost a year. The only thing the video added to my education about substances was a flash of a distorted face and an impending terror each time the lights were dimmed for another video in an assembly or health class.
There is no reason to scare anyone, especially children to teach a lesson. If empathy is taught through scare tactics, then it will be associated with fear, anxiety, and shutting out future lessons of empathy with anticipation of being scared again.
How should empathy be taught? Not confined to the classroom as a lesson, rather ingrained into daily life. Not solely through assemblies and videos that are repetitive or scary, instead through sharing relatable personal experiences and as part of a greater moral development.
I'd definitely agree with the idea that when teaching "empathy" through horror stories, the message gets lost in fear rather than a true understanding of someone else's circumstance- proven by the fact that once someone else's situation is deemed impossibly unlikely to occur in a someone's life, a common reaction is to ridicule the video or the story, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd the reason I think that tools like these can be so ineffective is personal experience-- if you're presented with two stories: one that's presented to you by a teacher or police officer that ends up in horrific circumstance to a person you've never met, and another that's someone much closer to you that seems to end up just fine (i.e. everybody that smokes or drinks that doesn't end up in a terrible accident)-- you're more likely to empathize with the situation that's much closer to you. That's why in communities like schools or towns where terrible accidents have occurred, those students or members are much more likely to sympathize with that situation because it's closer.
So that being said, I think the best way to teach empathy is to bring it closer to individuals-- there are going to be bad circumstances in any community, it's only a question of bringing those to light and learning from them.
I like that you've touched on with communities coming together and sharing bad circumstances as a way to increase empathy within communities. Relatability is key to empathy because having something in common with a person in a bad circumstance makes it easier to imagine yourself in a similar situation. This is why group therapy works: each person in the group may have a commonality of alcoholism, but each person is in a different stage (early, recovering, sober). I wonder how different community groups could be formed to teach children about bad situations and foster empathy? One example I can think of is church communities (youth groups, Sunday school, sermons etc).
DeleteInteresting post, Cordelia. I remember this exact video you are talking about from health class. It also haunted both my brother and me for a very long time, and I think about it to this day. While I agree that showing this video was perhaps not the best way to teach students about the dangers of drunk driving because it truly was so frightening, I am not sure it wasn't effective. I already knew drinking and driving was bad, but this video cemented that fact in my mind and made me deathly afraid of this combination. The scare tactic in this case, while difficult to deal with, was effective.
ReplyDeleteIn regard to your question about the best way to teach empathy, I think presentations like the one described above can be a very effective strategy if done correctly. At GBS, we spent an entire day dedicated to learning about AIDs, and a speaker came in and showed us the various medications she has to take each day and talked about her daily struggles and fears. This did not use the same scare tactic as the drunk driving presentation, but it was quite effective in getting myself and my peers to think about the topic more and feel empathy. If done well and not necessarily in a scary way, I think presentations like these can be an effective way to teach empathy.
I agree that, while disturbing, the drunk driving video is the only presentation that has stuck in my mind from middle school. I'm sure it was effective in making people think twice before drinking and driving. However, I do believe that there is a line between sobering and terrifying, and I still think that video crosses the line.
DeleteI'm glad to hear that GBS had a speaker about AIDs with AIDs speak about her personal experiences and troubles. I agree that presentations like that would be an effective way to teach empathy. I wish that GBN had more speakers about such topics.