SCHOOLS FOR EMPATHY

Some time ago, a group of high-school students were asked to name their greatest fear. …….“being scolded for what I did accidentally,” “being rejected by friends,” “that I will fail,” “losing my temper,” “disappointing my parents”.

Had these things been discussed in class?

Silence.

When universal education based on textbooks was introduced into an oral and traditional culture like ours, it had no room for an attendant mentoring the development of a student’s personality. No one thought children needed anything other than order and discipline. The more the student studied the more distanced he became from his natural environment, community, and native culture. This tradition has continued with the entire training between the child’s 5th and 15th years concentrated on the material world around them about which they are relentlessly tested. The higher-order of thinking skills-dare one says spiritual growth, but in need of discussion-has faded. Education has become a way of life to pass examinations.

Over the last decade or so, as teenage suicides and violence against children began to rise, a question has repeated itself:

On the road to academic excellence, did we miss something?

We know that an emotionally stable student is more likely to be focused, and yet we neglect the importance of children sharing their worries and doubts about why they get angry or cannot control themselves.

We know that we cannot reverse this system but surely, we can modify it with the support of teachers and other stakeholders. In a civilized society, each generation is expected to make the society better and safer for the next one. Hence, the tremendous societal role schools have. Training in understanding the value of cooperative growth, empathy, and managing feelings and differences has to start early. Countless hours have been spent discussing how personal and social transformation is possible through a well-designed course on social and personal ethics but hardly anything is said about training the teachers, the agents of awakening.

A policy to foster the idea and importance of the self in harmony with wider and wider circles can be implemented through schools to influence at least those children who get to attend school who will one day lead their communities and society; they will write and teach, they will enact policies and laws.

Millions of Indian children below the age of 10 have no hope of an education. Disadvantaged by illiteracy, they are vulnerable to all the negative forces around them. Doesn’t that leave the rest of us with a duty to overcome our limited knowledge based on traditions and prejudices? The intense competition that contemporary life fosters has already left many youngsters with no inner resources to counter anxiety, fear, and range. Some young children are so lonely and edgy they take their own lives when they fail entrance exams, do not get the kind of clothes they want, or feel inadequate in English-language classes. It is clear that the skills necessary to manage feelings of anger and disappointment have become extremely urgent and are as important as academic achievement. No single plan of action will fit everyone. Each region, possibly individual schools in consultation with neighboring institutions, will need to devise what works for them.

Educating for peace seeks to nurture a moral vision about the role of the self in the family, society, nation, and world. A six-year-old cannot understand the term social justice. A 14-year-old can and must. But the former can understand the idea of sharing and fairness, which in turn will develop into a grasp of what the latter understands in five seconds. An eight-year-old can only be told that he must not destroy leaves and plants for fun and stone a pup for fun. A 15-year-old understands that leaves, birds, insects, people, and climate are all linked.

If we are to survive on an impoverished planet that cannot manage its food stocks or famines, its water resources or forests, we must, as quickly as possible, see ourselves as a global family and sensitize children to understand that what affects one group in one part of the world, will eventually affect everyone everywhere else. We have already learnt how to make children healthier but we have paid less attention to their hearts and minds.

Surely the goal of education is to equip people to lead meaningful lives and not only to make a living.