COMMUNITY
and the children who take
part in the program become mediators and
peacemakers
among
their peers.
This may seem a tall order.
Yet, in her book “Roots
of
Empathy:
Changing The World Child By
Child”, Mary Gordon illustrates with sometimes
jaw-dropping anecdotes
about how children in
the Roots of Empathy
program demonstrate
compassion
and
maturity not usually
looked for in young
children as they respond to bullying or
reach out with empathy to a peer who is
sad or struggling. One
classroom teacher reports, “After a year of
exposure to the program, I am amazed
at their collective abilities
to engage in critical thinking tasks. They are keen
problem solvers, in small
and large group settings.
Individually, they are able
to make independent decisions, no small achievement for six-year-olds! I
have absolutely no bul-
lying in my classroom, a
feat I attribute solely to the
program. In fact, my students have become selfappointed “peacemakers” on the playground,
often bringing students
from other grades and
classes to our classroom
to “solve the problem by
talking it over’.”
“Roots of Empathy,” says
Gordon, “is a program
with many layers. It offers
an experiential insight into
competent parenting: understanding how a baby
communicates, learning
issues of infant safety and
infant development. But
it takes the learning that
occurs with the baby in
the classroom and builds
it into a broader exploration of how humans understand and value themselves and each other. …
I was convinced that the
transformative potential
of such a program was
enormous. I had no doubt
that it had the power to
increase the emotional
competence, the collaborative skills and the
parenting capacity of a
whole generation, child
by child, classroom by
classroom, community
by community.”
“Roots of Empathy” lays
out the ways the program works to help children develop empathy
for babies, each other,
and even for harried
parents. Academic research done on the program bears out the anecdotal evidence of how
transformative the work is.
More information is available at rootsofempathy.
org.