Roots of Empathy. Mary Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ Section One: Roots of Empathy

1 From a Tiny Seed

2 Empathy: What It Is and Why It Matters

3 The Roots of Empathy Classroom: My Teacher Is a Baby

       Section Two: The Six Strands of Connection

       4 Roots of Empathy: Six Strands of Human Connection

       5 Love Grows Brains: Teaching Children Neuroscience

       6 Temperament: Getting to Know You

       7 Attachment: Building the First Relationship

       8 Emotional Literacy: The Language of the Heart

       9 Authentic Communication: Speaking from the Heart

       10 Social Inclusion: Setting a Place for Everyone

       Section Three: Roots of Empathy and Society

       11 What Babies Would Say to Bullies

       12 What Babies Would Say about Infant Safety

       13 What Babies Would Say to Teachers

       14 What Babies Would Say to Parents

       15 Changing the World Child by Child

       Appendix A: The Story of Parenting and Family Literacy Centres

       Appendix B : Roots of Empathy: The Research

       Notes

       References

       Foreword

      To all those who claim that only academic subjects can be measured and improved, you are about to get your comeuppance. Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy is a simple, brilliant, and powerful example of how developing children’s empathy can be a priority and can be accomplished with amazing results.

      Using science and motherhood, Mary Gordon has created a wonderful, heart-rending, and inspiring program that tugs at the heartstrings as it shows what can be done in the most difficult cases. Who would have thought that you could build a curriculum around a mother and her baby, and that a baby-driven curriculum could meet neuroscience with such wonderful results?

      Roots of Empathy is solidly based on scientific knowledge of the human condition. But more than that, it takes us into the pedagogy of how one can develop and foster attachment, emotional literacy, authentic communication, and social inclusion. It shows how one can take even the toughest kids and give them an experience that literally changes their lives by helping them get in touch with what it means to be human in a world of diversity—indeed, in a very tough world.

      The strategies are clear and powerful. And do they get results! In carefully controlled evaluations by external academics, we see that bullying decreases over the period of a year, as do other forms of aggression. And empathy to other children increases. So does reaching out to include others, especially those who are least likely to fit into the group. And of course the close link between academic learning in literacy and math and self-esteem and general well-being flourish in a mutually reinforcing dance of development.

      In my own work, we have been focusing on achieving literacy and numeracy for all students—raising the bar and closing the gap, as we say. We are getting promising results on a large scale across whole countries, such as England, and whole provinces, such as Ontario. But we can only get so far. The missing link is the third basic—the well-being of children, not as a standalone initiative but as integral to academic and overall success in life. We will be able to go the distance only if we make academic and personal and social development a mutually reinforcing centrepiece of our policies and strategies.

      Every country in the world should take Roots of Empathy seriously. Learn from it, and introduce it into your classrooms. Make the whole child the centre of development, not in an abstract philosophical way, but in a decidedly direct and concrete manner. Mary Gordon has opened the door to finally treating the whole child in a practical, no-nonsense yet sensitive and compassionate way. The heart is the way to the mind, but they have to be explicitly linked. Roots of Empathy is a model of social and academic inclusion. If you are an educator, a parent, a politician, please read this book.

      Michael Fullan

      Professor Emeritus

      Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

      at the University of Toronto

       Preface

      I grew up in Newfoundland, raised in a large loving family with three generations under one roof. My parents were passionate about social justice. One night when I was six and my sister Susan was eight, my father set an empty tin on the dinner table while we were eating and put some coins in it. He explained to us that we couldn’t have the black patent leather, Mary-Jane party shoes we wanted, because the money would go to buy shoes for little girls in India who didn’t have any.

      It was well known by the local jail population that when you got released you could go up to Mrs. Dyer’s (my mother’s) for a hot meal. I remember being invited to make our guests welcome by sitting at the card table in the hall to share conversation as he ate his meal. From my mother, we learned about the dignity every person was entitled to, regardless of circumstances.

      I offer these stories by way of explaining the power of family and the impact that incidents in everyday life can have in shaping the values we carry forever. I was picked up rather than put down when I faltered as a child, and that helped me to trust myself.

      The journey that brought me to Roots of Empathy has been rich and winding, and recurring themes have appeared along the way:

      The Importance of Family: I witnessed intergenerational cycles of violence first-hand when I worked with families caught in the cycles of child abuse, neglect, or domestic violence. The pervasiveness of these social ills can be addressed when we look at the common denominator of these ills—the absence of empathy. As children develop empathy, they become more adept at finding the humanity in one another. Without empathy, we can’t get to conflict resolution, altruism, or peace. There are two overarching understandings from working with families; first, children develop within the culture of their family and we need to work with that rather than against it. Second, it is the relationships rather than the structure of families that count.

      The Privilege of Working with Children: My work with children who had been victims of abuse or neglect, who lived in hostels, who lived with the unpredictability of addict parents, taught me that they love, purely without judgment, and have an infinite capacity for forgiveness. All children can teach us lessons of loyalty and acceptance. Working with little children as a kindergarten teacher, I was overwhelmed by both their strength and their vulnerability. I was amazed by the honest way they wore their feelings and behaviour. All those who have the opportunity to work with young children СКАЧАТЬ