The word ‘empathy’ was coined in 1909 from the German word ‘einfühlung’ meaning ‘feeling into’. Prior to this, the closest word to empathy was ‘sympathy’, which is loosely described as feeling sorrow for other people’s troubles and adversities.
Empathy can be divided into three categories, all essentially interlinked:
Affective empathy: this refers to the different feelings we get when we respond to other people and their emotions. We may either mirror or share in other people’s feelings.
Cognitive empathy: this is when we see the other person’s perspective. We are able to put ourselves in the shoes of another person by identifying and understanding those emotions.
Empathic concern: this is when we recognise and are in tune with someone else’s emotional state, and can feel and show concern. This is when we take action.
Empathy is an innate trait. One hundred per cent of us possess it. Ninety-eight per cent of us use it, but only a small percentage of us reach our full empathetic potential. Roughly 2 per cent of the population have empathy but not all of its parts and, as a result, their empathy is restricted or non-existent.
Human beings have always had this trait. It is a basic characteristic of the human species, with many physiological reactions and processes that accompany it. Recent research suggests that there is even a ‘fundamental baseline’ of empathy among mammals.
Rats get distressed when they see another rat in pain. Rhesus monkeys will stop operating a device for getting food if this caused another monkey to get an electric shock. Our survival depends upon it. If we constantly seek self-interest over empathy, our survival as a species will be threatened. We need to be sensitive to our offspring and our ‘group’.
Recent research on the science of empathy is flagging up exciting findings, the sort of findings that are having, and will continue to have, a huge impact on our teaching of empathy.
First, in the early 1990s, was the significant discovery of mirror neurons. These are a type of brain cell that ‘fire’ or respond equally when we perform an action, or when we see someone else performing that same action. The implications of this simple concept are mind-blowing. Up till this point, scientists believed that we used thinking processes to interpret or predict other people’s behaviour or actions. This is not the case. Our mirror neurons fire up when we see other people’s actions and facial expressions, and we immediately experience the feeling associated with that action. There is no thought process involved.
The mirror neuron system influences our ability to empathise by adopting the other person’s point of view. For example, the mirror neurons fire up when we see another person smiling and we ‘feel’ their smile. Through the mirror neurons we start to understand the mental state of another person, a crucial element of empathy. This was a game-changer in neuroscience, and in the understanding of empathy. A leading professor of psychology and neuroscience said this about the discovery: ‘The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution, is the single most important “unreported” (or at least, unpublicised) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.’
What emerges from all of these studies is an understanding that our empathy levels are highly dependent on our brain chemistry, and brain chemistry depends on our nurturing environment. Children who receive little or no nurturing or empathy will be unable to ‘read’ other people. This is not just a massive disadvantage for them. It is a tragedy.
Empathy in the 21st century classroom
Empathy creates connections between people and brings them together. It is at the core of pro-social behaviour.
Schools must put relationships at the heart of their education programme. Our feelings give us valuable information about our needs. If we don’t give names to these feelings, then we can’t assign meaning to them. If we can’t assign meaning to them, then how can we use these feelings as the essential guides for the relationships in our lives?
Sir Ken Robinson, international advisor on education, believes that our education system has not evolved from a model that is now out of date. Our schools are organised along factory lines with our children educated in ‘batches’, with standardised testing. Empathy has little or no place in these buildings or systems.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, political activist, also has a clear vision of empathy in schools. One of his ideas is that schools must stop spinning out children and their qualifications as if they were one and the same thing, and start producing schools that nurture empathy. This nurturing must not be seen as an added ‘extra’, but should be the very foundation of learning, the bottom line of education. He has seen first-hand that schools that allow children to mentor (show empathy) and tutor the younger children have a significant effect.
He says, ‘A school in NYC had adopted this technique and the results were phenomenal. The older children felt responsible for the younger ones and were there to help them with their homework and school-related projects. The co-operation and camaraderie between them encouraged a friendlier and more harmonious school environment. It helped build the character traits that bring about empathy.’
This may seem obvious. And surely our schools are doing this already? In most cases, they are, but more often than not as a ‘soft skill’ as opposed to the ‘bottom line’ philosophy.
Our schools are seemingly keen for change, for reform, for raising standards. There is a gradual realisation that empathy needs to take more of a centre stage in children’s learning journeys. Social and emotional education is now being threaded into national curriculums, and awareness is rising all the time.
But empathy still isn’t at the heart of learning. This ‘heart’ has to consist of the formation of strong and lasting friendships between practitioners, children and families where practitioners themselves are models of empathy.
Martin Hoffman, a professor of psychology at New York University, has these punchy words to say on the subject: ‘You can enhance empathy by the way you treat children, or you can kill it by providing a harsh punitive environment.’
The decline in empathy can cause us to feel pessimistic. However, if empathy levels can go down, they can also go up. There is no doubt about it; a revolution is happening, an empathy revolution. Thanks to a tsunami of research into the science of empathy, new and exciting insights on the topic are being uncovered year on year.
Books are being written, and recent research continues to unravel this fascinating human trait. We know that we can ‘grow’ empathy in our children and in ourselves. Furthermore, it makes sound economic, social and emotional sense to start fostering empathy at the earliest stages of education. It will, quite literally, save us a fortune.
This is an edited extract from Developing Empathy in the Early Years: A Guide For Practitioners by Helen Garnett with Jackie Harland, Helen Lumgair and Valerie Lovegreen
