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Empathy: the new way to teach
What is empathy?
It's a word that we hear quite often nowadays particularly concerning the education filed. Our Scandinavian neighbours, especially the Finns, surprised us all a few years ago when their PISA exam results showed us just how efficient their education system was. After that, the word 'empathy' started to appear in the Finnish educational system and was a major part of the reform under way and completed in 2020. What's more, for the last 40 years the Danes have been encouraging the use of empathy as a means of educating by parents and more recently, empathy has become a school subject in its own right with as much weight as Maths or English. The French Ministry of Education mentioned empathy for the first time during the 2013 education reform launched by Education Minister Vincent Peillon, and then more recently in January 2024 by Education Minister Gabriel Attal, who published the “Empathy education tool kit for Primary Schools” that was implemented across schools from September 2024 (document in French below).
So, what is empathy?
According to the dictionary, empathy is the capacity to feel what someone else is feeling. It's the ability to completely understand another person's perspective on an emotional level, which thus implies having the ability to perceive emotions. This is of course what differentiates human intelligence from artificial intelligence i.e. our capacity to perceive and feel emotions. If we are trying to understand each other through empathy, then not only are we trying to feel our own emotions, but we are consciously looking to feel the emotions of the people we are interacting with. By adopting such an approach to communication, we not only aim to understand each other better, but also the real consequences of our thoughts and actions.
Educating through empathy enables us to create a society where people are more in tune with each other, reducing tensions that form the basis of violent interaction, which is the initial goal of Gabriel Attal through the empathy education tool kit. “Educating through empathy will improve human interaction between pupils and promote essential skill learning in living together, self esteem, respecting others and ultimately in academic achievement for all, in a peaceful school atmosphere.” ( “Empathy education tool kit for Primary Schools”, page 5)
The foundation for beneficial relationships based on empathy is honesty, both towards others and ourselves. If we wish to be truly understood by the people we interact with, then we need to overcome the fear associated with self-exposure, regardless of whether we are feeling strong or particularly vulnerable. Trust therefore plays a major part in overcoming these barriers. This is why learning in an environment that takes feelings into consideration is essential in building self confidence.
Universal Pedagogia English School France, 16th August, 2015. (updated 18/02/2024)
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Implementing empathy in teaching ?
Why implement empathy in the French
education system?
Quite simply as a way of dealing with the increase in violence, bullying and numerous other issues that will have a negative impact on future French society. The reason that has pushed the French Ministry of Education to incorporate the notion of empathy into citizen and civic education lessons, is to enable young people to become more emotionally aware of how victims of bullying feel when they suffer relentlessly at the hands of intolerant, unfair 'survival of the fittest' type mentalities. The statistics on school violence and the rise in juvenile delinquency coupled with various reports cited by past French government guides on 'school climate' published in 2013 and 2014, seem to confirm the tendency that young people are embroiled in unhealthy relationships. But why is this so?
Firstly, we are currently living in a very paradoxical society. On the one hand, we wish to promote empathy while on the other, we are invited to become more accustomed to violence through video games or films that seem to promote the idea that dominating our opponent through extreme levels of cruelty is the best option to coming out on top.
What's more , our military technology appears to be heading in the same emotionless direction. We are now all familiar with remote controlled drones commanded at a distance by soldiers holding the lives of potential enemies under their thumbs just as they would when playing a virtual game, or the new 'robot-soldiers' that DARPA contestants presented on 5th and 6th June 2015, capable of killing and thus efficiently replacing human soldiers, supposedly minimising the number of potential casualties. Are we not simply becoming less and less sensitive to the horrors of war on a purely psychological and emotional level, naively believing that if the wars of the future involve metal soldiers in far away countries then we will be less affected by them?
Secondly, the other major paradox that our current society seems to encourage concerns our perception of emotion. In France, we don't allow ourselves the right to fully express negative emotions in public. We teach our children from an early age at home or at school to express everything that is positive while running as quickly as possible from anything negative. Even children's fairy stories have a tendency to have positive endings conforming to the politically correct public emotional stance. In today's fairy tales, Cinderella marries the Prince, the evil Blue Beard is killed and the wood cutter comes to save Little Red Riding Hood, whereas in the original versions not every character had a 'happy ever after' (in certain original Little Red Riding Hood versions not only does the grandmother get eaten by the wolf but Little Red Riding Hood too). Thus, in public, we must always come across as having a “positive” emotional reaction be we TV presenters, politicians, members of the police force, teachers, sales personnel etc, conforming to the image associated with out profession.
Unfortunately, the example we are setting for our children is that it's acceptable to cultivate a double personality, one conforming to other people's expectations while the other hides our true feelings that we suppress. We can therefore comprehend why it's difficult to see true empathy in practice in a social environment that seems to partially invite us to act like robots, void of public displays of emotion.
Furthermore, the type of empathy the French government wishes to implement between children and adults isn't yet possible given that those supposed to teach it have not yet been trained and don't necessarily adopt this stance in their own lives (even though maybe teachers will no doubt be better equipped with the “Empathy education tool kit for Primary Schools”). Some education professionals working with juvenile delinquents do receive training in empathy, but empathy starts with the capacity to honestly recognise and express all aspects of our own emotions, be they positive or negative, in public or private. How many of us really dare to express what we're feeling and thinking at all moments? How many of us feel uneasy when we see a stranger crying preferring to avoid contact? How many can only offer a 'Don't cry' as a means to consoling someone who's upset, instead of encouraging them to let go and release their tears? By behaving as such, we're simply validating that for us, positive emotion is allowed but expressing negative emotion is something to run from. Yet, to be people in touch with our emotions and capable of empathy, we need to feel comfortable with both the negative and positive aspects of emotion.
Moreover, what is particularly difficult in our modern French society is showing the world that we are capable of handling everything without faltering under the weight of our negative emotions no matter how high the pressure or expectations. We have no choice but to put aside our feelings to appear strong and invulnerable to those around us to make them feel at ease while we're trying to efficiently multi-task. How can we work full time, deal with the day to day running of our homes, our family life, our love life,
our children's after school activities, helping them with their homework, responding to other people's needs while finding time to go out and socialise, without capitulating under the pressure of being wonder-mum, wonder-dad or wonder-teacher... unless we put aside our true feelings? However, if the example we're giving our children is to continue and assume all our responsibilities while suppressing our true feelings, then we are putting them on the highway to depression or a nervous break-down rather than teaching them how to be empathetic towards themselves i.e. embracing the capacity to feel, listen to and express their own emotions. Before wanting to teach empathy to others, we should first start to allow ourselves to be empathetic towards ourselves.
May everyone take heed in order to allow us to really start implementing this beneficial pedagogical stance.
What's more, we also need to accept that the message concerning empathy being currently taught is particularly confusing for our children and our pupils. We insist that they use empathy in their peer relationships, and yet when we need them to do something because we have an obligation to follow the school curriculum or because we need 'to get on', we're quick to slip out of the empathetic attitude. Don't we simply fall back into a relationship based on intolerance, injustice and survival of the fittest when it suits us best? Do we really feel what others feel or do we prefer to simply run away again from honestly expressing the negative emotion that our own stressed has caused? If we don't authorise ourselves to feel our own negative emotions and express them, it will be difficult to perceive them in others , especially if we're the ones who've caused them.
For the moment, empathy is therefore only a flicker on the French education system's spectrum, not really being put into practice throughout the teaching profession. As long as we continue to implement “selective” empathy, good enough for child to child relationships but not for subordinate relationships, we will not really be teaching empathy.
Universal Pedagogia English School France, 25th August, 2015. (updated 04/03/2024)