There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy – radical eyes for equity

There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy – radical eyes for equity

There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy

[D]espite overwhelmingly good intentions, most of what passes for intercultural education practice, particularly in the US,
accentuates rather than undermines existing social and political hierarchies.

PAUL GORSKI, GOOD INTENTIONS ARE NOT ENOUGH: A DECOLONIZING INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION

A split second of awareness kept me from stepping into my apartment’s elevator, the floor covered in vomit, recently.

I thought about this moment yesterday while standing in that same elevator filled with an unpleasant smell as I also noticed a new orange-brown stain on the floor.

A week or so ago, I was unloading two bicycles from my car rack, going up and down the elevator and walking through the enclosed garage of the complex a couple of times. I encountered twice a women with her small dog on a lease, and in both cases, she paused while the dog urinated on a steel beam in the garage.

It isn’t uncommon to see dog dropping scattered down the hallway carpet in this complex either.

Having lived almost four decades in my own homes before becoming an CONTINUE READING: There Can Be No Equity without Community and Empathy – radical eyes for equity

Teacher Tom: Projection, Empathy, Compassion

Teacher Tom: Projection, Empathy, Compassion

Projection, Empathy, Compassion

During my first year as a teacher, I had a student, a two-year-old, who loved her hugs. She would hug me hello in the morning. She would hug her mother and father goodbye. She would hug total strangers if given the chance. It was a charming instinct, one for which she had grown accustomed to receiving praise. "She is such a loving girl!" "Oh, how sweet!" However, her hugging did not always go over particularly well with her peers. Indeed, more often than not, her unsolicited hugs, which were generally quite enthusiastic, bordering on tackling, would frighten other children, often causing tears.

The Golden Rule, most commonly cited as "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," is one of the underpinning principles of many of the world's major religions and cultures. As a moral guide, it relies on individuals to look inside themselves, to perform the mental experiment of putting themselves into the shoes of others, and to act accordingly. The problem, of course, is that the way I want to be treated isn't necessarily a good guide to how others want to be treated. This little girl enjoyed a good hug, but doing unto others was, in this case, obviously the wrong thing to do.

Over the next couple of years, with the support of the adults CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Projection, Empathy, Compassion

Teacher Tom: "Radical Empathy"

Teacher Tom: "Radical Empathy"

"Radical Empathy"

In Rutger Bregman's book Humankind, he writes about an experiment in which psychologists told volunteers a sad story about a 10-year-old girl who was suffering from a deadly disease. She is, according to the story, on a waiting list for a life-saving treatment, but time is of the essence. The volunteers are told that they can move her up on the list, but they are instructed to be objective in their decision. Most people, understanding that all the children on the list were in dire straits, opted to not give this specific girl an advantage over the others.  A second group of volunteers, however,  was given the same set up, but this time they were asked to imagine how this specific girl must be feeling, to dwell on her pain, suffering, and fear. In this case, the majority chose to allow her to jump the line.

As Bregman points out, this is, at best a shaky moral choice. After all, giving this girl, who the second group of volunteers now "know" through their empathy, an advantage, they are in fact disadvantaging all the other kids, violating the principles of what most of us would consider even-handed fairness. Those other children have stories as well, but because the volunteers spent time empathizing with this one specific girl, they favored her. Bregman sees this as an example of how empathy can blind us:

(Empathy) is something we feel for people who are close to us; for people we can smell, hear and touch. For family and friends, for fans of our favorite band, and maybe for the homeless guy on our own street CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: "Radical Empathy"