Story from the US about the importance of teaching children compassion:  

Saturday, September 22, 2007

RAISING AUSTIN

Compassion: worth learning, worth teaching

Showing children empathy is an essential life lesson

I had my captive audience.

We were headed to Dallas last weekend, so I decided to turn the road trip into a learning experience for my sons. I pulled out our DVD player.

 David, 13, and Brandon, 9, were curious about the black and white film I had told them about.

"The Elephant Man," the David Lynch movie based on the life of Joseph Merrick, a 19th-century man deformed by a congenital disease, so affected me growing up that more than 25 years later, I vividly recall the ridicule and abuse Merrick suffered.

Merrick was scorned by society and treated cruelly. But one doctor showed kindness to the man in the remaining years of his life. I felt it was a tale of compassion worthy of sharing with my children.

At the end of the film, I told the boys they had a choice: They could be like the doctor in the way they treat others who are different, or they could be like everyone else in the movie. I challenged them to picture themselves trapped in Merrick's body, unable to be fully known, fully loved, because others refused to look beyond the exterior.

I don't think compassion happens by itself. I believe parents must be proactive in teaching our children empathy.

But compassion can't be taught only through a movie; it has to be tangible.

For example, we can encourage children to reach out to new students at school by taking them with us when we welcome new neighbors on our street. To befriend the child at school who sits alone at lunch or by reaching out to an elderly person.

At the beginning of each school year, eighth-grade teacher Janet Marek, who is certified in peer mediation, conflict resolution and empathy, gives her own lesson in compassion at Canyon Vista Middle School in Round Rock. She shows her students a photo of herself in middle school, with her silver-rimmed cat-eye glasses and large red hair bow.

Then she requires each student to say a put-down based on the picture. Some hesitate. Others try to refuse. For a few, insults roll readily.

But each must participate.

After each insult, the student tears a piece of the picture off and must keep it overnight.

The following day, each student must then give a compliment. They can't repeat a compliment, so they must listen to each other carefully and be creative. Then one, by one, as the compliments come in, they piece the photo back together.

"It's easier to tear people down than to put them back together," Marek tells them. She has them think of the times in their lives when they were injured by others. "When they recognize it in themselves, then they can communicate empathically."

Each year, my husband and I take our children south of the border to do mission work in an improverished colonia in Mexico where children routinely go without shoes and baths. Their entire homes — some made of cinderblocks, others of cardboard — are smaller than the average American bedroom.

My kids have picked up trash, planted trees and built walls to a medical center. But more importantly, they are learning to regard everyone with dignity and compassion.

"Our first response is not always our best response," Marek said. "We need to think outside ourselves, and we need to be concerned about others. It takes constant reminders that we all need each other."

Source: statesman.com