School programs put an emphasis on empathy

SCARSDALE, N.Y. — The privileged teenagers at Scarsdale Middle School are learning to be nicer this year, whether they like it or not.

English classes discuss whether Friar Laurence was empathetic to Romeo and Juliet. Research projects involve interviews with octogenarians and a survey of local wheelchair ramps to help students identify with elderly and disabled people. A new club invites students to share snacks and board games after school with four autistic classmates who are in separate classes during the day.

To combat feelings of exclusion, the Parent-Teacher Association is trying to curtail a long-standing tradition of seventh- and eighth-graders showing up en masse Monday morning wearing the personalized sweatshirts handed out to the popular crowd at the weekend's bar or bat mitzvahs.

Battle against bullying

The emphasis on empathy in Scarsdale and schools nationwide, including Seattle, is the latest front in a decadelong campaign against bullying and violence.

"As a school, we've done a lot of work with human rights," said Michael McDermott, the middle-school principal. "But you can't have kids saving Darfur and isolating a peer in the lunchroom. It all has to go together."

Many Scarsdale parents praise the empathy focus, but some students complain that the school has no business dictating what they wear or how they act in their personal lives. Others say that no matter what is taught in the classroom, there is a different reality in the cafeteria and hallways, where the mean girls are no less mean and the boys will still be boys knocking books out of one another's hands.

Bar mitzvah sweatshirts emblazoned with the name of the honoree, the date and occasionally even the guest list are commonly worn, if not on the Monday after, then on a Tuesday or Wednesday a month later.

Otherwise, "what's the point in getting them?" asked Jess Calamari, 13, an eighth-grader who gave out blue hooded sweatshirts to more than 150 guests at her bat mitzvah last year.

Dana Reegen, a seventh-grader who said she has been talked about behind her back, gave her classmates a C in empathy. "I know a lot of people aren't very nice to each other," she said. "They don't really think it's the most important thing, they're more focused on what they look like, what they're wearing, and who's going out with who."

Nationally, some question whether such attempts at social engineering are appropriate for the classroom or should remain the purview of parents, churches and youth groups outside of school hours. "Who could be against teaching empathy?" said Michael Petrilli, a vice president for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy group in Washington. "But there's a laundry list of seemingly important activities that, when added together, crowd out the academic mission of our schools."

Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, said teaching empathy could seem "artificial or hokey" to some students, but over time can foster a school culture that encourages learning over social distractions. "I don't know if you can teach everybody to be empathetic," she acknowledged, "but you can raise awareness."

The Character Education Partnership, a nonprofit group in Washington, said 18 states — including New York, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska and California — require programs to foster core values such as empathy, respect, responsibility and integrity.

This year, Los Angeles is spending nearly $1 million on a nationally known program for its 147 middle schools, Second Step: Student Success Through Prevention, which teaches empathy, impulse control, anger management and problem solving. In Seattle, seven public elementary schools are using a Canadian-based program, Roots of Empathy, in which a mother and her baby go into the classroom to explore questions such as "What makes you cry?"

Within the charter network KIPP, which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, some schools are focusing more on empathy, with lessons about the Holocaust, role-playing and a "values jingle" sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells."

Fewer problems

At Public School 114 in the South Bronx, David Levine, author of "Teaching Empathy," has been running workshops since 2006. The school's principal, Olivia Francis-Webber, said the number of fights had dropped to fewer than three a month — from one to three a week — and disciplinary referrals were down to about five a month from nearly 20.

In Scarsdale, middle-school officials also have seen the impact on behavior: Administrators have received three complaints about bullying or harassment on buses this year, compared with an average of two or three a month last year, and counselors have handed out fewer detentions for minor infractions such as chronic tardiness to class.