It seems teachers and all people evolved with education have
been talking about the need for students to learn empathy. But the real question is, why do our children
need this now? What has changed in
American society? Might my solution be
this simple?
Teachers and administrators have witnessed students
committing mean and brutal acts to each other. Some students might intimidate
or isolate another student in the hallway because they are not wearing the
“coolest” brand of shoe. And another student might call a student a racist name
in a Facebook post. Nobullying.com
reports 52 percent of young people were bullied online, and 10 percent of
middle and high school students reported to have received some kind cyber hate
message. No matter the how or where, we
all agree bullying needs to stop.
Is bullying anything new?
No. But, the National Center for
Education Statistics (NCES) reported bulling in American schools have increased
by 24.5% since 2003. At the same time 71
percent of our nation’s 15,000 school districts have reduced the hours of
instruction on many classes, including history.
Because of national directives such as the No Child Left Behind Act,
school districts have trimmed course in areas such as history and other social
studies classes to focus students’ studies on three subjects, reading, writing,
and math. These three subjects are
important, but there is blowback for cutting social studies and history…
So I’ll cut to the chase:
Could classes like history and social studies put a dent in the number
of student being bullying? I say YES!
History and other social studies classes are built on the
premise to understand or attempting to predict people’s behavior. To understand the theory of supply and demand
in economics, a student needs to understand the wants and needs of people. In political science, you need to UNDERSTAND
the politics of the 1950s, how the American public FELT about Communism, to get
the old saying, “only Nixon could go to China”.
Better yet, in my US history class, I have students study
the life of a Continental solider during the winter of 1777-1778. Then my students place themselves in Valley
Forge. My students write a letter to a family member describing life during
this cold, harsh winter. My students, if
only for a minute, take themselves from their comfortable, safe classroom
environment and place themselves in the shoes of a cold, hungry, scared
American soldier. Then, we share these observations
and feelings with each other.
This is how we teach EMPATHY! In math class students do not learn about
EMPATHY as they learn about exponents or about cosign and tangent. Empathy is NOT taught in science where they
learn about the different biomes of the Earth.
Empathy is NOT taught in English where they learn about dangling
participles. But students learn about is
in their social studies and history classes.
One possible solution to a complex issue of bullying might
be to return social studies and history to the American middle and high
schools. These classes give students the
opportunity to develop the skill to “see” an issue from another person’s part
of view.
