The schools at work
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NEW YORK — The privileged teenagers at Scarsdale Middle School are learning to be nicer this year.
Research projects involve interviews with octogenarians, and a survey of local wheelchair ramps to help students identify with the elderly and the disabled. 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.
A photojournalism project showcases students’ work with the homeless, charities and the environment. And this month, the student council is planning a “Mix It Up Day” to break up cafeteria cliques.
The emphasis on empathy, here and in schools nationwide in the United States, is the latest front in a decade-long campaign against bullying and violence. Many urban districts have found empathy workshops and curriculums help curb fighting and other misbehaviour.
In Scarsdale — a wealthy district with few discipline problems — educators see the lessons as grooming children to be better citizens and leaders, by making them think twice before engaging in name-calling, gossip and other forms of social humiliation.
For instance, Sarah Frohman, 13, said she now catches herself when she is about to call someone who annoys her a “retard”, and that she has told her soccer coach in a youth league not to use the word.
This year, Los Angeles is spending nearly US$1 million ($1.5 million) on a “Second Step” programme for its 147 middle schools, which teaches empathy, impulse control, anger management and problem solving.
In Seattle, seven public elementary schools are using a Roots of Empathy programme, in which a mother and her baby go into the classroom to explore questions like “What makes you cry?”
On Long Island, Weber Middle School inducted 300 students into the Weber Pride club this year, as reward for gestures like sitting with a new girl at lunch.
At Public School 114 in the South Bronx, where David A Levine, author of “Teaching Empathy”, has been running workshops since 2006, 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.
The New York Times
From TODAY, News
Monday, 06-April-2009
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