Lessons in empathy, to get US teens to be nicer

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

Lessons in empathy, to get US teens to be nicer

The schools at work

-----

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

Happiness is ... lending a helping hand

Kids, this is something to learn from. Happiness is not always getting what you want. It is in giving, and not to yourself, but of yourself, to other people, especially the needy, and especially at times like this.

Do you see it in your parents?

Whom do you see that model this character? Look around you. They may not be far away.


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KEY TO HAPPINESS
Passing it forward…


A RECESSION-HIT businessman refuses to steal time away from his volunteer work among kidney patients. One neighbourhood doctor “closes an eye” when patients say they can’t pay.

A 29-year-old professional gives free tuition to troubled kids, after a hectic day’s work. A 78-year-old woman living in a one-room flat rallies her foster children to help elderly neighbours.

Singaporeans, ungracious and self-centred? You only need to look around, when the going gets rough in a recession like this, to discover we may be a better people than we think.

Today went in search of simple acts of “help-thy-neighbour”, for our second Happy Issue of this year — the first was on Jan 5 — and unearthed countless stories of everyday unsung heroes.

They are (mostly) not rich, almost all busy with work, some wrestling with their own personal or financial woes. But they are proof it doesn’t take much to bring light into a stranger’s life.

Take the scene at noon last Friday, at the Toa Payoh Bus Interchange.

A man, who was among the masses hurrying along, stopped beside a woman in a wheelchair selling donation draw tickets. He took an entire booklet, for which he paid $20.

When Today stopped him and asked why, he shrugged: “What is $20? Probably only a few meals, right?” A minute later, he scurried back and shyly asked the reporter not to name him.

The woman in the wheelchair, stroke patient Amy Ng, said such acts of kindness are common during this downturn.

Last year, she sold an average of five donation draw books a day. Now, it’s eight on average and her record is 18.

“Singaporeans are actually more generous this year,” said Mdm Ng, 68, who volunteers with a charity.

Then there is customer service specialist Aries Ang, 29, who gives free tuition at the Gracehaven Children’s Home every Tuesday night for two hours, no matter how tiring her day has been.

When she first thought of volunteering three years ago, she had doubts about whether she could do it. These days, she coaches a child in Primary 4 and another in Primary 2, both of whom could barely read at first. “My greatest joy was to hear them reading. I don’t think you can put a value to that,” she says.

One dentist we learnt of tends, for two hours every Wednesday, to the dental needs of some 460 mental patients at the Sunlove Home. Another publicity-shy general practitioner, who lets needy patients pay just a nominal sum or pay later, downplays his deeds: “Such acts are very common among doctors. It is nothing ... like passing it forward.”

And then there is businessman, Mr Lim Cheng Eng, who in February gave a $200,000-hongbao to build a childcare and kindergarten centre in the West; and a month later, a six-figure sum to set up a bursary at his alma mater, the Nanyang Technological University.

The childcare centre, said Mr Lim, would allow parents to go out and work to supplement lost income, while the bursary would ensure no needy student is denied an education.

In these tough times, “those with the strength contribute their muscles. Those with the financial resources give their money,” said the 68-year-old who owns a confectionary business.

LEONG WEE KEAT and ALICIA WONG


From TODAY, Afternoon Edition
Monday, 06-April-2009

Happiness is ... lending a helping hand

Kids, this is something to learn from. Happiness is not always getting what you want. It is in giving, and not to yourself, but of yourself, to other people, especially the needy, and especially at times like this.

Do you see it in your parents?

Whom do you see that model this character? Look around you. They may not be far away.


-----


KEY TO HAPPINESS
Passing it forward…


A RECESSION-HIT businessman refuses to steal time away from his volunteer work among kidney patients. One neighbourhood doctor “closes an eye” when patients say they can’t pay.

A 29-year-old professional gives free tuition to troubled kids, after a hectic day’s work. A 78-year-old woman living in a one-room flat rallies her foster children to help elderly neighbours.

Singaporeans, ungracious and self-centred? You only need to look around, when the going gets rough in a recession like this, to discover we may be a better people than we think.

Today went in search of simple acts of “help-thy-neighbour”, for our second Happy Issue of this year — the first was on Jan 5 — and unearthed countless stories of everyday unsung heroes.

They are (mostly) not rich, almost all busy with work, some wrestling with their own personal or financial woes. But they are proof it doesn’t take much to bring light into a stranger’s life.

Take the scene at noon last Friday, at the Toa Payoh Bus Interchange.

A man, who was among the masses hurrying along, stopped beside a woman in a wheelchair selling donation draw tickets. He took an entire booklet, for which he paid $20.

When Today stopped him and asked why, he shrugged: “What is $20? Probably only a few meals, right?” A minute later, he scurried back and shyly asked the reporter not to name him.

The woman in the wheelchair, stroke patient Amy Ng, said such acts of kindness are common during this downturn.

Last year, she sold an average of five donation draw books a day. Now, it’s eight on average and her record is 18.

“Singaporeans are actually more generous this year,” said Mdm Ng, 68, who volunteers with a charity.

Then there is customer service specialist Aries Ang, 29, who gives free tuition at the Gracehaven Children’s Home every Tuesday night for two hours, no matter how tiring her day has been.

When she first thought of volunteering three years ago, she had doubts about whether she could do it. These days, she coaches a child in Primary 4 and another in Primary 2, both of whom could barely read at first. “My greatest joy was to hear them reading. I don’t think you can put a value to that,” she says.

One dentist we learnt of tends, for two hours every Wednesday, to the dental needs of some 460 mental patients at the Sunlove Home. Another publicity-shy general practitioner, who lets needy patients pay just a nominal sum or pay later, downplays his deeds: “Such acts are very common among doctors. It is nothing ... like passing it forward.”

And then there is businessman, Mr Lim Cheng Eng, who in February gave a $200,000-hongbao to build a childcare and kindergarten centre in the West; and a month later, a six-figure sum to set up a bursary at his alma mater, the Nanyang Technological University.

The childcare centre, said Mr Lim, would allow parents to go out and work to supplement lost income, while the bursary would ensure no needy student is denied an education.

In these tough times, “those with the strength contribute their muscles. Those with the financial resources give their money,” said the 68-year-old who owns a confectionary business.

LEONG WEE KEAT and ALICIA WONG


From TODAY, Afternoon Edition
Monday, 06-April-2009

The real kite-runner

Kids, you might like this, but it costs more than your usual kite.

Read on...

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HIGH ART
Forget canvasses, artist Von Tjong uses kites

Mayo Martin
mayo@mediacorp.com.sg

FOR artist Von Tjong, things are, quite literally, looking up. In her first solo exhibition, the 36-year-old creative director of The Arts House is eschewing traditional canvas paintings hung on gallery walls in favour of a more high-flying medium — kites.

Absolute Van Gogh, which starts next Thursday, will feature around 20 paintings done on huge Japanese kites, which will be hung from the ceiling.

The idea came after she was invited by the Singapore Kite Association to create a piece for last February’s Singapore Kite Festival, held in Punggol Park. The result was a piece inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers series on a Rokkaku kite, which traditionally is painted with the faces of samurai.

“It’s an amazing feeling seeing your painting in the sky. It was like a flying canvas and the sky was my own gallery,” said Tjong.

For the art works on display, Tjong is similarly inspired by the artistic styles of Van Gogh as well as of 20th century Chinese artists Zhang Hongtu and Wu Guanzhong, who are both known to apply Chinese ink painting aesthetics to interpret Western-style paintings and vice versa.

“Wu can use Chinese ink to simplify Western paintings and Zhang can use the styles of Van Gogh and still paint a shan shui (traditional Chinese landscape paintings).”

It’s a challenge that she’s taking up, too, applying Chinese ink techniques to recreate her favourite Van Gogh painting.

“(Sunflowers) was the first painting that attracted me to his work. He had to love something that much to play around and apply the different shades of yellow in one painting. His use of the impasto technique is also very different from (traditional Chinese ink paintings) where you play with the ‘less is more’ concept.”

Tjong revealed that kites were a more expensive material to work with: Each piece costs around $180 compared to $15 for a small canvas.

But it’s not the first time she’s been working on unusual materials. She’s created works on boxes — shoe, gift and mooncake ones — and also makes teddy bears.

Initially a hobby, it became serious when she was commissioned to create a Peranakan series for the Sentosa Shop in 2007.

Seeing her art flying in the sky in an open field is an experience she wants viewers to feel as well. “I can’t transport the sky and field into the gallery premises, but maybe I’ll put fake grass patches on the floor,” she said.

Absolute Van Gogh runs until April 23 at the Arts House Gallery, 1 Old Parliament Lane.

From TODAY, Plus
Thursday, 02-April-2009