As xkcd notes, pretty much everything in life is optional, but that doesn’t make any of it useless.
Empathy and Excellent Sheep
This course self-iterates, applying the ideals of a makerspace to itself on a consistent basis. One of the driving questions for that iterative work is the old standby, “When will I ever have to use this?”
Answering that questions led to our profiles and set of universal skills and traits — not just an assessment model, but a way of treating the Humanities as the study of being human, which applies to every human being by default. Literature becomes a means of opening ourselves up to new experiences, of developing empathy, etc, and writing becomes the best tool we have for getting at truth.
The most recent sets of universal skills, traits, and profiles look like this:
- Universal Skills and Traits: https://tinyurl.com/universal-skills-traits
- Grade Abatement Profiles: https://tinyurl.com/grade-abatement-profiles
These are usually assessed through a universalized, step-by-step guide. The first pair of skills and traits we consider:
Click for the printable Google Doc.
It emphasizes what the rest of course repeatedly does: Empathy is the most important skill you will ever learn. It’s also how you get at the “stuff of growth,” as Ken Robinson said.
We’ll look at an essay that addresses this specifically and directly in a moment, as part of a formal assignment. For now, consider the answer to the question, “When will I ever have to use this?” in terms of how it will get you into college or into the job market.
First, colleges want empathy. You’ll have to read the entire article to gain a sense of how colleges are reevaluating student admissions, but the trend is national and inexorable:
Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, began making changes even before the Turning the Tide report debuted, but it’s since done even more, launching a scholarship for students who exhibit kindness and empathy and recruiting students through community-based organizations. Since it stopped requiring standardized-test scores last year, it drew the highest number of first-generation students in its history.
Kindness and empathy are now just as important as any other transcript element. In a few years, I believe you will see test scores and GPA fade even more, with broad evidence of empathy and collegiality necessary for admission to the best schools.
If this seems like it applies only to high-achieving or Ivy-League-bound students, that’s not the case. The pressure to perform and the dehumanizing aspects of the system affect students across the spectrum. That is why I’d invite you all to consider this article on Ivy League schools and the work over the last few years of William Deresiewicz, who wrote Excellent Sheep and a number of related essays.
Look past the surface level focus on top-tier schooling and the “excellent sheep” he describes and recognize that all of us are warped by the system. That’s why the New Yorker essay is worth a read. It gives you insights like this:
The system manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.
That speaks to our makerspace focus on a spectrum of skills and traits, from self-awareness to assiduousness. It also mentions again the “bubble of privilege,” which is really a lack of empathy. It doesn’t matter how you define that so-called “soul,” either; a lack of it affects your prospects as you apply to college, work toward a career, and build a life.
In fact, the job market makes the need for empathy even clearer:
Those match up to the skills and traits we use to a significant extent, and you’ll once again see empathy and collegiality at the top.
The message in all this is simple: If you want to be successful, you need to learn how to empathize.
Your Most Important Skill: Empathy
In a high school classroom, we need a way to practice, not just prioritize, the skill of empathy. We will use Chad Fowler for that. That link leads to Lifehacker’s coverage of the original article, which has been reformatted for class use here: https://tinyurl.com/fowler-empathy. Your assignment, which will be given formally at some point:
Read and discuss Fowler’s essay, and then find time to practice empathy in each of the four ways he lists.
In class, you’ll be able to collaborate to transcribe your experiences and what they’ve taught you, and there will be a formal place to submit your notes. You need to look beyond the assignment, however. Fowler obviously isn’t writing just to high schoolers. You can practice empathy with or without a Google Doc and deadline; most of us could answer Fowler’s questions, reflect on the experience, be metacognitive about our choices, and try to develop some personal insight into ourselves.
The following list might help you to focus this practice. Keep in mind that there are other ways to approach the work.
- Listen | Do this with any conversation, but look for one that is about “heated topics,” as Fowler puts it. You can also deliberately begin a conversation you know will get heated in order to practice listening.
- Watch and Wonder | Do this during a study hall or lunch period, since they offer the easiest and least awkward or invasive opportunities. This exercise is about understanding that other people have lives as complex as your own — which the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows coined as sonder.
- Know Your Enemies | For best results, pick an “enemy” with whom you have an ongoing dispute, but not someone you actively dislike. Follow Fowler closely when thinking about this enemy, putting your thoughts in writing as much as possible. Then reflect on whether this exercise did “reduce your frustration and anxiety over some of the most stressful interpersonal situations.”
- Choose the Other Side | Choose a debate about a subject that matters to you personally — one for which you have a definite position — but not necessarily one you struggle to discuss rationally. Then force yourself to take the other side, writing that opposing position out. Focus your metacognition on how easy or difficult this is, what it reveals to you, etc.
Use the post here to talk about the process, the lessons and learning in the other essays embedded in this post, the overarching importance of empathy, and so on.
Additional Texts
Below are additional texts worth reading. These are the kind of texts worth folding in more formally as the subjects of discussions in class, because they provide more real-world context for empathy. Why would you need to hone the skill? Because you are going to encounter that line between opinion and fact. You are going to need to question your beliefs when they are challenged by someone else. You will need to recognize your own echo chambers and open-mindedness, as well as the expertise and guidance of the folks who want to help you.
You can ask questions about any of these in the comment section here, too.
First, a video:
Second, an article on empathy and its relationship to opinions, facts, and accepting the wisdom of others: