A new 20,000-student study from Harvard University finds that children are increasingly learning to value personal success above all else. According to the Making Caring Common Project, the results of that mindset can contribute to a growing population of young people that lack empathy. Despite some challenges, local efforts have taken root to help teach both understanding and basic kindness.
Most news coming out of schools tends to revolve around shifting standards, testing performance and requirements. Academic performance is imperative, but what about students’ social well-being?
Emmy Seaton is 10 years old and the winner of the Guess anti-bullying Foundation’s “Lunchroom Kindness Challenge.”
“I won $500 for sitting with 75 new people that didn’t have friends.” Seaton said.
She has since created a kindness club at her school and while her school supported lunchroom program, it didn’t initiate it. This is where Paducah mother Susan Guess and her daughter Morgan come in. They started the foundation after Morgan was bullied at school when she was eight.
“We had to put her on anti-depressants, she had stomach spasms and panic attacks and actually asked us to remove her from school. She said she shouldn’t have to leave school,” Guess said. “Her dad and I said bad things are going to happen, we can ignore it, we can blame others or let’s be a part of a solution. So, four years later here we are at the kindness walk, almost makes me cry.”
Both Emmy and Susan participated in Paducah’s first organized “Kindness Color Walk” which brought out close to 500 people in an effort to get kids thinking about kindness before starting their new school year. Guess said the event had a “remarkable turnout.”
But getting the same enthusiasm from the schools isn’t as easy when test scores are priority.
“This is the positive way to bring change and our goal always was for her to find her own voice, and what we found is, hopefully we can help other kids find their own as well.” Guess said.
Fourteen-year-old Doug Owens didn’t have a voice and took his own life after incessant bullying. His sister, Olivia, walked in his memory.
“He was bullied in junior high for a few a years and he just had too much,” Owens said. “We had no idea what was going on until it was too late.”
Olivia believes the school could have done more to prevent the bullying that she says led to Owen’s suicide, and she may be right. According to the Harvard study, parents are mostly responsible for the way kids prioritize their thoughts but schools provide an environment with the most opportunity for social emotional learning.
Harvard’s Luba Falk Feigenberg says children who lack empathy don’t have lasting friendships and tend to be more cruel, dishonest and disrespectful,
“Ironically, in our study we found that the kids who prioritize their own personal happiness over kindness end up being less happy overall.” Feigenberg said.
During the Making Caring Common survey, the young participants ranked what was most important to them: achieving at a high level of happiness (feeling good most of the time), or caring for others.
Almost 80% of youth picked high achievement or happiness as their top choice.
Two-and-a-half years into the project, Feigenberg says schools are looking for resources to implement strategies to focus on empathy and caring.
“When we think about the kind of society and the kinds of communities that we want to live in, we need to be raising kids that can have empathy towards others and can act in kind and respectful ways.” Feigenberg said.
The movement is happening locally, if not spearheaded by local schools. Beyond the Guess Foundation, McCracken County’s 4-H club has had a program called “Calling All Colors” for more than 10 years.
The club’s Robert Tashjian says the program’s goal is to expose students to different cultures around the world so the knowledge can translate into an understanding of differences.
Tashjian says while schools want to get involved there isn’t always time with the demands of a strict curriculum. But recently, because of social media, pressure to make caring a priority is coming from the community.
“With Ferguson, all these things that we are seeing that are going on are really what are driving us and pushing our leaders to say that ‘We have got to get youth involved in programs that show tolerance and kindness with one another,’” Tashjian said. “Because we don’t want to live in a world that we are currently living in. We need to live in a society that is better than that.”
At least one area school has incorporated empathy into their environment. Principal of St. Mary’s Elementary School Lisa Clark says early introduction to empathy is imperative.
“It is incredibly important in Elementary school because your foundation comes from your younger years.” Clark said.
In the meantime, kids like ten-year-old Emmy Seaton are making changes one friend at a time.
“I was bullied in 3rd grade by a little girl but she was having a rough time with her family, so I got my other friends together, and we put support on her,” Seaton said. “And then she wasn’t being a bully anymore.”
