School of love
When you enter a classroom running a Roots of Empathy programme, you might find the teacher looks a little different to normal. Sure, he might be wearing an official T-shirt that reads “Teacher”, but he’s also as likely to be having a quick nap or looking for a snack. In this lesson, the teacher might be just a few months old, but don’t let the adorability factor fool you. This baby is here to help primary school students learn how to manage their own emotions, read physical cues and understand the concept of empathy, a characteristic that Roots of Empathy founder Mary Gordon believes is the functional key that can determine either a good life or a difficult life, for both the students themselves and those around them.
“As children develop empathy, they become more adept at finding the humanity in one another. Without empathy, we can’t get to conflict resolution, altruism, or peace,” she writes in her book Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child.
The charity, Roots of Empathy, launched in Mary’s native Canada in 1996, but its ties to New Zealand run deep: we were the first country outside Canada to pick up the programme, in 2006. Helen Clark, then prime minister, met with Mary and was a supporter of the programme from the beginning.
