Kirin Bir Sethi, an Indian educator and the founder of Riverside School in India, follows a rather unusual but innovative curriculum for her school. When her fifth graders are taught about child rights, they are not only expected to learn from traditional learning methods in the classroom, but are also made to roll incense sticks of agarbatis for eight hours! This initiative is taken to make students experience what it feels like to be child laborers.
And, not surprisingly, it transforms them.
This journey leads to their utter conviction that they have the potential to go out and change the world.
After around two hours of rolling sticks, when the children go through intense exhaustion and can’t perform any longer, it is then when they feel change. After that, they are given the task to go out in the streets, in order to convince everyone that child labor has to be abolished.
There are some concerned parents who ask that training children to become good humans is necessary, but what about subjects such as math and science?
Surprisingly, after this activity, the students show improvement in their test scores, and outperform the top ten schools of India!
In addition to the activity mentioned above, the students are given tasks to come up with one problem they observe around them, and work on it for one week. The children come up with a wide range of issues, ranging from loneliness to alcoholism. In one case, 32 of her students actually managed to stop 16 child marriages!
These are the type of activities that help children cultivate empathy to change them into better human beings.
According to a study conducted on the victims of bullying, they discovered children who were bullied had increased depression, higher anxiety, lower educational attainment and lower incomes when they grew up.
Another study published in JAMA Psychiatry journal, kids who were bullied, later on were at a greater risk of developing anxiety disorders. Female victims were at a greater risk for developing agoraphobia while male victims are most likely to consider suicide.
It’s rather quite surprising how the scars of childhood persist through adulthood! But this does not only go for bullying, but in fact all our childhood experiences, both good and bad, have a profound impact on our personalities as adults.
That being said, considering how negative experiences have such drastic effects on one’s behavior, same goes for positive circumstances.
This sometimes makes me think, that if wounds of bullying often continue way up till adulthood, then initiatives taken by schools to develop positive character traits, such as empathy, may also be powerful enough to persist, even when the child grows up.
This needn’t be as intensive as that done in Riverside School, but small and simple steps should be first taken by schools in order to grow empathy in young children.
When Abigail Marsh, a researcher and neuroscientist, was saved from a deadly car accident, her entire life seemed to change. When a dog rushed towards the front of her car, she abruptly changed its direction. This put her life in risk. Her immediate assumption was that she would not be able to survive.
But she still did.
Out of nowhere, a stranger got out of his car, put his own life in danger, and brought Marsh back to safety.
This experience changed Marsh’s life to some extent. After that particular event, she decided to become a psychology researcher, in order to study the human capacity to care for others.
This made Marsh think, why did he do what he just did? Why in the world do people do altruistic acts for others, with extraordinary risks to themselves?
In order to find out the answer, she studied people on the opposite end - she started examining the brains of psychopaths. These are the people who lack the motivation to help others in need. They are characterized as cold and unsympathetic individuals. In most cases, they are not oblivious to other’s emotions, but are found to be indifferent to the signs that people are distressed.
A part of the brain called amygdala plays a crucial role in helping us recognize and feel other people’s emotions. As a result, people who have more active right amygdala are generally more compassionate. In other words, these people have greater abilities in sensing when others are in distress.
So, that being said, considering the brain’s plasticity, this means that what we learn and experience can permanently change the structures of our brain. Can this be true about the amygdala too? Most probably.
Just as activities such as learning creates better neural connections and promotes neurogenesis, performing altruistic acts may also lead to a more activated amygdala. As mentioned above, schools can take small steps to cultivate empathy in their students. Not only will they get exposure to welfare at a young age, but will also develop the habit to support others, and may also develop a more active right amygdala.
In other words, if schools started teaching their students this, this may eventually lead to creating better, more ethical and more compassionate population in the future
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