A reader posted this comment:
It is obvious that the designers and supporters of CCSS do not have empathy for children. Narcissism is on a spectrum and intensifies with chronic stress. This is evident in how the Common Core Environment has created systemic Narcissism from the top down:
The antithesis of narcissism is empathy. If you have unconditional love for children and can be an empathic, you are not a narcissist. Empathy is the ability to get into someone else’s shoes and validate what they are feeling. The art of empathy is being there on this same level to hear and nurture feelings but is different from sympathy. Sympathy often feels to others like we are putting ourselves above them and feeling sorry for them. This does not bring comfort to most. But, if I express sadness, frustration or any myriad of emotions, and you are able to be with me, hear me, acknowledge the feelings and not judge… you are exhibiting an empathic response. If you jump to solutions or tell me what to do, are judgmental or critical, tell me what you do to solve your problems, or feel sorry for me, this is not practicing empathy!
When teaching children, creating an empathic environment is crucial for their development of self. Children need to know their feelings matter. It makes them feel real, noticed, seen, heard and visible. When feelings are attended to, the child then learns to trust their own feelings and can continue to grow up feeling empowered by their inner thoughts and emotions. This is in contrast to living in an adult world of crippling self-doubt because they were not heard in their early development.
Empathy does not mean you have to agree. Feelings are feelings are feelings. We can be critical of someone’s thoughts as thoughts can be distorted, but what we feel, we feel. Emotions need to be processed. Empathy with others is not about agreeing, but it is about getting into children’s emotional realm so you can understand them. . One minute in time can make a difference in someone’s life. It has happened to me and likely has happened to you. These moments are never forgotten, but in reverse, when not heard, that recollection can also stay on memory lane.
Narcissists are not accountable. They blame others, project their feelings, and are not able to tune in. As a parent, being accountable and honest is crucial. This is also a key to not raising a narcissistic child or a child who can’t believe in themselves because they were never validated. When adult children in recovery confront their narcissistic parents
and narcissistic teachers, they usually meet with defensive reactions, shame, humiliation, and judgment. How helpful is this? People make mistakes because we are all obviously and painfully human. When your child or student confronts you about your behavior, don’t be defensive. Be honest and listen.
The greatest gift you can give children as a parent or teacher is empathy.
To do this, requires a level of maturity so you are not acting defensive or hurt. Keep the door open for emotional connections and great things can happen. This includes compassion and comfort for pain, but also celebration for joy and success. If you find you cannot do that, consider getting therapeutic help. Learning how to tune in emotionally is an art and it can be taught.
Remember that putting work in front of a child is not teaching. That is punishment.
Real teaching is about inspiring children to use their own imagination and curiosity for self-discovery. The only way to do that is to guide, teach, nurture and listen to what is going on inside that person, and then to be there for them. It is not about “this student scored low, or this student was the top of the class. Most adult children of narcissistic parents report that their parents have no idea who they really are. While each child and adult has an outer life with accomplishments and “doing”, each one has an inner life about “being.” If you are tuning into the inner side of your children, you are not a narcissistic teacher or parent. Think about how it feels for you when you have someone really listening and caring about what is going on in your emotional world. In our narcissistic and technologically oriented culture, people are hungry for emotional intimacy… especially our precious children.
“ To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.” Stephen Covey
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is such a beautifully written piece. Thank you!
LikeLike
… and this also highlights the antithesis of David Coleman’s comment that “no one gives a s*** how you feel” … speaking of narcissism.
LikeLike
Both David Coleman and his quote really needs to be seen for the sheer horror of it:
Why hasn’t this gotten the same attention that Lous C.K.’s Common Core critique? Or the quotes of basketball owner Donald Sterling?
Coleman should be kept as far away from any position of authority or influence over education as possible.
And for the actual children of “corporate reformers”, Coleman’s evil is, in fact, kept as far away as possible. From NYS Ed. Commissioner John King’s kids (private Montessori… antithesis of Common Core) to Chris Christie (private parochial school) to Rahm Emanuel (Chicago Lab School) to the Obamas (Sidwell Friends) to Bill Gates (Lakeside) … the children of Common Core backers are given an education that is diametrically opposed to what’s in the Common Core.
LikeLike
The Common Core Environment was created by narcissists for the profit of narcissists. In far too many places, it is now being administered by aggressive narcissists and politically protected by narcissists. Within such a multi-layered narcissistic environment not much is possible or permissible except whole scale, to the root transformation of the entire system. Children cannot tune in to their own feelings and practice compassion with one another as they are being systematically shamed, degraded, judged, manipulated and ignored.
LikeLike
And then there are all the referenced to RIGOROUS the obligatory policy adjective in boot camp training, and an implicit condemnation of teachers who are “soft” on kids, and express this in empathetic responses.
LikeLike
Thanks for these precious thoughts on this Mothers’ day morning. As a district supervisor, what I miss most are the relationships I was able to build with students and parents. To me, the most critical part of being a parent and educator is to first nuture the social- emotional well being of children. That is the foundation upon which all other learning can be built. When children trust and respect you, and know you care about them, they will be able to work at the learning part. I make sure to visit my most at-risk schools, especially middle schools, every week. I walk the halls and greet students with a smile to let them know there are adults who care. Those who know me as their former administrator still give me a hug and a smile. They never forget someone who showed them empathy and took the time with to talk and listen when they were struggling. As an administrator my students knew my door was always open to them. You are so right, it only takes a minute, but can affect them in ways we may never know. Thanks for clarifying the difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy can be so crippling, empathy so empowering.
Thank you for reminding us that empathy is the key to all relationships, be it personal or professional.
LikeLike
Oops, “nurture”…
LikeLike
Beautifully written. Thank you
LikeLike
The damage being done by narcissistic “reformers” is unconscionable. Shame on all of them.
I wish Michelle Obama would read this on this Mother’s Day, and sit down and share every word with the President. Empathy starts at the top, and until the President recognizes and values the importance of caring, listening, emotional support….. children don’t stand a chance.
Profound words. Thank you.
LikeLike
The more our education ventures away from civics and humanities, the more we are going to see narcism reach new heights… to the point where even our most cherished – our children – are being treated abusively. The public school should be a place of safety, of nurturing, fostering learning and understanding about local, national and world community. Instead it has all been replaced by a financial race or competition with a We against the world mentality where there are a few winners and mostly losers. Ughhhh! Bush and Obama should be ashamed of themselves for “buying” into (yes pun intended) this philosophy with NCLB and RTTT.
A good read which addresses the very topic of this article (especially one chapter on socratic questioning and another one which is the concluding chapter which addresses NCLB and narcism)… it is called, “Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities” by Martha Nussbaum.
LikeLike
I find it interesting that the author links stress and narcissism. This seems plausible.
LikeLike
Just found this at:
http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2011/11/war-on-education-and-reading-david.html
——————————
Common Core Curriculum Standards entrepreneur David Coleman is barnstorming the country claiming that schools need to de-emphasize fiction and obliterate any semblance of reader response.
No feelings, no imaginations, no speculations: Just the facts, kid.
What children need, asserts Coleman, is a close reading of “informational text.” That’s what he calls non-fiction. No opinion, no flights of fancy. No creation of new worlds. The teacher’s job is to make sure kids stick just to the text. Informational text, pronounces Coleman, is what will give students the world knowledge necessary to compete as workers in the Global Economy…
Coleman insists that informational text is what gives readers “world knowledge.”
Susan Ohanian, Substance News – “[A]s you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” Thus, Common Core Standards architect David Coleman delivered [1] the core pedagogy of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to educators gathered at the New York State Department of Education in April 2011.
Listen to a few more of Coleman’s proclamations and you have to ask yourself if this is a man of deep experience and rectitude or just a cuckoo bird let loose on a hapless bunch of educrats who don’t know how to voice dissent. Coleman was on stage one hour 59 minutes in Chancellor’s Hall decreeing the new reality of teaching in public schools across America. No one in the audience challenged his bizarre declarations.
Coleman is billed as “a leading author and architect of the CCSS, and our professional organizations have already caved in on the Common Core — without a shot being fired. As premier standards entrepreneur, Coleman is a busy man, having already co-written the Common Core State Curriculum Standards and the Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literac.
Coleman insists that teachers must train students to be workers in the Global Economy. In his words, “It is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.” Translation to the classroom: No more primary grade essays about lost teeth or middle school essays about prepubescent angst. Instead, students must provide critical analysis of the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic, listed as an “exemplary informational text” in the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts. If that’s judged as over the top for 12-year-olds, there’s always Ronald Reagan’s 1988 “Address to Students at Moscow State University.”
As though literacy is to prepare children only for a working environment. And as though personal opinion isn’t vital in a working environment.
Coleman is on a mission to slash both the amount of personal narrative in writing and the amount of fiction in reading. This is based not on any experience teaching –except at the University of London–but because, he insists, readers gain “world knowledge” through nonfiction, which he calls “informational text.”
Standardisto David Coleman doesn’t give a shit about what children have long enjoyed about reading fiction and poetry, since he wants to make schools a boot camp for the global economy via the “Common Core Standards” he is helping the U.S. Department of Education push like crack cocaine across the USA. Ironically, schools like Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C. (where the children of Barack Obama go to school) and the University of Chicago Lab School (where the children of former White House Chief of Staff and now Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel go to school) reject straight jackets like the “Common Core” and promote the reading of children, young adult, and real literature .Skeptics who might doubt that replacing Brown Bear, Brown Bear with a Wikipedia entry on Ursus arctos will stave off our nation’s economic woes might wonder:
Why, if fiction is no more vital than leftover turnips, is there a Nobel Prize in Literature and not in lawyers’ briefs or material from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Web site (listed as a Common Core exemplary text)?…
The Common Core State Standards exist because the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wanted them. To help their aide-de-camps, the president and the U. S. Secretary of Education, pretend that these are state and not national standards, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sent buckets of money to the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers to act as sponsors. More tons of money to the National PTA to spread the good word and so on. As I revealed in an article in Extra![ix] very few media have pointed to the money source. Of course very few media even bother to mention anything about the Common Core…
With David Coleman as their spokesman out on the stump, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the U. S. Department of Education, acting in concert with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, prescribe a very pale, sickly shade of green future for our vibrant and deliciously messy classrooms. Certainly, Lobel’s moral, Without a doubt, there is such a thing as too much order, applies even more to the classroom than it does to wallpaper.
And letting our corporate school reformers steamroll our schools into a neat and tidy standardized product puts our children in great peril.
LikeLike
Absolutely, stunningly, beautiful. In the great religions of the world empathy is a primary goal. In Buddhism especially I think. When people have their head on straight and seek the great goals of life THEY, the people who develop that empathy etc are the ones who profit – as well as of course, the society in which they live. The people who live to just make money, seek power as their primary objective, will never have enough of these kinds of things. The void in their inner personalities they try to fill with these kinds of transitory things. Sad for them as for the rest of society which is influenced unduly by that acquisition of money and power.
Thank you Dr. Ravitch for posting your blog here. Again, BEAUTIFUL!
LikeLike
Empathy in the classroom is also called Humane Education. By and large seen as a program offered by Animal Shelters, true Humane Ed is the Golden Rule…it is Character Education with the added pillar of Animal Welfare. Children are shocked to learn that humans are animals. This disconnect between human animals and our other beastly family members are, I believe, part of the disconnect in education.
LikeLike
Here, a discussion of precisely the opposite point of view, as exemplified by the Council of Great [sic] Schools video now featured on the Common [sic] Core [sic] website:
LikeLike
Students are the last on the chain of empathy. Empathy needs to start with those who are at the top. Teachers are depleted of empathy as CC robs the life out of the arteries to their hearts. I’d like to make this about teachers by turning the 3rd paragraph into an analogy for teachers.
“When teaching children (training prospective teachers), creating an empathic environment is crucial for their (pedagogical toolkit) development of self (for the classroom). Children (Teachers) need to know their feelings matter. It makes them feel real, noticed, seen, heard and visible (like professionals in their field). When feelings are attended to, the child (a teacher) then learns to trust their own feelings and can continue to grow up (to refine their skills) feeling empowered by their inner thoughts and emotions (that make them effective teachers). This is in contrast to living in an adult (narcissistic) world of crippling self-doubt (of corporate greed and stupid politicians) because they (their voices) were not heard in their early (years of teaching) development (and in absence of the freedom to teach and the support and encouragement from the top).”
LikeLike
This is a really fine article. It summarizes nicely the centrality of acknowledging the whole person, especially for children in the world of education. There they are “Learning the Rules” more intensely than in some other portions of their lives. If empathy is missing from the educational environment, what does that teach children?
I would only add that alongside the core emotional component of empathy, there are cognitive and behavioral components to this most significant of gifts which is shared not only by humans; but it is found in differing ways and degrees among all “social” animals. Life as a member of any group is irreparably impaired without empathy. Like art, it has its inborn part, and it can (and needs to) be taught.
LikeLike
Diane, I am the author of the comments you posted for this article which came from my Twitter: mimi@zombienation15. I am happy that this information is helping to shine more light on the dangers of the punitive authoritarian elementary school environment as a leading cause of personality disorders (mental illness).
As an experienced school counselor who has observed this psychological damage to children first hand, I have been advocating against this increasingly punitive authoritarian environment for the past several years in Texas schools.
I have observed that elementary age children are not socially and emotionally equipped to cope with the high level of chronic stress in this environment. Since they have not yet developed a strong sense of identity, or skills to process the strong emotions of victimization (shame, anger, guilt, self pity, need for revenge) that are produced in this critical and judgmental authoritarian environment, the result is chronic feelings of “never fully measuring up”. Based on our best research on personality disorders from University of Washington (Dr Marsha Linehan), an invalidating environment in childhood leads to Borderline/Narcissistic Behaviors.
People do not choose to develop Narcissistic /Borderline Personality Disorders, but it is the result of growing up in an “invalidating” environment and developing “unhealthy” coping defenses for survival. This coping involves using “avoidance” and “denial”, and building up a “faux front” of “positive” performance to please authorities (teachers & parents), while repressing authentic “negative” emotions of “inferiority” and “codependency”. When this dysfunction begins in childhood, Borderline/Narcissistic behaviors are usually accompanied by Dissociative behaviors, and can lead to Dissociative PD which is known to accompany traumatic stress disorders. We can see increasing evidence of this is our current adult society as well as school children.
Since children have not yet developed adequate coping mechanisms to process this chronic stress, which is “traumatic” stress for many sensitive children, they are forced to function with their natural response to fear which is “freeze”. It is their only means of “survival” in a threatening environment from which there is no escape. Many children are showing symptoms of hypoarousal or hyperarousal, not only in response to fear, but also for coping with boredom. This will lead to “desensitization”. This “desensitization” observed in Texas school children was pointed out when Dr Julie Westerlund, Professor of Science at TSU, and I started publishing articles in the Austin American Statesman, and speaking out about how children in Texas schools were having difficulty using scientific thinking because they had lost imagination and the ability to use higher thinking skills. The loss of spontaneity, vitality, and “imaginative play” that I have observed in many children causes them to appear more like “prisoners of war” than normal children.
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/opinion/feilke-standardized-testing-is-a-form-of-child-abu/nXrXw/
http://m.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/westerlund-state-tests-impede-learning/nXQR3/
After observing increasing signs of trauma (regression, dissociation, and constriction) in children in my elementary school, I wrote a professional report for the Texas Health & Human Services Committee (HHSC) in October 2013. Early on, when first observing these increasing symptoms, I and other mental health professionals in Texas, thought the symptoms were High Functioning Autism (HFA), since the symptoms of trauma and HFA are similar, and were occurring in higher rates in the children identified as Gifted & Talented with high spatial intelligence; however, it later became obvious that the environmental factor was chronic stress in the authoritarian school environment of “conformity” with a “one size fits all modality”.
In my report to the HHSC, I pointed out specific punitive methods that I observed to be used in this authoritarian “high stakes testing” environment and the impact it was having on all children. I described why this environment causes “psychological abuse”, since it meets the two conditions for psychological abuse, which are “entrapment” and “dominating control”. My report described how methods of punitive Applied Behavior Analysis that are used to train dogs and zoo animals is being used in elementary schools for the purpose of obtaining high performance scores on tests. To my knowledge, these punitive methods are continuing to be used, only with more “covert” secrecy, as illustrated in Pearson’s refusal to allow Texas parents the opportunity to review the contents of STAAR. I am continuing to protest strongly by saying that the only “valid” thing STAAR can measure is a child’s endurance for psychological torture.
Borderline/Narcissistic behaviors have become more “typical” in our society as a result of decades of overall national/global chronic stress and distrust in society, in addition to the authoritarian school environments, to the extent that today we are seeing a kind of “modern barbarianism”. “Covert” Narcissism is difficult to recognize in any system, whether it is a government, corporation, school, or family. It it everywhere and includes most of us on some level. It will take more mental health education for the general public to understand the dangerous impact that Common Core is having on elementary age children.
I will continue to speak up and point out that the punitive authoritarian elementary school environment of Common Core (TEKS/ STAAR in Texas) is not “normal”, but has created a dysfunctional system that is causing mental illness in the form of personality disorders on a grand scale.
We can no longer blame “codependency” in our society entirely on “smother mothers” and bullying fathers, or other complex circumstances; but, more credit for this dysfunction must be given to the smothering, bullying, punitive, authoritarian elementary school environment with its “one modality fits all”. We can no longer trust sending our children to schools that are “Doing Harm”. I am continuing to work with the Texas Parents Opt Out Movement, which is gaining momentum.
It is time for our dominant Narcissistic leaders, as well as our submissive general society, to overcome our “black and white thinking” and recognize that if we model “totalitarianism” in our schools, it will become “normal”, and that is what we are becoming as a society.
LikeLike
The Texas Parents Opt Out Movement is gaining momentum because more parents are beginning to recognize the harm of this punitive authoritarian elementary school environment. It stifles the healthy social and emotional development of children in the form of “learned helplessness”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
LikeLike
[…] Why Empathy for Children Matters […]
LikeLike