Roots of empathy—an evidence-based program developed in 1996 by longtime educator and social entrepreneur Mary Gordon—has already reached more than 270,000 children in Canada, the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Now, as The New York Times reports that “empathy lessons are spreading everywhere amid concerns over the pressure on students from high-stakes tests and a race to college that starts in kindergarten,” Mary Gordon explains the value of and how best to nurture empathy and social and emotional literacy in all children—and thereby reduce aggression, antisocial behavior, and bullying.
Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Mary Gordon has created a brilliant strategy for teaching young children the essential skills to see the mind within each person… Empathy in all its forms is encouraged and cultivated in this science-based, emotion-inspiring, life-changing immersion in the inner world of human development.”
—from the foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, author of The Developing Mind and Parenting from the Inside Out
“Empathy, an innate human quality that arises in a child from nurturing attachment relationships, is increasingly rare in our stressed, alienated, and disconnected culture. Mary Gordon's Roots of Empathy program, outlined in this indispensable book, provides young students with an environment in which they can interact with someone even more vulnerable than they, under the care and attention of loving adults. Empathy grows naturally.”
—Gabor Maté, MD, author of Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
“[An] impressive book... It’s a bold and wonderful idea, part of a movement to put empathetic understanding of other people alongside the academic concerns of education and close to the center of our society.”
—The Globe and Mail
“This brilliant program belongs in every classroom in every school in every country of the world, forever. There’s no better way to teach empathy—the essential human trait.”
—Raffi Cavoukian, singer, author, and founder of Child Honoring
“Mary Gordon has opened the door to finally treating the whole child in a practical, no-nonsense, yet sensitive and compassionate way.”
—Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto
“In this engaging book, Gordon describes how her program has helped reduce incidences of aggression and bullying… This ‘emotional literacy’ allows Roots of Empathy to educate, as Gordon puts it, ‘both the mind and the heart.’”
—Ode
“I’ve long recommended the Roots of Empathy program in my own work with parents, children, and educators, which, like Mary Gordon’s program, is focused on teaching children how to do the right thing. Roots of Empathy is an essential book for every one of us invested in cultivating greater empathy in children—whether at home or in the classroom.”
—Michele Borba, EdD, author of Building Moral Intelligence and Parents Do Make a Difference
“Emboldened by what infants and young children have taught us about how early in life the seeds of compassion are planted and what it takes to grow the roots of empathy deeply, Mary Gordon strives to bring about no less than world peace and protection for our planet’s future, starting with schools and classrooms everywhere, one child, one parent, one teacher at a time.”
—T. Berry Brazelton, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School and Founder, Brazelton Touchpoints Center and Joshua Sparrow, MD, Director of Special Initiatives, Brazelton Touchpoints Center, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, authors of the Touchpoints books
—from the foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, author of The Developing Mind and Parenting from the Inside Out
“Empathy, an innate human quality that arises in a child from nurturing attachment relationships, is increasingly rare in our stressed, alienated, and disconnected culture. Mary Gordon's Roots of Empathy program, outlined in this indispensable book, provides young students with an environment in which they can interact with someone even more vulnerable than they, under the care and attention of loving adults. Empathy grows naturally.”
—Gabor Maté, MD, author of Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
“[An] impressive book... It’s a bold and wonderful idea, part of a movement to put empathetic understanding of other people alongside the academic concerns of education and close to the center of our society.”
—The Globe and Mail
“This brilliant program belongs in every classroom in every school in every country of the world, forever. There’s no better way to teach empathy—the essential human trait.”
—Raffi Cavoukian, singer, author, and founder of Child Honoring
“Mary Gordon has opened the door to finally treating the whole child in a practical, no-nonsense, yet sensitive and compassionate way.”
—Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto
“In this engaging book, Gordon describes how her program has helped reduce incidences of aggression and bullying… This ‘emotional literacy’ allows Roots of Empathy to educate, as Gordon puts it, ‘both the mind and the heart.’”
—Ode
“I’ve long recommended the Roots of Empathy program in my own work with parents, children, and educators, which, like Mary Gordon’s program, is focused on teaching children how to do the right thing. Roots of Empathy is an essential book for every one of us invested in cultivating greater empathy in children—whether at home or in the classroom.”
—Michele Borba, EdD, author of Building Moral Intelligence and Parents Do Make a Difference
“Emboldened by what infants and young children have taught us about how early in life the seeds of compassion are planted and what it takes to grow the roots of empathy deeply, Mary Gordon strives to bring about no less than world peace and protection for our planet’s future, starting with schools and classrooms everywhere, one child, one parent, one teacher at a time.”
—T. Berry Brazelton, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School and Founder, Brazelton Touchpoints Center and Joshua Sparrow, MD, Director of Special Initiatives, Brazelton Touchpoints Center, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, authors of the Touchpoints books
About the Author
Mary Gordon is an internationally recognized educator, author, child advocate, and parenting expert who has created award-winning programs focused on the power of empathy. In 1996, she founded Roots of Empathy, which now offers programs in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and elsewhere. Gordon speaks and consults to governments, educational organizations, and public institutions. She is a Member of the Order of Canada and an Ashoka Fellow. Her Web site is http://www.rootsofempathy.org.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a social worker who has been running parenting groups for mothers referred by Child Protective Services for a few years now, I loved this book and the brilliant work and program Dr. Mary Gordon describes in it. I would so love to see this program in all our schools here in the States as I firmly believe it would help our children develop better social and emotional skills on multiple levels. In fact, the kind of sensitive, gentle observing and interacting that this program describes and encourages in the classroom would benefit all of us as it really focuses empathic attention and attunement right where it's needed most, with our infants and young children.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If everyone learned at a young age the importance of true compassion, understanding and empathy for other human beings- our world would be very different.
Teaching children information is very different than creating an experience to find out how others feel.
This critically helps us realize our common humanity...how our behavior affects others...what our emotions are...and how what we first-think, say and do -deeply impacts others.It leads to self-responsibilty-excatly what we all need more of.
This is critically important!
This Book and Program shows us how to incorportae this in our schools...through their interactions with babies.
What else happens that is quite amazing is that it gets children to open up about their own feelings...either form their time as babies or in how they may be felling in the "here and now"-
something that is very important.
Thanks for writing this book. I am hoping many others discover it.
Sincerely, Bonny Corbeil.
Virgin Islands.
Teaching children information is very different than creating an experience to find out how others feel.
This critically helps us realize our common humanity...how our behavior affects others...what our emotions are...and how what we first-think, say and do -deeply impacts others.It leads to self-responsibilty-excatly what we all need more of.
This is critically important!
This Book and Program shows us how to incorportae this in our schools...through their interactions with babies.
What else happens that is quite amazing is that it gets children to open up about their own feelings...either form their time as babies or in how they may be felling in the "here and now"-
something that is very important.
Thanks for writing this book. I am hoping many others discover it.
Sincerely, Bonny Corbeil.
Virgin Islands.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Sam
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Mary Gordon grew up in a family of super-feelers, with parents deeply concerned about social justice. She couldn't buy black Mary Janes because little girls in India did not have shoes at all. And her family dinner table often included newly released convicts, invited for their first hot meal as free men. Gordon has now taken her extraordinarily high Emotional Intelligence and created a program to spread empathy across the globe, starting with elementary-age children.
The Roots of Empathy program brings newborns into the classroom once a month and uses the experience to build lessons about relationships, parenting, and empathy. The program has been successful in reducing bullying, abusive parenting, and prejudice.
Parents should read Roots of Empathy to learn real-world strategies for encouraging empathy in their own children. Gordon writes, "The instructor uses well-known children's literature to illustrate emotions such as loneliness and sadness and to underscore themes such as inclusion and bullying." Parents can use storytime to talk about feelings with their children, opening up the opportunity for those conversations later in life.
Gordon's overarching premise is that babies are uniquely positioned to teach emotional literacy. Students learn by "observing the baby's experiences and the emotions they inspire; naming the emotions; anchoring the emotion in themselves privately through discussion; reflection, art, and journaling; and discussing their feelings with others." Parents too can take lessons from this progression. The next time your child sees a kid crying is an opportunity for you to help you child expand his or her emotional intelligence.
Gordon also points out practices that inhibit the development of empathy. "Labeling children as the 'Down syndrome child' or the 'immigrant child' is a failure of inclusion," she writes. "It is defining people by their differences and erecting barriers to recognizing their achievements and contributions." Conversely, showing children their commonality with others paves the way for them to be caring, giving adults. The authors of the The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement similarly found that the most effective way to combat the growing wave of narcissism in American society is to create a sense connection with others. They wrote, "When we see ourselves as connected to others, egotism dissipates." Gordon's book puts a how-to lesson behind that conclusion.
Gordon's book, however, is devoid of sociological or psychological research. The book is aspirational, along the lines of, if every classroom adopted the Roots of Empathy, we could change the world. This is repeated over and over in different variants and slows the book down at times.
The book also includes a few dozen drawings from Roots of Empathy students, showing what their wishes for the infants that have acted as their teachers during the school year. Some kids wish for people to be nice to the baby. Others wish for the baby to have safe housing, or to live in a world with no war. The lesson from the drawings is that kids are naturally empathetic, and we only need to encourage those feelings to emerge. Gordon never discusses politics, but the reader might be struck by the fact that none of the children are concerned about wealth transfers or military strength, two constant themes in American political discussion. So there is a political lesson in this book as well: Our children display a natural capacity for empathy. This ingrained concern for others can flourish, if only we seek to show people what they have in common, instead of what pulls them apart. Most American political talk today, however, is about fights among factions--rich versus poor, Keynes versus Hayek, conservative versus progressive. Those divisive conversations kill empathy at its root, and there aren't powerful forces out there to create a balance. We've left it up to people like Mary Gordon to save our natural empathic natures from this destruction. But we need to do more to help them succeed.
The Roots of Empathy program brings newborns into the classroom once a month and uses the experience to build lessons about relationships, parenting, and empathy. The program has been successful in reducing bullying, abusive parenting, and prejudice.
Parents should read Roots of Empathy to learn real-world strategies for encouraging empathy in their own children. Gordon writes, "The instructor uses well-known children's literature to illustrate emotions such as loneliness and sadness and to underscore themes such as inclusion and bullying." Parents can use storytime to talk about feelings with their children, opening up the opportunity for those conversations later in life.
Gordon's overarching premise is that babies are uniquely positioned to teach emotional literacy. Students learn by "observing the baby's experiences and the emotions they inspire; naming the emotions; anchoring the emotion in themselves privately through discussion; reflection, art, and journaling; and discussing their feelings with others." Parents too can take lessons from this progression. The next time your child sees a kid crying is an opportunity for you to help you child expand his or her emotional intelligence.
Gordon also points out practices that inhibit the development of empathy. "Labeling children as the 'Down syndrome child' or the 'immigrant child' is a failure of inclusion," she writes. "It is defining people by their differences and erecting barriers to recognizing their achievements and contributions." Conversely, showing children their commonality with others paves the way for them to be caring, giving adults. The authors of the The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement similarly found that the most effective way to combat the growing wave of narcissism in American society is to create a sense connection with others. They wrote, "When we see ourselves as connected to others, egotism dissipates." Gordon's book puts a how-to lesson behind that conclusion.
Gordon's book, however, is devoid of sociological or psychological research. The book is aspirational, along the lines of, if every classroom adopted the Roots of Empathy, we could change the world. This is repeated over and over in different variants and slows the book down at times.
The book also includes a few dozen drawings from Roots of Empathy students, showing what their wishes for the infants that have acted as their teachers during the school year. Some kids wish for people to be nice to the baby. Others wish for the baby to have safe housing, or to live in a world with no war. The lesson from the drawings is that kids are naturally empathetic, and we only need to encourage those feelings to emerge. Gordon never discusses politics, but the reader might be struck by the fact that none of the children are concerned about wealth transfers or military strength, two constant themes in American political discussion. So there is a political lesson in this book as well: Our children display a natural capacity for empathy. This ingrained concern for others can flourish, if only we seek to show people what they have in common, instead of what pulls them apart. Most American political talk today, however, is about fights among factions--rich versus poor, Keynes versus Hayek, conservative versus progressive. Those divisive conversations kill empathy at its root, and there aren't powerful forces out there to create a balance. We've left it up to people like Mary Gordon to save our natural empathic natures from this destruction. But we need to do more to help them succeed.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very valuable resource
The book explains the need for empathy education, as well as how using babies as ambassadors for empathy can change classroom and school climate. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Anne
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
This is one program and a wealth of knowledge that could easily change the world, and is. I hope to excite others of this work.
Published 2 months ago by Claire Brothers
5.0 out of 5 stars
a life changing book
Powerful book demonstrating the impact infants can have on children, particularly those who have previously lacked proper parenting. Read more
Published 3 months ago by L. Rita Sloaon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent writing
If you are interested in stopping bullying this book is extremely helpful and insightful in understanding why it happens and how it can be stopped. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Marianna
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great ideas for any school
This is a great idea for any school system.. i bought four of these books to share with other people at my school.
Published 14 months ago by mizzeliz
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, well worth the $$$
Great book, amazing author, wonderful subject. This book really opens your eyes to the idea that empathy is teachable and offers some practical ideas on how to get a roots of... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mumoftwo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic for Teachers and Parents!
Gordon has an accessibility to her work that is engaging and inspiring. I was pleasantly surprised by this book and how quick the read is compared to some other books in this... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Prof. Corwin
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Missing Piece
In the U.S. the current buzzword is "Social Emotional Learning". This books provides a useful model for effective social-emotional teaching that is noticeably lacking in U.S. Read more
Published on August 31, 2010 by D. Monteith
1.0 out of 5 stars
Roots of Empathy
I am a little disappointed with my purchase. I found the writing style to be dense. It did not go straight to the point to tell me the reason for bringing a baby into the... Read more
Published on March 13, 2010 by Gladys Landing
