Abstract
While compassion primarily takes the form of an individual response to the suffering of others, it does not operate within a vacuum. As we have seen in various ways throughout this book, compassion is shaped, disrupted and informed by institutional processes and structures. That this is so requires us to consider the extent to which schools – and the teachers who work within them – promote or inhibit compassion through their general ethos, culture and practices. As the Framework for Character Education published by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham suggests, ‘character is largely caught through role-modelling and emotional contagion. School culture and ethos are therefore essential.’
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Notes
- 1.
http://www.charterforcompassion.org/index.php/charter-for-compassionate-schools; emphasis in original.
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- 4.
All UK-based awarding bodies offering programmes and qualifications.
- 5.
For a survey of empirical literature on role-modelling see Sanderse 2013.
- 6.
The use of the term emulate rather than imitate is deliberate, given the former includes the bringing of the observed and valued virtue into the character of the child in a critical way. The term imitation seems to denote mere mimicry. Kristjànsson (2015) draws on the Aristotelian notion of ‘emulation’ with regard to the process through which young people can come to learn from the virtues of others. As Sanderse (2013, p. 36) also suggests emulation involves greater educative depth than imitation, and moves the child from ‘becoming like the teacher’ to ‘becoming like what the teacher exemplifies’.
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ARC DE150100926 ‘How Australian High Schools Educate for Global Citizenship’.
- 9.
In his recent detailed sociological exploration of the family as it relates to the community in the USA, Robert Putnam (2015) draws some interesting pictures of contemporary forms of family, including the impact of increasing work pressures.
- 10.
A separate study from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues reports that ‘as competition and accountability increase, the gap between professional altruistic motivations and working practices conducive to such motives increases. Teachers in this study were pleased to have the opportunity to discuss issues of character and virtue, arguing that these had been squeezed out of discourse by the predominance of quasi-accountability measures. The apparently relentless focus on technique, audit trails and assessment risks endangering the enthusiasm and goodwill of teachers found in this study. The finding that colleagues provide support and in some ways ameliorate the stress of such demands highlights the importance of such relationships in good teaching practice’.
- 11.
It has been assumed that participation in sports clubs provided a platform for the development of character, but recent research found no correlation between such engagement and performance on moral dilemma-based assessments (Arthur et al. 2015a). More evidence is needed which examines this further, and so participation in sports clubs is included here with this proviso. The same study did find a correlation with participation in music, choir and drama-based activities.
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Peterson, A. (2017). Schools as Compassionate Institutions: Teachers, Families and Communities. In: Compassion and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54838-2_7
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