For as long as I can remember, I have wanted my students to care about things. Care about your classmates, about your teachers, about the spaces at school, about the spiders and the snakes, the trees. As they grew older, I would want them to care about the whole wide world—waste, pollution, war, hunger, extinction. Actually, young children feel empathy very quickly and intensely for aspects of the natural and social world. I remember many impassioned speeches from them (when I grow up, I’m going to take care of the whole world), and also expressions of care and concern for little creatures, for trees, and at a later age, the quieter feeling of compassion for people whose lives are very difficult.
Raising awareness—to spark off feelings of care in others—is a part of my educational plan. Actually, it is my ‘action’, it is the thing that I’ve chosen to do in response to my feelings of empathy and care for the world! I think these days we’re riding a wave of this kind of ‘care-raising’, if you will. Excellent books are being written for even very young children that sensitively introduce complex realities such as poverty and injustice. Other media, too, are being designed to evoke this sense in children early on. Educational curricula formally acknowledge this need as well. Blissful ignorance is now neither possible nor desirable for the young.
Today, thinking about the topic of care, I’m looking afresh at my eagerness to create exposure and tell the untold stories. For some students over the years, this sense of care in fact turns into a burdensome thing, a sadness that distorts their daily life. That’s not the intention, although to be honest I prefer it to resignation (well, that’s just the way the world works) or denial (there’s so much to be glad for in the world, why be so negative all the time). Maybe it is when care cannot be followed by a positive action, that it remains an uncomfortable feeling within. That is unless some thought or other comes along that quietens the inner tension, or some action that releases it. For me, feelings of care seem to rise up in the midline of my ribcage, in response to all kinds of triggers. The feeling often translates into action when there is something immediate that I can do—write a letter, pick up the phone, give someone a hug.
But, I’m thinking now, it matters less whether or not action follows. It’s just heart-warming every time a person—young or old—can have feelings of care about something other than their own interest! And if this feeling can be shared with others, could it not have its own ripple effect in the world?
1 William Stringfellow, Count it All Joy, 1999