Eric Barthold believes that we need to develop our ability to take another person’s perspective.
I would love to see our education system value actively build students’ ability to empathize and take others’ perspective. The lack of empathy is particularly obvious in today’s script of masculinity for young men and boys of all ages. In a society still often directed by men, the separation between ourselves and the “other” is inherent in how we define being male and therefore boys in particular have trouble understanding what it would feel like to be in someone else’s shoes, so to speak.
If our world placed more value on being empathetic we could lessen the many the tensions behind many pressing issues in today’s society, from environmental conservation to all forms of social justice and injustice (race, gender, class, and sexuality), simply by having the ability to actively understand another person’s experience and perspective.
by Rachel Signer
