Cognitive Empathy

I have written before about empathy and its dangers. Turns out I was writing about just one type of empathy:

emotional empathy.

I’m probably way behind most of you, but there is apparently another form of empathy. You got it: cognitive empathy.

Which means this: trying to understand the perspective of other people and why that perspective makes sense to them.

(And the flip side: trying to understand your own perspective and why it makes sense to you.)

Not a lot of that type of empathy going on these days.

And

exactly the type

of empathy we need more of.

Especially in schools.

Here’s a thought: While true Critical Race Theory is not taught anywhere in K-12 schools (cuz this level of theory tends to get taught in college and graduate schools), its outcomes —

  • questioning mainstream assumptions

  • revising traditional narratives

  • critiquing events and understandings through a number of lenses, especially lenses that are under- or mis-represented

  • co-creating a fuller understanding of history and literature and what it means to be human

— are arguably the very point and aim of a democratic education. (Even math and the sciences, which tend to revolve around right answers and factual information, are nevertheless constructs that highlight certain things over others and whose oversights might be interesting for students to think about.)

Think the Nth. The rich understanding that emerges from shared perspectives, understanding that manifests in individual people uniquely but is nonetheless co-constructed from a number of different takes on reality, all of which are legitimate because, well, they exist.

Can we substitute cognitive empathy for the good work so many teachers are doing to prepare our students intellectually and practically for a robust, inclusive democracy? Is there anyone on the planet who would argue that this skill is objectionable?

(I know: It’s a wishful and largely rhetorical question.) But still:

Can we polish this skill ourselves?

(Credit for my discovery of this concept goes to Robert Wright’s Nonzero Newsletter 11/8/21.)

Betsy BurrisComment