Learning using the Empathetic Imagination.

"For many years my heart demanded a crystal ball from us
And desired from a stranger what itself had" (Hafez)

In this current age of authoritarianism and weak civil society, characterized by a deficit in empathy and too much disconnection, its important to highlight what should be obvious. True intelligence is relational and empathetic.

Children, when they first enter school, are remarkably adept empathizers. They learn to relate to their classmates by being attentive to their presence, interests and concerns, which is the central quality of children that makes a classroom possible.

But a young child's empathetic ability is not limited simply to relating with their classmates. A child does not find it improper but natural to empathize and relate with an isolated tree by feeling for its loneliness, or to use his or her empathetic imagination to actively relate with the qualitative nature of the number 2 or even the infinite.

The world of the empathetic imagination, native to a young child, is where immediate experience, intellectual concepts like science and mathematics, art, and empathy unite: where everything takes on a symbolic and relational character. It is where the qualitative, relational view of reality, lost since Descartes, is recovered. It is the reality closest to the reality of the poet or artist: where knowledge, rather than remaining purely quantitative and detached from us, becomes human, obtains meaning, and is available to all.

In the modern world, the deficit in empathy towards nature, and reality more generally, is the root cause of the climate crisis. It is the root cause of our disconnection from ourselves and each other, our weakened civil society, and our students disconnection from their learning. With the first comprehensive K-8 STEAM curriculum, together with a rich computational environment focused on development of both their empathetic and mathematical models of reality, we can help students learn both empathetic and technical skills, and finally allow teachers to utilize their natural empathetic impulses throughout the entire K-8 curriculum.

E-mail: info@empathet.com

Top: C. (grade 3) empathizing with two imaginary friends 'mathy' J. and 'literary' P by describing what each of them see and feel when they see the same two birds.
Bottom: G. (grade 1) empathizing with the qualitative nature of adding by personifying it.