Sadie Jameson
Professor Jennifer Colby
LS 233: Essay #1
September 10, 2016
Empathy Through the Arts
According to the webster dictionary empathy is,” the feeling that you understand
and share another person's experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone
else's feelings,” which is something that can be taught in the classroom today’s. With
the study of history, students are exposed to many different cultures and lives that have
come before theirs. We will be able to show how different cultures lived and how they
impacted history with the art they enriched us with today. Now this concept may be too
advanced for younger children , but if we slowly start introducing this idea of empathy to
students live, they will be able to connect with others with their experiences, idea, and
emotions. What better way to do this than through the arts.
In our own proud state of California there is a group of people, throughout history
even, whom seem to be over looked, the Native Americans. They are often looked as
second class citizens, but we fail to see how they have enriched our lives with art. In a
class we could have a whole segment on the different tribes and how they have
impacted our lives. There could be field trips to the Indian reservations where students
could see demonstrations on how life used to be, giving them this connection to what
life was like for the native Americans. This connection will help the student have
empathy toward these people and the folk art they make. Not only would the student be
fulfilling the California standards, but with including art this experience will have a lasting
impression on them.The whole idea of empathy is to get the student to understand other
people's emotions and by using art this ideal will be implanted on them and this skill can
be used the rest of their lives.
While time has definitely changed from when the Native Americans were here
and even from 10 years ago.With the ever growing social media, it is easy to hide
the what one really feels and in time if you do express how you feel it is easy to fall
victim to others criticism. So instead of expressing themselves kids just bottle everything
up instead of sharing how they really feel.This can cause serious mental issues that the
student will have to deal with the rest of their lives. While social media does let people
connect from all over the world they seem to be missing a key element in their
relationships and it empathy. We need to create a place where student feel free enough
to share what they have gone through or simply how they feel. With different projects in
class we give kids the options to express these things to us and others. One idea to
connect the student with others while incorporating social media could be making a
mural, a simple painting, or any other form of art and recording it while you do. With the
video the student would be able to post it on various social media platforms. This would
finally allow student to express what they are feeling and if we could get multiple
students to do this, they are bound to find connections with others who share a common
interest or experience.
The whole idea of empathy is to get the student to understand other people's
emotions and by using art this ideal will be implanted on them and this skill can be used
the rest of their lives. When we incorporate this idea of empathy we will be able to not
only teach standards with a deeper meaning and get students to connect more on a
“spiritual” level, but they will hopefully develop this skill of caring for others that they will
use. Teachers would be able to show some of the high arts and have the students
share what they think the artist or what the subject in the painting is was thinking. They
will also be able to use the new platforms our generation has of reaching others across
the world, so the student now have more information than ever. All this new resources
that technology has brought us can be highly impactful on lives, but sometimes the old
way of field trips and hands on learning is the best way to reach students. School is a
place to help students develop skills that will help further them in life, empathy is
something that their needs to be a bigger push for. Let's start a revolution in our
education where we teach kids to actually care what others have experienced and it
starts by the connections through the arts.
Liberal Studies: Empathy Through the Arts
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