"Empathy" is becoming the new classroom buzzword, pressed into wide service to signpost a valuable sensitivity at the heart of social and emotional accomplishment.

Not only in school: the online newspaper The Huffington Post lately made a splash of The Empathic Civilization by the "social and ethical prophet" Jeremy Rifkin.

Rifkin's meditation on the "race to global consciousness in a world of crisis" reminded Post editor Arianna Huffington of her own 2003 essay on altruism The Fourth Instinct> which she described as "the call to soul" – not to be confused with any call to survival, power or sex.

Rifkin defines empathy as an active emotional engagement – the willingness of an observer to become part of another's experience.

"We empathize with each other's struggles against death and for life," he writes. "One acknowledges the whiff of death in another's frailties and vulnerabilities. No one ever empathizes with a perfect being."

Curriculum studies on these lines – to counteract any baser drives toward bullying or prejudice – are getting into schools by way of junior and senior programs called The Seeds of Empathy and The Roots of Empathy, both developed in Canada by the educationalist, social entrepreneur, and child advocate Mary Gordon.

The latest country to try out The Roots of Empathy is Ireland. Mary Gordon visited the country, this week, and demonstrated the approach at Killenarden Senior School in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght.

Two classes were introduced to a mother and her six month old baby and were encouraged to observe in action what Mary Gordon described as "a near-perfect model of empathy and emotional attunement".

Return visits by mother and child over several months should allow the children to find out about the cognitive, social, physical and emotional milestones in the baby's development and the importance of nurturing and stimulation in brain development.

Through their interaction with the mother and baby, Gordon told The Irish Times , they come to understand that babies are affected by every experience, good and bad, and that early learning is dramatic. They also learn about the baby's vulnerabilities, the dangers of second-hand smoke and risks of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Shaken Baby Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

The Roots of Empathy is said to have reached more than 270,000 children in 11,000 classrooms worldwide since it was launched in 1996.

It claims among its supporters the ever-present Dalai Lama, Daniel Goleman, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Program and former Prime Minister of New Zealand.

It has won an international Changemakers award from the Ashoka Foundation and a third share in a global competition for programs designed to help youth at risk.

Roots of Empathy teaching is purposely atmospheric – but published effect sizes in relation to its ambition to develop pro social skills and combat bullying behavior in young children are modest. It scores around .07 in relation to improvements in behavior and the reduction of behavioral problems, and around .1 in relation to increasing pro-social behavior. (Evaluations of intensive classroom interventions such as FAST and PATHS have scored around .7.)

Those effects sizes are likely to be reviewed and revised as a result of a first European evaluation launched, last year, on the Isle of Man by Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, at the University of British Columbia, Tamara Russell at King's College, London, and Fiona Scott, Roots of Empathy director of research.
 
Their pre- and post-test survey team recently spent three days in the island briefing teachers and issuing pre-test questionnaires to program and comparison classes. Post-test surveys will follow after nine months. 

As for this week's Dublin demonstration, Deirbhile Nic Craith, education officer at the Irish National Teachers Organisation, is reported as saying that Roots of Empathy has the potential to fit Ireland's Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) agenda.

"Children respond very well to the relationship between a baby and a mother and it could be used as a resource for teachers implementing the SPHE program. The problem is that it would take up more than the allocated time for SPHE. It might work if the certified instructor was the support or resource teacher in the school."

Fergus Finlay, chief executive of Barnados, also watched the demonstration. He told the Irish Times. "Such programs help children develop resilience to deal with and cope with adversity, but if it was introduced here, it would have to be piloted and adapted for Irish children."