Educating Insular Minds

Most people would agree that anti-social behaviour – from taunts and intimidation to exploitation and violence – should be curbed. But what can education do about it?

One way to approach this problem is to focus on the degree of mental insularity that needs to be overcome. There is a wide spectrum of propensity for interpersonal engagement amongst the young. At one end, there are those who empathise with others, respect their concerns, are well disposed and equipped to talk things through even when there are disagreements, and seek others’ views before acting in ways that may affect them. At the other, we have those who tend not to register others’ feelings, are often oblivious to their perspectives, rigidly refuse to discuss or even listen to contrary arguments whatever the evidence, and act as they please regardless of what others may think.  

The challenge for educators is to help the young develop in the direction of reducing their mental insularity and becoming more inclined and able to engage with others constructively. There are three key components to achieving this:

·      Empathic Thoughtfulness: moving the learners’ moral sensibility outwards through an expanding circle so they can appreciate how others might feel, and are more disposed to take the wellbeing of others into consideration.

·      Cognitive Thoughtfulness: developing the learners’ critical and collaborative reasoning skills so they have a better understanding of the roles of objective evidence and logical argument, and can deliberate with others in assessing what warrants belief.

·      Volitional Thoughtfulness: cultivating the learners’ control of impulse and lethargy so that they are disposed to act appropriately in light of the informed views of others, and avoid irresponsible choices.

What does this entail in practice? Above all, it calls on educators to adopt techniques that can take individuals out of a state of ‘closed mindedness’ and show them the positive experiences of mutual concern, collaborative reasoning, and inclusive decision-making. 

For example, instead of celebrating only one type of ‘success’ (e.g., formal test results), young people should have the opportunities to learn about the valuable contributions each other can make. Where there has been transgression, restorative justice methods should be applied to ensure the transgressors learn from those they have hurt and change their mindset and behaviour in the future.

There should be lessons on how to sift through and evaluate sources of information to gauge their reliability; explanations of how objective scientific and scholarly investigations actually work; case studies of serious distortion and deception in the media; and team exercises in cooperating to find provisionally acceptable answers. 

Debates, which focus on the skills to press for one claim or its opposite regardless of its overall merit, should always be supplemented by sessions that nurture abilities for conflict-resolution and consensus-building. More widely, decisions on a range of issues that affect the students in a class, their school, or the wider community, should be made through democratic engagement – which may involve elections, participatory voting, or deliberative conference.

Insular minds ignore the suffering, reasoning, and perspective of other people when these are critically relevant to how one should behave. Learning to engage with others as we need them to engage with us must be at the heart of education.