Empathy and Partializing

I  use Carol Bly's anthology Changing the Bully Who Rules the World at every plausible teaching opportunity. One of her suggestions for encouraging moral growth finds its way even into classes for which the anthology is no appropriate: the practice of empathy and partializing. Basically, to empathize is to respond to someone's statement by saying, "I understand you to say:" with a non-parroty summary of what the person said following the colon. The original speaker then either agrees that the paraphraser got it right or tries again. The exercise continues until the speaker is satisfied that he or she is understood.

Partializing is a response to one kind of glitch in this process: the utterance of quite general statements which the responder cannot without idiocy paraphrase or summarize. If someone says, "I hate cats," there isn't much for the partner to do except "It sounds like you have negative affect towards cats," and that is stupid. So one says instead, "What is it about cats that you hate?" In general, to partialize is to invite someone to break up a large generalization into something that one can get one's head around. After partializing, one goes back to empathy.

This exercise seems to me extremely helpful in classrooms. I sometimes devote the first ten minutes just to this, with students exchanging statements and then changing partners. Partly, this is powerful because it makes sure that the first voice people hear in the class isn't mine. (One of my professional mantras: if you once take the ball, you will never be able to give it away.) Also, people begin class by forming a relationship to another student. Also, people begin class with the experience of being heard and hearing somebody else.

Ultimately, the reasons why this works are pointless. It works. The only way to know it works is to try it a few times. Something in people's psychology makes this an important thing to do.

One needs prompts to start the process: topics about which to produce a good sentence. Sometimes, I write prompts appropriate to the day's reading. Sometimes, at the beginning, the prompts are more general. I often send them out by email the day before, asking students to write on three of the ten -- one or two substantial sentences. 

Here is one such set of prompts:

1. I like some places better than others because…

2. I get really unhappy when

3. Happiness requires

4. As we get more mature, we..

5. Big houses

6. Rural landscapes

7. People who use big words

8. Politicians

9. Shopping malls

    10. My  local public library