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The acclaimed program for fostering empathy and emotional literacy in children―with the goal of creating a more civil society, one child at a time
Roots of Empathy—an evidence-based program developed in 1996 by longtime educator and social entrepreneur Mary Gordon—has already reached more than a million children in 14 countries, including Canada, the US, Japan, Australia, and the UK. Now, as The New York Times reports that “empathy lessons are spreading everywhere amid concerns over the pressure on students from high-stakes tests and a race to college that starts in kindergarten,” Mary Gordon explains the value of and how best to nurture empathy and social and emotional literacy in all children—and thereby reduce aggression, antisocial behavior, and bullying.
“Mary Gordon has created a brilliant strategy for teaching young children the essential skills to see the mind within each person… Empathy in all its forms is encouraged and cultivated in this science-based, emotion-inspiring, life-changing immersion in the inner world of human development.”
—from the foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, author of The Developing Mind and Parenting from the Inside Out
“Empathy, an innate human quality that arises in a child from nurturing attachment relationships, is increasingly rare in our stressed, alienated, and disconnected culture. Mary Gordon's Roots of Empathy program, outlined in this indispensable book, provides young students with an environment in which they can interact with someone even more vulnerable than they, under the care and attention of loving adults. Empathy grows naturally.”
—Gabor Maté, MD, author of Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
“[An] impressive book... It’s a bold and wonderful idea, part of a movement to put empathetic understanding of other people alongside the academic concerns of education and close to the center of our society.”
—The Globe and Mail
“This brilliant program belongs in every classroom in every school in every country of the world, forever. There’s no better way to teach empathy—the essential human trait.”
—Raffi Cavoukian, singer, author, and founder of Child Honoring
“Mary Gordon has opened the door to finally treating the whole child in a practical, no-nonsense, yet sensitive and compassionate way.”
—Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto
“In this engaging book, Gordon describes how her program has helped reduce incidences of aggression and bullying… This ‘emotional literacy’ allows Roots of Empathy to educate, as Gordon puts it, ‘both the mind and the heart.’”
—Ode
“I’ve long recommended the Roots of Empathy program in my own work with parents, children, and educators, which, like Mary Gordon’s program, is focused on teaching children how to do the right thing. Roots of Empathy is an essential book for every one of us invested in cultivating greater empathy in children—whether at home or in the classroom.”
—Michele Borba, EdD, author of Building Moral Intelligence and Parents Do Make a Difference
“Emboldened by what infants and young children have taught us about how early in life the seeds of compassion are planted and what it takes to grow the roots of empathy deeply, Mary Gordon strives to bring about no less than world peace and protection for our planet’s future, starting with schools and classrooms everywhere, one child, one parent, one teacher at a time.”
—T. Berry Brazelton, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School and Founder, Brazelton Touchpoints Center and Joshua Sparrow, MD, Director of Special Initiatives, Brazelton Touchpoints Center, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, authors of the Touchpoints books
