Kindergarteners from across School District 58 have not yet learned long division, but they are already "raising a civilization," in the words of Roots of Empathy founder Mary Gordon.

Youngsters from kindergartens at each elementary school in Merritt as well as Princeton completed the Roots of Empathy program this week. The program is centred on students' interaction with a newborn baby and its parents over the course of a school year.

Lessons are designed to use the growing baby's interactions with its parents to create empathy, or the ability to recognize and share others' emotions, in the students.

"By bringing the baby in with the family, kids are able to see the connection," says Peggy Forsyth of Merritt Youth and Family Resources Society. "Every school has their own family."

In Merritt and Princeton, the Merritt Youth and Family Resources Society and School District 58 have jointly presented Roots of Empathy for the last five years. Forsyth co-ordinates the program with Jane Kempston of School District 58.

The Roots of Empathy curriculum is based on themes like communications, sleep, emotions, and safety, explains Forsyth.

The theme, as it relates to a baby's development, is introduced to the students in a pre-visit lesson.
Then, when parents and babies visit the classroom, the students observe how the baby expresses its feelings and how the parents respond. The students discuss their findings in a post-visit lesson.

At Bench Elementary School last Friday, the kindergarteners in Sandra Kane's class bid farewell to their baby for the year, Frances Reid, and her parents, Jen and Ryan Reid.

Forsyth played a DVD message from Gordon that explained the philosophy behind Roots of Empathy.
"The love between a parent and a baby is the foundation of Roots of Empathy," said Gordon.

"They're able to find the humanity in themselves and then to find it in others.

"What's happening…is the raising of a civilization."

Forsyth agrees. She adds that some of the children would only have the opportunity to see an empathetic relationship at school.

"They find it cuts down on aggression, bullying. It creates empathy, right?"

A University of Michigan study published in Personality and Social Psychology Review last year found that today's college students show 40 per cent less empathy than students in the 1980s and 1990s.
The study examined 72 studies measuring empathy conducted over the last 30 years using information collected from nearly 14,000 students.

"The results were startling: almost 75 per cent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago," noted a Scientific American article about the study published last January.

A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in January paints a similar picture.
Researchers from the University of Toronto and Duke University in Durham, N.C., compared past studies of physicians' empathy when interacting with patients.

Based on recordings of conversations between doctors and patients, the researchers concluded that doctors fail to respond to emotional cues from patients up to 90 per cent of the time.

Roots of Empathy began as a pilot project in Toronto in 1996 and has since spread across Canada.
Schools in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and United Kingdom have adopted the program as well.

"We started about October, when Frances was four months old," said Forsyth at Bench Friday. She noted that participating babies are usually between two and four months old and come from local parents.

"Interior Health generally helps us. Every school has their own family."

Forsyth says that although Roots of Empathy is only being offered to kindergarten students in Merritt at present, the program could extend all the way until Grade 8.

"We have the curriculum. One year, we tried it at the middle school.

"Right now, we don't have enough instructors."