Using literature to increase students’ empathy
Asking students to reflect on emotions through literary works can enhance their empathy. Here are some tried and tested methods
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Reading comments on social issues online often worries me because a lot of them tend to be judgmental and self-righteous. I often wonder why this happens and conclude that it stems from a lack of empathy.
The author of The Everything Psychology Book, Kendra Cherry, defines empathy as “the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view and imagine yourself in their place. Essentially, it is putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they are feeling.” Empathy makes people less judgmental, and we can nurture this quality in students through various approaches.
One is to expose our students to experiences that differ from their own. As a Japanese literature lecturer, I do so using literary works. These include Matsuda Aoko’s short story Kanojo ga Dekiru Koto (which means “What she can do”), which portrays a woman facing societal pressure after a divorce; Ichikawa Saou’s novel Hunchback, about the daily life of a disabled woman; and Kamatani Yuuki’s manga Shimanami Tasogare (which means “Twilight in Shimanami”), which follows a gay teenager’s struggle with identity. Through reading such works, students can start to think about the social issues they discuss and understand others’ life experiences. Other methods I use include:
Encouraging students to express their thoughts and feelings
The classroom should be a space where students can freely express their opinions without fear of being judged. To facilitate this, I give worksheets with questions for students to fill in after they’ve read a literary work. We then discuss these questions in class. One group takes turns presenting the results of their reading, and then the other students respond.
The worksheet starts with basic questions that require lower-order thinking skills, such as identifying the characters, the setting, and the plot. The questions then progress to more complex prompts aimed at developing higher-order thinking skills. They cover how the characters in the story are described, why they are described that way and the subtext. When students express their opinions, I encourage them to speak up by emphasising that there is no wrong opinion or answer.
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Inviting students to imagine themselves as characters in the story
The worksheet also includes questions about whether the story made them feel happy, sad, angry or worried, encouraging them to explore these emotions. I also ask students to imagine themselves as the characters in the story. For example, when discussing the short story Kanojo Ga Dekiru Koto (“What she can do”), I ask students to visualise themselves as the protagonist, a divorced woman who is judged negatively and unsupported by the people around her. I then ask students to identify every emotion she might feel and then we discuss them.
Get students to reflect on actions to take
At the end of my lecture, I invite students to reflect on the issues discussed in the literary work. For example, after reading the novel Hunchback by Ichikawa Saou, I ask students to consider whether they and the communities they belong to have shown empathy towards people with disabilities and then about steps they can take to better the situation for these people. These steps don’t need to be grand; small but concrete actions work well, such as reading more literary works about people with disabilities, showing empathy to marginalised individuals, and refraining from posting critical comments on social media.
Although we are still far from a just and equal society, using literature classes to foster empathy in our students is a small step that we can take towards creating a society that shows respect and empathy to all.
Rouli Esther is a lecturer in Japanese literature at the University of Indonesia.
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