[Music]
to star but I want you to do an honesty
quiz with me I want everybody in the
room think back to when you’re a
teenager for some that might be take it
a lot longer but others I hope not think
back to when you’re a teenager and if
you did at least one thing that you
didn’t tell your mother or your father
put your hand up
come on okay put your hands down if you
didn’t put your hand up it’s too late
the thing is that a lot of the youth and
young people get bad press we tend to
vilify young people not all the time but
you know very quickly in the media young
people are seen as the cause of problems
rather than the solution what I’m going
to do with you over the next couple of
minutes I hope is talk to you about why
youth are important but why empathy
education in terms of in schools with
youth in a very I think very innovative
way holds really good promise and
there’s something we should take
seriously by the way 80% of 82% to be
exact of young people grow up with
absolutely no problem in their life and
of the roughly 20% that do less than 20%
I have a problem 80% of those just grow
out of the problem so the rule to be a
good parent is do nothing
and actually it’s true but it’s really
interesting I’m doing a lot of more
serious work in relation to my work with
UNESCO in relation to youth extremism
and violence and it’s really and I did
use the term youth radicalization
because I think being radical as a youth
is a good thing I’m a radical adult
there’s nothing wrong with being a
radical youth but even in terms of a
really serious issue of violence
prevention and youth extremism it really
is interesting that in the work that
I’ve been doing with UNESCO and with the
UN what has become clear is that it’s
not just the internet that’s the issue
the issue actually is around empathy and
you heard a little bit earlier on
empathy so let’s talk about what is
empty and be really clear about what I’m
saying when I talk about empty so empty
first of all is not sympathy sympathy is
a completely different thing sympathy is
when you feel pity or when you feel
sorrow so and then when you look at what
empathy is empathy can either be static
or active okay so when you think about
empathy it’s the capacity to understand
where somebody is coming from to
identify with them to really feel for
them but not in a way that is pitiful
that’s static empty active empathy is
where you actually go and do something
about it and it’s really interesting
getting back to my pro youth statement
that if you look at things like 9/11
tsunami Hurricane Katrina research has
shown that the first people in to help
in human disaster has been youth now
that’s not to say all youth behavior is
good as we do know horrific Lee there
have been occasions where this has gone
the other way but in order to get to
that we get to that a bit later
as to why I’m thinking about this like
solution what I want to do to start with
is to think back to two examples one is
very personal for me which it you know
I’m very happy to share with you and one
then is more historical let’s start with
the historical one so I want you to
think back over 100 years ago to World
War one to Christmas Touma’s een in near
in Belgium near eeep
and think of Christmas Eve on a snowy
evening you had British and Irish and
French soldiers for pletely British and
Irish soldiers at that stage one side of
no-man’s land and you German soldiers on
the other side a no-man’s land
suddenly soldiers started to sing the
German soldiers started to sing still
not silent night they were applauded by
the British soldiers and the British
soldier signed Good King Wenceslas I’m
getting into the mood for Christmas then
two soldiers one from each side took a
very dangerous step and stood up
could’ve got shot went across shook
hands and peace broke out priest peace
broke out for quite a number of days the
soldier is mixed mingled shared schnapps
photographs of their children
chocolate celebrated Christmas together
and they even played a famous game of
football which by the way Germany won
one nil I believe from da Milan not that
that matters but the thing is that they
they identified with each other they had
human contact with each other and they
had warmth for each other
and then they had empathy for each other
and they were expected to go back
fighting and many of them were unable or
unwilling a number were court-martialed
for fraternizing with the enemy and
others were just sent back from the
front and other soldiers put in but it
is interesting that in 2000 1915 in the
Vosges mountains another peace broke out
between soldiers in a similar way an
amazing part of the story and this is
true that there was a cat now the cat
was called felix by the British soldiers
and nestor by the German soldiers which
is very confusing very confusing for the
cat the cat carried messages across
no-man’s land scribbled into a little
thing on his neck or her neck on
well his neck and believe it or not the
generals decided that the Koch will be
court-martialed and the cat was shot
know empty there
so I think we should start a campaign
for Felix stroke Nestor’s brought back
into not back to life but brought back
and to be condoned for his good behavior
but it is interesting that in a war
situation that is how powerful empathy
can be and the example for myself is not
it’s not a one that you know I talk
about very much and but I’m the youngest
of a large family my I’m from Dublin and
I had a very resourceful and very
resilient mother partly because my
father died in an accident when I was
very small over seven months old but I
went to a Christian brother school in
Dublin where corporal punishment was
rife and has reminded lately around this
whole issue when I read Roddy Doyle’s
new book smile and heard him been
interviewed about it and for there are
many people for whom the physical abuse
of schools was not an issue you know
they you know some famous broadcasters
I’m not going to name said it did me no
harm well good for you but it did a lot
of people harm and the interesting thing
about that story is thinking about
passive and active empathy for me was I
stood up for another kid in the class
and got hammered physically assaulted by
a lay teacher actually and after it
happened I remembered in the faces of my
peers that they could do nothing and I
saw a pity luckily for me getting back
to my mother I went home and I lived
nearby and I told my mother and my
mother came down and sorted it out and
when I say sorted it out I mean sorted
it out right up to the head brother she
was using active empathy think about
this now what we want for our kids when
they go to school and I work in an
education institution I really really
think we have to think seriously about
the Leaving Cert
I think we really have to think
seriously about education systems well
one thing we do know when we send our
kids to school is that we want them to
learn mathematics to read to write and
so forth but we also want them to be
good people we also want them to be
caring people regardless of religion
regardless of creed sex regardless of
everything we want them to be human
and I would argue very very strongly
that empathy education and schools
should be compulsory and can be done
easily and well there are two examples I
will give you one in more detail the
first example relates to the work of
Mary Gordon in Canada who’s developed a
program for primary schools called roots
of empathy an absolutely excellent
program pioneered by her and in that
program a small baby is brought into the
primary school with the mom or the dad
usually the mom into the school and the
children identify over a year with the
baby they make eye contact with the baby
the kids go at the baby they noticed
that the baby is sitting up they noticed
the babies ferreted they notice whatever
happens and they talk about it and they
talk about how the child has changed
they connect with the baby they don’t
see the child as in any way other than
that beautiful child and that program
roots of empathy which is entire schools
Bernard as I’ve introduced it is really
a burning program I am really interested
in adolescents in the research center
that I work in and with colleagues there
dr. Barrington Brady Kyra Boylan and
Daniel Kenan we’ve been working on
empathy education for secondary schools
and we’re doing that with the help of
young people calling me by that is we
train youth as researchers so just to
say when I talk about training youth as
researchers I don’t mean doing research
on youth
I mean youth actually doing the research
and I’ll give you some examples in a
moment of that so how that works is the
young people learn research methods they
learn bias they learn ethics they learn
all the things that you need for social
research and they actually have
developed a really really good training
manual on research methods it’s so good
that it’s better than some of my
colleagues teach in masters level and
I’ve said that publicly but it really is
good they’ve developed really really
good research manual and I’ll give you
three examples so what they do is they
do a piece of research and when they
complete the piece of research they make
a short four five minute video to share
the video in classrooms and as part of
the program around various issues so I
some examples of the work they’ve done
so for example one group we worked we’ve
worked a lot with Fraga on this and one
group in West Halle we’re looking at the
issue of being LGBT in West Halle and
the issue of coming out if your
adolescent and your own safety a very
real issue another group in North
Leitrim looked at the issue of youth
homelessness in rural areas which is not
discussed very much and talked about and
looked at research and found out that
there were young people in their school
who were trying to deal with
homelessness and disguise the house they
went home because they didn’t have one
an even greater example or an equally
great example is the work of Ashland on
fear
brilliant youth researcher from Carrick
and Shore and temporary when the floods
hit Paracon sure two three years ago
next January she and others really
without word act of empathy and got old
people out of their houses in the
community and were first in to help and
they just made a fantastic video of this
I’m supported in this work by the actor
Cillian Murphy whose patron of the
center it’s interesting that when
Everett kid Ian comes into the
university everybody’s in but he has
that effect but he is a good friend and
a really loyal supporter and weed he
takes the seriously and he has advised
the young people a lot and of course the
connection between arts music drama is
all incorporated into the program with
the videos the idea the program is that
it’s youth teaching youth not out of
teaching youth youth teaching youth
which we think is very powerful I’m very
grateful to the schools that have come
forward 12 schools are working with us
on this pilot project and we think it
has huge resonance by the way it’s also
gone I was gonna say viral international
in the sense that we’re actually working
with carolyn nash in myanmar away at the
moment in relation to prevention youth
violence on a very close colleague
professor mark van and in penn state
looking up since brutality and youth
research very interesting projects so
the idea of all this is that if you can
create empathy as they create as a
really take it seriously in schools and
you know you could say well we can do it
as part of well-being i think you can
and well-being is very important of
course it’s very important
but there are lots of people I can think
of politicians whose well-being
very good but they don’t have empathy so
not well-being and empathy are important
but they need to be connected better so
if that’s not convincing enough for you
you know you okay commits me a bit more
pass
okay I’ll convince you a bit more the
way I’m going to convince you is that
actually the evidence is now showing
that if you learn empathy in school you
do better in school you actually
actually achieve more academically if
that is the reason you one would really
want and I’m particularly grateful to
the work of Elisabeth Siegel from the
University of Arizona in America and her
work on this and but the evidence is
overwhelming that where you teach
empathy in schools the performance the
academic performance of youth improves
which is really interesting but what’s
really interesting about this as well
comes from Jane Clinton’s work so the
next slide I was going to show you I
originally had a different idea in mind
because the and I’ll tell you what the
idea was in a second the way this works
is there are neurons in the brain so
this comes from neuroscience and what we
now know from neuroscience is that as
Jane says another lessons brain is under
construction so do you remember back
when you were a teenager and you were
lying in bed on a Saturday morning and
you wouldn’t get up to 12 or warning you
really wanted to sleep you should have
been that sleep your brain is still
developing now if you’re out the night
before that’s your own business that’s a
different problem but generally speaking
you adolescents need to sleep they need
sleep because their brain is still
growing and what we know from
neuroscience who are the Nerds I’m not a
nerd neuroscientist
and by the way my wife always told me if
you start talking you know I could share
with you what I did for my PhD and this
is not in any way just in James de mer
but it’d be my wife always says the
quickest way to clear a party in the
house is to write a show photograph so
get Pat to talk about his PhD people
leave pretty quickly so you can imagine
if you engage with neuroscientists
around this variable to bring you but
there are what they call mirror neurons
in the brain I’m particularly at the
back of the brain and when those where
our neurons are most active empathy
goals
it’s literally plasticity in the brain
a lot of stuff going on in there
Pleakley towards the frontal lobe by the
way the original slide I was gonna put
in here was from the Beano from the
numbskulls because I love the way the
numskulls had all these things going on
your head but I chose not to do that so
I think there is a journey in life that
we all take I mean what what you know
what do we want to be any of us in life
is is is happiness contentment and you
know if we’re really concerned about the
environment which we should be and you
know we’ve heard a lot about why we
should be concerned about the
environment we have to be concerned
about humanity and humanity has to take
over in a way maybe that it didn’t
before and technology I think is really
important and very useful but I think we
do really need to stitch in humanity and
I do believe very very strongly that
empathy education can bring us there
thank you very much
[Applause]
you
to star but I want you to do an honesty
quiz with me I want everybody in the
room think back to when you’re a
teenager for some that might be take it
a lot longer but others I hope not think
back to when you’re a teenager and if
you did at least one thing that you
didn’t tell your mother or your father
put your hand up
come on okay put your hands down if you
didn’t put your hand up it’s too late
the thing is that a lot of the youth and
young people get bad press we tend to
vilify young people not all the time but
you know very quickly in the media young
people are seen as the cause of problems
rather than the solution what I’m going
to do with you over the next couple of
minutes I hope is talk to you about why
youth are important but why empathy
education in terms of in schools with
youth in a very I think very innovative
way holds really good promise and
there’s something we should take
seriously by the way 80% of 82% to be
exact of young people grow up with
absolutely no problem in their life and
of the roughly 20% that do less than 20%
I have a problem 80% of those just grow
out of the problem so the rule to be a
good parent is do nothing
and actually it’s true but it’s really
interesting I’m doing a lot of more
serious work in relation to my work with
UNESCO in relation to youth extremism
and violence and it’s really and I did
use the term youth radicalization
because I think being radical as a youth
is a good thing I’m a radical adult
there’s nothing wrong with being a
radical youth but even in terms of a
really serious issue of violence
prevention and youth extremism it really
is interesting that in the work that
I’ve been doing with UNESCO and with the
UN what has become clear is that it’s
not just the internet that’s the issue
the issue actually is around empathy and
you heard a little bit earlier on
empathy so let’s talk about what is
empty and be really clear about what I’m
saying when I talk about empty so empty
first of all is not sympathy sympathy is
a completely different thing sympathy is
when you feel pity or when you feel
sorrow so and then when you look at what
empathy is empathy can either be static
or active okay so when you think about
empathy it’s the capacity to understand
where somebody is coming from to
identify with them to really feel for
them but not in a way that is pitiful
that’s static empty active empathy is
where you actually go and do something
about it and it’s really interesting
getting back to my pro youth statement
that if you look at things like 9/11
tsunami Hurricane Katrina research has
shown that the first people in to help
in human disaster has been youth now
that’s not to say all youth behavior is
good as we do know horrific Lee there
have been occasions where this has gone
the other way but in order to get to
that we get to that a bit later
as to why I’m thinking about this like
solution what I want to do to start with
is to think back to two examples one is
very personal for me which it you know
I’m very happy to share with you and one
then is more historical let’s start with
the historical one so I want you to
think back over 100 years ago to World
War one to Christmas Touma’s een in near
in Belgium near eeep
and think of Christmas Eve on a snowy
evening you had British and Irish and
French soldiers for pletely British and
Irish soldiers at that stage one side of
no-man’s land and you German soldiers on
the other side a no-man’s land
suddenly soldiers started to sing the
German soldiers started to sing still
not silent night they were applauded by
the British soldiers and the British
soldier signed Good King Wenceslas I’m
getting into the mood for Christmas then
two soldiers one from each side took a
very dangerous step and stood up
could’ve got shot went across shook
hands and peace broke out priest peace
broke out for quite a number of days the
soldier is mixed mingled shared schnapps
photographs of their children
chocolate celebrated Christmas together
and they even played a famous game of
football which by the way Germany won
one nil I believe from da Milan not that
that matters but the thing is that they
they identified with each other they had
human contact with each other and they
had warmth for each other
and then they had empathy for each other
and they were expected to go back
fighting and many of them were unable or
unwilling a number were court-martialed
for fraternizing with the enemy and
others were just sent back from the
front and other soldiers put in but it
is interesting that in 2000 1915 in the
Vosges mountains another peace broke out
between soldiers in a similar way an
amazing part of the story and this is
true that there was a cat now the cat
was called felix by the British soldiers
and nestor by the German soldiers which
is very confusing very confusing for the
cat the cat carried messages across
no-man’s land scribbled into a little
thing on his neck or her neck on
well his neck and believe it or not the
generals decided that the Koch will be
court-martialed and the cat was shot
know empty there
so I think we should start a campaign
for Felix stroke Nestor’s brought back
into not back to life but brought back
and to be condoned for his good behavior
but it is interesting that in a war
situation that is how powerful empathy
can be and the example for myself is not
it’s not a one that you know I talk
about very much and but I’m the youngest
of a large family my I’m from Dublin and
I had a very resourceful and very
resilient mother partly because my
father died in an accident when I was
very small over seven months old but I
went to a Christian brother school in
Dublin where corporal punishment was
rife and has reminded lately around this
whole issue when I read Roddy Doyle’s
new book smile and heard him been
interviewed about it and for there are
many people for whom the physical abuse
of schools was not an issue you know
they you know some famous broadcasters
I’m not going to name said it did me no
harm well good for you but it did a lot
of people harm and the interesting thing
about that story is thinking about
passive and active empathy for me was I
stood up for another kid in the class
and got hammered physically assaulted by
a lay teacher actually and after it
happened I remembered in the faces of my
peers that they could do nothing and I
saw a pity luckily for me getting back
to my mother I went home and I lived
nearby and I told my mother and my
mother came down and sorted it out and
when I say sorted it out I mean sorted
it out right up to the head brother she
was using active empathy think about
this now what we want for our kids when
they go to school and I work in an
education institution I really really
think we have to think seriously about
the Leaving Cert
I think we really have to think
seriously about education systems well
one thing we do know when we send our
kids to school is that we want them to
learn mathematics to read to write and
so forth but we also want them to be
good people we also want them to be
caring people regardless of religion
regardless of creed sex regardless of
everything we want them to be human
and I would argue very very strongly
that empathy education and schools
should be compulsory and can be done
easily and well there are two examples I
will give you one in more detail the
first example relates to the work of
Mary Gordon in Canada who’s developed a
program for primary schools called roots
of empathy an absolutely excellent
program pioneered by her and in that
program a small baby is brought into the
primary school with the mom or the dad
usually the mom into the school and the
children identify over a year with the
baby they make eye contact with the baby
the kids go at the baby they noticed
that the baby is sitting up they noticed
the babies ferreted they notice whatever
happens and they talk about it and they
talk about how the child has changed
they connect with the baby they don’t
see the child as in any way other than
that beautiful child and that program
roots of empathy which is entire schools
Bernard as I’ve introduced it is really
a burning program I am really interested
in adolescents in the research center
that I work in and with colleagues there
dr. Barrington Brady Kyra Boylan and
Daniel Kenan we’ve been working on
empathy education for secondary schools
and we’re doing that with the help of
young people calling me by that is we
train youth as researchers so just to
say when I talk about training youth as
researchers I don’t mean doing research
on youth
I mean youth actually doing the research
and I’ll give you some examples in a
moment of that so how that works is the
young people learn research methods they
learn bias they learn ethics they learn
all the things that you need for social
research and they actually have
developed a really really good training
manual on research methods it’s so good
that it’s better than some of my
colleagues teach in masters level and
I’ve said that publicly but it really is
good they’ve developed really really
good research manual and I’ll give you
three examples so what they do is they
do a piece of research and when they
complete the piece of research they make
a short four five minute video to share
the video in classrooms and as part of
the program around various issues so I
some examples of the work they’ve done
so for example one group we worked we’ve
worked a lot with Fraga on this and one
group in West Halle we’re looking at the
issue of being LGBT in West Halle and
the issue of coming out if your
adolescent and your own safety a very
real issue another group in North
Leitrim looked at the issue of youth
homelessness in rural areas which is not
discussed very much and talked about and
looked at research and found out that
there were young people in their school
who were trying to deal with
homelessness and disguise the house they
went home because they didn’t have one
an even greater example or an equally
great example is the work of Ashland on
fear
brilliant youth researcher from Carrick
and Shore and temporary when the floods
hit Paracon sure two three years ago
next January she and others really
without word act of empathy and got old
people out of their houses in the
community and were first in to help and
they just made a fantastic video of this
I’m supported in this work by the actor
Cillian Murphy whose patron of the
center it’s interesting that when
Everett kid Ian comes into the
university everybody’s in but he has
that effect but he is a good friend and
a really loyal supporter and weed he
takes the seriously and he has advised
the young people a lot and of course the
connection between arts music drama is
all incorporated into the program with
the videos the idea the program is that
it’s youth teaching youth not out of
teaching youth youth teaching youth
which we think is very powerful I’m very
grateful to the schools that have come
forward 12 schools are working with us
on this pilot project and we think it
has huge resonance by the way it’s also
gone I was gonna say viral international
in the sense that we’re actually working
with carolyn nash in myanmar away at the
moment in relation to prevention youth
violence on a very close colleague
professor mark van and in penn state
looking up since brutality and youth
research very interesting projects so
the idea of all this is that if you can
create empathy as they create as a
really take it seriously in schools and
you know you could say well we can do it
as part of well-being i think you can
and well-being is very important of
course it’s very important
but there are lots of people I can think
of politicians whose well-being
very good but they don’t have empathy so
not well-being and empathy are important
but they need to be connected better so
if that’s not convincing enough for you
you know you okay commits me a bit more
pass
okay I’ll convince you a bit more the
way I’m going to convince you is that
actually the evidence is now showing
that if you learn empathy in school you
do better in school you actually
actually achieve more academically if
that is the reason you one would really
want and I’m particularly grateful to
the work of Elisabeth Siegel from the
University of Arizona in America and her
work on this and but the evidence is
overwhelming that where you teach
empathy in schools the performance the
academic performance of youth improves
which is really interesting but what’s
really interesting about this as well
comes from Jane Clinton’s work so the
next slide I was going to show you I
originally had a different idea in mind
because the and I’ll tell you what the
idea was in a second the way this works
is there are neurons in the brain so
this comes from neuroscience and what we
now know from neuroscience is that as
Jane says another lessons brain is under
construction so do you remember back
when you were a teenager and you were
lying in bed on a Saturday morning and
you wouldn’t get up to 12 or warning you
really wanted to sleep you should have
been that sleep your brain is still
developing now if you’re out the night
before that’s your own business that’s a
different problem but generally speaking
you adolescents need to sleep they need
sleep because their brain is still
growing and what we know from
neuroscience who are the Nerds I’m not a
nerd neuroscientist
and by the way my wife always told me if
you start talking you know I could share
with you what I did for my PhD and this
is not in any way just in James de mer
but it’d be my wife always says the
quickest way to clear a party in the
house is to write a show photograph so
get Pat to talk about his PhD people
leave pretty quickly so you can imagine
if you engage with neuroscientists
around this variable to bring you but
there are what they call mirror neurons
in the brain I’m particularly at the
back of the brain and when those where
our neurons are most active empathy
goals
it’s literally plasticity in the brain
a lot of stuff going on in there
Pleakley towards the frontal lobe by the
way the original slide I was gonna put
in here was from the Beano from the
numbskulls because I love the way the
numskulls had all these things going on
your head but I chose not to do that so
I think there is a journey in life that
we all take I mean what what you know
what do we want to be any of us in life
is is is happiness contentment and you
know if we’re really concerned about the
environment which we should be and you
know we’ve heard a lot about why we
should be concerned about the
environment we have to be concerned
about humanity and humanity has to take
over in a way maybe that it didn’t
before and technology I think is really
important and very useful but I think we
do really need to stitch in humanity and
I do believe very very strongly that
empathy education can bring us there
thank you very much
[Applause]
you
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