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Discussions of democratic education often begin with a discussion of general political theories,
and then based upon those theories, deduce what sort of education we would want for citizens.
1
The goal
of this paper is not to present a comprehensive curriculum for democratic education, but instead to focus
on one component to include in such an education: empathy training. I contend that given the assumptions
of several political theories, increasing citizens’ empathic predispositions should be an important part of
democratic education. While they may disagree on many other points, deliberative democrats, civic
republicans and political liberals should all agree that we want to instill empathic dispositions in citizens.
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I. Empathy
Jonathan Levy concisely and convincingly demonstrates that the “word empathy has been
troublesome since it entered the language of psychology and psychiatry” (1997, 179). One reason for this
trouble is that researchers have disagreed as to whether empathy is primarily affective or cognitive. Nancy
Eisenberg and Janet Strayer maintain that empathy can be defined as "an emotional response that stems
from another's emotional state or condition and that is congruent with the other's emotional state or
situation" (1987, 5). While they acknowledge that empathy involves at least some cognition—
differentiation between the self and other—they stress that empathy is an emotional response. "Affect and
cognition have been difficult, if not impossible, to dissociate in empirical attempts to measure empathy.
Nevertheless, what empathy is (content) and how it occurs (process) are distinguishable issues" (Strayer
1987, 230). In contrast, some researchers conceive of empathy as a primarily cognitive. While he does not
directly define empathy, G. H. Mead's discussion of role taking indicates something at least akin to
empathy. He writes that "the exercise of what is often called 'social intelligence,' depend[s] upon the
given individual's ability to take the rôles of, or 'put himself in the place of,' the other individuals
implicated with him in given social situation, and upon his consequent sensitivity to their attitudes toward
himself and toward one another" (1934, 141). Under this understanding, empathy is more than just an
1
For examples see Barber 1992, Battistoni 1985, Crittenden 2003, Galston 1991, Gutmann 1987, and Macedo 2000.
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While I recognize that civic republicanism and political liberalism are not democratic theories per se, they are
theories in which democracy plays a vitally important role. As such, I do not think it improper to talk here of
democratic education.
Convention