Helping Children Develop Empathy and a Sense of Justice

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In this video, renowned educator and author Vivian Paley explains the importance of supporting the development of children's empathy and sense of justice from their earliest days. She developed a pedagogy she called "doing stories," in which children would dictate and then act out stories from their own play, and she found that children would consistently act from a deep sense of compassion and fairness. She believed that early childhood was the ideal time to start helping children "learn to care about every other person’s feelings, beliefs and welfare" (From "Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades," Southern Poverty Law Center, 1997).
Over her long career, Paley observed that young children had a keen sense of fairness and empathy--making early childhood the ideal time to engage in social justice pedagogy. Paley believed children went to kindergarten knowing three things: stories, how to play, and a sense of fairness. She tapped into this knowledge by developing social justice pedagogy that she called "doing stories." By asking children to dictate and then act out the stories they were originally doing in play, Paley found that children would consistently and pervasively act from a deep sense of kindness, empathy, and justice. As children worked together, she found they would center (or re-center) their stories on equity and fairness. As an active observer of children "doing stories," Paley was able to highlight and support the decisions children made, helping to heighten their self-awareness and awareness of others. In this way, her work demonstrates how educators can and must teach young children on the complexities and importance of social justice and anti-racism. Early childhood is, in fact, the ideal time to teach these concepts.
The CECE interviewed Vivian Paley in Chicago in 2010 about "doing stories" for a video series on oral language development, written by Dr. Theresa Bouley (www.easternct..... This video was created in 2021 from unused portions of that interview.
Vivian Paley passed away in 2019, but her legacy lives on.
Copyright 2021 by the Center for Early Childhood Education at Eastern Connecticut State University. This video may only be used for educational purposes. It may not be used for commercial purposes and may not be edited or adapted without written permission from the Center for Early Childhood Education. For more information, visit www.easternct....