Chris

Law

July 12, 2012

EPSE 585 Social and Emotional Development in Education Class 8: Prosocial Behaviour and the Roots of Empathy Before the first paragraph is finished, Schonert-Reichl, Smith, Zaidman-Zait and Hertzman (2012) bring up a concept that seems to be sadly, frustratingly and pervasively missed in social and, especially, political policy. The attitude of fixing the problem after its already happened rather than preventing the problem from happening in the first place has always seemed so shortsighted and just plain stupid to me. My undergrad ethics professor once gave a lecture that had to do with human nature and he described the analogy of a machine that made a faulty product. He asked the question, What do you think makes more sense fix the product as its going down the conveyor belt to the customer or fix the machine making the product? Everyone in the class agreed that it was better to fix the machine before it made faulty products. It appears, with educational programs like the Roots of Empathy there are attempts at decreasing the likelihood of creating faulty products but the effort does not seem to be as whole-hearted as seems to be necessary. In my current job, I see so many broken products that it strikes me that we obviously have not developed enough programs to reach enough people so as to prevent the machine from creating the tragic lives some of these kids have to live. The authors go on to comment about prioritization and being cost-effective in the education they offer. This idea frustrates me to no end. It is assumed that people in the Western world share the common value that children are something of value. That we should need to attribute a high priority to one thing compared to another that could fabricate a sound product in the first place, is insane. When you add in questions of cost-effectiveness to the preventative versus reactive I would be very surprised if it cost more to create sound products than fix the faulty ones. I suppose I owe my job and ability of make a living to the inherent (?) reactionary attitude of the human species. Hopefully, I will be out of a job one daywell at least a fix-it job.