The Importance of Kindness

This week’s article summary is How Making Kindness a Priority Benefits Students.

When asked in surveys to rank the importance of achievement, happiness, and caring for others, high school students list care a distant third.

As the article attests, though, care for others helps support both future personal and professional success. 

We may think it’s the selfish bullies who cold-bloodily rise up the corporate ladder (and clearly a few them do ‘make it’), but in reality it’s those who are good listeners, supportive colleagues, and team players who more often succeed professionally.

Recent research shows that empathy, care, and consideration for others are teachable skills and habits. 

And while grit and perseverance are the trendy life skills emphasized in schools today, great school like Trinity have always been committed to developing the full range of student character, including interpersonal skills and communion (a sincere care and concern for others).

Joe

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While treating others with kindness is at the center of many families and schools, the importance of being kind trails behind other cultural values in the U.S.

In a recent Harvard study 80% of students surveyed said they value achievement and happiness over caring for others. While 96% of parents report that they want above all for their children to be caring, 81% of kids said they believe their parents value achievement and happiness more. A similar math holds for students and teachers: 62% of kids believe their teachers prize academic success above all. And this thinking affects student behavior: The very same kids who rank caring for others behind happiness and achievement, and who believe their parents want the same, scored low on an empathy scale.

It matters that the young learn to be kind because a caring outlook is linked to positive life outcomes across multiple domains.

For free societies to function, citizens need to look beyond narrow self-interest and consider the public good. A singular focus on achievement undercuts the basis of a civil culture, which depends on cooperation and personal sacrifice for the betterment of all.

Wharton psychology professor Adam Grant has made a career of showing how generosity at work leads to professional advancement. Contrary to the conventional notion that job wins require a kind of ruthless selfishness, especially in business, Grant has found that most who are generous with their ideas and time—and who have figured out how to collaborate and network—have better professional outcomes than their less charitable colleagues. Provided that the “givers” don’t lose sight of their own interests, and so avoid becoming exploited, kind employees advance at higher rates than their self-centered peers.

Strong relationships, too, are grounded in kindness. Recent research on marriage reveals that regular acts of kindness and generosity fasten couples together. (Contempt, on the other hand, divides them.) Psychologists John and Julie Gottman, who study marital stability, found that particular types of kindness are especially valuable in a marriage: being charitable about the partner’s intention—i.e., not assuming the worst when things go wrong—and celebrating the spouse’s successes. They report that this “active constructive responding,” as they call it, when partners react positively and enthusiastically about their mate’s success, is associated with high-quality, long-term relationships.

A school community functions so much better when kids have strong social-emotional skills. Having empathy, being able to consider another’s perspective, and managing one’s own emotions and actions, all of which are connected to kindness, are linked to academic success. The converse is also true: schools with hostile cultures, where kids feel threatened and distracted, make learning more difficult. And students who lack trusting relationships with teachers are also at a learning disadvantage.

Research shows that social and emotional skills, including kindness, can be taught and learned, and that children benefit from the lessons. According to a review of over 200 programs designed to teach social and emotional skills in school to children of all ages, kids who took part in the initiatives improved their outlook and behavior toward others. They also had better academic performance and showed improved social-emotional awareness.

Some might ask if it makes sense to focus on teaching kids how to get along. Isn’t it important for them to learn how to assert themselves, to speak up for what they believe, regardless of others’ feelings? Yet it’s possible to protest and demand change without resorting to nastiness. Advocacy work and kindness are not mutually exclusive.