Parenting for Character: Teaching Justice and Compassion (2)

Justice Toward Others
The virtue of justice, as it can be applied to children, has three applications – being just toward yourself, being just toward your responsibilities, and being just toward others. The order is important.

In my previous blogs on the topic of justice, I addressed justice toward self and justice toward responsibilities. These frame an important foundation for the practice of justice toward others, which includes justice toward the world. Justice toward others is built upon personal responsibility and personal commitment that make the practice of justice toward others noble and effective.

To say that an individual is being just toward himself, means we are saying that he makes himself accountable to himself for the person he is becoming. Furthermore, to say an individual is just toward his responsibilities, means he holds himself accountable to the tasks and everyday duties required by social environments: family, friends, school, community.

Justice toward others rests upon these two forms of justice because without this foundation, justice toward others can become self-serving and undermine the purposes and impact of justice toward others.

The Virtue of Justice toward Others Compared to the Virtue of Compassion
Given this perspective, I distinguish the virtue of justice toward others from the virtue of compassion. Compassion is built upon empathy. It embraces our care and attitude toward individuals and groups based upon our capacity, willingness, and ability to understand others.

Being just toward others includes qualities of compassion but also calls us to understand the expectations of behavior depending upon our social environments. The virtue of justice toward others asks us to evaluate our responsibilities of conduct and duty toward the people and social environments in which we live.

Let me provide a personal example comparing justice toward others with compassion. When I teach children a skill such as solving an algebraic equation, I am just toward them when I embrace my role as a professional educator. I set academic standards that reflect excellence. My teaching methods are carefully considered. The materials I use match the student’s needs. I make adjustments for individual learning needs. In this manner, I am being just toward my students. I have a moral obligation to provide the best math education possible.

My position of being “just toward my students” requires that my students be “just toward their teacher,” that is, they have a responsibility in my class to focus, engage, cooperate with my instructions, and complete all of their work. I am being just toward my students, and they are being just toward their teacher.

If only the teaching life could be so easy.

Invariably, and unfortunately, this lovely scenario does not always play out. My students don’t listen to me, they don’t focus, they avoid work, they cut corners, and then they make the most extraordinary and creative excuses for their performance.

Now, in the realm of justice, I may correct my students, scold them, threaten to contact their parents, and generally show my disappointment and frustration. Furthermore, I would claim that these reactions are “just” responses to their “unjust” behaviors.

At this point, the virtue of justice toward others requires the virtue of compassion. Once I set aside hard lines of right and wrong, I can also try to understand why a student did not do his work. I can take time to understand his circumstances at home or at school. I can try to understand his own internal reasoning. Perhaps he was intimidated by the work. Perhaps he did not understand the lesson. There could be many reasons, and compassion will drive me to identify this child’s particular need and then be a friend as well as a teacher to help him rise to find a way to meet the “just” requirements of my math course.

While compassion may compel me to look at the situation differently and to make accommodations for the needs of my student, this new relationship based on understanding and kindness, does not absolve the child of responsibility to learn math and do the work that is required. The original standard of “justice” cannot be compromised. But helping the child to achieve that standard may include extra efforts on my part to guide, coach, and tutor the student.

We should not separate these two virtues. Without justice toward my students, I will compromise my standards of excellence, and I will make a mockery of quality. My students will not receive a first class education. Yet without compassion, my standards of quality and excellence may overwhelm and discourage students. Compassion calls me to make up the gap between high standards of achievement and a child’s actual performance. Compassion calls me to “go the extra mile” in order to support, guide, and reassure others that I will help them reach high standards.

If I throw out high academic standards because a student isn’t doing the work I require, then I am not being just toward him or myself. If I let my definition of compassion absolve students from their responsibilities of learning math, if I lower my academic standards so that children will feel better, then I have absolved myself from my duty to justice. I am no longer being just to my student.

On the other hand, if I insist on justice in my responsibilities to teach mathematics, yet do so without any compassion, I may never be able to help my student achieve. Even worse, I will develop a judgmental attitude toward my student, driving him away from any meaningful learning in the future.

Justice is tempered by compassion. Compassion is real when it enables others to raise their standards of life and performance.

From November 2017 Birchwood School of Hawken Clipboard