Nobody Left to Hate by Elliot Arnonson

Elliot's book Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion after Columbia brings in social psychology in its treatment of the contemporary school system. Arguing that we would never allow any workplace environment to become as rotten and insidious as the school environment has become, Aronson brings in social psychology to show the effect that the environment can have on any mile. He also leads us through possible interventions that we can use to improve the school setting.

Aaronson points out that cruelty, bullying, humiliation, cliquishness, competition are aspects that occur on a regular routine in many of our schools across the country. More so, educators and parents often fail to stress the need for empathy, cooperation, and the nurturing of "social intelligence." The result is that in an increasing amount of schools, students from dysfunctional homes are buttressed by images of violence form outside society and from the media to transport that violence to school setting and to perpetrate that violence there.

What can we do?

Using psychological principles, Aaronson correlates the case to the steps that British 19th century scientists took when faced with a cholera epidemic. They simply removed the pump handle of a particular contaminated well so that no more water could be drawn from it. After that, they addressed the root of the epidemic which was the closeness of latrines to water supply. In a similar way, Aaronson urges that we curb media violence, enact more stringent gun-control measures, and in some school even impose gun-metal detectors (although he is chary with this recommendation recognizing that it increases the oppressiveness of the learning environment making it seem a jail).

Using social psychology, he insists that we must take constructive steps too to discouraging taunting and bullying, importing a more tolerant more emphatic and caring atmosphere in the schools, and developing cooperation and empathy in both teachers and students.

He uses social psychology to make these measures specific and concrete by for instance giving us a tour of certain social experiments that may help in this instance as well as insights gained from social psychology.

One of these insights is the fact that we tend to attribute deviant behavior to the individual failing to often recognize that it may more aptly be traced to environment. Cure the environment and you may often remove the pathological behavior.

Using social psychology, Aronson also describes interventions that have been used to mitigate pathological behavior such as bullying and taunting. One of these is a famous Norwegian method. Another is the 'jigsaw' classroom that promotes cooperation and social integration. The Norway method was a successful program introduced in Norway by a social psychologist named Dan Olweus. Teachers were trained to recognize and deal with bullying and cooperation was used. Lunchroom and playgrounds were supervised and intensive therapy was put in place for bullies and their parents. The program reduced bullying by approximately 50%.

The 'jigsaw technique' is a method where the class is split into five or six groups each given a certain assignment to complete and in each group each individual is given a specific task that she has to complete and that together fulfills the assignment of that particular group. In this way, each student is made to feel special, each student is compelled to collaborate and involve himself (shirking is disallowed), and each student is forced to listen closely to insight of others and to direction of group leader. The technique not only shows a three-decade track record of successfully increasing educational results, but also of reducing racial conflict (since the groups are deliberately commingled). It also builds empathy and the tolerant environment that the contemporary school so dearly lacks as well as "cooperation by design."

"Friendship coaching" for unpopular students is another method where unpopular students receive coaching on social skills. This is the intervention that Steven Asher of Duke used who taught unpopular students in the third and fourth grades to act in ways typical of more popular students. A year after the designs, the bullying of these students head stopped.