Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

Last week, I sat through student interviews for our school scholarship program. Students could win scholarship awards for Learner Profile, the ATL’s, and Action. It was fascinating to hear young 6-8 year old children summarize what they believe were some of their best qualities and why they do what they do. But the learner profile award was the most telling. And learner profile trait that made me cringe the most when I heard a student talk about it was caring. Caring? I hear you say. I know. It’s a surprise. Let me explain.

First of all, whenever I hear the students talk about learner profiles, it reflects greatly on the teachers, aspects of the school culture, and family values. Children mirror the learning community.

I heard numerous students talk about how they do caring things because they hope others will appreciate them and extend care back to them. In fact, what they described was being generous in order to initiate reciprocity. I recognize that this concept of reciprocity is apparent in my host country’s culture. People often refer to this as Guanxi. Western cultures refer to it as Quid-Pro Quo. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

Several years ago, Adam Grant wrote a really interesting book called Give and Take. In the book, he makes a compelling argument for why doing good is not only smart, but should be our goal. Generous and caring people in studies demonstrate better life outcomes, such as greater career success, improved relationships, and health outcomes. Even though he may enumerate many ways doing good is beneficial, that should not be why we are caring and kind.

I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I don’t want to be a book spoiler, but Grant explains how people may look like “givers” but are actually “takers”. He uses the example of Kenneth Lay and his abuse of power that ultimately bankrupted the company and left his employees jobless and without pensions. But on the outside, he looked like a “good guy” because he was charitable. I think this is a prime example of using generosity for optics and is the danger of what can happen when “caring” is miscommunicated and reinforced in our society. Clearly, this man had an intellectual understanding of kindness and generosity but not the emotional intelligence to be able to demonstrate ethical behavior and true responsibility for his employees.

We need to do better at educating our children’s hearts, or this pattern repeats itself in our society.

IB is supposed to be the framework that can adapt to any context in which it finds itself, whether a public or private institution or the values within a nation or town. We are flexible and respectful in how we approach curriculum design. Although I think it’s important to navigate the curriculum through these complex lenses, I think the learner profile is where we might need to take a stand. What do I mean by that? I mean, that has a particular definition of what it means to be caring, and guess what?-It’s not a quid-pro-quo protocol. Take a look:

As you can see, we don’t do caring things because we expect good things to happen to us in return. It’s not about filling our spiritual coffer with good karma or our bank account with money. We do good things because we want a better and more peaceful world. Caring simply for the sake of being caring has no benefit other than knowing that we are helping the world be a better place. Money isn’t the goal. Service is. And we must do that in our schools by explicitly developing empathy-building skills. I recognize that we may be swimming against society’s current paradigm, but it matters. It’s worth the effort. Don’t you agree?

So, if you are an educator who has been promoting the status quo of a “taker” (ie: I give so I can get) in sheep’s clothing, take a moment to reflect on where that type of behavior leads to our society. Let’s go back to the definition of this Learner Profile and refocus CARING on using our empathy skills to inspire our young learners to create systems, products and services that make a difference in our future.

**If you have any great resources that help others to make the connection between our minds and hearts, please share them in the comments below. Sharing is Caring, right?!