Lee, Peter and Denis Shemilt. “The Concept that Dares not Speak its Name: Should Empathy Come Out of the Closet?” (2011)

Since the 1970s, teachers and researchers in the UK have been concerned about historical empathy, the way in which students understand past beliefs, values, and practices. There was a great deal of opposition to the inclusion of historical empathy in the curriculum, for two main reasons: first, the line between historical imagination and literary invention was too often crossed; second, the term ‘empathy’ caused some misunderstanding, many believing that it signifies the need for only affective engagement with the past. The concept of historical empathy, however, rests on the assumptions that people give meaning to the world, and we need to understand past beliefs, values, and practices in order to explain what people were doing.

Lee and Shemilt then identify the three challenges posed by empathy to students: “(a) making sense of human behaviour; (b) understanding why practices that seem irrational and unreasonable today were common in the past; and (c) grasping what does and does not count as empathetic” (40). They focus on the second and third concepts, and provide a six-level progression model for how students tend to progress in understanding with the concept of empathy. They then provide more detailed explanations of the various stages, and share suggestions for advancing students through them. However, in conclusion, they argue that empathy should only be used in the classroom in an experimental capacity at this time.