There are skills that rarely appear in the curriculum, although they are essential for life. They are taught (when they are taught) tangentially, between the lunch queue and a fight in the playground. Empathy and compassion belong to this group of almost invisible competencies, which make an enormous difference and yet hardly feature in official programmes.
This article is part of a series dedicated to the ten life skills that the Inter-American Development Bank has identified as fundamental: measurable, teachable, and with tangible effects on the well-being and development of children and adolescents. We have already discussed mindfulness and problem-solving. Now it is the turn of empathy and compassion.
For years, they were considered part of character, personality or, more often, good upbringing. Something brought from home, if one was lucky. But in recent times, thanks to research in psychology, neuroscience, and education, it has become clear that they are not only moral virtues or temperamental traits: they are skills. And as such, they can be developed, taught, and assessed.
In this article we will review what exactly it means to teach empathy and compassion, what evidence supports their teaching, which programmes have worked, and what schools that decide to take this task seriously can do.
What Are Empathy and Compassion?
The term “empathy” is one of the most overused terms of the last decade, something that has contributed both to its fame and to its trivialisation. Yet, in the school context, it is not very present. The same happens with its less popular companion, compassion. It sounds like an ancient virtue, something alien to the administrative language of educational systems.
The difference between the two is simple. Empathy allows us to understand what another person feels. Compassion, in addition, drives us to do something with that knowledge. A listening ear. A gesture. An act that relieves, even a little. If empathy is knowing that someone is suffering, compassion is wanting them to suffer less.
These skills do not work alone. They combine thought and feeling. They require putting oneself in another’s place without losing one’s own. It is a subtle balance, learned through practice and example. Some learn it at home. Others never learn it. But few learn it at school.
According to the Skills for Life report by the Inter-American Development Bank, empathy and compassion are not only desirable qualities. They are useful. They improve coexistence, reduce conflicts, foster cooperation. Even if they do not appear on the report card, they prepare for adult life better than many subjects. The report considers them “measurable, teachable, and meaningful” skills.
There is also more concrete evidence. Studies link empathy with prosocial behaviours (such as sharing, helping, yielding) and with greater environmental awareness. Not because those who recycle are more empathetic, but because those who imagine the impact of their actions usually leave less rubbish behind.mericano de Desarrollo ha identificado como fundamentales: medibles, enseñables y con efectos tangibles en el bienestar y el desarrollo de niños y adolescentes. Ya hemos hablado de la atención plena y la resolución de problemas. Ahora es el turno de la empatía y la compasión.
According to the Skills for Life report by the Inter-American Development Bank, empathy and compassion are not only desirable qualities. They are useful. They improve coexistence, reduce conflicts, foster cooperation.
How to Integrate Empathy and Compassion into Schools Today
To teach empathy, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution or redesign the national curriculum. Nor is it necessary to invent a new subject. Sometimes it is enough to change the way a response is listened to, an interruption is managed, or a conflict is handled. In fact, many schools already work on empathy. They often do so unknowingly.
The integration of empathy and compassion into school life requires a certain intention. The first key is that it cannot be a “decorative activity”. If it is presented as something occasional (a themed week, an end-of-class dynamic, a worksheet to fill in emotions), the effect will be minimal. Not because it is wrong, but because it is not enough.
There are multiple meaningful ways to do it. It can be incorporated into service-learning projects, where students identify a real need in their environment and act to address it. It can appear in guided readings that invite students to explore characters’ points of view; in structured debates where the goal is not to crush the other but to understand them; or in tutorial sessions that, rather than being mere conduct-control assemblies, become spaces to talk without haste.
Another, more systematic, option is teacher training. Because teaching empathy without having worked on it personally is like teaching swimming without ever having been in the water. Many current programmes start with adults, not pupils. If a teacher has never had a safe space to talk about their own emotions, they will hardly be able to facilitate one for their students.
Brief rituals can also be introduced, without therapeutic pretensions: a pause to breathe at the beginning of class, a round of “how are you” without raising hands, a letter that is not delivered but written. They do not magically transform coexistence, but they create small habits of mutual attention. Sometimes that is enough.
The obstacles, of course, are not minor. The overload of content, pressure for results, lack of time and temptation to restore order the quick way make many schools shelve these initiatives before they take root. But some persevere. And what they find, when they do it well, is not an educational miracle or a leap in PISA. It is something more basic: an environment where pupils feel seen. And where the classroom looks a little less like a mere formality.
Measuring to Improve: Evaluation and Follow-up
Empathy and compassion can indeed be taught. But when we try to measure them, things get complicated. They are not easily quantifiable. They do not appear in striking graphs nor fit neatly into performance scales. Even so, evaluation is possible. And, above all, necessary. Because if nothing is assessed, what is taught risks becoming anecdotal. And if assessed poorly, it may become useless.
The most common method is self-report. Students are asked directly how they think they feel, how much they understand others, or how often they act to help. The Basic Empathy Scale, developed by Jolliffe and Farrington, is one of the most widely used in adolescents, with validated versions in several languages, including Spanish. Also used is the Compassionate Love Scale by Sprecher and Fehr, which distinguishes between compassion towards close people and compassion towards strangers or “humanity” in general. On the latter, interestingly, most score much lower.
These scales work reasonably well, but they are not infallible. They depend on the student’s level of self-awareness, their sincerity, and their desire to appear a good person. Sometimes the score measures the ideal more than the reality. That is why it is advisable to complement self-reports with other more indirect tools.
Some schools observe specific behaviours: how many conflicts are resolved without sanctions, how many students intervene to support a classmate, what kind of language is used in class. Others collect qualitative narratives, portfolios, or small projects that reflect emotional understanding. They are not “hard” data, but they say a lot.
In research contexts, neuroimaging techniques have even been tested: showing emotionally charged images and observing which areas of the brain are activated. They work, but require a laboratory, a specialised team, and a considerable dose of patience. For now, it is not something applicable to ordinary evaluation in a school.
The key is to find methods proportional to the purpose. Empathy should not become a subject with numerical grades, but efforts must have some effect. Sometimes it will be enough to listen to the students themselves: if they feel more understood, if they get along better, if they argue less and talk more. Not everything is quantifiable. But some things, if not addressed, simply disappear.
An Empathetic School Is a Transformative School
Empathy and compassion are neither an educational fad nor a moral luxury. They are skills with empirical support and proven impact. They improve the school climate, reduce conflict, strengthen bonds, and prepare better than logarithms for life in common. And most importantly: they can be taught.
There are schools already doing it. Some do it through structured programmes, others through everyday gestures. And although not all have the same resources, they can share the same purpose: to form people who not only know how to think, but also how to live together.
The challenge now is not technical. It is political and cultural. It is about deciding whether we want educational systems to remain focused on individual competencies or whether we are willing to recognise that educating also means preparing to inhabit the world alongside others.
