Ask Dr. Forgiveness
I hear colleagues tell me that it is child abuse to impose the education of forgiveness on unsuspecting students. How would you answer such a charge?
Good philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. Good education is the same. Part of being wise is to know how to control one’s anger, to reduce resentment, and to forge healthy relationships in the home and in the community. Forgiveness, seen in scientific studies, is one effective way of reducing resentment and fostering better behavior and relationships. If we then deprive a child of this part of wisdom, are we somehow aiding that child’s development or stifling it? Teaching about forgiveness is far from child abuse. Deliberately withholding knowledge of forgiveness is educational deprivation, which should happen to no child.
If I wanted to start teaching forgiveness in my first-grade classroom, what kind of resources do you have for this?
First, thank you for considering giving your first graders access to the amazing benefits of forgiveness education. To demonstrate to you that teaching forgiveness education is beneficial for both your students and you, please read the 3-page Why Forgiveness Education? on our website.
Starting a forgiveness education program either in your classroom or throughout your school is relatively simple since we provide all the materials. We have Curriculum Guides available for grades Pre-K through 12th Grade. The curriculum guides are comprehensive (most over 100 pages) making them easy for classroom teachers to use.
The guides are available in two formats–the standard version for public schools and the Christian version that includes supplemental information tying the lessons into Christian principles and values. Here is a preview of an actual curriculum guide for you to review–the introduction and first three lessons of the 1st Grade Curriculum Guide (Standard Version) and the 1st Grade Curriculum Guide (Christian Version).
The guides focus on Dr. Seuss books in the early grades and on other age-appropriate books, DVDs and websites for older students. Through stories, children learn about the five moral qualities most important to forgiving another person–inherent worth, moral love, kindness, respect and generosity.
In the Grade One Curriculum Guide, for example, Dr. Seuss’ book “Horton Hears a Who” is the centerpiece of all of the materials. Horton was chosen because of his oft repeated wisdom: “A person is a person no matter how small.” This idea captures well the concept of inherent worth.
For each grade level the curriculum gets progressively more challenging so that by the twelfth grade the students are encouraged, if they so choose, to bring the principles of forgiveness to their community outside of school. See Curriculum Guides Basic Description 5-2014 for details.
Each grade level has a number of children’s books and related materials suggested for use with the teacher guide. You may obtain the books yourself, or we have available, and will provide to you at no cost, two-page to six-page book summaries with each guide you purchase.
Finally, we highly recommend a two-hour teacher training program we have developed for all instructors who will be providing forgiveness education. We can provide that training on site, through Skype, or through audio CD. Teachers can listen to the CD as a group (preferred method) or can access it whenever they wish. Contact us for details at director@internationalforgiveness.com.
You can order complete sets of the curriculum guides (book summaries included) as well as the Instructional CD in our website Store. Deciding to teach forgiveness education to your first graders would be a smart investment.
If you could give just one reason why forgiveness is something good, what would that one reason be?
As your question implies, you are aware that there is more than one reason why forgiveness is good. To meet your challenge, I would say that the major reason why forgiveness is good is because it is linked to love, particularly what we call service love or agape love. When you forgive you are exercising this kind of love toward someone who has not been loving to you as seen in his or her unjust actions. Thus, forgiveness is good because it meets injustice with the heroic virtue of love. I call it heroic because it is so difficult to offer agape love in the face of others’ injustice.
Please convince me that forgiveness is not some kind of a cop-out. As I see it, when people forgive they are avoiding conflict. It seems to involve a lack of courage.
Forgiveness is a response to injustice and as such it never ignores justice. Instead, it is a response of mercy in the face of such injustice. To give mercy as a conscious choice when experiencing another person’s injustice is a heroic act of virtue, hardly a lack of courage.
When people practice forgiveness, they do not ignore justice, but instead give mercy and strive for justice at the same time. The justice sought is likely to be good because it is not mingled with resentment. Thus, forgiveness hardly is a cop-out. Did I convince you?
Think about the recent tragedy of mass shooting that happened in California. The mass shooter felt inferior and disrespected by others due to his short stature. It seems that he did have real experiences of being bullied in the past, but what if there were someone who could not really recall being bullied by others but still had serious anger toward a specific group of people because of their potential mistreatment (or historical mistreatment)? Another similar example is this: Think about a racial minority who does not think that he has ever been mistreated due to his racial background (or cannot recall such an incident), but he knows that those with the same racial background as his are often mistreated by others. He now has serious anger toward a certain group of people; his anger is real and is directed toward certain people. Is forgiveness still relevant in this case without a specific incident of injustice? Is it possible for someone to forgive unknown others? If yes, how would that process of forgiving unknown others look different? Thank you very much for your time.
Philosophers talk about secondary forgiveness in which Person B forgives someone who hurt his family member, Person A. Person B is legitimately hurt, although not directly, by the injustice perpetrated on Person A. Thus, he has a right to forgive if he chooses because he has been indirectly hurt by the injustice.
In the other example, of an ethnic or racial minority who has not been directly hurt, the norms of a given society still can be hurtful to his group. Thus, this person can forgive the abstract entity of society. The process can be more difficult because it is so abstract. One cannot see the norms themselves, only the outcome of those norms (such as behavioral or verbal disrespect). The forgiver may not even have specific people in mind and thus the process begins and ends with this abstract entity of “society.” Other than the one or ones singled out for forgiving, the process would proceed similarly to that in which Person B is hurt by Person C and then forgives Person C.
